olennawhitewyne:

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

bonusvampirus:

I’m going to reply to this one, so that astromousike gets a notification, but I have two anons about this too: 

im curious – why is monosexual bad? i thought it was used by bi/pan/poly people to describe homo/hetero people and that it literally means sexualities that are only attracted to one gender? is this bad????

and

What is monosexual and what’s wrong with the word?

You are correct in that “monosexual” does literally mean “person who is only attracted to one gender.” The problem with the term and especially with “monosexualism” is that it implies that gay men and lesbians are privileged on the basis of their sexualities, when they are not. It homogenizes biphobia from gay men and lesbians with biphobia from heterosexuals and treats it all as downward aggression, when really biphobia from gay men and lesbians is lateral aggression, and, like most forms of lateral aggression, it goes both ways. 

“Monosexism” as a term does nothing that “biphobia” does not, and “gay and lesbian monosexuals” is an absolutely revolting term that 100% of the time could have been replaced with “gay men and lesbians” without any loss of meaning. Frankly, I’m skeptical that much good will ever come from discussions that homogenize lateral aggression and downward aggression, but for the rare occasions when some good might come from it, there is nothing wrong with calling people “homosexuals and heterosexuals,” or even “people who are not bisexual.” (The latter phrase, despite what some people will claim, does not remotely have the same implication as “people who are not trans,” for example. “People who are not trans,” is a less-than-ideal phrase because it’s only necessary because cis-ness is normalized to the point where most people don’t even know the word for it. Monosexuality is not normalized to that point. Heterosexuality is. The moment that you forget that, your queer politics turn to shit. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.) 

Additionally, by referring to people as “gay and lesbians monosexuals” rather than “gay men and lesbians,” you are prioritizing their monosexuality over their actual identities. You are going out of their way to group them in with heterosexuals in order to paint them as oppressors, when really you could have made the same point if you’d just said “gay men and lesbians” but that would have required acknowledging that they are just as oppressed as you are. It’s all part of this bullshit ~queerer than thou~ thing that polysexual tumblr has going on, where we keep seeing ridiculous claims like “homosexuality is heteronormative,” and other bullshit that’s really transparently homophobic and does nothing to actually liberate anyone, but it does help certain popular bloggers score points and followers for ~calling out the evil gay oppressors~.

Yes, lesbian and gay tumblr does its own version of this, where they talk about “straight passing privilege” as if that’s a constant thing that can be quantified or divided up among sexuality lines. (There are bisexuals who will never pass as cishet. There are lesbians who easily can in most social situations.) It’s also based on the idea that heteronormativity is a privileged which is ridiculous. That’s also wrong. 

Speaking of lesbians, though, we really need to acknowledge that androsexuality is compulsory for all women in a misogynist society, and while certainly women of all sexualities can be hurt by this, claims that it does not hit lesbians in a unique and brutal way are ridiculous. Lesbians are oppressed for their monosexuality. You cannot separate a lesbian woman’s monosexuality from her oppression. Claiming that she’s privileged for her monosexuality or that it is in any way fair to lump her monosexuality in with a straight man’s, or indeed even a straight woman’s or a gay man’s, is ridiculous. 

Basically, both sides of queer tumblr needs to get its shit together, and a big part of this is killing terms like “monosexism” and “straight-passing privilege” dead so that we can have an actual dialogue where we listen to each other as two groups who are equally oppressed in different ways and who both sometimes hurt each other in entirely avoidable ways. Only then can we actually heal together and go back to putting our energy toward destroying the heterosexist patriarchy. 

Proponents of the terms “monosexualism” and “monosexuals” don’t actually want a dialogue. They want a one-sided conversation where gay men and lesbians accept all of the blame and have to do all of the work toward fixing the rift between our communities. Proponents of the term “straight-passing privilege” one the same thing, just the other way around. Both of them are wrong. 

so this goes for allosexual too, with additional caveats about the implication that non-asexual people are always ready for sex, always want sex, always enjoy sex, &c.

it’s sloppy and manipulative bs

I mean I don’t really want to “kill dead” the term “straight-passing privilege.” I agree that it should not be used to suggest it’s an inherent part of being bisexual, or that all bisexual people possess it, which I’ve seen in the gay and lesbian communities online. That needs to stop. But we can’t even use it for bi people who are in long-term relationships or marriages with people of the opposite-sex? Who make up a really disproportionate number of vocal “bisexual activists” online, in a way that has a negative effect on the bi community and gives others the impression that biphobia is only about your internal identity struggle and fights online… because that’s all it is for some of these people? I feel like both gay and lesbian people and bisexuals who do not pass for straight should have a way of talking about the ways in which these people do not represent us.

Honestly, the way the LGB community approaches “passing privilege” from both ends is puzzling to me, especially when you compare it to other groups. IME, people seem a lot more comfortable talking about “passing privilege” with regard to race, trans people, disability, etc. and while there are exceptions and issues within those groups of the word being misused, people can use the term and also make it clear that they recognize the “passing” person is not actually a part of the oppressive majority, and therefore doesn’t have identical experiences to a person who is actually white or cis or non-disabled. Bisexuals who “pass” would not have the same reaction to for example, a lot of the homophobia from straight people they’d be more likely to overhear due to those straight people’s perception that they’re One of Them. The fact that a lot of het-partnered bi people resent the fact that they “pass” and try to counteract it, is evidence enough that it doesn’t make them “basically straight.”

That being said, it seems bonkers to me to deny that there are enormous privileges to being in an opposite-sex relationship regardless of how you identify. You can be legally married just about anywhere in the world. You don’t have to dodge how you talk about your partner to coworkers to avoid being fired from your job. You can express your affection to your partner in public without worrying about strangers violently retaliating. And so on and so forth. And I think some of the cringey discourse that’s emerged in the LGBT communities online, and how it seems to be uniquely frustrating for gay men and lesbians, is a result of people who don’t experience any of those more concrete, systematic forms of homophobia leading the discourse.

I think identifying it as a form of privilege means we can also talk about how and why these people have such disproportionate representation in online “queer” communities and bisexual movements…. and how to fix that. In a similar way that disability communities have started doing with the fact that white, middle-to-upper-class people with degrees who are able to hold down a job are way overrepresented compared to people who are not or not able to be any of those things. (And how that contributes to cringey ideas online like that verbal autistic people’s main struggle is that we can’t get laid, etc.)

I think what we need to “kill dead” is the implication in “straight-passing privilege” that bisexuals who “pass” don’t struggle in their own way. They do, they have their own experiences that should be discussed in these communities. But the fact that so many people have the impression that those are the only problems bisexuals face is a problem, and something we can’t address if we don’t have terms that talk about “passing.”