korrasera:

geekandmisandry:

ididntmakeitforyou:

eco-rad:

identitypolitics:

Or, How Not to Be a Homophobe

• Stop using the word queer. As an identifier. As an “umbrella term”. As a fill-in for any LGBT person you come across. It is a slur. If you don’t find yourself uncomfortable with the word being used so flippantly, maybe consider why that is. We may be able to experience homophobia for our same-sex attraction, but we are not the primary targets of it. 
• Stop claiming bi-erasure when you won’t even call yourself bi. Pansexual, queer, wlw, polysexual… What’s wrong with the word bisexual? Why obscure a simple fact?
• Along with that, stop calling definitive lesbians queer or wlw. 
• Stop pretending that our attraction to men is in any way marginalized. This is ridiculous. Go outside. 
• Recognize that “biphobia” is not a unique axis of oppression. It exists for bi women as the intersection of homophobia and misogyny, if it exists at all. There is no “systemic biphobia”; the oppression we may face is homophobia for our same-sex attraction compounded with misogyny for our femaleness. 
• Recognize that straight passing privilege is real. 
• Recognize that if you’re dating a boy, you’re in a straight relationship. 
• Stop implying gay people are wrong for not being attracted to both sexes. Cut it out with the “hearts not parts”. 
• Stop implying that everyone can/should be/is bisexual by insisting that “sexuality is fluid”.
• Know when our voice is necessary in a discussion. Are there people more qualified to be speaking on the subject? 

okay i like some of these but honestly why is it just for bi girls?? why are bi girls held at a higher standard that literally any other lgbt person within the community

Because bi women bring their straight boyfriends to LGBT spaces. Because no people talk about their straight relationships as if they are just as oppressed as everyone else. Biphobia is real but it’s because of the fact that many bi people act really straight.
When you act straight and pass as straight can you see how people would say your relationship is straight. How easy it is for you to move between worlds and bring our operators into them. There are so many bi people who don’t get it and have no intention to.
I will always be inclusive of bi people and recognize the unique problems they face. They have a place. They deserve respect. But your solutions to problems cannot be at the cost to the rest of the community.

If you have a straight partner you have to go to lgbt places alone. No support network for you.

So much privilege 🙃🙃🙃

Just as a friendly reminder to @ididntmakeitforyou​, @identitypolitics​, and anyone else listening, you aren’t actually being inclusive or supportive of bisexual people if you argue the points in the OP’s post.

Here’s why:

Actually, no. Honestly, I can’t. There’s so much wrong with the posts made above that this is going to have to be a laundry list of why you should never talk like this to people in your own community:

1. Telling people to stop using queer is offensive. Especially if you argue that doing so makes a bisexual person a homophobe.
2. Queer isn’t a slur. There’s nothing wrong with asking that someone not refer to you with that term, as is expected any time you tell us how you want to be addressed, but queer is absolutely an umbrella term for the community. The notion that queer is a slur that has to be banished from use in the community is something that really started in the TERF community and is a great example of authoritarian gatekeeping coming from other people in the LGBTQ+ community.
3. You shouldn’t be telling people how they’re allowed to identify. It’s none of your business.
4. Same goes for saying that lesbians can’t be referred to as queer or women who love women. Especially when there are queer lesbians that use the term wlw and queer to describe themselves.
5. Not all bisexual people are attracted to men. There are more than two genders.
6. Bisexual people suffer prejudice for being bisexual. That includes when a bisexual woman is in a relationship with a man, or when a bisexual man is in a relationship with a woman. We don’t experience misplaced homophobia, we have a different experience all together. Straight people act like we’re just pretending to be gay to feel special, while gay people accuse us of being self-hating gay people who enter into heterosexual relationships to escape oppression.
7. Straight passing privilege is a completely nonsense concept and has no bearing in discourse about queer issues. Trans women who pass for cis don’t get hated any less by the rest of the world. Bisexual men who are in relationships with women don’t magically stop being bisexual when someone talks about how terrible bisexual people are in front of them. The standard for judging whether or not you experience a type of oppression is your identity, not the way you choose to dress or the type of makeup you wear.
8. Bisexual people in a relationship with someone of a gender other than their own are still bisexual, it doesn’t magically make them straight. It’s not a straight relationship and it never will be, because it’s a bisexual person in a relationship. It’s not the relationship that’s straight or gay, it’s the people in the relationship.
9. Saying something along the lines of ‘hearts not parts’ has nothing to do with implying that gay people are wrong for not being attracted to someone. It’s a reference to the fact that people fall in love with other human beings, not genitals, and is frequently used to describe the underlying problem with transphobia in the LGBTQ+ community. If your sexuality means that you have relationships with women and you state that you can never be attracted to or have a relationship with trans women, all that says is that you feel that trans women aren’t actually women. That’s not sexuality, that’s just bigotry.
10. Sexuality is fluid for a fuck of a lot of people. I’m sure there are bisexual people who do act like assholes about it, but that’s not a common feature of the bisexual community.

The real cost to the community is when emotionally immature people try to exert control over other people in the community like authoritarian gatekeepers. Or, put more simply, all of these arguments are bunk. They’re reductive and invalid and in some cases utter nonsense.

Just as a quick summary:

• Bisexual people can’t be in a straight relationship because they aren’t straight.
• Relationships don’t work that way you corn dogs.
• Bisexual people get treated like shit for being bisexual, not for being mistaken for gay.
• There’s no such thing as passing privilege you absolute fritters.
• All arguments that bisexual people act really straight are centered in bigotry against bisexual people.
• Queer is not a slur just because TERFs want it to be one, you ding dongs.
• Biphobia exists.

Internalized biphobia is a hell of a drug.

I honestly don’t mean to come across as hostile, I’m just very confused about what you mean by “queer is not a slur.” It’s a word used by people who are not in a marginalized group to denigrate people who are in one. That’s…how slurs work. It’s a slur that bi people (as members of the queer community) can reclaim and use for ourselves, and I think it’s wrong to tell someone who is a member of the community that they can’t reclaim it but it’s still used in a hurtful fashion by people who aren’t part of the community.