like, being visible as lgbt is rarely even a good or nice thing let alone a privilege. at best it’s uncomfortable and at worst it’s actively dangerous, bc, u know, homophobia and transphobia!
and yeah sometimes visibility can be a good thing!! like if i was going to a gay club and i wanted other women to know that i’m a lesbian then being read as such would be handy, but i don’t have that level of control over my visibility – if i want to be read as a lesbian to women in a gay club i can’t choose not to be read as a lesbian by the men there, the people outside, my taxi driver, etc. etc. my visibility can be very dangerous! it’s a constant mental maths of who is and isn’t safe to let know and even then they might read me as a lesbian anyway! and that’s only talking about personal aesthetic types of visibility let alone the visibility of lesbians as a whole in culture and media which i have no control over and often sucks!!!
this issue is v important for trans women especially bc being closeted and passing as a cis man or being out and passing as a cis woman can be so important for their safety and survival, be that in emotional, physical, or mental health.
so basically if you’re asexual or similar and you’re complaining about lgbt people being privileged or oppressing you bc they have more visibility actually think for a second about what you’re saying and the violence you’re idealising.
this goes for non-binary people as well!! i’ve met dozens of NB people who are under the impression that somehow trans women have it easier than them because people “know what we are” or “know that we exist” and honestly it’s the opposite of the truth; that’s what makes it that much harder for us.
i know it’s exhausting to not be recognised for who you are but you need to stop and think about what would happen to you, and what IS happening to people because bigots DO know
The United Nations proposed a law condemning nations who sentence people in the LGBT community, among other minorities, to death.
And the U.S. voted against it.
They refused to condemn countries who SENTENCE THE LGBT COMMUNITY TO DEATH!
The United Nations isn’t one of those gray areas. All of the laws and legislations are intentionally black and white. In this case, you either condemn killing the LGBT community for the sake of being gay/trans/etc. Or you don’t.
There’s no middle ground. There’s no interpretation. There’s no reading into it.
On October 3rd, 2017, the United States refused to condemn sentencing the LGBT Community to death. Which can only mean that they’re in favor of sentencing the LGBT Community to death.
I think a lot of the discourse on here, esp about intra-community issues, comes from the perspective of people who are a part of pretty insular leftist queer communities and assume everyone else engaging w their writing is too. so you have stuff like “white trans people are celebrated when they come out” or “everyone wants to fuck transmasc genderqueer people” as statements people are making, which are very very true in some cases from within these really insular communities but seem like you’re blogging from another dimension to people who like, live in small town Iowa.
I think this is why we get a lot of the tumblr arguments we get. like one person’s like “ask every single person you meet for pronouns no exceptions or you’re a bad person” and someone reading that who isn’t part of an urban leftist queer scene is like??? you want me to as the aggressively homophobic straight men who live in my open carry state for their pronouns?????? but no one wants to add “disclaimer: I go to smith college/live in Montreal/have completely forgotten what fear feels like” to their posts
Also why I think some people are so concerned with limiting who gets to be in the ~community. I’m from Indiana, I’ll take all the people I can get in my community.
^^^ that reminds me of why the advice to cut people off if they don’t share your politics or completely accept you isn’t always so workable, especially if you’re POC or marginalised in some other way. You’d be lonely and isolated, and there’s no guarantee that the queer lefty community is going to be able to make up for it (there’s been too many cases where people have come out thinking they’d get the love and support of the queer community, but instead the queer community ignores them because they don’t ‘look the part’ and their home community shuns them). And some of these people, even if they’re broadly homophobic, would still protect and defend you at all costs because you’re literally family to them.
YES.
I kind of want to tattoo “It’s not that simple” across tumblr’s collective forehead sometimes.
alder-knight 