I thought I was done but I’m not.

Hundreds of people, sex workers and members of the ace community as well as everyone supporting them, have already stepped up and said “sometimes people have sex with people they’re not attracted to and this doesn’t mean that their sexual orientation is different from what they’re claiming it is or that anyone involved is a rapist.”

But one trans guy states the hypothetical in which a lesbian and a gay man decide to fuck each other despite not being attracted to each other and suddenly everyone is losing their minds calling him a lesbophobe and a corrective rapist. Because a hypothetical lesbian made a decision they personally wouldn’t make.

No one is telling you to go fuck a man! No one is telling you you have to fuck men! You can simply choose to not do that if that’s something you don’t want to do! No one cares! But you don’t get to police the decisions of others just because they share an identity with you and you don’t get to accuse trans people of being rapists when they have not literally committed rape! A text post on tumblr dot com about a hypothetical scenario is not rape!

You people are just transphobic and suckling a little too much milk out of radfem teat.

this isn't even the first time that suggestion was made on tumblr. i distinctly remember YEARS ago an anon sending a blog a message (which i can't remember the blog but i wish so i could find the ask) stating that she was a lesbian, her roommate was a gay man, and that sometimes they have sex to let off steam. and that the arrangement was ideal because no one would catch feelings! two consenting adults helping each other achieve orgasm is not a big deal, and once again, i'm saying that as a sex averse person.

i think the ask was sent in the middle of acecourse in 2014 or something. it was sent in agreement that sexual attraction is not required to have sex and has very little to do with your sexuality. sexuality and sex overlap, sure, but they are not intrinsically connected like people believe.

i only saw that post on my dash ONCE, btw, so there wasn't heaps of discourse following it. the reason i say that is because the heaps of discourse following the suggestion NOW is 100% because the suggestion was made by a trans man in a hypothetical situation. it is without a doubt driven by transphobia.

I used to work with a butch that wanted kids and couldn't afford adoption or IVF so she and her wife made an arrangement with a STRAIGHT cis male friend that they would take turns having unprotected sex with him until at least one of them got pregnant. Now they have 3 kids together and he sends them some nominal amount for child support and visits with the kids sometimes, there's no feelings besides friendship with the guy vs the two women, and it's whatever.

Yesterday a standup routine done by a stud popped up in my suggesteds and she was talking about how she was trying to convince her guy friends to sleep with her because she's a lesbian but she wants kids but she doesn't have the money for IVF and consensual friend dick is free and tends to do the job just fine. She makes a somewhat self-disparaging joke about how her guy friends are intimidated by her masculinity and also respectful of her lesbian identity and thus how she's having a hard time finding a man to have sex with. And since it's standup it might not be wholely true but that also means that actual lesbians have been talking about doing this for ages.

I also knew a lesbian that was FWB with a guy for a while because she was working out her feelings over her most recent ex and wanted to keep having sex because sex is fun but didn't want to catch feelings so deliberately chose a guy because she knew she wouldn't be interested in more and could break it off easily since she wasn't actually attracted to him.

So it's really, uh, inch-resting, that a trans guy makes a stupid joke post about fictional people doing the same and gets a whole witch hunt sent after him, especially immediately after someone makes the claim that no one does witch hunts for trans guys over the most ridiculous and stupid shit.

Also a ton of people have already pointed this out in other posts/comments, but I still find it very interesting that all the backlash is about the lesbian. No one has had a single thing to say about the hypothetical gay guy, only about the hypothetical lesbian.

parent: never have sex child: i’m asexual parent: what do you mean you have to have sex

why couldn't someone allo get my lovely understanding parents who probably totally knew i was watching porn at 15 and warned me about condoms at about the same age

my lovely understanding parents who totally see my future as marrying a guy and having kids

)=

If you’re solely attracted to people who were assigned female at birth, don’t call yourself a lesbian.

i’ve read a lot of stupid shit on this garbage can of a website, but this just shot to #1

"if you’re a lesbian, don’t call yourself a lesbian. i dont really know why, i just hate lesbians, and would like if they no longer existed. why dont u just suck a dick. im so progressive"

A transphobic lesbian is still a lesbian tho.

stop saying that asexuals can still have sex, despite being ace

stop saying aromantics can still be in relationships, despite being aro

we know

but we dont have to. stop it. thats not what makes us important.

imagine: a lesbian woman and a gay man married. with kids. no…

im an aromantic asexual in a relationship who is willing to have sex under specific circumstances get rekt

also a homosexual man and a homosexual woman can love each other if they are not also homoromantic and their romantic orientation aligns with each others gender

I am aro ace not in a relationship right now but open to one possibly involving sex. I know it's possible.

And by "lesbian" and "gay" I did not just mean "homosexual", I meant "homosexual homoromantic". Thought that was parseable from context.

My point was just that while two people who aren't attracted to each other either sexually or romantically can be in a sexual/romantic relationship, it's not something to be expected as a "norm". It's an exception. You are an exception. I am an exception. We are more like the non-aro-ace populace than many others who are further marginalized for it. Let's not contribute to this marginalization ourselves. That's all I wanted to say!

It’s important to separate church from religion. I identify as Christian; Orthodox Christian. I have huge fucking problems with Christian churches. Especially Orthodox church in Russian. because, you know - ban on gay propaganda (?!?!?! what the fuck even was that) (that would be funnier than the gay agenda if it wasn’t a real thing) - blessing tanks and other weapons (that Russia uses to fight basically colonial wars with neighbors like Georgia and, fucking surprise, Ukraine) - blatant lack of separation from state (have you heard about Pussy Riot?) - basically all fun things resulting from the last one, like accumulation of wealth, rising censorship, support of current dictatorship regime…

there are problems, yes

woah, wait. what?

 -Gay propaganda (especially among children) isn’t, in my mind, a good thing at all. It’s propaganda, for heaven’s sake, that is never good. People should decide who they want to be all by themselves, without someone else’s pressure. No one banned homosexuality in Russia, you know.

 -I don’t know if it’s some “media war” thing and what the world thinks about the whole Georgia/Russia conflict, but it was actually Georgia that started the whole damn thing. Russia only protected its national interests.

And well, Ukrainian crisis is such a huge (and hot) topic to discuss, I could speak for hours and hours about it, but, ahem, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine. Or attack it. Like, at all. People who are standing against Ukrainian army and fascist factions are people of Donetsk and Lugansk.

 -what Pussy Riot did was actually disgusting. Media has been going on and on about “girls, unfairly treated by police”, etc., but has anyone thought about other people? People, who were practically insulted by their actions? Western society has a very one-sided info on this kind of situations.

 -dictatorship regime?! I’m sorry, have I misread that?! well, I am Russian and I live in Russia, and I don’t think we have a “dictatorship regime” here. Actually, people can speak their minds here, whereas in US, for example, there are certain topics that are quite dangerous to discuss (for example, 9/11 probably being an American government project to get an excuse for invading certain countries). Also, accumulation of wealth? Ehh, have you heard of Popes? Bishops of Rome? Well, Russian priests are sooo far behind them it’s kinda funny. 

I’m not claiming my point of view to be the one and only possible.

But, ahem, may be it’s time to stop breeding stereotypes? To stop anti-Russian propaganda? 

Just some questions to think about.

1) Gay propaganda is not real and not possible. An orientation is not chosen, it's what you are born with. Russian ban on gay propaganda is actually a ban on educating kids about alternative sexual orientations, leaving gay teens confused and lonely. It leads to suicide and all other fun things. LGBT+ Pride is an important movement for a reason, and banning it can lead to nothing good. Once again: it's IMPOSSIBLE for gays to seduce straight boys into becoming gays. Orientation is not a choice. To understand yourself, you need full information. Providing that information is now banned in Russia.

2) Yeah... Georgia started the war. A tiny state in the mountains attacked Russia and, like... hoped to win, I guess. Against Russia. Georgia. Sure. That's exactly what happened. *pats on the head gently* Oh, and naturally, Ukraine is full of fascists. And Russian people are genocided. My family and friends have been genocided since, what? winter? and somehow haven't noticed. *pats on the back soothingly* And Russian soldiers are not in Ukraine at all, at any point. Russian army that occupied Crimea right before its voting for separation was just there to help people come up with the decision, and that this decision was in favor of a state whose army was at the moment among their houses was just a blissful coincidence. Oh, what an amazing world you live in.

3) And Pussy Riot, girls who tried to sing in the church, got a fucking prison sentence, despite having little kids at home. This is beyond ridiculous.

4) 9/11 is an American government project to have an excuse to invade countries. And Russia doesn't have a dictatorship regime at all. Elections were not falsified at any point.

Dear followers, this is not a troll. What you see before you is what they really, honestly think. What my grandmother who lives in Russia thinks, despite having right in front of her the example of her own son's family being mysteriously not prosecuted and not discriminated against and not supporting fascist ideology in any form. This is what state-controlled media does to the people's minds, and this is why totalitarian regimes like communism are more terrifying than capitalism, with all its inhumanity, could ever be. This is also the reason I have an English-speaking blog, rather than Russian-speaking, and don't visit Russian internet at all these days, despite Russian being my native language. And I'm blocking this person now.

sent by curttu. the link is here

~Mod Q

can straight girls please stop shitting their pants over being mistaken for lesbians or being called lesbians as an insult?

when someone tries to insult you by calling you a lesbian, they’re a homophobe. if you actually find it insulting to be called a lesbian, you’re a homophobe too. this is not a difficult concept to grasp.

ok I get what this is going for but “can people stop being upset over x” is not a good approach

"if you actually find it insulting to be called a lesbian, you’re a homophobe" is exactly the same as saying "if you actually find it insulting to be called a man, you’re a misandrist"

and yet a lot of people, such as transwomen, DO have reasons to take issue with being called a man without actually hating men

the reasons things bother people are complex and depend on the person’s own personal mindset and experiences AND THAT DOES NOT CHANGE JUST BECAUSE THE PERSON IS STRAIGHT OR CIS OR ANYTHING ELSE

When I was in the kindergarten, other kids found it funny to come up with insults based on my surname. It's not even unusual. I was called Beard, Ballerine, Bread. None of those were actually insulting by themselves, you know? Yet I did feel insulted each time those were used instead of, you know, my actual name. Because those kids' intent was to insult. I wasn't bothered by the actual words themselves - none of those were in any way bad - but I was hurt because they were being purposefully mean to me.

If a straight guy calls a straight girl a lesbian, meaning it as an insult, there are lots of reasons for the girl to be offended without her being in any way homophobic. Not even mentioning the whole "he purposely insulted her" angle, the girl can be offended on behalf of her actually lesbian friends who she doesn't feel are in any way inferior to her. The girl can be insulted by an underlying idea that girls only have value as commodities to guys and lesbian girls are therefore useless, if that's what the guy meant. The girl can be insulted by an underlying idea that straight girls are feminine and if a girl is unfeminine she must be lesbian. There are so many layers of heteronormativity and gendernormativity and just vague societal sexist bullshit at work, depending on the situation, the very idea that someone would decry a girl for being offended...

are you trying to defend your inalienable right to call girls lesbians regardless of their actual orientation when you want to, or what

I mean if a girl was, like, making out with another girl for some reason and then had issues with being assumed lesbian instead of straight, then yea, the girl probably has problems - then again, she might be irked by bi&pan erasure in such an assumption...

Trying to explain to people how I can feel sensual attraction without any romantic or sexual attraction is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. It’s surprising because it really isn’t a foreign concept.

It’s kinda like seeing a really cute, happy, or sleepy animal and getting the urge to pet, cuddle, and hold it. Not because you have romantic or sexual desires for the animal, but because you feel drawn to give it affection, and doing so makes you happy.

It’s also like holding something of great sentimental value. You feel the need to keep it close to you because it’s special and important to you.

For me, there are just some people I get the deepest sensual attraction for. All I want to do is hold them and cuddle them and give them soft little kisses and tell them how wonderful they are and how important they are to me. I don’t have any sexual desire for them. I don’t have any romantic feelings for them. They’re just really special to me and I feel drawn to give them a lot of affection because doing so makes me happy and will hopefully make them happy too.

I have been cuddling with my grandma extensively all evening, all on my initiative and all very... cuddly. Now please, I want to hear how it invalidates my sexual orientation. I want to hear those arguments.

listen

heteroromantic asexual = not straight

aromantic heterosexual = not straight

heteroromantic heterosexual= straighty mcstraighterson

i’m never going to stop being quietly entertained by kids trying to inoculate against cishet cooties. 

Have only ever been attracted to members of the opposite sex, have been in a happy relationship with one for ten years, but cannot strictly prove you wouldn’t be okay with a hand job from someone you couldn’t see if you were a little tipsy and it felt good = “not straight”.

PHEW DODGED A BULLET THERE.

i’ve been trying to process tumblr user the-real-seebs’ statement for like twenty minutes now, and i’m still not sure what it’s getting at, but i don’t see why anybody of any sexuality would have to prove they would not be okay with receiving a handjob from somebody they couldn’t see.

The point is that tumblr’s “cishets are sooooo horrible they are literal human trash” bullshit has created a problem: Roughly 90% of all living humans are being told they are “literal human trash”. So the teenagers come along, and they want to not be hated, but they don’t have the vocabulary or rhetorical skills to fight back against impenetrable obfuscatory academic jargon used to tell them they can’t complain about it. Soooo… they invent ways to declare themselves “not straight”. Or “not cis”. (See also: “circumgender”.)

The whole thing’s stupid. The entire fucking point of LGBT advocacy has been to express the idea that you shouldn’t be shamed or judged for your gender identity or sexual orientation. All this “cishets suck” crap is basically reasserting the idea that gender identity and sexual orientation are things that at least some people should be ashamed of. Not. Helping.

Well, actually, the point is also that “straight” really means mainstream “normal” sexuality, which is, yes, heterosexual heteroromantic. Without any sort of moral judgement, asexual or aromantic identity already excludes your from mainstream. It’s a fact, and has nothing to do with “toxic tumblr attitude”. Which is present, yes, but it doesn’t change that.

I’m pretty sure a lot of young teenage boys aren’t interested in the romantic aspect of relationships and are effectively aromantic heterosexuals. I think that’s pretty mainstream.

Being heteroromantic and asexual is more unusual, but really.

"Are you straight?"

"Well I’m interested in the opposite gender but I don’t want sex/romance, so no."

That’s basically straight with preferences, no matter how unusual and far from mainstream.

That’s like saying identifying as demisexual/demiromantic or whatever label fits the way you express your sexual or romantic attraction (or lack thereof) makes you queer/not-straight.

This is what the attitudes on tumblr tend to exacerbate, in my opinion, because straight people are eeeeevil and surely my preferences in what in want in a straight relationship will make me immune.

Or maybe I’m being horribly judgemental and misinformed, in which case feel free to help me about that.

Yes, I guess you are kinda minsinformed. This is not a tumblr-exclusive question, and it did not originate from "straight people are gross and I am not gross". Not at all. Here's where I feel you are wrong. - in dividing relationships into "straight" and "gay" and claiming that as a basis for sexuality you erase not only asexual, but also bisexual and pansexual identities; - no, straight people don't treat asexuals as same as them, lack of desire for sex/romance is pathologized; - one can say that "wants sex with men instead of women" is not all that different from "wants sex with women" too, compared to "does not want sex at all" and thus make an argument that homo/bi/pansexual people are really just "straight with preferences"; - no, demisexual and demiromantic are not about the way you /express/ your desires, it's about the way you /experience/ them, same as homo/heterosexuality. You either are attracted to someone in a certain way, or you are not. Basically determining sexual orientation is like checking a series of boxes "are you attracted to people of the same gender?" "are you attracted to people of the opposite gender?" "does gender factor in your attraction to people?" yes, no, yes - homosexuality no, yes, yes - heterosexuality yes, yes, yes - bisexuality yes, yes, no - pansexuality no, no, no - asexuality There is no other factor that makes homosexuality more "queer" than asexuality. Everything that is not heterosexual cisgender is queer - "weird", "different from assumed norm". Assumed norm is allosexuality and alloromanticism - that you do feel romantical&sexual attraction. Its lack is still pathologized, there is workspace discriminaiton, there is corrective rape. Oppression olympics is pointless so I am not going to make any comparisons about who has it worse or who ticks more boxes in "am I oppressed" quiz. Being queer is not about just how bad your life is. Being queer is about being different than heterosexual cisgender. Ticking another combination of boxes on that quiz than no, yes, yes makes you other than heterosexual. Full stop.

Here is a great post on this topic.

As aromantic asexual I don't feel fully qualified to talk about romantic orientation, but basically as far as I understand for most people it is the same as sexual orientation, therefore the requirement for meeting the "straight" norm, so you are not assumed different/broken/gross/satanic spawn, is "heterosexual heterorormantic cisgender". Any one requirement broken? Congrats, you are not normal. You are queer.

I just had a straight guy tell me “Gah I love lesbians” and before I could even say anything, he added, “because, ya know, they like the same thing I do and sometimes it’s nice to get advice from a girl instead of guys who think making love is just repeatedly putting your dick in something, ya know?” And I have never been more proud of the human race.

how interpersonal relationships are supposed to work