Racing Turtles

So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.

For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.

Also getting really tired of that criticism of any activism that dares talk about how it might benefit Straight™ men

Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?

Also it’s not just homophobia, it’s toxic masculinity which is the manifestation of hating women so much it impacts their own gender, and also transphobia and transmisogyny, where any deviation from the gender assigned at birth is heavily policed with violence

I really disagree here, and not because I don’t think straight men should have more occasions to be vulnerable and emotional, but because they as a group benefit from the oppression of everyone else

I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!

I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else? 

They’re the norm the queer movement deviates from!

Do they? Broadly, as a class? Is every single straight cis man benefiting from privilege more than every single gay cis man? 

I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.

But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.

I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.

The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.

So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?

I want to recruit straight cis men to be my allies, not typecast them as my enemies because I think that homophobia is the only kind of evil in the world.

When I said, “cops are oppressed under capitalism,” this is the kind of shit I mean. Oppressor/victim isn’t binary. I particularly like this ‘pyramid scheme’ conception of privilege.

Particularly because pyramid schemes rely on an endless chain of recruitment. The way to move slightly up the ladder is to have people under you. Just slide into a higher role…

Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.

Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.

It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.

The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.

Which is part of why I get very nervous about straight-white-cis-abled-man bashing. A lot of people don’t sound like they want people to not be treated badly based on demographic characteristics they have no control over; they just want to be the people wielding the whips.

The other thing to consider is that straight-man stereotypical, toxic behavior is actually profoundly unnatural and we should remember that it is. It is heavily enforced by men on other men, with some participation by some straight women, because that is the only way it can even exist.

Look at straight women, gay women, gay men. What’s one thing they all have in common? They are all free to look up to the person they love. Not to put them on a pedestal, but to think of them as a leader. To follow that person when they have good ideas, to obey them when it seems like the right thing to do. To respect them and consider their opinions vitally important.

Now look at what most straight men do. Women are honored for their attractiveness and for caretaker traits, but a good portion of the time, straight men do not respect the opinions of the women they love, because they have been taught that a Real Man doesn’t listen to a woman’s opinions. They don’t look up to women they love. They don’t follow them. 

This is not normal. Normal human behavior is what is evidenced by everyone who is not a straight man and not under enormous pressure to behave as if the people they’re biologically compelled to love and want sex with are inferior, subhuman beings. Love is supposed to make you respect and honor and listen to the person you love. It’s supposed to make equal partnerships. because when you take the pressure off to do something else, that’s what people do.

Homophobia is, in part, straight men reacting violently to the notion that a man can still be male, and human, and have all the same rights as another man, if he doesn’t religiously police his own behavior to be sufficiently misogynistic. Doing “feminine” things – which includes loving another man – has to make a man subhuman, just like women, because if it didn’t, then straight men have everything to gain by treating women well. Contrary to what the NiceGuys whine, women really do prefer men who respect them and honor their opinion. If there were a lot of men who did that, the men who don’t wouldn’t be able to get laid, because natural competition… the only reason women settle for men who don’t respect them is that that’s the only kind of men they know. 

In order to maintain male privilege, straight men must attack any man who seems sympathetic to women – including fellow straight men who actually respect women, gay men, trans women (who they see as being feminine men), and anyone who challenges the binary. If they do not do so, then natural behavior – respect the person you love – reasserts, and also, men who respect women and don’t exercise privilege over them get women more easily, and cultural evolution destroys male privilege. So the stakes are high, but in order to keep their privilege, they have to practice subtractive masculinity – a component of toxic masculinity that says “anything that women do is feminine and men can’t do it.”

Keeping a clean house? Feminine. Caring about how other people feel? Feminine. Eating enough vegetables to be healthy? Feminine. Having a close relationship with friends you can be emotionally open with? Feminine. Loving pets, especially cats? Feminine. Wiping your own ass? Feminine. (Seriously, I’ve seen men argue that wiping their butts properly is “gay”.)

As “being good in school” becomes defined as a thing women do and therefore feminine, men have to start making themselves deliberately into idiots. As “reading” becomes defined as a thing women do, men have to reject it. There are seriously forces at work in our culture trying to turn men into apes because women were allowed to do all the things that define us as human, and now men can’t do them… if they participate in toxic masculinity.

Straight men would be infinitely better off if they just gave up the privilege and accepted being equals. And everyone else would be better off too. Just because straight men would benefit from an end to toxic masculinity doesn’t make it a bad idea.

So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.

For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.