Yeah it’s definitely the second thing. People who identify as Pan are like the 5th level vegans from the Simpsons, they’re going to have thought about this shit wayyyyyy more than any of us. They’re definitely not like the “I don’t see color” people, they are absolutely the opposite
Right. I didn’t mean to imply they’re bigots. A true person feeling that way is, as you said, the opposite. The problem is, after ten minutes of this over complicated I don’t see sex and gender conversation/explanation, I think the group loses a lot of people. They’re either left confused or just hit a barrier which equates to not wanting to deal with something they think is super complicated.
Most the time I don’t care who is attracted to whom, so I juts get introduced to someone’s significant other and just, well, roll with it regardless, but I am absolutely open to being part of the support system which is more like an equality system.
I’ll struggle with pronouns but… if that makes someone else’s life easier, and they allow me to do it wrong sometimes, often, and it doesn’t hugely impact me… that just seems like a simple ask. They’re not asking for much here. I don’t get the resistance to it. Language changes all the time.
Honestly I understand the same thing. I spent a lot of time being absolutely exhausted in civil rights/social justice discussions before I ever understood privilege, for instance. It’s tiring. It’s a ton of work. And the people on the other side, they don’t want to explain it for the twentieth time, either. And some people over there aren’t even really fair at all, they’ve been biased the other way. This happens for both of these groups (race discussions and sexuality discussions). But I think this part:
Is the important part, and I completely agree.
Hey, I actually knew that one. :)
See, I think this is kind of part of the “issue” for me, and I put issue in quotes because for the vast majority of the time it’s not an issue at all.
Most of the time, when it comes to someone else’s sexuality… I just literally do not give a fuck. I don’t really want to hear about it. Which isn’t to say that you can’t display your sexuality openly, just like heterosexual people have traditionally done.
So I’m certainly not saying that anyone should ever feel the need to hide anything. You should be able to behave normally in public.
But I’m not really cool with folks pushing that stuff way out into the public eye, and demanding that I give a shit about it. Just like I’m not cool with folks demanding that I give a shit about their being heterosexuals. I literally do not give a single fuck about who other people want to have sex with (or not). It’s not something I think about with most folks in normal interactions with them.
On some level, this bugged me with transgender folks getting upset about being called “she” vs. “he”, because a pronoun is such a nothing thing, that arguing about it made it into a bigger deal than it was. But whatever, I got over it, because who cares.
But using some fucking made up word like “xir”? Nah, fuck that. Go deal with real problems. It’s something that was created ENTIRELY by someone who just wanted to feel special and force themselves to be the center of conversation. Xir is not a thing. Nothing is gonna convince me otherwise. Even typing it, I still don’t even know what the fuck I’m typing. Is it like “Her”? What about “Xim”? Are Xir an Xim interchangable?
I just don’t give a shit about learning a bunch of new linguistic rules to cater to a tiny sliver of the population who are generally all rich white kids who want to feel special.
I knew you still had the cold void of absence of a heart of a conservative within you, Timex :)
i see what you did there
Nobody demands you give shit about anything. But for those who do give a shit, there is a vocabulary.
I mean, there is a ton of terminology involved with a lot of issues. But it would be really weird to post a complaint that you are sick of hearing about Glass Seagal, student debt, and the CFPB because it is too damn complicated and irrelevant to your life, so everyone needs to stop shoving it in your face. Whatever. Nobody is shoving it in your face, so you be you.
I recommend the 1989 annotated version of Ursula LeGuin’s essay “Does Gender Matter?” about the question of pronoun usage and its social implications. It’s anthologized in her splendid essay collection ‘The Language of the Night.’ She was writing it in the '70s regarding her use of ‘he’ as the generic third-person pronoun for the double-sexed characters in ‘The Left Hand of Darkness,’ but some of the same issues come up in the contest of modern trans identity.
You may or may not agree with her conclusions but it’s an interesting read. She herself originally felt that “‘he’ is the generic third-person pronoun in English, dammit” but later completely reversed her decision to say that “they” should be used, and “let the pedants and pundits squeak and gibber in the streets.”
Now, ‘xir’? I, um, yeah. Dunno about ‘xir.’ But languages have been evolving since time immemorial.
Timex has literally been accused of discrimination in this thread due to not buying into these extra letters.
Just to be clear, it’s not like I want them to feel bad, and that’s why I won’t say “xir”. It’s that I feel like they are just looking for a thing to feel bad about.
With things like someone who is asexual, I still don’t see how it could even come up unless you make it come up. Like… I know folks who aren’t involved in relationships. That’s normal, isn’t it? I mean, not everyone is always in a relationship. At no point am I gonna be like, “Hey guy at the bar! WHY AREN’T YOU HITTING ON THAT CHICK?!”
I have a hard time thinking of a situation where I would know that someone considered themselves asexual, unless they told me. (at which point I’d probably think, “Why the fuck did they just tell me that?”)
I completely agree with this. When Cortez added that bullshit “QIA+?” to LGBT, yeah, it slightly turned me off.
But whatever. Fascists control the country, I have much bigger things to worry about, and so do the LGBTQIA+?
You may actually travel with a, shall we say, higher class of person than the people that are a problem. I assure you, there are people who constantly ask about relationships, who they’re interested in, and that’s just office gossip. It’s a lot worse in the school environments and worse in work environments that aren’t even white collar.
I’ve encountered this by a simple request, can you refer to me as “x”, the same way as Kenneth might ask me to call him Ken. It’s not usually that… challenging outside of discussions about it. The default pronoun is a different matter, but I am open to it because… why not?
So just as a for instance that phone typing won’t do justice to.
A friend of mine identifies as asexual. She’s 31 and has had numerous sex partners over the years and eventually just had to accept about herself that she just doesn’t feel those feels or enjoy those activities.
However, it happens that she entirely enjoys every other element of being in a relationship with someone. She likes being emotionally close and sharing feelings and snuggling and watching movies together and hanging out and saying ridiculous cute shit to each other… Pretty much the whole shebang but the banging.
Now, it may not surprise you to learn that most of her partners aren’t thrilled about this one the years. Most people really love bumping uglies and get a little miffed if they get stiffed on that front in a relationship.
So, when dating, she always faces the choice: do I make my asexuality really apparent from the get go to avoid “misleading” anyone, or hold it back until we’re already involved and know each other? It’s worth noting here that she’s got pretty bad anxiety and moved across the country for with, so it’s hard for her to meet people, so most of her dating life starts online on a site like PoF.
Well, it turns out that both choices result in really unpleasant outcomes for her. When she discloses her asexuality, she gets dudes promising their sweet dicks will “fix” her once and for all, and when she assures them they will not, they call her names and say awful shit until she blocks them. If she withholds it at all, she inevitably gets blamed for being a cockteasing whore, and more abuse is piled upon her.
One ex, who she was with for quite some time, decided that he deserved sex whether she was into it or not and raped her at a party, then gaslit her into thinking it was her fault for being a tease… She’s STILL getting over that one.
Asexual or not, she’s got as much right as anyone to pursue relationships and connections with others that make her happy…but her sexuality (or lack thereof) makes her a constant target for abuse and misunderstanding and cruelty, and in that venue, she can hardly hide it… Nevermind when ex’es or spurned woo-ers go and spread nasty rumors about her.
I’m not saying throwing the A onto LGBTQI magically makes all the dudes on her local dating services super woke and respectful. But I AM saying that she faces legitimate forms of discrimination and abuse for her sexuality, and that like any marginalized group, she and people like her are sometimes best helped by greater recognition, awareness, and, eventually, acceptance.
Know what DOESN’T help? Telling her “fuck your feelings, you’re just looking for an excuse to feel sorry for yourself.” All that does is make you sound like a hateful, bigoted asshole.
I say sound like because after all these years arguing about shit on here with you, I DO think you’re capable of coming to understand how a group of people you clearly haven’t invested much time or effort into thinking about, listening to, and empathizing with can actually experience genuinely harmful and unfair treatments you’d heretofore discarded as meaningless, and adapt your worldviews to suit.
You’ve done it before. You can do it again.
This seems less to be about her being asexual and more about the people she’s in a relationship with being complete assholes. I mean… those kind of responses are not normal.
Not that I am understating why her choices are difficult, it’s just, a decent person would not respond that way.
Well, but it’s the total assholes that are the problem. It’s like saying that racism isn’t really something we should be overly concerned about because only bigots think and act that way.
The world is full of bigots, racists and assholes. Understanding the issues that make folks a target of these deplorables is inherently important. (Note that I am not implying equivalency here - Just pointing out that Armando’s anecdote demonstrates that these are not imaginary problems and that saying the issue is assholes doesn’t make it less of an issue for the people affected or those who care about making the world a less shitty place.)
I can see where you might take it that way, but what I meant is… if she identified as a, what is it , cisgender, the problem would be the same. It’s not her asexual status that’s leading to this, it’s this person seems to think women and relationships exist for sex.
I mean if I were in her position, I’d have the same problem. Sex is not the guarantee that some men seem to think it is. And me adding that last part is to indicate I know it’s not imaginary, and I empathize. I just think these people would be awful to anyone in a relationship with them.
Nobody demands you give shit about anything.
Well, that’s not really true.
But for those who do give a shit, there is a vocabulary.
That they expect everyone to use. Which… doesn’t work when 95% of the population thinks “this is just stupid bullshit.”
LGBTQ was fine. “Queer” covered everything else. Now literally every division and subdivision wants a letter. It’s just silly.
Also I call bullshit on pansexual. It’s just bisexual, no one has said anything to me that indicates anything otherwise. Hell, I even read up on it and… it was bisexual.
I’m with Timex on this one. There are people with real issues and rights being violated. Everyone glomming on to them so they can get a letter in there and pretend that being asexual is the same as being gay… no. Just no.
I’ve interacted with an asexual person who preferred “them”. Fine. Beyond that? It meant fucking nothing at all. You aren’t sexually interested in anyone or anything. Great. No one gives a shit, it’s utterly irrelevant to everyone for all practical reasons. It has nothing to do with stuff like getting married or the like. I mean more power to you, but no one cares and it doesn’t matter.
:: moved from other thread ::
I’m in the old man crowd here. I want everyone to feel welcome and accepted and let their freak flag fly within reason, but at the same time rejiggering the language to cater to a sliver of a sliver of the population who get bad feels when someone refers to them as either “he” or “she”? Nah, I’m out. I can probably be persuaded to get with “they”; that’s the third-person singular indefinite-gender pronoun anyway. But demanding to be referred to as “xir” or whateverthefuck is taking a step too far in demanding that everyone else change their behavior to suit whatever you’ve decided your particular situation to be.
I don’t buy @Timex’s claim that they’re all rich bored white kids – I’ve met plenty of queer folk of all backgrounds online and off, and I’m not at all convinced that alternative sexuality is caused by privilege – but I am absolutely in the no-fucks-given camp.
I know that makes me a bad progressive, but it is what it is. I have a family member who absolutely refuses to talk to me about gender/sexuality issues because I’m not progressive enough for her, which mostly means that she’s lost an opportunity to educate or debate. Litmus tests are dumb.
@ArmandoPenblade’s story about his asexual friend was illuminating, though. I totally get how that’s a thing now. Thanks for sharing.