A follow-up to my last blog post
Posted 17 July 2020So, there are a couple of things I want to talk about in regards to my last post here. In particular, I have one thing I want to add to my whole message to older queers, and then have some messages for younger queers.
First off, for you older queers here, one thing I would like you to stop as well is just straight up attributing actions to "younger queers" as if they're a homogeneous group. They're not. And, I say "they" here, but there's a non-zero chance I should be saying "we". Yeah, hi. My name is Aura and I'm a 22-year-old queer. Of course, in addition to younger queers not being a homogeneous group, the views you're discussing are also not exclusive to this group. Spoiler alert: younger queers aren't the only queers out there with exclusionist views. Stop acting like they are. Anyways, that's my message for you.
Now for a message for the younger queers out there. Or rather, a message for the younger queers who hold exclusionist views or the kind of hardline views I discussed in the last entry. Time to talk to y'all. And, I'm specifically targetting you young folk because I don't think it's too late for y'all in the same way it might be for a 45-year-old TERF1. We need to discuss some of the outright foolishness y'all can perpetrate.
So, like, listen. The world is complicated. The world is very complicated. And, well, as inhabitants of this world, we're all just here doing our best to make sense of it. To help us in that task, we use words. Words help us figure out more by giving us ways to express what we've already figured out. It's easier to reason about trees if you have a word for tree. It's easier to reason about the mind if you have a word to encompass "the mind". And it's easier to reason about your own sexuality if you have a word to express a sexuality.
But, words can be very flexible things. That's not a bad thing. If I talk about my heart, I may be talking about my literal heart, the organ in my chest that pumps blood around my body to keep me alive. But, I could be talking about the idiomatic heart, the source of my emotions. Imagine yelling at someone for saying that they love someone with all of their heart. Ridiculous, right? That's what you exclusionists sound like when you, oh, I dunno, yell at bi/pan lesbians for being bi/pan and lesbians.
Yep, I'm back to call out some fuckin' bullshit, and it's your turn to get an earful of it. (You folx with the hardline views are gonna get a piece of my mind in a moment, don't you worry.) Seriously, words, like everything else in this gods-forsaken world, are complicated. They're flexible things. And, yelling at people because they use words in a way you don't like helps no one. We have a word for doing that in linguistics. It's called prescriptivism and no one fucking likes prescriptivists. At the end of the day, the words people use to describe themselves are highly personal things, and they're usually approximations of the first or second order. It's not your place to yell at them for their best approximation of their sexuality.
And, of course, this kind of bullshit does also go for other sorts of exclusionism. A non-binary lesbian is doing their best to approximate their gender and sexuality using the words we have. It's not your place to yell at them for their best linguistic approximation.
And, well, other exclusionism that's kinda beyond the scope of this post is also bullshit. Just so we're clear, trans women are women, trans lesbians are lesbians, and trans men are men, not just misguided lesbians. But that sort of exclusionism gets outside of this broad linguistic exclusionism of "you can't be a lesbian if you're also attracted to men," or "you can't be a lesbian if you're non-binary."
So, then, just to make sure we're clear: Bi/pan lesbians are valid. Enby lesbians are valid. Your exclusionary attitude? Not valid. Are we clear? Do you understand?
Gender and sexuality are confusing things. And, sometimes, we have to make do with the words we have to describe them. And it's not your place to assume what's actually going on in someone's head when they use certain terms to describe themselves.
Now, as for those of you discussed in the last blog post. Listen, the symbols that people use for themselves are also highly personal, and they transcend the people who created them. To object to a flag over its meaning is fine. If a TERF makes a flag that incorporates TERF symbolism, the flag isn't bad because it was made by a TERF. It's bad because it has TERF symbolism in it and generally represents that reprehensible ideology. But, a lesbian flag with no transphobic (or otherwise) symbolism in it that's used by all manner of lesbians isn't bad just because it was made by a TERF. Sure, the creator is a piece of shit, but the flag isn't an issue.
So when you, say, start yelling at people to stop using the pan flag everyone knows and instead use some poorly-designed knockoff instead, you're doing nothing for anyone. Just because the creator of the pan flag is problematic doesn't mean the flag itself is. So, next time you find out the creator of a flag is problematic, maybe consider asking yourself why that should make the flag problematic. Usually, it doesn't. A flag is a flag, and flags for good people can end up being made by bad people. That doesn't mean the flag or the people who use it are bad by association.
Anyways, so there you go. A follow-up. Hope everyone took away the messages here as I intended them. Anyways. Happy wrath month, y'all. Stop taking your wrath out on each other and maybe focus them at the systems that oppress us2. There will be plenty of time to sort out our own issues later.
1 Yeah, TERF. I know there may be people here who would prefer the term "FART", and, while I won't chastise you for it, I personally prefer to keep my discussion above such a base level. And, no, TERFs, TERF isn't a fucking slur. Fuck off out of here with that shit. Return to mark 1 in article
2 As a final note, yes, exclusionists, you do count as "systems that oppress us." TERFs can fuck out back to the unpleasant place from whence they came. Return to mark 2 in article
Keywords: Hot takes, Queer shit