#Heterosexism

[david-goldrock]

Since this is tumblr, I just wanna check

Please reblog to enlarge the sample size

[anti-sexist-enban]

Cissexism and heterosexism are very much rooted in traditional sexism. Sexism demands that people assigned female identify as women, adhere to feminine gender roles, and experience attraction to men; and that people assigned male identify as men, adhere to masculine gender roles, and experience attraction to women.

Cissexism certainly is transphobic, as it privileges cisgender ways of being over transgender ones, and encourages a cis/trans dichotomy. And heterosexism certainly is homophobic, as it presents heterosexuality as normal and other sexualities as deviant. But I find it worthwhile to acknowledge exactly how sexist ideals about “males” and “females” contribute to these systems. It’s notable that heterosexism is not fully encapsulated by the term “homophobia,” as it also contributes to other kinds of prejudice such as acephobia—for example, I have seen plenty of acephobia directed at men on the basis that being a “red-blooded man” necessitates wanting and having sex with women. This comes in addition to the belief that desire for sex is a requirement for being human at all.

To break down transphobia, exorsexism, interphobia, and discrimination against all sexual and gender minorities, we must break down sexism itself.

[scretladyspider]

Let’s talk about what demisexuality is not.

First off: what is demisexuality? We have to establish what it is to talk about what it isn’t.

‘demisexuality’ describes not experiencing sexual attraction until a close bond is formed. This doesn’t mean demis are attracted to everyone we bond with, and we can have differing desires towards sex. Demisexuals may or may not be demiromantic — they’re not one and the same.

While demisexuals can also be demiromantic, this isn’t true as a rule. Just like being asexual doesn’t necessarily mean you’re aromantic. It’s possible to be both, nothing wrong with that — but they’re not inherently synonymous.

*For some people who are aroace, include demi aroaces, their sexual and romantic orientations are deeply intertwined and there isn’t a big difference between the two. Other people use the split attraction model, which recognizes a difference in sexual and romantic orientations.

Many people think that “everyone is demisexual” because they read the definition and say “oh, that’s just being normal”. They’re confusing not experiencing sexual at ALL with waiting until a relationship is serious to have sex.

Demisexuality is a sexual orientation. The thing people confuse it with is a decision regarding sexual behavior that can be made regardless of orientation— the decision to wait to have sex until you’re emotionally close. That decision can be made by anyone, demisexual or not.

Often people read the definition and say “I’m demisexual, I wait to have sex until it’s not just sex. I want emotional fulfillment too.” When it’s explained that demisexuals rarely have sexual attraction and only under certain conditions does it occur, one of two things happens:

they misunderstand and assume that demisexuals are also experiencing sexual attraction without the bond and just not acting on it, or

they begin to understand that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and action.

More often than not it’s the former.

It’s interesting that this misunderstanding happens when demisexuality is described because allosexuals (people who aren’t ace) abstain from sex all the time but still feel sexual attraction. There’s this underlying assumption that everyone experiences sexual attraction.

But… just imagine that feeling of not being attracted and expand it. It’s doubtful that you experience sexual attraction to every person you see is physically attractive. Just expand that and there you go. Or imagine it like not seeing a particular color until you suddenly can.

Demisexuals aren’t all cisgender and heteroromantic. But there’s nothing wrong with demis who are! If ace isn’t enough for you to respect someone is LGBTQIA+, you don’t understand or accept asexuality or the orientations under its spectrum.

Demisexuality is NOT “just being a woman”. Demisexuality also isn’t “the patriarchy convinced young girls not having casual sex was a sexuality”.

There’s so much wrong with both of these, and they tie together, so I put them together here. Not only does this thinking see cis women and feminine people as being inherently “more” asexual, it robs allos and aces alike of bodily autonomy towards sex and sexuality. It bleeds out from conservative Christianity — it’s the same ideas that lead us to abstinence only sex “education” and that women must be sexually available at all times or their husband will cheat to “get his needs met”. Saying that cis women & feminine people are just all demisexual or ace removes the bodily autonomy of those who want sex and those who don’t by assigning a culturally acceptable narrative as more important than lived experience. But sexuality isn’t limited by cisheterosexism.

The truth is there are still a lot of people learning they’re under the asexual umbrella as educators and advocacy groups get education out there, and even in queer spaces asexuality isn’t always accepted, let alone its spectrum. A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option!

In addition, and partially because of, tropes like this, asexuality and everything under it are considered more “feminine”. Sex is seen as a symbol of status and depending on your gender and presentation, that status gets lowered or raised depending on the number of partners had.

Cis men and masculine aces exist, and also have to contend with cultural pressures to “perform” sexually, whether they want to or not. Erasing these experiences doesn’t help further acceptance towards asexuality or just sexuality in general.

And! Cis women and feminine people can have and enjoy casual sex! Others don’t but still experience sexual attraction regularly. Being allosexual isn’t limited to the masculine. Libido can also exist without sexual attraction. Human sexuality is just not as narrow as you think.

That’s where I’ll leave this one. Remember, it’s okay to be demisexual. It’s not okay to dunk on a group of people you didn’t bother to try to understand. Keep an open mind. There’s room at the table for learning, not bigotry.

[thestrangestthlng]

Wait… 😂 hold on hold on hold on

This is one of the worst headcannons I’ve literally ever seen. We’ll get to the predatory bullshit in a second… but…

YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT AN ITALIAN MAN WOULDN’T LIKE FOOD?! An Italian? Like… from Italy…

Not.

Like.

Food.

EL.OH.EL.

This particular Italian? The one who is loading his plate?

ANYWAY.

Because I’m done laughing at the dumbassery…

Let’s get into the innately heterosexist bullshit with making him predatory.

The fact that so many members of that side of fandom thinks that it is okay to label a canonically gay characters in his forties as predatory is absolutely disgusting.

The amount of anti-queer violence and legislation is the direct result of this predatory stereotype/view of queer people. People DIE because of this train of thought.

And to headcannon a breakup between them this way, especially with Buck’s history of assault is absolutely disgusting and proves that you really don’t care about the representation of queer people. Honestly, it feels like some of yall don’t like gay men at all.

Honestly, it was corny, tired, and you can do better.

While you’re working on your tired headcannons, you can work on yourself and your shitty rhetoric.

And just because….

[unforgivablengk]

I say this as a 35 year old trans queer who has been out since I was like 12. I'm desperate for y'all not to take us backwards. liberation, not assimilation.

[ineffable-opinions]

BL: Romancing in a Bubble?

As always, please let me know if you have suggestions, critiques, comments or corrections.

I will only be discussing BL broadly (here I use BL as an umbrella term) and not just live action. I don’t want to club together BL and GL since in spite of their shared roots they are very different in their genre conventions, target demographics, and history. Also, I am not very familiar with it.

I consider BL a genre in itself – practically well as the way Masala is a cinema genre.

Please check the content/trigger warnings before diving into the works I have mentioned below. Feel free to message or ask.

BL / romance

I don’t think BL is romance or even a sub-genre of romance. A lot of BL is romance. Many more of them have at least a romantic side to them. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is romance. (I remember the discussion Killing Stalking had prompted.)

But there are plenty of BL devoid of romance. Like One Room Angel, Social Reform Season, and The Orc Bride. Similarly, BL is not exactly a porn sub-genre even though there are plenty of ero-BL.

Also, there are plenty of BL where romance takes backseat such as The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Blue Morning, Brother, Lawless Gangster and Thousand Autumns.

BL / queer

Queer – Can I call it a genre the way I call BL a genre? Even if one were to ignore queer as method in academia, it is still so complex.

Let me quote Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) author Chiang-Sheng Kuo:

[W]hat exactly is queer literature? Is it queer literature if queer people like to read it, or is it only queer literature if there are queer characters in the books? Or is it an appendage of the queer movement? If a queer author writes a book without queer characters, does that represent a certain aspect of queer culture?

(You can find the whole interview here.)

I think the problem persist even when I think of queer as a label.

Then there is the issue with conception of “queerness” itself. Like, in a way it is a limiting term. Is it fair to call normative or customary male-male erotic practices such as masti and Launda Naach, “queer” just because that’s how it is perceived elsewhere now?

To quote what Kaustav Bakshi wrote in Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla:

In the last decade, the question of decolonizing queer epistemologies was being raised periodically, whereby queer politics, despite having a shared agenda of toppling heteronormativity, and queer culture, albeit having a shared aesthetics, became more and more regionalist – not in a negative sense – but, with implications of difference, which can be interpreted and understood only when one subjectively experiences the ‘region’ with respect to gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical and intellectual ability, access to education, metropolitan cultures, and most importantly, the internet.

[T]he attraction towards the launda is not understood as ‘queer’ – non-normative or out of the ordinary – but, as an integral part of sexual life, which is not always compulsively alert to the heterosexual-homosexual binary.

Imo, decolonizing queer epistemologies comes in handy when discussing BL since there are plenty of BL dealing with:

Historical BL set in eras and locations that had customary male-male sexualities and practices.

BL with special settings, like omegaverse, with different (if any) idea of queerness.

BL / other queer content

Just as Japan has gei-comi, and other manga like Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out, and Kieta Hatsukoi (shoujo), What Did You Eat Yesterday and My Brother's Husband (seinen) beside BL manga, different countries offer diversity in queer content with noticeable overlap. But clubbing them together would not be easy. Moreover, this diversity is as much cross-sectional as it is temporal (tanbi, JUNE, shonen ai, yaoi, BL in Japan).

BL the main difference between BL and other queer genres is BL’s focus on moe (affect). Anyway, BL predates LGBTQ+ acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people (BL fans) were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL is commercialized and we get mostly feel-good content. But that is capitalism (and the State) reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people’s labor of love.

I wonder if it is apt to consider BL the way western queer shows (such Verbotene Liebe, Queer as Folks, Os Nossos Dias and SKAM) as benchmark when discussing BL? Won’t it be better to evaluate consider BL in relation to local non-BL queer content in BL producing countries? But then, there are BL inspired by western queer culture such as Partners by Tamaki Yura.

Here are three gei-comi that I recommend for BL audience, through which they can get an insight into non-BL queer manga from Japan (created with androphilic men as target audience) :

Fire Code by Ichikawa Kazuhide

Fisherman's Lodge by Gengoroh Tagame

Coming Home by Go Fujimoto

Here is my BL versus gei-comi list which I think highlights their differences and similarities (I have included only Gengoroh Tagame’s works since they are probably the easiest to access/buy/borrow):

Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? by Gengoroh Tagame || Hitori de Yoru wa Koerarenai by Matsumoto Yoh

Arena by Gengoroh Tagame || Jinx by Mingwa

Cretian Cow by Gengoroh Tagame || The Orc Bride by Madobuchiya (Nishin)

Uo to Mizu by Gengoroh Tagame || Terpenoid by Okadaya Tetuzoh

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame || The Story of My Brother by Ike Reibun

There is lot of overlap between BL and gei-comi. Gengoroh Tagame first published in JUNE (a magazine that contributed to BL we know now). There are magazines and anthologies (Nikutaiha BL) that offer crossover between different streams of queer content.

Similarly, there are danmei (Chinese BL) novel written by queer men such as the autobiographical works: Six Records of a Floating Life and Waiting Until 35 Years Old by NanKang BaiQi and Bei Cheng Tian Jie (北城天街) by FeiTian YeXiang.

BL / Queerness - exploration and conflict

Here are some live action BL (I’m not including some of the more famous ones like TharnType and Wedding Plan) where plot is rooted in character’s queerness and its exploration or implications:

Lan Yu – first danmei to get live action adaptation. The central conflict is rooted in the queerness of its characters, particularly Chen HanDong.

A Round Trip to Love and Irresistible Love – based on danmei by Lan Lin. These are part of a shared universe. The former has both ‘coming out’ (Cheng Yichen) and ‘leaving home’ (Lu Feng). In the latter, all the conflict is rooted in compulsory heterosexuality and we get the perspective of not only an amphiphilic (bisexual) man (Xie Yan) but also an amphiphilic woman (Xia Jun) of the same social class.

Boys Love: The Movie

No Touching At All (2014)

Udagawachou de Matteteyo (2015)

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Sing in Love (2022) – Queerness is part of the main conflict.

Mood Indigo

Life: Senjou no Bokura

Light on Me

I don’t keep track of these things usually, so this is based off memory.

In Japan, most BL has dealt with the struggles of being queer in a largely heterosexist society since the days of tanbi and shonen-ai (such as Zankoku Na Kami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto). JUNE gained notoriety for focusing on it and yaoi boom was movement away from that. Then yaoi gained notoriety for existing in a bubble. When BL started to treat heterosexism in society as a part of the narrative, it garnered praise for being ‘transformative’.

BL has managed to carry within it different modes of identity and queerness.

Take Okane ga Nai (No Money) by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Toru Kousaka for example.

It is often held up as the epitome of all that is wrong with BL (or yaoi as anglophone fandom calls it). What’s less talked about is the main character, Ayase Yukiya’s queer angst and his exploration of identity that spans several volumes of the manga series. Kano on the other hand doesn’t struggle with his identity at all since his attraction to Ayase is driven by a very strong, initially unreciprocated emotional connection dependency (formed when his father died and he was at his lowest). For him, sexuality is merely a form of expression of his attraction for Ayase. Therefore, it does not inform his identity in anyway.

Within cannon, Someya and Honda’s pairing offer contrast to Ayase and Kano’s pairing. In a way, Kano and Someya have post-queer and pre-queer identities, respectively. Someya is a self-actualized person who mentors other queer characters (club staff, Ayase, Honda, Kano). There is a lot of give and take that happens between Ayase and all the queer people he meets at Someya’s club. Ayase's and Honda’s struggles with identity and sexuality are juxtaposed with Kano's and Someya's self-assured disposition.

That is also why I don’t think I Told Sunset About You stands out much. It can easily fit into the BL fold because there are plenty of BL that approached the same theme as I Told Sunset About You in a similar fashion (including these live action BL: His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta, Life: Senjou no Bokura and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese).  

I recommend the danmei novel Sissy by Shui QianCheng, the author of the works Beloved Enemy, My Stand-In and Meet You at the Blossom are based on, for a more detailed exploration of heterosexism, including femmephobia and homophobia.

Sissy, Beloved Enemy and Professional Body Double (the novel My Stand-in is based on) are all part of 188 group (a shared universe of novels).

There are plenty of other BL from other region that are focus on themes such as heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality. Here is such a one-shot: Romantic by Motoni Modoru (part of the anthology Tanbishugi).

BL / terms

I like BL and associated terms like danmei because of the culture and the history associated with those terms. Tanbi and danmei are different readings of same characters 耽美 but they represent very different things. Shonen-ai literally translate to boy(s) love but that term (or BRM (boys’ romantic manga) as Emiko Nozawa puts it) carries within it so much history and specific artistic styles and sensibilities. Waai is derived from yaoi/yuri but there are fu-cultural processes, very different from that of yaoi creation, behind the production of Y-novels. I learned a lot from exploring these words alone.

[eleiyaumei]

Defenders of biological essentialism in fae fiction always excuse it by saying "Fae are another species and have a different understanding of gender from us."

Why are they not concluding from this argument that there should be all kinds of genders in fae societies then?

I feel like romantasy is as festered with heterosexism and lacking scrutiny towards traditional gender roles as otome games

[hineini]

As if that was illuminating at all

Safe saying a certain genderqueer Jewish woman didn't regard the Strands game supposedly dedicated to Judaism's pride celebration remotely illuminating.

Problem A) nearly every word eligible to be highlit in blue was actually linked, directly or indirectly, to everyday dietary choices many, mostly Ashkenazic, Jews will make no matter the date.

Problem B) Chanukah didn't receive recognition of its proper transliteration. Since it has a chet at the start, it's supposed to be written as Chanukah. However, the team in charge of the stranding game opted to deny its proper start then throw an additional n in.

Have a look and come to your own conclusion(s if necessary) about if they should have been put in, changed and/or anything else.

Brisket.

Latkes.

Applesauce.

Challah

Kugel.

Hannukah Foods.

Do you think they fit in? Venture beyond the umbrella's bounds? Anything else?

If I can say anything without hesitating, it's that I once more felt it was mandatory to do something to push them to think through their choices and set them (as?) straight (as possible?). Draining to always have to do it if you're gay but shit. Defying the gravity exerted by the effect of heterosexism, whether religious, stereotypical and/or any other one(s) of its manifestations, is draining even if you're aware you have to draw attention to avoid silently condoning problematic, mistaken, etc. information.

[lyledebeast]

It's incredible to me how often people's idea of "the female gaze" on Tumblr boils down to "I'm a woman, and when this man takes his shirt off its hot to me, so therefore it only exists on film for people like me."

It's especially egregious when people do this with characters like Lestat in AMC's Interview with the Vampire, who is not only himself bisexual but in a relationship with a man, who is usually the person he is undressed for!

Part of the problem is that people are talking about the cinematic gaze without any clear sense of what that actually means. It's never just about the sexuality of the character onscreen or of individual people who are looking at them. Laura Mulvey used "the male gaze" to describe how the framing of women's bodies in cinema mirrors the way women's bodies are framed in culture (i.e. as passive objects for male consumption.) Her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is 49 years old now, so the idea of the gaze has undergone much evolution, but there is no need to insist that female gaze be both reductive and heterosexist.

[queering-ecology]

TOWARD A QUEER ECOFEMINISM-summary

This is (the start of) a summary of the main ideas and relevant information put forth by Greta Gaard in her article, Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.

--

Progressives have long lamented the disunity of the ‘left’ in the USA and the future of progressive political organizing likely depends on our ability to have a main base of articulation. Ecofeminism understands that many systems of oppression are mutually reinforcing—ergo the liberation of women requires the liberation of nature and vice versa.

 “Love of nature is a process of becoming aware of and unlearning ideologies of racism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism so that we may cease to reduce our idea of nature to a dark, heterosexual, ‘beautiful’ mother” (115).

According to Gaard, to be truly inclusive, ecofeminism must consider findings of queer theory and vice versa.

--

*Cover image: Still from “Prelude: Serotiny” of the Metamorphosis series of the Institute of Queer Ecology.

[endlessburningdarkness]

the reason why when lou binghe does physically force himself on shen yuan (kissing him forcefully) (not stopping during their wedding) it's written off as passionate is because shen yuan is the bottom and people think that a top/masculine character is entitled to do those things out of "passion" and the bottom must want it bc they pretty much see the bottom as the woman in the relationship.

this is also why they write it off as un negotiated kink or whatever as if an un negotiated kink isn't automatically abusive. the whole point of kink is that it is negotiated beforehand. if there's no negotiation, it's not kink. and before you say porn logic, isn't the story meant to be a satire of porn logic danmei novels? what was the point of the maigu ridge scene if it goes back to porn logic in the next chapter?

additionally shen yuan insists on bottoming because he also thinks he has to be the woman in the relationship. shen yuan's internalized prejudices go unquestioned by the fandom who wholeheartedly justify his unhealthy thinking and behaviour as a porn logic kink because that's what gets them off. that's fine if you could admit that's what you like, but why pretend it's healthy wholesome romance within the story?

i guaranfuckingtee if shen yuan was a woman you would clearly see it as abusive, but along with the extensive heterosexism, because shen yuan is a man (and bc he's a stand in for the reader), there's a complete denial that he could possibly be in an abusive relationship. because most people want to keep pretending men never get abused.

[gay-aunt-jackie]

"When I was around 16, I was put in such a box of, like, ‘Billie Eilish wears baggy clothes only. And she's not a woman. And she doesn't look like a girl. And she's not desirable.’ So when I made Happier Than Ever, I was kind of like, ‘OK, people have decided that I'm this one thing. And I am that thing. But I'm also all these other things.’ So of course, classic me, I had to go with the completely extreme version of it. […] I really just did it to prove a point. I was just like, ‘F**k you guys. I can do whatever I want. And then I can go back to what I was doing before, and you guys can eat it.’ So even though it was a little extreme how I did it all, I feel really grateful for it."

[dinosaur-ears]

What do I do with all this anger?

[nysocboy]

Who is Theo James, and why is he naked all the time?

In White Lotus Season 2, Cameron and Ethan (Theo James, Will Sharpe) and their wives visit the Italian resort, and start flirting with every woman in sight, plus each other. In Episode 4, Cameron even says "I want to be inside you.  I want to do stuff to you."  But it is just queerbaiting; the two never lock lips.  In fact, they hate each other.

You could probably figure that White Lotus, well known for its shocking homophobia, would never portray an actual gay romance.  After all, it was created and written by Mike White, aka The Devil. 

But Theo James is not personally homophobic; he has been interviewed an a dozen gay magazines, he wants to play a gay action-adventure hero, and he was in the running to play gay pop star George Michael.  Let's check his previous work for gay roles. The Time Traveler's Wife (2022) features (straight) lovers stymied by the guy's frequent involuntary time slips.  Heterosexuals all the way down, although it does give us some nice rear and frontal nudity.

Sanditon (2019-22) is an adaption of a novel that Jane Austen left unfinished at her death in 1817. There is actually a gay character, outed in the second season. Theo plays Sidney Parker, whom focus character Charlotte love/hates with the "He's arrogant!" trope.  

In the animated Castlevania (2018-21), Theo plays Hector, whose plot is propelled by that horribly cliched Dead Wife Trope.  

Archive (2020)?  Another guy with a Dead Wife, who he tries to recreate with an android.  Yawn.  I'm beginning to think that it will be tired cliches as well as heterosexuals  all the way down.  Are the butts and dicks worth the trouble?

Lying and Stealing (2019)? Caper romance between two thieves.

How it Ends (2018)?  "In the midst of an Apocalypse, a man struggles to reach his pregnant fiance, who is a thousand miles away." That's actually the motive behind about half of the characters on The Walking Dead: "I'm looking for my wife!"

Before The White Lotus, Theo was most famous for the Divergent series, four movies set in a teen dystopia where people are classified according to their primary virtue: Candor, Dauntless, Erudite, Abnegation, and Amity.  He plays Four, a Dauntless instructor who romances focus character Beatrice. 

Ok, let's try Theo's future projects.  In the upcoming The Gentleman (2024), he plays Eddie Halsted, who inherits his father's estate without realizing that it is the front for a drug empire.  And he...falls in love...with...

I give up.

The nude photos are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

Not to be too controversial but… idk. Sometimes heterosexual sex be hittin’

[shaadidevereaux]

Dangerous Liaisons

I'm starting to question whether I can ever truly be understood emotionally & romantically.

The way cishetero people construct an unquestionable reality about how they view & interpret bodies...and lock the rest of life out...

It's such a lonely and cut-throat system of category & apportioned love.

It invades everything.