#maybe ten years from now i'll be thinking your sophisticated thoughts but for now the lowly emotional purpose of words is what i align with

[chemicalarospec]

okay I want to preface this with 1. I'm not saying "you're wrong, I'm right" -- I just wanted to provide my perspective and self-examine why this post made me uncomfortable. 2. I'm the kind of person that keeps literal garbage (like foil candy wrappers) around, hoping that it will have a use -- you seem like the kind of person to throw anything away once it no longer is needed -- this could boil down to our different outlooks on life.

Firstly, I agree that nearly 100% of "femmephobia" stems from directly misogyny, but not everything that fights against misogyny successfully combats femmephobia… If discrimination against femininity isn't distinct from discrimination against women, why did I spend my childhood trying to be more tomboy-ish because I thought tomboys were somehow better than girly-girls? Why did this messaging usually come from "feminist" works where a princess, metaphorically speaking, rejects the tower -- and the dress? I have said before, and maintain, that the biggest failing of 2010s feminism was that it was so busy liberating women from femininity that it forgot to liberate femininity from inferiority.

Obviously, you're right that GNC women are NOT given any privilege at all over feminine women, but I think it's also true that slightly masculine women -- women who can act a little more masculine, have a more "reserved" style, perhaps with short yet feminine hair -- are valued over women who are "girly girls". At the very least, a neutral woman is much preferable to a "ditzy, vapid" feminine woman -- and this very clearly targeting femininity. Without the past decade of women trying to prove that they can be neutral/masculine in order to prove we have equal value, I would say you could just call it misogyny and be done with it, but with that context, it's clear that anti-misogyny ideology can still end up with discrimination towards femininity. While I myself never have and honestly never would use the term “femmephobia,” I think having the ability to separate discrimination against femininity from, despite it stemming from, discrimination against women is important -- especially in the context of how we combat the two. To say the separation of the two has no credibility just leads us back into the "if you wear makeup you're a slave to the patriarchy" mentality.

Secondly, as an acearo person, reading your paragraph on aphobia was a little uncomfortable. Any arguments for distinct aphobia in a societal context aside, the fact of the matter is that "aphobia" is usually used to describe discrimination against aces and aros from within the queer community. I still hear horror stories about asexuals feeling extremely isolated from both straight and "LGBTQ" community during "ace discourse" in the 2010s. To say that the word used to succinctly label and call out the exclusion of asexual people from the queer community is useless... well, it's concerning, to say the least. (I checked your blog and you're a big queer-sayer so you're not a TERF, but the fact that I had this worry at all...)

To go back to the other reasons: Aphobia is a term that aspec people can use to describe their experiences and connect as a community. Without this word, there is no one word we can use to describe the intersection of all those different "isms" that hurts us.

(For aromantics specifically, "amatonormativity" almost does the job, but as it was coined in the context of single people, it doesn't take into account our full experience. Amatonormativity sets the expectation, but "aphobia" is what occurs when aromantics fail to meet the expectation: "Aphobia" specially means "fear/hatred of a lack of something," so it describes the complicated feelings that many aromantics, including myself, experience regarding our complete lack of romantic love --"internalized amatonormativity" isn't exactly the same as "internalized a(ro)phobia" because there is a difference between not being in a romantic relationship and never being capable of romantic love.)

It doesn’t matter that you admit discrimination against aspec people exists: by saying we don’t deserve a word to describe our experiences, you are trying to break up our community. Or at least that's the way it seems -- that you're trying to dis-empower aspec people. (NOT CALLING YOU APHOBIC JUST EXPLAINING ONE INTERPRETATION OF YOUR WORDS.)

Edit: I checked OP's blog and he is actually aphobia -- they have an entire "ace discourse" tag. She dresses it up a lot as a critique of imperialism/racism/ect (the points are valid and interesting, but not at all related to asexuality, the naturally occurring human sexual orientation across all populations), but at the heart of it, they don't think cishet aces deserve to be "part of the community" so they're just a typical aphobe.

And if you combine your argument about femmephobia with your argument about aphobia, you end up directly contradicting yourself.... because in what world are gender non-conforming cis women correctly conforming to society's demand to "be cis"?

Finally, cultural appropriation, just... doesn't fit in with these two? It's not an -ism or a -phobia -- as you correctly defined it, it's a very specific act. I think a better comparison would be that cultural appropriation is like queerbaiting and critical race theory as "very specific terms that are inappropriately taken way out of context all the time and create needless outrage." All of these things do happen, but they are also very frequently not present when they're talked about. Plus they all have that "buzzword" status, and, given that the first two describe acts, are level at specific instances -- not describing an umbrella of experiences like "aphobia" and "femmephobia" do. ("Critical race theory" is a bit different, as it is a "theory" -- neither an act nor an -ism/-phobia, but I think the comparison of how conservatives freak out about it being taught in k-12 schools when it's a university-level concept hold up to the other two are misused.)

I dunno, it's also clear you're thinking about things through a more structural lens than I am, but I think trying to boil discrimination down to the intangible value system of "mainstream society" and leaving behind personal experience and interpersonal discrimination just creates an incomplete picture. You want words to be able to signify a complete "analytical framework" for society all on their own, I want words to provide language to describe specific categories of discrimination and hurt in order to provide a sense of community and a community a means of fighting back -- "you must first name your fears to fight them" or whatever. So I guess that's where the disagreement lies, and why this post made me uncomfortable.

“cultural appropriation” is kind of like “aphobia” or “femmephobia” in that the situations these terms purport to describe are really extant and harmful, but the analytical framework that they imply is complete nonsense or otherwise unhelpful

[chemicalarospec]

Didn't answer my latest anon so I could block them, but to the person who said "you're a child": congratulations! you successfully deduced from the information publicly available on my blog (with a little scrolling, though I did recently answer another rude anon about this) that I am in fact a minor! this is true! this is a true fking fact! I simply cannot argue with you because this is literally true! I am under both the ages of 18 and 21, the two most common ages of being considered an adult!

If you're still upset over my rather calm and inoffensive thoughts on that post about cultral appropriation, aphobia, and "femmephobia", may I direct you towards my tag which reads, verbatim: "maybe ten years from now i'll be thinking your sophisticated thoughts but for now the lowly emotional purpose of words is what i align with". I am well aware I do not have a high level of background knowledge in "analytical frameworks" of society! I am well aware that my interpretation of the topics at hand was a bit more of an "immature" one! However, it is the place I am in now, and writing that out is important for me to continue my journey of understanding. If I never returned to that post, I would have thoughts about it 80% less.

[orlothegreat]

Do you headcanon Orlo as a virgin? He's definitely ace and I think maybe a tiny bit sex repulsed, but I wouldn't be surprised if Peter was like "have sex or I'll kill you."

OOC

I’m so glad someone asked this question. I do think Orlo is a virgin and I’ll tell you why: popular media needs to represent people who have voluntarily chosen to abstain, for whatever reason, without portraying sex as the ultimate mark of maturity, sophistication, or, worst of all, self-worth.  Sex is sex. It’s a gift and a pleasure to those who enjoy it, neither inherently good nor inherently evil (as toxic “purity culture” would have us think), and I think the people who wrote and directed The Great wanted to consciously invest in a likable, even admirable, character whose sophistication is in no way based on bedroom activity. 

 I think they’re doing that on purpose to code him as an underdog in the cast, like Catherine and other women are, in a society that has really toxic and misogynistic views about having sex.  There is no agency for women, there is rampant toxic masculinity, there is necrophilia (I’m not gonna kinkshame but taking a man’s dead mother’s body and attempting to fuck it in front of him is pathologically cruel), there is no healthy polyamory to be found, and so on.   Enter Orlo, who cannot comfortably engage in ANY of this, which further alienates him from a Court that already treats his life as a precarious thing should he ever step out of line from Peter’s tyranny.  It adds another, more painfully awkward, sympathetic dimension to a character who already clearly feels compassion for those of lower social station.  

These social attitudes about sex are incredibly ableist too, perceiving people who don’t want to have sex as somehow “freaks” or “degenerates.”   Even Mariel, a (debatably) good character, makes an ableist, acephobic, and transphobic comment about “checking for a cock” with Orlo, when he simply suggests a cautious coup approach.  He runs away, which suggests he may have even been actually molested in the past for not doing “a man’s work” properly.  Such an attitude horribly conflates sexual abstinence with both effeminacy and cowardice (themselves, at the time, seen as interchangeable terms) and condones nonconsensual sexual predation of characters like Orlo, to just “help him achieve his potential.” 

At first I thought this was terribly tone deaf writing on the part of the showrunners, but now I’m wondering if they didn’t do it on purpose to increase our compassion for Orlo, who is the ONLY character who ENTIRELY supports Catherine’s efforts from start to finish, without ever compromising her goals or her safety. I mean let’s face it: a man who doesn’t want to use a woman for sex in any way, in a culture that dehumanizes women regularly, is her safest, most trustworthy conceivable ally. 

So Orlo’s asexuality, and the SEPARATE issue of his sexual inexperience, are key factors in his character development.  They are in fact the main reason I decided to take up this particular muse, that and the fact that he’s played expertly, as ever, by Sacha Dhawan, a dear favorite actor of mine. I cannot say enough in support of the ace, sex-repulsed virgin Orlo theory. 

Lol, your point about Peter issuing an order that outrageous is a sound one. However, this goes back to my point. Maybe Orlo hasn’t ever had sex, but he can write and orate circles around ANYONE at court about politics, economics, social and philosophical factors, literature, art, etc. The mark of Orlo’s prowess, and his ten years of surviving Peter’s treachery, is these skills, which render his sexual inexperience irrelevant.   In other words, Orlo can easily strike a deal with a scullery maid, have her spread rumors of what an amazing lover he is, let those rumors get back to Peter, without having to do anything that makes Orlo uncomfortable. :D <3 

tl;dr yes I think he’s a virgin and I think his character is super unique: an attractive, powerful, wealthy nobleman in the misogynistic 1700s who doesn’t want to have sex, and is still a bamf, is an AMAZINGLY interesting challenge for me as a writer. :D