#shaselma

[colorisbyshe]

@shaselma can’t figure out how to use a readmore, sooo

Basically, you went at me as if I was a “bigot” outsider criticizing aces rather than a bisexual agender grey-ace having an intracommunity discussion about how cishet aces are trying to pretend like they don’t oppress me. So, y’unno, you fucked up. It’s okay to admit you erased my aceness and fucked up.

Anyways,

Asexuality’s definition isn’t “being attracted to no one.” It is “not experiencing sexual attraction.” Cis straight aces are attracted to the “opposite” gender. Gay aces are attracted to the same/similar gender. Bisexual aces are attracted to multiple genders. Like?? Asexuality is not defined as “attracted to no genders.”

Cishet aces who force themselves into the community do in fact hurt LGBT people. Here is an extensive collection of stories (dozens, if not hundreds) about how cishets in LGBT spaces have made LGBT people feel unsafe. Threaten to bring guns to pride just days before Orlando. And have the power to out LGBT people who displease them. Like? I’m glad you have had great experiences with cishets but a LOT of us have not. And no one is saying they don’t deserve safe spaces, just that they need to create aro/ace safe spaces that can focus on tearing apart societal expectations of sex/romance (like the feminist movement does) instead of glomming into a movement that is largely about normalizing our sex and love.

Read more for length.

An asexual booth at pride takes up literal, actual space that could be used for other booths, including booths that supply condoms and other life saving resources. Booth space costs money, takes space, and require volunteers, all tangible resources the LGBT community si short on. Making aseuxal paraphernalia takes time (designing takes time and effort and emotional labor), physical labor, and money. Spreading awareness for asexuality takes time and effort and labor and money which AGAIN the LGBT community is short on and is better spending it on mental health resources, HRT treatment, HIV/AIDS treatment, etc. Like?? I would love to live in your world where we have infinite time/money/space/energy/materials but that’s not the world we live in. LGBT people are dying because we can’t get enough beds, get enough food, enough medicine, enough treatments.

And you know what? These resources are even MORE in danger because cishet aces have REPEATEDLY threatened to stop funding LGBT programs for saying the A is for Ally. Read about that here.

Straight society doesn’t tell cishet aces fucking shit about being broken or wrong. Like?? Straight society punishes sex and the “wrong” romance more than it ever punishes the lack of either. Cishets feeling sad and lonely isn’t the LGBT community fucking problem. I felt sad and broken and wrong because I was (and am) fat and people rarely ever hit on me. Does that make me LGBT? No. ARe sex repulsed people who aren’t ace LGBT? No. Can they still feel broken and wrong? Yes. Like?? Considering cishets can have low libidos, be sex repulsed, just choose to pursue other things besides sex/romance, and all that shit and feel bad for it... are they all LGBT now too? Or just the ace ones?

Are incels LGBT too? Where are your standards? What about aces and aros who fuck and date? And feel perfectly fine?? Are they not LGBT?

Non-LGBT aro/ace folk are never in the closet. Again, there are no legal, socioeconomic, or violent repercussions for non-LGBT aro/ace people to discuss their lack of attraction. Not telling something about yourself is not the same as being closeted. Closets are something we are forced into. I don’t tell people my kinks. I’m not kink-closeted. I just respect that no one needs to know or asked.

Again, straightness isn’t exclusionary of aces and I have met plenty of cishets who accept cishet aces as one of their own. I know straight poeple who have literally BALKED at the idea of cishet aces calling themselves non-straight. Like my original post said it’s litearlly because cishet aces frame themselves as non-straight that straight people get confused.

Anyways, as as non-bi person can you please shut the fuck about about bi oppression? Bisexuals are oppressed by homophobia, lesbians and gay men do not benefit from biphobia. Biphobia from lesbians/gay folk is called lateral aggression.  And like your “bisexuals make up the bulk of the LGBT community and receive less resources” bullshit misinformation has been THOROUGHLY debunked.

Cis LGBP people do benefit from trans oppression but trans folk chose to fight together with LGBP people because our oppression is often very similar and comes from the same places. Sylvia Rivera has spoken about this.

So, anyways, if you acknowledge that biphobia is a subset of homophobia and nonbinaryphobia is a subset of transphobia, that means we can neatly surmise that the LGBT community is SPECIFICALLY about combating homophobia and transphobia. Thanks. Do you know who oppresses the L, the G, the B, and the T? Cishets. Including cishet aces.

And you literally didn’t name a siNGLE fucking issue or historical event that wasn’t specifically about homophobia/transphobia, so, uh??, What the fuck??

Also cishet aces benefit from heteronormativity so like... no.

[exitpursuedbyasloth]

shaselma replied to your post “Some Thoughts On Supernatural 12x11, “Regarding Wasted Potential”

I disagree about the comedy/angst contrast, I thought it worked well, but HOLY SHIT that pseudo-rape joke scene was uncomfortable as fuck. Why is it played as funny that she'd even care if she'd taken advantage of him? That is the right attitude to have, and they shrug it off like she's an overly-concerned SJW. And really, no, he hadn't actually been roofied, but he'd still been drinking, and assuming she wasn't because she was working... That's STILL fucked up. SQUICK.

See, it’s funny because SPN thinks men getting raped/sexually assaulted is funny (or hot, depending on how hard they have to No Homo that week). So the idea that a person, a young woman (also a joke in many SPN episodes) thinking she may have unintentionally taken advantage of a man who was roofied, is a hilarious farce.  I mean, like Dean would even care if she had, ahhaha.

Or maybe it’s just a personal jab at those silly audience members who complain when SPN does things like normalize and LOL at sexual assault, or when the writers make jokes about the sexual abuse of characters. Silly little SJW tumblr girls, all not appreciating SPN’s glorious rape culture bullshit.

The show (especially since Bucklemming came back in S6) is littered with “LOLrape” jokes when the man is the victim. Whether it’s Dean and fairies in s6, or “Season Seven, Time For A What The Shit Am I Watching” bullshit with Becky and Sam, or 9x03 (which was mocked again in 9x09), Girls Girls Girls, just everything about Dean + Amara, Sam and that British Lady of Letters hallucirape, men getting sexually exploited and abused is funny and/or hot. 

But, to be fair, they often makes jokes about women getting sexually assaulted too. Equal opportunity terribleness.

(And I’m not saying the show didn’t have rape culture bullshit in the earlier seasons, it most certainly did. But the earlier seasons would occasionally treat rape like it was a bad thing, even when it happened to men. However, ever since Bucklemming returned in S6, there’s been a noticeable increase in the amount of sexual assault, and an increased trend in normalizing it. Bucklemming and Klein were some of the worst offenders, but Dabb and Berens and many of the other writers are also guilty. Robbie Thompson and Misha and about half-a-dozen of the recurring actresses are the only ones to have ever actually acknowledged SPN has a problem with this.)

We may not agree on the episode’s merits as a whole, but we are bang up in line about the unfunny and uncomfortable as fuck psedo-rape joke scene.

Let me expand upon my issues with the execution of this episode, that aren’t about SPN’s deeply troubling issues with sexual abuse.

Comedy/Angst contrast works amazingly well when done correctly, when it’s balanced, when the humor is genuine, when the serious moments are thoughtfully and the humor doesn’t undercut them, when the emotional moments cut to the quick, when they mean something, and when it’s a well constructed narrative. When done well, the comedy will enhance the emotional impact/drama, and visa versa. And in this case, I feel the episode failed on pretty much all these fronts. Not unlike the writers previous episode, “That Fucking Hitler One (Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?)”

It was not balanced. The episode was 95% vaguely insulting humor at Dean’s expense, 3% serious, 1% gross rape joke, 1% painful montage.

The humor wasn’t funny, for the most part (even excluding the rape joke). I could tell the episode wanted me to laugh, but I didn’t get why I was supposed to be laughing. A couple lines here and there weren’t bad (Like, paraphrasing, “Our best friend is an angel?! That’s awesome!”). But a lot of it was “LOL, Dean is kinda gross and dumb, he eats like a pig, he’s a womanizer, look him stumblr about”. I am so fucking tired of their overcompensating dudebro retcon of Dean. I am tired of Dean’s trauma being used for laughs. I mean, like the food for example; they forget that they wrote Dean not having enough food as a child because of John’s neglect. In earlier seasons, when his food habits were focused around eating a lot, using it as comfort, wolfing it down, being super protective of his food, and wanting to feed other people (just not from his plate), that all residue effects of his childhood hunger. His focus on pies was because he remembered his mom giving him some, and it was one of his only memories of her. It was a character quirk that actually reveled something deeper about the character. Unfortunately, in the post-Edlund era, Dean’s eating habits have become a punchline, its there for other characters to raise an exasperated eyebrow at.

I mean, compare it with “Bad Day At Black Rock” where much of the humor was based on the increasingly ridiculous things that kept happening to Sam due to his bad luck curse. Both Sam and Dean get cursed with something that WILL harm them, but  I think the humor worked in BDABR because there’s no real life equivalent to his curse, other than those days where it seems like everything is going wrong, that the universe is out to get us. But in Sam’s case, that isn’t just him being dramatic, the universe really IS out to get him. However with Dean, there IS a real-life equivalent to his memory curse, and it’s dementia/Alzheimer’s. So it’s hard to laugh at the flippant humor that doesn’t seem to acknowledge that this is an actual serious thing people go through. There can be humor in dark places, but with something like that, your humor should punch up (or at least across), and not down as this episode did. The punchline of so many jokes was “LOL, he has Alzheimer’s!”. 

I’m not even sure if that one emotional gut-punch moment  (the mirror scene with Dean) was even intended to be serious, a moment of terrifying realization at just what was happening. Had Jensen delivered it differently, it could have been more funny than horrifying (well not actually funny, but the writers attempt at funny). I mean, being helpless to stop your memories from fading away, yourself fading away, is some Yellow Wallpaper quiet horror. And it’s not like there’s not real life tragedies to draw from, dementia and Alzheimer’s. But there was so little of that, compared to so much “LOL, lookit Dean bumble around!”

(The brother moment at the end was just the same rehashing of stuff the show does over and over and over. There was not a thing new about it, because this show is terrified of growing and changing.)

I also just don’t think this episode was well-written on a fundamental level. The memory loss spell didn’t seem to follow any rules. I mean, it’s vaguely suggestive of dementia (in which case most the humor was just in bad taste), but as the episode went on, it seemed more apparent that how the spell progressed was based entirely around “What can we make a joke about/what funny thing can Dean do”, that’s what the pathology centered around. First Dean has some short-term memory loss, can’t remember the previous night. Then he randomly forgets how to do certain tasks, what the names of things are (at this point I was still with them, because this can be how dementia presents itself). Then Dean’s personal memories began flickering in and out. Then Dean’s personality seemed to go, and also that was supposed to be happy Dean? The forgetting tasks and names gets dropped, because Dean still knows how to read, operate a gun (is this more of the ‘Dean is a natural born killer’ Bucklemming BS rearing it’s ugly head?). And then the witches out of fucking nowhere, that Rowena just HAPPENS to know very well (of course....why was that even a part of the episode?). And that fucking montage...I love shows that don’t take themselves too seriously all the time, but this felt unearned and trying too hard. A slo-mo of Dean riding the bull would have worked much better on it’s own. And of course, the rape joke. All in all, it wasn’t particularly polished, it was like a rough first draft.

It was a good idea that could have actually been done really well. But again, if there’s anything SPN will never fail to do, it’s waste some perfectly good potential.

[tyrannuspitch]

@ettaperrault @shaselma @raimijenner 

thank you all so much?? i hadn’t heard of most of those things so i know have a list to choose from rather than like. two things i must like because they’re my only options