If you identify as LGBT, I truly feel you have a very real duty to let all the acephobes and islamophobes and transphobes and interphobes and ableists and racists and other shitlords in your LGBT community know that they are NOT WELCOME.
Like, seriously. for example: the asexual community on Tumblr is dealing with such a huge onslaught of acephobes right now. Tumblr blogs about asexuality suffer pretty much constant attacks, from anon hate to whisper campaigns to doxing. And most of the acephobes that do this identify as LGBT.
There is a group of LGBT people out there who believe they need to ‘protect’ LGBT spaces by violently attacking vulnerable communities. Now those people don’t care if aces hate them, but they might care if they know LGBT people hate them too. So if you are LGBT and you are NOT a violent acephobe, what have you done to let these shitlords know that their behaviour is not welcome?
i get your point although i dont think it’s fair to exclude other lgbt+ just bc they may be aphobic
lgbt+ is a community for EVERYONE who doesnt identify themselves as cishets and we should not focus on excluding each other but fight the straights instead
i definitely believe there can be arohets and acehets and that they should be a part of the community if they want to, but i dont agree with your example.
even though aphobia exists, it’s not any more special or different oppression than what the other lgbt+ members receive. lgbt+ phobia and racism is comparable but compring aphobia to racism is kinda stupid. it’s as if i would compre the racism asians get within the anti-racist community to lgbt+phobia.
no one in the lgbt+ community OPRESSES the other. biphobic gays or transphobic pans do not oppress bi’s or trans ppl. they are phobic but an oppression is more than just a few ppl in an already oppressed community. the ones who oppress are the straights bc they are the ones who controls the systems and laws and they oppress everyone in the lgbt+.
i do agree that there are some ppl in the lgbt+ who recieves more hate and phobia than others though (both from society and other members of the lgbt+). but it’s not oppression and can therefore not be compared to racism, sexism, etc. and we shouldnt shut them out bc of it. and we should nor fight each other but the straights!!!! (not the a-straights, but the “straight-straughts)
I think you highly underestimate what it feels like to face discrimination in the one place where you are supposed to be safe. It can be incredibly violent and it is often far more painful than facing discrimination in the rest of the world because the last place you had left is being taken away from you. And losing that support has very real material consequences.
The fact that the people who are doing this have less privilege than the rest of society does not change at all how much damage they can do when they make an unsafe place out of the only place you have left.
The one doing the excluding in a situation like that is the one that decides to make the space unsafe with their bigotry. When I act against their violence it is not me being exclusive, it is me restoring the inclusivity of the space by acting against what is making it unsafe.
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To be honest, I have zero interest in fighting ‘the straights’ and I see very little point in pretending that the world is composed of ‘the straights’ who have all the power and ‘the lgbt+’ who have none of the power. The world very clearly isn’t organized like that and when I am out there fighting oppression it is very clear to me that I have more in common with the straight working class person of color working to end racism than with the rich queer person trying to become the fight queer CEO of a company.
I am interested in fighting systematic homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, aphobia etc. And for that matter I am interested in fighting racism, ableism, islamophobia, etc. Wherever I find it. If I see any of there things in my local LGBT+ community I will not tolerate it.
And I don’t think there is anything divisive about that. The only people who are being divisive are the people who decide that bigotry has a space in this place of solidarity and resistance that we’ve build together.
i think you misunderstood my point
i’m well aware about the feeling. im pan and i know lots of lgbt+ ppl who are bi/pan-phobic af. that doesn’t mean i won’t consider them as a part of the lgbt+ community. there are terfs between us as well but i don’t think they should be excluded either.
im POC too and i know there are POC’s being racist against other POC’s but instead of fighting each other i’d rather focus on UNITING us so we can fight white ppl. because if we fight white ppl/straights the racism between POC’s and the phobia between lgbt+ would probably disappear since it’s something that white ppl/straigts have constructed. im not saying i accept their racism, i’m saying that we are ALL oppressed. they do not oppress me because they are/have not power over systems or structures. the racism i recieve from other POC’s are not an opression of it’s own. it’s still a part of the racism ALL OF US get from white ppl. that doesn’t mean i accept it, it simply means that it’s a part of a bigger group who is being oppressed. and i can’t exclude POC people just because they’re racist against others??? they’re still POC
like im not saying that you should accept or tolerate aphobia or bi/panphobia, i’m saying that they’re still a part of this community even though they have trashy opinions! instead of excluding we should UNITE!!! you can’t exclude people who are born into something! lgbt+ or POC isn’t like the feminism movement. you can exclude a sexist woman bc a woman doesnt automatically make you a feminist. but not being cisstraight makes you an lgbt+ and not being white makes you a POC! just bc a jew isn’t religious you can’t exclude that person and make them not being a jew anymore. it doesn’t work like that
Okay, let me specify:I would never argue that a terf, a biphobe or an aphobe is magically no longer LGBT+ because they are transphobic, biphobic, aphobic, etc. That would make no sense.
I am, however, trying to either get them to stop acting
transphobic, biphobic, aphobic, etc within the community or if that fails getting them the fuck out of any LGBT spaces that I have any role in.
If you disagree with that there is no miscommunication going on between us, in that case we just disagree.
Why I think it is so important to do this is because I do strongly believe that terfs, biphobes, acephobes etc do very real damage in LGBT+ communities and harm the most vulnerable among us.
Like, I can deal with shitty behavior because my local LGBT community isn’t the only lifeline I have. I have multiple support networks where I feel safe and i can tolerate a certain amount of stress in one of them. But if your local LGBT+ space is the only space where you are kind of safe, and then some biphobe comes in, the result is that you are no longer safe anywhere. That is a deadly thing. We lose good people because of that and often we lose the most vulnerable people in our community because of that.
At the same time, terfs, biphobes, acephobes etc who are allowed to act on their shit in our communities drive away trans people, bi people, ace people, and attract people with bigotted ideas like their own. Until they take over completely. This destroys communities.
This has very real consequences. The fact that terfs have for a long time had space within queer and women’s communities came from a desire to maintain unity within queer and women’s spaces, but in the end it is why terfs have been able to grow as a movement, why they have been able to harrass and cast out trans women from those communities. These are things that have resulted in the very real deaths of trans women and destruction of queer and women’s communities.
So even if I would like to keep the whole community together, I can’t. But I can choose between protecting a bigot or protecting their target.
QueerAnarchism 