hey uh
i think we need to be Very careful about how we approach the topic of compulsory heterosexuality/heternormativity, especially around younger and easily influenced kids questioning their sexuality (and to an extent, autistic kids. ill get onto that in a second)
i’m 17 years old. twice, tumblr has pushed me towards identifying as a lesbian under the guise of “compulsory heterosexuality” and telling me that my attraction to men may be fake and forced upon me by society.
i love men. i always have. i think they’re very attractive. 2/3 of my exes are dudes. i have a lot of sexual thoughts about fictional men and have a ton of crushes on actors and musicians.
however, i also really love women. i prefer women irl a lot of the time. now, i’m autistic. i cant speak for every autistic person but i can be quite easily swayed by things i read online. when i saw posts talking about compulse het, i was like “hey that kinda sounds like me!!!” and i called myself a lesbian.
but it wasn’t right. the whole time i was still thinking about how much i love fictional men and was feeling like a fake lesbian and some kind of intruder. but, i was also convincing myself that it was just compulse het. that my feelings to men weren’t REAL and of couse i was a lesbian, obviously!
i stopped. ive embraced my identity as a nb person and currently do not have a label for my sexuality.
which brings me onto why i think compulsory heterosexuality could be damaging to younger kids.
ive spent several years battling with gender identity and sexuality. i’m still figuring things out now. many young kids are influenced by the shit they read. picture a young girl who thinks she might be bi or a lesbian. the compulse het theory might just confuse her even more.
and in my opinion, i think the whole thing is dodgy to begin with. i’ve seen a lot of people who use the theory turn out to be biphobes, telling bi girls that they aren’t really bi and that they’re just struggling with compulsory heterosexuality and should just be lesbians. it is up to the individual to decide whether they think their attraction to men is fake or genuine, forcing this idea on them isn’t healthy.
and there’s a lot of… transphobia and terfs involved in this theory. i’ve seen people calling trans women men and saying that girls who are attracted to them are suffering from compulse het bc “trans women are the opposite sex/men uwu” trans women are women, fuck off.
im not saying we shouldn’t use this theory. it’s helped a lot of people realise their identities. but i think we should be very careful about how we approach the subject as to not harm kids or confuse scared people even further.
Good talk Oli. I was wondering what was up because I saw you flipping back and forth but felt maybe it wasn’t my place to question it. Kind of wish I’d approached you about it and talked to you back then.
But yes, all of this. Tumblr has become a pretty dodgy place for queer talk these days. Early tumblr was a lot better and way more positive and educational. Now it’s all about gatekeeping or forcing people to view their sexuality a specific way and that’s not health or good for sure. And yeah there’s soooo much terf and radfem rhetoric bouncing around. Not to mention identity policing.
I’m glad you’re figuring things out for yourself.
To be fair, the term “compulsive heterosexuality” WAS coined by a TERF so exclusion of bisexuality/m-spec identities in general and of trans folk in that entire concept is 100% intentional. that people who are most likely m-spec (among others) are struggling with its prevalence here on tumblr is absolutely no surprise to me.
PS. if one wants an alternate term that works better, I know I’ve seen coercive heterosexuality, but that can be just as fraught depending on how it’s used. Frankly speaking, I don’t know why people didn’t just stick with heteronormativity, btu that’s just me. //shrug
You know, you’re right, heteronormativity is kind of the better term for it tbh.
As a bisexual myself, I’ve seen this happen far too often as well (and i cant tell you how many canon bi/pan sexual charas are constantly called gay/lesbian bc “uhhhh theyre not an acutal bi its called compulsory hetrosexuaility sweaty uwu” but that might be slightly off topic)
Regardless, the term really squicks me out, and no offence but if anyone uses it with any legit seriousness(outside of talking general/debating) I’m going to be like 1000 times more weary because the term is just used so negtively twoards my sexuality? ????
Yeah. Lots of this. Even when people do not use this term, if someone talks about lesbians that spend a long time identifying as bisexual because of heteronormativity and fails to mention all the bisexual women that spend a long time identifying as lesbian because of biphobia…. judging them so hard.
QueerAnarchism 