Academics sure are bad at talking about abstinence, huh

lol nothing like a little academic reading on “purity culture” to reopen some old baggage

[cn: conservative Christian talk, anti-ace stuff, discussion of rape (fictional and political)]

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misogyny, homoantagonism, and asexuality

I have been thinking about this link Siggy posted ever since I first saw it, mostly about how the word “asexual” is used — because it was posted as an example of “wacky things that appear in my [‘asexual’] google alerts” — (and yes I’m not addressing the bigger picture atm because, foolishly or not, I expect everyone who reads this blog to share roughly the same opinion on Nazis). The article has nothing to do with asexuality, but the part with “asexual” in it is here: [cw: anti-lesbian talk/ethnocentricism]

We sat at a table in the kitchen, where Spencer told me about a game he liked to play called “Lesbian or just German?”, the idea being that German women were so hairy and asexual that one couldn’t tell the difference.

I can’t tell from the context whether the attribution of the traits “hairy and asexual” to both German women and lesbians was explicitly given as reasoning by Spencer to begin with or whether that was the author Julie Hill’s own extrapolation, but either way,

???

???

???

I know the “asexual” as it’s being used there isn’t the same as the “asexual” people self-ID as, but that’s just the thing — what it is being used as, as far as I can tell, is desexualization/the absence of heterosexual sex appeal/lack of “sexual availability” (to men). And I’m just. I’m just looking at how “asexual” is already being treated like it goes hand in hand with the “hairy lesbian” stereotype, and since the right response to that stereotype isn’t to throw actual hairy gay women under the bus (with not just “hey not all lesbians are hairy” but also “being a lesbian and being a hairy woman are both okay — hairy lesbians deserve support”)… there’s another demographic combo I can think of that doesn’t deserve to be thrown under the bus, you know? Maybe asexual/nonsexual lesbians need more love too, you know?

Iunno, as long as the broken anti-dialogue pro-circulation tumblr format is going to exacerbate so many folks taking swipes at each other over a perceived gay vs ace dichotomy, I’m gonna keep whining that we need a mass migration to another platform.

abuse spans all

Okay yeah and branching off that last post, how about this wild idea: Abusers… are… unreasonable.  They do unreasonable things.  They have unreasonable expectations.  They are unreasonable.  So I’ve got no clue what some people are on about whenever they say something like “imagine a parent getting mad at their kid for X, that doesn’t happen because that’s just ridiculous.”  Hey, real fun fact: “it’s ridiculous” has never been enough to stop humanity from doing cruel and violent things.  Holding that expectation at all is ridiculous.  And more importantly here, it begs the question: Why are you expecting abusive behavior to be reasonable?  Why are you talking like there exists any abuse where you’d look at it and say, “oh, yeah that makes sense”?

Do me a favor and pay attention to that.  If someone’s position is that real abuse is “reasonable,” that’s the kind of thing that calls a person’s entire politics into question.

dirty trashy prude

[cw: sex talk, misogyny]

Initially I wrote an introduction to this but instead just have this list:

js

The moment your character meta analysis goes “We all know that American culture sees sex as bad” and calls my culture “sex-phobic,” you’ve lost all credibility with me and I can’t trust you enough to even keep reading at that point.

healthism and femininity

[cw: Christianity comparison in post; sexually-toned “reparative therapy”-toned psychiatric abuse, misogyny, and anti-sex worker sentiment at link]

Anyway this is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I say the concept of “health” has been used to abuse and control people.

And I should be able to drop a sentence like that and leave it, without anticipating someone seeing it and coming back to me with “It’s good to be healthy though.  Don’t shame people for trying to get healthy.”  Of course it’s convenient to be healthy.  But I should get to be able to say “be wary of how people deploy the concept of ‘good for your health'” without getting inane responses, the same way I should be able to say “be wary of how people deploy the concept of ‘it’s God’s will'” without someone replying, “But some things ARE God’s will and it’s important to follow it.”  I mean, I expect even very sheltered Christians to get the idea that some Chritianities are worse than others and do lead people astray, but I swear I don’t know how to get through to some people about healthism, not when it’s as ingrained in my culture as it is, I dare say more than Christianity is.  Critiquing healthism is incomprehensible blasphemy.  I might as well tell someone “I want to be sick and always getting sicker.”  It’s…  I don’t know.  I worry.  I worry about the pervasiveness of a faith that strong.

Here are some quotes for those of you who didn’t click the link.

A quote from user lesbian-lily in the linked comment chain:

I’m too tired to find sources and images and whatever, but this is literally how they used to assess women’s mental health and still is a lot of the time. If women wore baggy clothes, didn’t wear make up, didn’t have perfect hair or rejected femininity in any way it was used as a sign of their mental health, a sign that they were crazy and needed fixing. Women wouldn’t be able to free themselves from institutions until they began to conform to femininity. Associating self care with femininity is kinda really fucked up considering we used to get sectioned purely for not being feminine enough.

A quote from Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful cultural practices in the west screenshot’d by user nineteencigarettes:

Pertschuck’s big worry is that, “The woman who feels unable to meet the demands of a female identity and who grooms and dresses accordingly is indeed likely to be viewed as asexual by those around her” (1985, p.221).  The woman may desire precisely such freedom from men’s gaze but Pertschuck will not allow it.  He sees the solution for such women who refuse to service male sexuality as “appearance training.”

What’s got me hecked up is that I can’t even be properly horrified at just the passages themselves, because I’m also thinking…

I’m imagining that someone would tell me the use of the word “asexual” here has nothing to do with the modern usage by the ace community, not even a little bit.  Which makes about as much sense to me as saying that there’s no anti-butch sentiment in trying to “help” an unfeminine woman engage in more feminine beauty rituals, as long as the reason for that “help” isn’t paired with suspicion that she’s attracted to women.  Or as much sense as saying that this “appearance training” to make her sexier (to men) has nothing to do with heteronormativity.  Just misogyny.  Just misogyny alone.  Because those two systems don’t overlap like that and aren’t enmeshed in each other or anything.

I’m so hecked up by the homophobia of saying homophobia doesn’t care about making women attractive to/attracted to/”sexually available” to men.  It’s just so patently false, so black is white and red is blue, it springs up in my brain now when I read about this stuff.  God, I want to fight someone.  But this is down the rabbit hole deep.

Believing the women

[cw: Christianity]

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words.

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

Luke 24:1-11

Remember that.  It was women who first saw the empty tomb.  It was women the angels told “he has risen.”  It was women who brought the news.  It was women, not the male disciples who are more well-known.  And despite the fact that they had witnessed many strange and impossible things themselves, the men didn’t believe them.

Believing in the resurrection begins with believing the women.

“I’m not here for you.”

Probably the best meta I’ve seen on Hamilton is this, to which I have nothing of value to add.  But I do want to talk about the relationship between Angelica and Eliza just for a bit.

The Virgin Queen

[tw: transmisogyny, incest]

But when we’re fictionalizing someone who was famously the “Virgin Queen,” most of that fictionalizing will center around one thing: “Come on.  We know she’s f***ing someone.  Who is she reeeeaaally schtupping?  Because it had to be someone, right?”

I’m not the only one who noticed this, I see.  Glad to hear it acknowledged.  Not glad that this thread carries through more depictions than I was even aware of, though.

When Dudes Talk Gender & Asexuality

…I’ve seen them get a few things wrong.

This post is my submission for the March 2016 Carnival of Aces.