big fan of
dice but there is literally no conceivable way that this post is in good faith unless its writer is illiterate. To begin with, it accuses me of a variety of different intolerances that I neither have nor have expressed in any of my posts in this thread. The only possible reason for this is an attempt at bad faith engagement to undermine the points I have made without actually engaging with them. Next, it is comprised of a series of non-sequiturs that are individually incoherent, and somehow collectively contradictory.
Most of my responses to replies to my post in this thread have just been pointing out that they have failed to understand my argument and redirecting them to important distinctions that cause their response to be unresponsive. In this case, dice has already done that for me.
ehT 's response, however, not only has nothing to do with what I said but also has a very large number of separate problems that deserve individual treatment. Each sentence, more or less, expresses a separately bad response or independently harmful idea, so I will respond to each in turn.
I would also like to apologise to
Nalei - I think you were actually replying in good faith. Regardless, if we are talking bad faith and intellectual dishonesty, this post takes the cake. I will also try to make this post as clear as possible, such that each claim is separate and precise, hence the format.
seriously? the distinction between romantic and sexual attraction harms no one.
1) I explained in my first post that it harmed gay people as a whole and especially young LGBT people. This is not a response to that argument.
2) There are a very large number of young gay/lesbian people who have latched onto the distinction between sexual and romantic attraction because they have grown up in homophobic environments. This has led them to experience a significant amount of trauma. They have objectively been harmed by this model.
3) As I explained in my first post, it literally perpetuates homophobia. I assume you think this is harmful.
4) Even if it were not harmful, it is still incoherent. We should not model LGBT politics around an incoherent model.
5) In terms of more indirect harms, if this is our model of sexuality, then it changes the goals and advocacy of LGBT movements, safe spaces, and groups. Given that I have explained why it is independently wrong and harmful to those things, your argument that it is harming no individual misunderstands the full impact that the split attraction model has. You focus only on individuals and not their relations to a whole. This is, by definition, the neoliberalism I am critiquing.
it's just a fact of human sexuality. when someone chooses a label for themselves, it does not impact you in any way.
1) It does impact me. I have been harmed by it as a gay non-binary person.
2) I explained at great length in my first post why it is not a general "fact of human sexuality".
3) You cannot just claim something is a fact of human sexuality. If you think that it is a fact of human sexuality, then explain why and respond to my arguments.
it doesn't hurt you, either, when that label becomes something more than one person uses that label.
1) It does and has hurt me personally.
2) People using the labels as individuals is fine if they think it is valuable to them.
3) A caveat to that is that these labels also often hurt the individuals who subscribe to them, as explained in my original post and above.
4) People using labels is different from us understanding LGBT politics (i.e. anything but individual identity) on the basis of these models.
just because labels are descriptive rather than prescriptive and people wanna try different ones doesn't mean people are obsessed with them, and pointing out that these nuances exist doesn't sexualize queer people. that's bullshit.
1) This first half of this sentence is incoherent.
2) I explained in depth how it specifically sexualises and harms gay people. If you disagree, then respond to that argument.
3) The fact you are willing to respond to an argument about how something harms gay people with "that's bullshit" and no other substance says a lot about how much you actually care about gay people.
straight people have a sexual orientation too and their own individual nuances. they're allowed to have labels too lol.
1) Everyone is allowed labels individually, it does not follow from this that they are good or should be applied generally to our thinking or politics.
2) Nearly all of the straight labels are terrible and incoherent as well, for the reasons in my original post.
the point of queer liberation is to let people live and love on their own terms, and when you imply that people are hurting you for deciding what terms they live on, it's honestly no different from like telling bi ppl to "just pick one" cause it makes gay ppl look bad.
1) It is not at all clear that this is the point of queer liberation.
2) I am not implying they are hurting me for the terms "they live on", I am explicitly stating that this model of LGBT sexuality and politics is harmful.
3) This bi politics thing is totally unrelated. But also, people do not systematically think this about bi people. Even if they did, it is not a form of oppression. Neoliberal cooption of terms of identity in a way that is harmful to the entire LGBT community is both systematic and a form of oppression. It is also the locus of the biphobia you are alluding to.
4) Why did you even bring this up lol it is totally irrelevant to everything I have said.
just cause some kid on tumblr is exploring their sexuality and using words you don't like doesn't mean they'd find their True Orientation TM if they just logged off and thought a little harder about it. that's so condescending dude. i wouldn't have found out i was bi and nonbinary if i didn't meet people on the internet who told me i could even feel that way. i would probably still be unsure of myself if i didn't get the chance to think about who i could be, or hear people describe their experience in a way that resonated with me.
1) This is meaningless. I am glad you found your identity that way, but it does not follow from this that the split attraction model is good or legitimate.
2) It is uncontroversial that many people are wrong about what their identity actually is. Patriarchy and homophobia are constructs literally designed to ensure that people who don't fit within those paradigms don't identify with what they are actually feeling. It is my argument that the split attraction model is not only symptomatic of that, but a part of it. If you are interested in this, lesbian literature on compulsory heterosexuality, which I discussed in my original post, is particularly enlightening.
3) I can't believe I am having to clarify this again, but I am not concerned with individual identity. People are more than free to identify how they want, if it is helpful to them. The fact that they may be wrong or that what they are identifying as may actually be harmful to them does not detract from that in anyway. What I am actually critiquing is a model and conceptual understanding of identity as it relates to overall LGBT politics/communities. Nothing you have said engages with that crucial distinction.
being gay was unthinkable 100 years ago, too. but oh, one conservative made a joke about neopronouns so i guess i gotta throw my whole identity out and start from scratch!!
1) Irrelevant
2) At the risk of making another one liner that liberals latch onto as the only point I made and try to one up me in this thread: neopronouns are also harmful. They make mockery of the trans experience, focus on individualistic linguistic politics and attempt to categorise differences that don't actually exist (i.e. the same argument I have made about the split attraction model applies to them too.)
I would appreciate it if further responses to my post actually engaged with it, rather than merely spouting the same harmful and homophobic liberal queer politics that I am critiquing back at me.