Sometimes being queer makes feminism easier
Before I go off, let’s set the record straight: being queer very often makes almost everything harder in your life (except, of course, for sleeping with women, but that’s obvious). Sometimes, however, you get some benefits out of it.
One of those benefits is how queerness intersects with feminism. Unlike other intersections, lesbianism has had it’s say in the feminist movement back even in the 2nd wave. Most intersections didn’t get any recognition until the 3rd. That doesn’t make up for the dominant preoccupation with heterocentrism in today’s mainstream feminist circles, but at least it means that I can find some feminist theory on being queer without digging too deep.
The best perk of being queer and being a feminist is the knowledge that I might never have to fight tooth-and-nail with male privilege in my romantic life. Sure, it affects it in secondary and very irritating ways, but it’s typically the case that any woman I choose to get involved with has internalized patriarchal values in a way that can be overcome without daily struggles over what they still find central to their gender identity.
Specifically, I am talking about the most important part of being male: a complete aversion to all things associated with femininity. Women never really seem to have as much success with internalizing the thought, “I’m not like those girls, so I don’t care what happens to them or think it’s just the Natural Order of Things™” that men do. Thanks to gender roles, men have to embrace feminism by rejecting what the patriarchy says makes them a man. Women just have to embrace feminism by stop being shits to other women and themselves. Plus, you can always say to a woman, “hey those Bad Girls you dislike? Well, according to statistics, bad thing X that happens to Bad Girls also happens to everyone else, and those Bad Girls are just normal women, just like you.” From there, it’s a hell of a lot easier to get someone to emotionally grasp that sexism is wrong, because it happens to people like them, and could very possibly happen to them.
Men, on the other hand, get the benefit of complete ignorance. Which is why men entering feminist spaces often ask women there to “calm down and be rational.” It’s really easy to be completely unemotionally invested in things that happen to people that are the complete opposite of you, by definition, and that will never happen to you in the way that they happen to them. Yes, men can be raped, men can be sexually harassed, and men can be economically disadvantaged by being a single parent. But they will never suffer the same reaction from the culture that women do, and they have a pitifully lower chance of going through any of that than the women who languish in a cultural epidemic of misogyny. Of course, it also helps that unemotional involvement is supposed to be the mainstay of masculine identity and the paragon of all things rational, so men’s biased flippancy gets a cultural stamp of legitimacy whereas women’s earned outrage is dismissed as shrill, irrational, and unpalatable.
And then there is the whole personal life aspect. Let me tell you, facing a life time of endlessly worshiping the ground my Nigel walks on because he does an equal share or somewhat equal share of the duties of maintaining a family sounds extremely unpleasant. Here, let me praise you for doing the amount of work that if anyone with a vagina did (i.e. less than half) they’d be labeled a bad wife/mother. Also, navigating the choppy waters of trying to object to the overwhelming emphasis on the idea that sex=dick (dick gets hard, dick goes in something, dick cums, sex ends) while having dick in my sex life sounds bothersome.
Most importantly, though, my queerness makes the most common objections to my observations of sexism in our culture fall apart.
Let’s run down the usual scenario: Jenn sees a movie. Jenn sees a metric ton of sexism and misogyny. Jenn objects. Resident chauvinist rejoins something to the extent that men like titties, and ain’t nothing wrong with that/ain’t no changin’ that, or women are actually really like that, or it’s just the biological destiny of humankind (they’ll say mankind though) that women will turn into stupid weak servile children around men because [insert bullshit essentialist evolutionary biology/psychology here].
Here comes the fun part. I get to reply, “hey asshole, I’m queer”. That means a lot of things in different contexts. It means that there’s a ton of women out there who don’t do stupid things for dick, because they don’t like dick. It means that I like titties too, so I’m not just objecting to sexism because I don’t understand what it’s like to be attracted to women’s bodies. It means that there’s people out there that don’t do things for a sugar daddy or some sweet pussy because they like people of their own gender.
And for my trump card, being queer means that men don’t have a single fucking excuse for excusing misogyny and objectification of women. Because I can seemingly still recognize that Meghan Foxx is quite far from unattractive without thinking that the pile of shit that was Transformers 2 was totally not sexist. I can be titillated by some pornography (I admit it!) without thinking that the marketing of a very narrow and restrictive version of female sexuality for consumption is wrong. I can sometimes feel like I need to have sex with someone with a vagina right now or I’ll be very irritated and uncomfortable without excusing raping someone that teased me or was “asking for it” or buying someone at an economic disadvantage to me so I can use and discard their sexuality.
So now what’s their excuse?
Plainly, they don’t have one. A sex drive that focuses on the attractiveness of women and having sex with women is not a good reason to ignore misogyny, like misogyny, think misogyny can’t be helped, or “helplessly” be a misogynist.
Considering all the shit I have to take daily without complaint because of being queer, I very much enjoy ripping a misogynist’s “but I can’t help it” argument to shreds with a simple revelation of my sexuality. At the very least, I might get to confirm that he’s a total homophobe—on top of being sexist—so I can end a conversation with the intellectual equivalent of a dining table and find less futile ways to spend my time.
Posted on August 19, 2009, in Feminism, Gay Rights, Liberal Dudez, Offended White Men, Penis Brain, Porn Nation, Priviledge. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
XXBlaze 
I have a handful of problems with this post.
Dismiss them as you please (and most likely will) but I’m going to air them anyway.
For one, you seem to wear “queer” like a fashionable hat. As sort of a “look at me!!!!” statement. My best friend on Earth is a lesbian, and I’m bi. It’s not a badge for blog hits, it’s not a tool for arguments. I don’t like seeing it used as such. It just bothers me.
Also, you say that you don’t like that men think about their genitals and their orgasms during sex. What do women think about? Their genitals, and their orgasms. So, instead of sex revolving around dick, it revolves around vagina. Tell me the difference.
Dating men doesn’t involve “worshipping the ground they walk on” anymore than dating women does.
Wanting equality is one thing. Wanting superiority while constantly throwing insults at people you would like to (I presume) be allies is entirely another.
Also, when you talk about “But I like women too, so that means you’re dumb, dumb men!” type of argument, you neglect a simple fact: Yes, you like women. We understand. Your body still doesn’t have a majority share of testosterone. You’re sitll producing more estrogen. If you claim hormones don’t affect anyone’s behavior, or thoughts in any noticeable way, ask a transman or woman who took hormone supplements how much different they felt when their hormonal majority changed from their natural testosterone/estrogen to the other.
It also sort of weirds me out how you seem to say feminism is “No women are “bad”, but some men are”. I don’t get that. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no such thing as “No one in group X is bad”. There are bad women, same as there are bad men.
Well, then… I’ll bite.
Why, pray tell, am I not allowed to use my sexuality as a part of my identity that shapes my relationship to feminism? If nobody ever used their sexuality as a tool for arguments (more specifically, they didn’t use their sexuality as a tool for describing their complex relationship to a world that shuffles their sexuality into the “deviant” corner to rot) I wouldn’t have the lovely bulk of lesbian/gay theory that I’m ever so fond of. Reading the experiences of other queers means that I have someplace to look for experiences more like my own instead of the ever-present straight narrative. Also, I don’t comprehend why wanting people to read about my experiences and thoughts is a bad thing. It’s why I have a blog in the first place, and why, I gather, loads of other people do too.
Mostly, I’m getting some sort of sense that you think I’m one of “those” queers. The ones that are too loud, too open, and too unhappy with a world that really doesn’t like them all that much. Look, we’re not a monolithic bunch, I recognize that other gay people have very different relationships between their sexuality and other parts of their lives. But this is my blog and my experience, and I’m not going to be shut up and chastised away from expressing myself in my own space.
Hi, welcome to a feminist blog. Not ever post you read is going to be Feminism 101. I was referencing the very real cultural phenomenon in which people define sexual intercourse as the arousal of a penis, the putting of a penis in something, and the ejaculation of a penis. When women rub their vaginas together or do anything without a penis it’s not really sex in that dominant narrative. The difference is that when my sexuality revolves around vagina, people don’t think of it as “real” sex (i.e. I’m still a virgin because I’ve never stuck a dick in my vagina), or they think of it as masturbation fodder for straight men instead of a private thing between two people. And that’s all the basic Feminism 101 you’re going to get out of me. You want more, go look it up.
Hello. Again, welcome to a feminist blog. You should be getting the theme of the place by now. The culture we live in is called a patriarchy. In it, men are allowed to far less than half of their share of housework—and most men take full advantage of that, even unknowingly—and remain ignorant while their girlfriends/wives/mothers/sisters clean up their mess for them… because it’s just What Women Do™. And so if a woman does less than half or asks a man to do anything approaching half she’s a failure of a woman. A man slacks and it’s “boys will be boys”. Yeah, and I’m not really fond of dealing with that shit for the rest of my natural life and putting up with someone raised in a culture where they were told that they can just expect women to pick up after them and it’s a-okay. And yes, if you do ask, I’ve lived with many men as their daughter/sister/roommate/friend before, and all of them, to a certain extent, expect some woman in their live to pick up after them.
Also, the “wanting superiority” meme is just old. Did you stumble upon my little space from a Men’s Rights convention or something? Everything I’ve ever written is about wanting to be treated like an equal human being. Reading comprehension is a lovely thing.
And here’s the biology=destiny argument. Have you never met a really sexual woman in your life? How about a not very sexual man? I have, and I’m not living in an alternative reality or anything. Duh, hormones affect behavior. But it’s so much more complex than “estrogen makes women fat and weepy” and “testosterone makes men angry and horny!” So if you’re going to quote the biology at me, at least try to keep up with recent developments in that field, rather than the whole old-fashioned testosterone=he-man myth I’m ever so fond of. Also, note that I said that I can be really really horny and still totes think that rape is not cool and something I’d totes never do. Last time I checked, even if all testosterone did is make men really really horny, there hasn’t been a link demonstrated between “horny he-man” and “I totes don’t think that women are human beings with free will of their own that might involve not wanting me to stick my dick in them or otherwise harass them”.
Lastly, why do I even need to take time to type this shit out? Again, not complicated stuff.
Oh hi strawman feminist. I was wondering when you’d stop in. Go find me where I said that all men are totes evil and horrible and all women are lovely divine creatures. Some women are really horrible human beings. But they don’t typically get to benefit from the oppression of my gender as a class. Some men are fantastic human beings. If you look back, I’m quite fond of Jimmy Carter. But they get to benefit from the oppression of my gender so I don’t have the same power to just avoid their nastiness.
Again, Feminism 101.
It’s more that one’s sexuality means a lot of things to a lot of people. Mine means something to me, yours to you. And to me, it’s offensive to see it used as a bludgeon, as a weapon, or as something to get attention. Like a piece of fashion, or Facebook flair. That’s not what it is, and it cheapens it, (in my opinion), to see it used as such.
But this is my blog and my experience, and I’m not going to be shut up and chastised away from expressing myself in my own space.
Like I said, it seems more like you’re using it as a blunt instrument to prove a point. I just think it’s offensive.
The difference is that when my sexuality revolves around vagina, people don’t think of it as “real” sex (i.e. I’m still a virgin because I’ve never stuck a dick in my vagina), or they think of it as masturbation fodder for straight men instead of a private thing between two people. And that’s all the basic Feminism 101 you’re going to get out of me. You want more, go look it up.
You dodged the question and went into a non sequitur. I asked why you seem to think it’s offensive and bad that men focus on their parts, but that it’s good and right when women focus on theirs.
No matter who is having it, sex is still primarily people thinking about their genitals.
It’s a meandering point you make, because you complain about one, but laud the other, as if there’d be some alternative for males to instead not focus on themselves, when you’re focusing on yourself.
And yes, if you do ask, I’ve lived with many men as their daughter/sister/roommate/friend before, and all of them, to a certain extent, expect some woman in their live to pick up after them.
I think you confuse “Not caring enough to do it themselves/not finding it to be a priority” with “expecting you to do it”.
Also, the “wanting superiority” meme is just old. Did you stumble upon my little space from a Men’s Rights convention or something? Everything I’ve ever written is about wanting to be treated like an equal human being. Reading comprehension is a lovely thing.
I say it because it drips from your every word. You regard men as inferior, and want the culture to back that up. Everything you say is painted in it.
Duh, hormones affect behavior. But it’s so much more complex than “estrogen makes women fat and weepy” and “testosterone makes men angry and horny!” So if you’re going to quote the biology at me, at least try to keep up with recent developments in that field, rather than the whole old-fashioned testosterone=he-man myth I’m ever so fond of.
Fine. Start taking testosterone. Read accounts of transpeople who have experienced this. It’s pretty awful of you to take actual human accounts of events, and tell them they’re full of crap because you don’t want to believe it. Transmen often found themselves with shorter tempers, because faster to anger, and many other common “male” traits. Transwomen found themselves more likely to cry, and to experience more stereotypically “feminine” emotions, and have a more unstable mood state overall.
That’s not a “biology = destiny” that’s a “these are real people with real experiences and this is what they say, therefore I’m going to trust their actual, lived experiences over speculation and theory”.
Go find me where I said that all men are totes evil and horrible and all women are lovely divine creatures. Some women are really horrible human beings. But they don’t typically get to benefit from the oppression of my gender as a class. Some men are fantastic human beings. If you look back, I’m quite fond of Jimmy Carter. But they get to benefit from the oppression of my gender so I don’t have the same power to just avoid their nastiness.
You say it here, you allude that no women are bad.
hey those Bad Girls you dislike? Well, according to statistics, bad thing X that happens to Bad Girls also happens to everyone else, and those Bad Girls are just normal women, just like you.”
Bad girls = just regular ol normal women, not bad at all!
But you never make any distinction for males.
Know what I think is offensive? When people assume that only men are attracted to women and therefore that only straight men know what it is like to want to have sex with a woman and my feminism comes from the fact that I’m somehow disgusted with the female form. I’m not “making a point with a blunt instrument”, I’m reminding them that they ignored the fact that people like us exist, people that are not straight men who like women. If you make an argument and you forget to mention something that you assume—something that is intrinsic to your conclusion—and the other person points out that they made that assumption and it’s wrong, then that’s not “offensive”. It’s, well, basic argumentative tactics. Denying the truth of a premise to negate a conclusion. Pointing out a logical fallacy. What should I do, then, to avoid offending you? Just accept that misogynists like to pretend that people like me don’t exist at all? Nah, that doesn’t sound fun.
You can be offended all you want, but that doesn’t mean that I think your offense is realistic, or that it’s less offensive than the request that I kindly stop pointing out huge gaping holes in misogynists arguments. That’s what feminists do. Oh, and I’m a feminist. You ever hear the personal is political? Well, it is for me. I’m not using your sexuality to make a point, I’m using mine. And the very point is that straight people and gay people are not exactly like each member of that orientation, and that latter actually exists. That’s a point that you are ignoring.
I didn’t go into a non-sequitor, I’m saying that you didn’t get what I posted. I wasn’t talking about individual people thinking about their individual genitals during sex. I was talking about the cultural definition of sex and how men are more apt to forget about their partner’s pleasure during sex with a woman because the cultural definition revolves solely around their pleasure and teaches them that women are passive objects to be used to please them sexually. Oh, and that good women like being a passive object. I thought I said that clearly before. I’m also not obligated to reply to a point you made if the point was completely off-topic because you didn’t understand my post.
Nope. When the communal area is dirty and needs vacuuming, either I or another woman does it or it stays dusty and dirty. If the fridge is empty, the men will complain or go get take-out for themselves. The women I’ve lived with will go grocery shopping for everyone. When my mother used to do laundry, she’d do my brother’s. Otherwise, he wouldn’t. Things have to get done in a house, and when I lived with dudes, most of them would say shit like “man, I don’t have any clean clothes” or “there’s nothing to eat in this house” or “the couch is full of cat hair”. Like it isn’t their problem. Like they can just go complain to the live-in help (i.e. the women) and it’ll get done. Also, if you don’t want to take my word for it, go look it up. On average, when a woman marries a man that earns the same and works the same amount, the amount of housework she does per week increases almost seven hours while his, on average, falls an hour or two. I’m not confusing anything. I’m stating the facts as they have been taught by very obvious and blatant gender roles and proven by statistics.
If you fancy yourself a mind reader (“hey, I know what you’re thinking better than you do!”), you fucking suck at it. Don’t tell me what I regard and don’t regard if you can’t even grasp the gist of my argument and post and continue to debate me on the premise that you know what I’ve written and what I think better than I do.
Oh hi absurd objection that is completely off-topic. Didn’t I just say that hormones do affect behavior? Not in the simplistic 50s “he-man testosterone” way. I said that hormones don’t make people treat the gender(s) they are attracted to like shit. They don’t make men rape people. They don’t make sexism and inequality and systems of oppression and exploitation the Natural Order of Things™ or a-okay. Did I talk about them not affecting transpeople? Um, no. Did I talk about them not affecting anything at all? Um, no. Misogynists treat women like shit or lesser human being because they’re sexist bastards. I can take all the god damned testosterone in the world, and so can anyone else, and it’s not going to make me treat women like shit. They do that all by themselves.
I forgot, you know the contents of my own allusions and my mind and my thoughts better than I do. Especially since I’m a feminist and you don’t seem to have any sort of familiarity with feminist things like the heterosexist construction of intercourse or the cultural marginalization of lesbian sexuality.
Shit, if you’re going to quote me to make a damn point, make sure that what you’re quoting says what you think it does. Re-read that section of my post. Think on how you quoted it. They aren’t equivalent. Your objection is nonsense. I’m done spelling it out for you. Go assume what you want about what I wrote. Obviously, you know so much more about the contents of my mind and my prose than I do. It’s not like I own my own sexuality or my mind or I wrote my prose or anything.
Humankind. Language.. etymology… they concern me. Is there a better way to describe our species (without resorting to biological taxonomy)?
The word people may be a solution, but being both noun and verb makes it feel awkward to me.
Being is a noun and a verb, you know. I’m a being. I’m being polite. So is “camp”. I’m going to camp at the camp up that hill. Here’s some more nouns that are also verbs: lock, fish, drink, cook, stress, number, giggle, reply, hunt.
And then there is the whole personal life aspect. Let me tell you, facing a life time of endlessly worshiping the ground my Nigel walks on because he does an equal share or somewhat equal share of the duties of maintaining a family sounds extremely unpleasant. Here, let me praise you for doing the amount of work that if anyone with a vagina did (i.e. less than half) they’d be labeled a bad wife/mother.
Exactly. The author Anna Quindlen once wrote something about how what passes for an exceptional man would only be a mediocre woman.
Let’s run down the usual scenario: Jenn sees a movie. Jenn sees a metric ton of sexism and misogyny. Jenn objects. Resident chauvinist rejoins something to the extent that men like titties, and ain’t nothing wrong with that/ain’t no changin’ that, or women are actually really like that, or it’s just the biological destiny of humankind (they’ll say mankind though) that women will turn into stupid weak servile children around men because [insert bullshit essentialist evolutionary biology/psychology here].
Yes, yes, yes! This is why i don’t date men. I can’t stand that shit.
Oh, and you are right about having to worship Nigel. I surmise that the commenter above who said it’s not true is a man. They won’t own up to it. But I can tell you that if you don’t worship Nigel, he will pout, he will complain, and he will eventually cheat on you and/or leave. Oh, he doesn’t see it as worship; it’s just normal lovin’. And the fact that it is not reciprocated doesn’t bother him, either. Men express their feelings differently. They have different love styles. Yeah, they always have a fucking excuse.
Yeah, yeah. All men are emotionally repressed. All men can’t express their gratitude for their partner’s toils without their cock falling off. That shit drives me up the wall! Being an exploitative ungrateful misogynist asshole isn’t a “love style”, it’s a freaking indication that you’re an enormous douchebag. Not being able to express your feelings isn’t fucking endearing, it’s obnoxious and infuriating, you passive-aggressive asshat. Welcome to the human race. Here we deal with emotions of other people and the concept of equality. Very radical, I know.
Hi Jenn. I just want to say that I think being lesbian and being gay or queer are different things. The gay and queer movements are not focused on, or even properly cognizant of, the extent to which female humans are oppressed by heterosexuality. That’s why I don’t identify as either. I am a LESBIAN. A woman-defined and identified woman.
But I will agree that in conversations with chauvinist pigs (most memorably amongst other law school students, since I found myself standing around bars having political conversations with co-ed groups) it has occasionally been interesting to watch them realize that my love of breasts is the same as theirs and therefore NOT a sale-able excuse for dehumanizing women. Straight women may be flattered by a suggestion that the awesome power of their sexuality is enough to render men irrational (what?!?!). You know, men just “can’t help it;” and women just can’t understand what it’s like to be mesmerized by the female body. This does not work on me. HA! And it forces the discussion into a new place…a place most men aren’t prepared to go.
And AMEN, sisters, to the bullshit about Male Exceptionalism!! And hallelujah! I’ve got way too many other things to do with my time than to constantly redirect men.
Ah, see, the baggage of what term indicates what puts me in a limbo. I don’t typically isolate gender identity as the deciding factor in who I will and will not have a relationship with. Thus, I think bisexual is a misnomer, but neither heterosexual or lesbian truly fit. I like “queer” because it’s a catchall for everything that isn’t straight. But then, like you said, it doesn’t imply that feminism is a part of my sexual identity, or that I am a feminist. So I typically just identify as a “queer feminist”. It also has the nice advantage of not being gender-specific. “Lesbian” typically requires some sort of identification with being a woman and loving people that identify as women. That messy gender identity isn’t really part of my sexuality, I feel. It’s namely just down to I like relationships with people who are not assholes who I am also compatible with and whom I am also attracted to. It just so happens that most of those people identify as women because the “Not an Asshole” requirement excludes a lot of men.
Am I being too obtuse here? I mean, I do feel like the gay movement does have some sort of awareness of how heterosexism oppresses the gay community, but I agree that they don’t typically look at interlocking systems of oppression, and how specifically gender plays into that dynamic as well. The best analysis of that is typically found within lesbian feminism.
No, no, you’re not being too obtuse. :) I hear what you’re saying. And you know, I agree that defining one’s sexuality by gender alone is inadequate. I’m a lesbian, but am I attracted to ALL women? No. So another description would be more accurate. Probably more complicated and messy. Queer is more encompassing in some ways, yet because it also *excludes heteronormativity* (by definition!), I can see its appeal. I suppose it’s my commitment to WOMEN specifically that makes me a lesbian–but that loyalty references much, much more than my sexuality. And here we go again with the hetero-patriarchal separation of sex and mind/emotions. BAH!
Anyways, yeah, it’s interesting to see the smoke coming out of men’s ears as they realize that they can’t hide behind their sexual desire for a woman’s body in justification fof misogyny–and that you can pleasure a woman just as well as they can. HAhahahaha!