Nico

Sexuality Labels Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean

tal9000:

lizardwalk:

eateroftrees:

tal9000:

There are a bunch of words people use to define their sexuality. Straight (or “het”), Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and whatnot (also Pansexual, but in this first paragraph I’m setting up the cissexist, binarist case that I’m going to spend the rest of this post demolishing). Straight means that whatever sex you are, you’re attracted to the other one, Gay usually means that you’re a man and are attracted to other men, but sometimes just means that whatever sex you are, you’re into the same one, Lesbian means you’re a woman and into women, and Bisexual means that you’re into both men and women. Simple, right?

If you ignore non-cis people in general, non-binary people specifically, and incidental attractions to people not of genders that someone is usually attracted to, that even works. But bringing in people whose bodies are non-normative for their binary gender introduces a few cracks, and bringing in people who are non-binary busts it wide open.

Let’s deal with the first one. Very few people are actually attracted entirely to someone’s gender. They’re usually attracted to things associated with it. If someone says that they’re attracted to “women” and not attracted to “men”, would you really genuinely expect them to be attracted to a woman who is currently suffering from testosterone poisoning, with all the hairiness and harder features that implies? I certainly wouldn’t. Which means that the terms we’re using are wrong; the person isn’t attracted to women specifically as much as to some body type that they usually see in women.

Adding in people who don’t fit this two-gender model breaks the whole system wide open, of course. Is a woman who is primarily into genderqueer people “straight”? Is an androgyne who is primarily into men “gay”? The questions themselves sound preposterous because they are.

Now, could you get rid of all of these labels? Sure, but that ignores that there are very distinct differences between people. Lesbians primarily pursue other lesbians (and bi women) romantically, gay men primarily pursue other gay and bi men romantically, in communities without too terrible much monosexism; these labels give people an easy shorthand to find people who might be mutually interested in them. Further, queer people of all kinds have a shared history of oppression at the hands of a power structure that elevates straight cis people, which continues today; losing these labels means losing the ability to name their oppression.

So, a better solution is to leave them as identities for those whom they describe well, but at the same time to not assume that the simple definition marks the boundaries of the group. Sexuality and gender is a huge fuzzy space and doesn’t fit into neat boxes. And while the archetypal lesbian might be a woman who is attracted almost exclusively to other women, the definition needs quite a bit of broadening. For any individual lesbian, on what terms is she a woman? Genderqueer and genderfluid women exist (I’m not counting trans/cis here. Trans* people are absolutely the gender we say we are every bit as much as cis people are). On what terms is she attracted to women? Put another way, what about women is she attracted to? Is she genuinely attracted to people’s internal gender identities, or is she attracted to other traits that non-women (such as genderqueers) may have? All of those have to be answered for the individual person.

Like, pulling this from the airy realm of theory to speak personally, I identify as lesbian because I am a woman (entirely binary as far as I know right now) who is into people whose bodies show signs of an estrogen-based sex hormone system and who aren’t men, but that’s far from the only way to be a lesbian. There are more than a few non-binary gender people I’ve been into, and I can do that and (1) not think of them as women, (2) still not be any less of a lesbian for it, and (3) have most of my attractions be to people who were assigned female at birth (not all, but all the ones I know in meatspace) and not fall into the cissexism of saying that that is what I am attracted to. Like, unless you can’t get turned on without a copy of your partner’s original birth certificate, that’s not what your attraction is and you should say what you actually mean.

This goes for words like “bisexual” too. Etymologically it might imply that someone only has two genders that they’re attracted to, or two modes of attraction. But it’s not a strict description of who someone is attracted to. There aren’t enough phonemes in the English language to make enough words for that if you constrain yourself to reasonable lengths. “Bisexual” is an identity. Is anyone going to seriously argue that my attractions to genderqueer people make me not monosexual (i.e., not receive monosexual privilege)? Why would a bisexual person’s attraction to more than just two genders of people require them to not identify as bisexual, if my attraction to more than one gender doesn’t make me not monosexual?

I like the “People who’s bodies show signs of an estrogen-based hormone system” explanation :P

If someone says that they’re attracted to “women” and not attracted to “men”, would you really genuinely expect them to be attracted to a woman who is currently suffering from testosterone poisoning, with all the hairiness and harder features that implies? I certainly wouldn’t.

Actually, yes, I fucking well would, unless I knew they were a cissexist dipshit.  And it seems to be that saying that you’re a monosexual lesbian because you’re “a woman (entirely binary as far as I know right now) who is into people whose bodies show signs of an estrogen-based sex hormone system and who aren’t men” *is* erasing the realities and sexes of non-binary people you’re attracted to.

Is anyone going to seriously argue that my attractions to genderqueer people make me not monosexual (i.e., not receive monosexual privilege)?

Yes, yes I am.  Because many genderqueer people have a sex that is different from that of binary people who were assigned the same sex as them at birth.  How, if you are attracted to more than one sex, are you *not* monosexual?

To your first point, yes, I agree, using gender labels to indicate other things (genitals, hormones, whatnot) is cissexist, and I wasn’t clear enough in putting that in. Saying that you’re in to “women” when your attraction is to something other than someone’s gender identity is using cissexism to get away with not saying what you mean. You are absolutely right on this point, and I should have said earlier, that the people who say this need to stop. But the cissexist douchebaggery isn’t not being attracted to pre/no-hormones trans* women, it’s saying “women” when one means “women whom I judge to look cis”.

To your second, the entire point I’m making is that terming things based on the number of genders and specific genders someone is attracted to is actually not that useful. Assuming that someone’s sexual attraction is mostly based on the other person’s sex/gender is playing into cissexist tropes that sex/gender determines physical features, since for most people I know, those physical features (real or, in the case of people whom you have no meatspace contact with, never see pictures of/hear voices and so on, imagined). Very few people are actually attracted to gender identity (I’m not even sure if my “no-men” deal-breaker works that way; it could be the male gender identity itself, or a pronoun preference of “he”, I’m actually not sure. Though it’s probably not entirely language-dependent)

I’m not defining things where there’s a rigid wall around each of “Straight” “Lesbian” “Gay” “Bisexual”, “Pansexual”, and all the other identities, where you have a strict definition at the edge of each one, and if you don’t meet it you’re not allowed in. I’m defining from the center here, where there’s an archetype, and people can identify with whatever archetype best resonates with them (I mean, obviously, things like “lesbian” should probably have a rigid “no men allowed” policy, but not “nobody who isn’t into women exclusively allowed” or even “women only”).

Also, there’s an element of privilege structures involved here. Suffice to say, I am on the privileged side of monosexism here. While someone might erase the non-women I am attracted to when talking about my attraction to a woman (because of binarism), they aren’t going to assume that I am strictly attracted to genderqueer people when I date one. They aren’t going to tell me that I haven’t figured myself out for this. Nobody slut-shames me on the basis that if I’m attracted to more than one gender, I must be loose. I can’t even come up with a list of all the ways that I am not oppressed by monosexism, because I am not oppressed by monosexism. That’s privilege, not passing privilege. Saying that people who are full beneficiaries of monosexual privilege are not monosexual dilutes what should be a useful tool.

I mean, really, are you telling me that I should butt in to discussions where non-monosexual people are talking about being erased, or being told by people who run queer spaces to “come back when you figure yourself out” (exact quote; one of my friends was told this by her school’s lesbian group) with “well, I’m bi*, and I’ve never had that problem”? No, if I did that I’d be an appropriative douche.

*practically all of the non-binaries I have been attracted to have been genderqueer, so if you count that as a single gender (‘cause if we’re etymologizing to the number of sexes you’re attracted to, we might as well assume one word = one gender, right?), I’ve only been attracted to two genders and can therefore label myself “bi”, by the etymologizing route.

If you absolutely have to go by the “numbers” thing (which isn’t the be-all end all of naming attraction), for many people it’s better to count modes of attraction than genders. And I certainly only have one of those. For others it’s the other way around, but counting modes of attraction describes how I fit in to society and what my privilege is way better.

Finally, there’s a difference between “You’re erasing the gender of this hypothetical person by using terms this way” and “you’re erasing my gender by using terms this way” or even “you’re erasing this specific person’s gender by using terms this way” (which is only valid when you know it to be true, like, say, if you’ve talked to them about it and the person you’re telling hasn’t). In the latter case, I’d reconsider either using terms that way or being involved with that person (incompatible identities are a perfectly legit reason to leave someone romantically. But leaving someone only works as a way to avoid this when the language is being used to describe one’s romantic attractions). In the former case, you’re butting in to other people’s lives and relationships to tell them that their identities are wrong because they don’t match the rigid definitions that you want them to use.