Something you haven’t had to deal with
I just love it when men explain to women how lucky they are to be free of oppression.
being cis has nothing to do with your sex or being a woman. Like me, you're cis if you're not trans or non-binary.
What you feel is the prick of being labeled, something you haven't had to deal with because you were fortunate enough to be born cis
— Martin Wisse (@wissewords) July 8, 2018
Yaaaaaaaz definitely, women never have to feel the prick (or stab) of being labeled. Nobody ever tells us what we are, corrects us about what we are no matter how vehemently we protest, calls us harsh names, teams up in groups to do all that. Lucky lucky lucky fortunate us.
“You’re so lucky” says the middle aged, middle class white guy living in a safe western country.
I’m sure this is highly offensive (and highly rambling), but…:
I have a (politically moderate, older) friend who just recently came across the term “cishet”, which he had to look up, then he was shocked that was a thing.
Since then, we have embraced the label for comedic purposes, often lamenting the travails of our cishet lifestyle, how other people don’t understand us cishets, how cishets aren’t cool like they used to be, etc.
I then came across the term “cishet ace” which sounded awesome. I thought maybe we could make that our imposed label, until I found out “ace” was short for “asexual”, which is fine if that’s what you are, but we’re not. My friend wondered how you could be het and ace at the same time, which I’m sure is also offensive to ask.
Anyway, continuing my rambling, the context in which I saw “cishet aces” was a link to a long article discussing if cishet aces were truly queer or not, as apparently that had been a matter of debate. The author had an extremely strong opinion on that matter and was very unhappy with anyone that disagreed, but I read the article three times, and it was so confusingly written that I couldn’t figure out which side they were so strongly on. I decided I didn’t care that much and gave up.
OK, I’ll stop now.
“Cishet” is a particularly stupid word because it mashes two separate things together as if they automatically went together when the whole entire point is that they DON’T. You can be trans and also het or not; you can be het and the odds are extremely high that you’re not also trans. The two don’t go together, don’t lead off from one another, don’t imply one another – there’s just no reason to treat them as one word. I did a ranty Facebook post about it once, years ago, long before the “do you believe, yes or no” inquisition. I don’t remember if anyone responded or not.
Was the tedious article about whether cishet aces were truly queer or not by any chance at Everyday Feminism? They do a lot of that kind of navel-gazing shit.
Yeah, laydeez! You’re basically at the apex of privilege. BTW try to be more agreeable, you don’t want to scare off your husband by
having opinionsbeing stridently opinionated.Heh, if you google “are cishet aces queer” you get quite a few hits. A burning question!
Top of the pile:
http://affinitymagazine.us/2016/07/02/cishet-asexual-people-in-the-lgbtq-community/
It’s as tedious as it sounds.
It was actually a tweetstorm. Behold:
https://mobile.twitter.com/nex3/status/873590622615093248
Reading it again, I think their point is cishet aces would be queer if they existed, but they don’t?
I’m not sure, because something goes wrong with my brain right about when I read this part:
I think the Cishet thing is pretty bullshit. However, Ace just means you’re really not interested in sex (what used to be called zero libido – Frigid if you were a women and dedicated to something productive if you were a man).
So, het-ace would be possible. It basically means that if you were interested in sex it would be with the opposite sex, but you’re not. As a form of sexual identity I think it’s largely meaningless. It doesn’t actually describe anything intrinsic about your sexuality, just how much you value it. Seeking to be included in the LGBTQI rainbow on the basis of not caring about sex is just about as sensible as me wanting to be included in a V8 car fanciers club while caring nothing about V8’s, cars or indeed combustion engines, but just wanting people to pay attention to me.
Rob, yeah, that’s basically my take as well.
Kind of funny that most people used to bristle at being labeled (“don’t put your labels on me!”) and now so many people collect labels as a hobby, putting stuff like “bi/trans/poly/demi” in their Twitter description.
On that subject, the full twitter thread Ophelia thread linked to is interesting to read. I think Martin Wisse could have stopped with “What you feel is the prick”.
And as someone who who has always had a visceral dislike of the word “woke”, it warms my heart to see this is how it’s primarily used now:
Grand! I would use this on the smug millennial that keeps mansplaining to me what it was really like to be a woman in the 1980s (I was a woman in the 1980s; he was not even a protected-status embryo generating oodles of attention from woman-hating anti-choicers). The only problem is, he is not woke. So I’ll have to figure out something else.
But I am definitely glad to learn (from him, and others like him) that #MeToo has definitely gone too far when it complains about men putting hands on women’s knees, and that #BlackLivesMatter has gone too far when it objects to…something he wasn’t clear about, but I suppose about unarmed black men being shot by military-equipped police officers with an attitude, since that is what #BlackLivesMatter is all about. Actually, ignore that. I am not glad about that at all, because I have listened to too many males explain these things to me for years, and I’ve noticed they are almost always white men who understand racism better than the non-white community!
ISTM that “asexual” only needs to be a thing in a subculture where everyone is (presumed to be) having sex with, well someone, and you need an excuse to keep saying “no” to everyone. Fortunately the concept of identity is available, so all you need is to claim the appropriate one, and everyone will be immediately accepting of your personal choices which were none of their damn business in the first place.
@Ophelia #3
It’s intersectional! :-p
@Skeletor #11
Why is it funny? When a group with power labels an out-group in order to marginalise and oppress them, that’s bad. But when a marginalised group finds a collective identity to rally around and focus their strength and message through, that’s good.
Alternatively, think of it as the difference between self-deprecation and insults. Saying “I left my wallet at home, I’m such an idiot!” is fine. Saying “You left your wallet at home, you idiot” is not fine. (Well, it’s actually complicated, but it’s nearly always not fine.) Or as the difference between the picked-upon fighting back, and the bully fighting. The difference is in the power of the actors, and their reasons for acting.
Karallen, I see your point about being labeled by others vs. rallying around a collective identity, but to me the sheer number of labels collected makes it seem like a different phenomenon.
A couple of years ago I was at a theatre conference where they had a panel of woman directors (because woman directors are a rare bird, and spotting rare birds is always fun). One of the directors felt she had to apologize because she was only a woman director, not gay, not a person of color, not trans, not (she had at least two other things on the list, but can’t remember them now). Therefore, she was not a completely valid voice on that panel. Never mind that the presence of white “cishet” straight abled woman directors is no higher than the presence of the many other groups she was unable to put herself in. Being a straight white female does not give you an advantage as a director, or as a playwright (yes, I looked at the numbers the Dramatist’s Guild collected, and therefore am not speaking from just what I think I see, but from the actual data).
Collecting labels is terribly important for people who want someone else to validate their identity. It can be a picture of solidarity, yes, and that makes it worthwhile. But it is also becoming a tool for guilting anyone who has fewer labels.
Can anyone be ‘born’ cishet if gender is ‘assigned at birth?’
I’ve seen lots of online comments about self-labeled ‘aces’ who actually DO have/want sex. I can’t even begin to reason out their position on that front.
Oooh, let’s have a new movement centered on ace people who DO want to have sex. I guess they can be the trans-ace community? And demand instant fealty or else?
Steve Watson at #13, umm, no. That’s not how it works at all. See, Asexual people are not supposed to exist. We keep getting told that our orientation is “exclusionary” (which is kinda the point, but…) and “exclusionary” is bad and wrong. Not permitted. We’ve been folded into the Queer community, somehow, because apparently “No, I’m not interested” is somehow exactly like all the other non-standard options for relationships, except we’re not actually allowed to say No to someone else in “the Community”. Especially if you’re female. So in a very real sense, nothing has changed – our orientation is just as unacceptable as in the wider world, where females are not permitted to exist except for male usage, but now there are a whole new set of special words that dudes can scream at us for saying No, and we’re magically the most oppressive, dangerous creatures ever!
Such privilege! Who would have thought that one word had such power!
Ah, interesting, because exactly the same thing is happening to lesbians – they’re being told that not wanting dick is “exclusionary.”
God it’s all so ridiculous.
Yes, exactly like the erasure and targeting of Lesbians! And for the same reasons – feeemales must not be allowed to say No. Exclusionary is automatically bad, so Lesbians and Ace women must be… dealt with, somehow. Interestingly, the people with the best understanding and acceptance of Asexual women/girls tend to be 2nd-Wave/Radical Feminists, mostly (but not entirely) Lesbians. Personally, I tend to feel much safer with those who are not going to join in the harassment about relationships (always with males, isn’t that curious…) and offspring.
Skeletor #9
My god, that is hilarious. Cargo cult political theory.
Heterosexuals who aren’t interested in sexual and/or romantic relationships “lose access to material power.”
How? Why? Why would any gatekeepers of “material power” give a shit about your sex life?
But hey it sounds like political analysis. Kinda sorta.
God, isn’t that just exactly it? Appropriate (see what I did there?) the vocabulary but acquire no understanding of what it means, and just deploy it as a status symbol. Instant Woke Political Theory!
I must shamefully confess I never really considered asexuality from a female perspective. I’ve known several men that seemed to have no interest in women, and the only harassment they got is people occasionally trying to set them up or asking about their lack of interest. Behind their back was some discussion of if they were closeted gay or asexual or just were happy as they were and not currently interested in dating. Basically there was some minor curiosity, but it wasn’t really a big deal.
Of course if I’d thought about it I could have guessed that it would turn into a “how dare you!” issue for women.
Re “exclusionary”: It also STM that the “enthusiastic (and ongoing) consent” ethic is “exclusionary” in virtue of excluding everyone in the world, unless you have a good positive reason to have sex with a certain person. Otherwise, the default answer is “No” (with whatever level of politeness is appropriate to the occasion), and you’re not obliged to justify that answer to anyone’s satisfaction but your own (exception for long-term couples, where one is entitled to ask “Is everything OK, darling?” and receive an honest answer). This “exclusionary” business looks like trying to sneak sexual entitlement back in via the window.
Re that Affinity article: Wow. So many labels, so many fine gradations of preference, and they all apparently despise each other. These are not healthy adults. Reminds me of an editorial I once read in a fanzine about how at Cons, the fans of “science fiction”, “sci-fi” and “SF” formed different mutually hostile cliques. This was a great surprise to me who, despite being a lover of the genre, never knew those terms are supposed to refer to different things. I also decided that I never, ever wanted to meet anyone who thought that way.
Skeletor @24 – my husband used to be single (until he was 47). He was interested in sex, he dated women, but his single status made him suspicious. His neighbors suspected he was gay, and would rush their daughters past when he was around (why? I have no clue. If he is gay, he isn’t likely to attack your daughters – it seems most people have very little clue how sexual attraction actually works).
Once he got married, he was suddenly acceptable in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, as a single woman who didn’t date for 12 years, I was subjected to harassment in the workplace (he didn’t have that), people trying to fix me up (he didn’t have that), and just general nastiness. I finally solved the problem by leaving work, going on disability for PTSD, and eventually working from home. I don’t think that solution works for everyone.
Why should my sex life be open for discussion? My married friends never had to provide proof of a sex life, but I was expected to be seen in public with eligible, preferably horny, males.
My son married a woman who is a Star Trek fan. They met on a Star Trek sim game. He loves Star Trek, but has equal enthusiasm for Star Wars. She was horrified, and demanded that he not discuss Star Wars around her. WTF?
Steve Watson #25
Gawd, yes.
Many of the same people who were lecturing everyone about “enthusiastic consent” two years ago will now tell you that a lesbian who doesn’t want sexytime with a “woman”-with-a-penis is a bigot.