((Clint from the BG: Looks like that Ice Cap is BIPOLAR.)) ((Tony: STFU BARTON))
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Rumors that this person had different gender attraction as well as same gender attraction were created to make them seem straight.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “If you headcanon this character as bi instead of gay you’re forcing heterosexuality on them.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (calls past mixed gender relationships of a bi person “straight relationships”)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “As much as we’d like to let bisexuals into our community, when the going gets tough they’ll probably align themselves with heteros to save their skins.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “So you’re only half queer?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (assumes all bi women date men and all bi men date women)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Bisexuals will never know what it’s like to experience real bigotry the way we do.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “I’d rather have a straight ally represent me than a bi person, at least good allies acknowledge their privilege.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “You have a preference for different gender people? So you’re actually hetero then?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (assumes all bi people date straight people)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Why would you need ‘bi pride,’ gay pride already celebrates same gender attraction, isn’t that enough? Do you really need to celebrate your heterosexual side too?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “You need to acknowlege your straight passing privilege.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (bi person breaks up with them) “So it turns out they were hetero all along.”
Bi Person: …
Bi Person: “Sometimes Monosex-”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Excuse me? Did you just lump US in with STRAIGHT PEOPLE? Do you realize how much it hurts to be put in the same category as your OPPRESSOR? Why are you obsessed with proving that you’re QUEERER THAN US? If you don’t issue us an APOLOGY and then NEVER use that word again it will prove that bi people are the most HOMOPHOBIC people in the world!”
I’ve had this one sitting in my to-do pile for a while, and was finally galvanized to draw it up after going to a talk around intersections of sex, gender, and race this weekend. The topic of pronouns and terminology came up and the speaker just sort of smirked and said ‘yeah, we all know who wrote the dictionaries, don’t we?’ and I was like YES I HAVE A WHOLE THING ABOUT THAT.
My proudest moment of this comic is that I managed to sneak a penis joke into it.
ending internalised misogyny and the prioritisation of men over each other
what stopping girl hate is not about:
expecting women of colour, disabled women and LGBTQA+ women to excuse racism, ableism, homophobia and transmisogyny simply because it’s coming from other women
sometimes out lgbtqia+ people forget how vital it is to preserve safe spaces where closeted people are welcome in their (deserved) frustration at 20 y/o straight dudes calling themselves allies for brownie points.
but the ‘s’ in ‘gsa’ is important—not for the straight people, not for the allies, but for every fourteen year old girl who asks her unsupportive parents for a ride to a meeting under the guise of “allyship”. we can’t get rid of the only chance at community some of the most vulnerable people in ours have.
Y’all don’t understand what this scene means to me. This Christian girl wearing the flower crown and the white bedsheet was going to murder Piper for not kowtowing to her homophobic bullshit. Like, Piper is out here about to get shanked when the inmate counselor is within ear shot and can see what’s about to go down. Piper calls out for help, and the counselor turns his back and leaves, knowing full well that Piper might die. This is what a lot of Pacifists don’t understand: you can not react in a non-violent manner to someone who is trying to kill you. You have to be able to use the appropriate amount of force to disarm them, and thanks to these fantastic women of color, Piper didn’t die. This scene was everything.
the universe did not converge in the series of improbable events that ended in your existence on this flying rock in the middle of space so that you could discredit the identity of teenage bisexual girls
This statement would be perfect if it didn’t discredit the identity of every other being on this flying rock.
this just in: i can in fact encourage people to support bi teenage girls, who experience some of the lowest levels of social support from their friends and family and some of the highest prevalence rates of mood and anxiety disorders and suicidality without discrediting everyone else’s identity, similar to how i can say ‘save the whales’ and not mean ‘and let everything else die.’
What about our fans? Are they privileged? Let me tell you about Anders. He was one of two male love interests in Dragon Age II, and the only one of the two that would actually make his intentions known to the player without the player expressing interest first. If you were nice to him, he would make a pass at you, and you could turn him down, and that would be the end of it. And some fans REALLY did not like that.
Some of them asked for a gay toggle; because in a game where there’s mature themes, slavery, death, and none of which we offer toggles for, encountering a gay character? OOH, beyond the pale. They didn’t want to be exposed to homosexuality.
And this one fan on our forums posted that he felt too much attention had been spent on women and gays and not enough on straight male gamers. For all of whom he personally spoke, of course. ‘It’s ridiculous that I even have to use a term like Straight Male Gamers, when in the past I would only have to say fans.’ The purpose of the romances in Dragon Age II was to give each type of fan an equal content. Two romances whether you’re male or female, straight or gay.
How upsetting for this particular Straight Male Gamer to realize he wasn’t being catered to. This was not equality to him, but an imbalance; an imbalance of the natural order. He did not want equality, he’s not interested in equality. To him, from his perspective, equality means he’s getting less. Less options? Actually, no, the number of options we had in that game was actually the same number of options that he would have received earlier. What was his issue was the idea that there was attention being spent on other groups, which SHOULD have rightly gone to him.
Do ALL straight male gamers feel exactly the same as he does? Absolutely not. In the thread where this came up in fact, there was quite a few guys who came in and identified themselves as straight male gamers and said ‘I actually don’t have an issue with that, as long as I receive an experience I enjoy, I think other people should be able to enjoy that too.’ But if you think that Straight Male Gamer Dude is an outlier among our fanbase, you were not paying attention.
This is Anita Sarkeesian, she’s the author of the Feminist Frequency, a blog which examines tropes in the depiction of women in popular culture. You’ve probably all heard about this, it’s a matter of public record, she announced a Kickstarter to start a web series to look at the tropes in video games and she was subjected to a campaign of vicious abuse and harassment by male gamers. Why? Well, because she represents to these guys the loss of their coveted place in the gaming audience. Never mind that well all know Goddamn well that they’re still at the top of the totem pole. What they see themselves losing is sole proprietorship over their domain. That’s what it is.
Everything that is changing about the gaming industry to accommodate these players, to them, is diluting the purity of gaming which has belonged solely to them. That’s what this is all about. And here’s the thing, I’m pretty certain that our industry fears the scrutiny of those guys way more than the scrutiny of everyone else. Because those are the guys that scream at the top of their lungs, they spend their time on every internet forum, they spend their time making Metacritic reviews. Infuriate them, and you become a target. It’s so much easier to say “Well, that’s what our fans are like. There’s nothing we can do.” And that’s bullshit.
They didn’t set the tone, did they? We set the tone. What we put out there, what we permit, whether it’s on our forums, whether it’s on Xbox Live, the things that we permit we are in effect condoning. What happened to Anita, we the industry, are partly responsible for. We’re in part to blame. And if the idea of moral responsibility doesn’t phase you, consider the idea that the time will probably soon come that this will also amount to legal responsibility.
I’ve been seeing more and more people on tumblr arguing that monosexism can’t exist because gay and lesbian people don’t benefit from the oppression of bi people
Pulling the discussion that way DERAILS IT YET AGAIN and draws attention away from the real issue – centering it around gay and lesbian people when it’s supposed to be about bi people and our oppression
Social benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):
Bisexual erasure stabilizes the heterosexual/homosexual binary. Acknowledging that it exists would insinuate that sexuality is changeable, making it impossible to argue that gay people were “born this way”. So monosexism makes it easier to legitimize homosexuality.
Bisexual erasure makes it possible to create (usually binary, cissexist) gender-segregated gay and lesbian environments. Because bisexual people always carry the “threat” of being with “other genders” and then “bringing them into the community”. So monosexism makes it easier to organize and maintain gay and lesbian communities.
Bisexual erasure makes it possible for gay and lesbian people to use respectability politics with regards to sex. Because bi men are viewed as closeted men who sneak out to have unsafe anonymous sex behind their wives’ backs, and because bi women are viewed as sluts who make lesbians look bad because they’re “sexually available to men”. So monosexism makes it easier for gay and lesbian people to appear sexually “moral”.
These are all points made by gay scholar Kenji Yoshino (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.
Material benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):
Gay and lesbian people benefit from the work that bi people put in promoting and being active in queer movements/communities without having to credit them or give anything back to them.
Because bi people are excluded from leadership in these movements/communities, gay and lesbian people are the leaders and decision makers. That means they control communities’ agenda, money and resources.
Since internalized monosexism often makes bi people believe that bisexuality isn’t important enough to organize around, many contribute most of their activist time and energy to promoting gay and lesbian issues – again meaning queer movements benefit from the work of bi people at the expense of bi people and movements.
And of course there’s the part where (as stated above) almost all LGBT money goes to the GGGG part of it, and that bisexual people actually earn less money than gay and lesbian people.
These are points made by bisexual scholar and activist Miguel Obradors (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.
Then combine all this with the fact that bi people are DISPROPORTIONATELY WOMEN, PEOPLE OF COLOR AND TRANS PEOPLE. Then do the math.
Want to know more? Follow the goddamn links.
Now –
[Image: Samuel L. Jackson from the movie Pulp Fiction aiming a gun towards the camera looking angry (Say What Again meme). Top text: “SAY MONOSEXISM DOESN’T EXIST”. Bottom text: “ONE MORE TIME”]
LemonGrenade 