Mona

terratic:

brostridersbooty:

terratic:

brostridersbooty:

terratic:

• no but seriously, I have such a huge chip on my shoulder about fandom’s monosexist bullshit lately.
• not all queer women identify as lesbian/gay.
• not all queer men identify as gay.
• polysexual and polyromantic people exist.
• why do you keep erasing them.
• being in a canon m/f relationship does not necessarily make either party canonically hetero.
• and in fact, people calling any and all m/f ships “het[erosexual]”, even if one or both parties are queer, really fucking grates on me in general.
• doing things like calling Shakespeare, or whoever, “a big gay” is not okay.
• no, it isn’t.
• it’s erasive (he was likely polysexual, to the best of common knowledge) and dehumanizing (there is a huge fucking difference between saying “I’m a big gay” and “this other person is a big gay”).
• in fact, just please don’t use “gay” as a noun unless you’re describing yourself or someone you know for a fact is comfortable with it, because what may be comfortable to you could be incredibly dehumanizing when you apply it to another person.
• and also erasive.
• because again:
• polysexual and polyromantic people exist.

I would like to point out that a person calling an m/f relationship a heterosexual relationship generally is because the m/f is a heterosexual relationship, even if one or both parties is queer. Same with homosexual relationships. Now, labeling characters sexuality as “heterosexual” or “homosexual” when that is not the case is wrong.
Other than that this is a really great post that I think everyone should read.

N…o, “heterosexual” is a word that describes people, not relationships. A relationship is heterosexual if and only if all parties in the relationship ID as heterosexual and choose to describe it as such. For example, if I, as a person who is generally read as a woman, were in a romantic relationship with a man, that would not be a heterosexual relationship because it is my relationship and I am not heterosexual. (I am also not binary, but that muddles the matters further, so let’s put that aside for a minute.)

People are heterosexual. Relationships are not. Calling all m/f relationships heterosexual is really fucking erasive.

No I’m sorry but a man and a woman in a relationship is a heterosexual relationship. The type of relationship you’re in does not necessarily reflect your sexuality. A person can be queer and be in a heterosexual relationship. If a man who is bisexual is in a relationship with a woman who is pansexual they’re still in a heterosexual relationship.
I understand it’s harder when a person is non-binary, but that’s why there’s other words for other type of relationships.
I’m sorry people refer to your relationship as heterosexual.
I think I’m gonna have to drop this here because we’re not going to change eachothers minds.

I’m going to drop this after this reblog too, but I just need to say: no, it isn’t, because heterosexual describes people, not relationships. You can define your own relationship however you see fit, but pinning other people’s relationships under the straight/gay (false) binary is not okay. Because whatever you seem to think, calling someone’s relationship heterosexual implies that the people involved identify as heterosexual, and when you have no idea how those people actually do identify, that is not okay.

It could also be a misgendering of people you perceive as cis and/or binary genders. Like I REALLY UNDERSTAND irl, when you are a queer person, assuming that the people around you who appear to be cishet, in cishet relationships, etc, are cishet. It’s self-protective. I need to know who has privilege and power over me so I can be prepared to protect myself against them, and as long as I will adjust that perception when they tell me otherwise, I really don’t think it’s prudent to assume everyone around me is just like me. (Wonder, yes, allow for the possibility, always, but work off of the assumption as if it’s true: no.)

But when we’re talking about people in m/f relationships that we KNOW identify as queer, be they peers, historical figures, or fictional characters, unless they themselves categorize their relationship as heterosexual (some queer people do this! some people label their same gender relationships homosexual when they identify as some other kind of queer! this is queer people’s right, absolutely! but self-defined and prescribed labels are separate things), it is really fucked up to label it that way for them. And when we aren’t talking about real life people with real life straight privilege and power over us, but instead fictional characters, presuming straight and cis as a default and enforcing that by reading all m/f as occurring between heterosexual identified cis people, kind of sucks in some of our eyes. I mean it’s totally people’s prerogative to read characters and texts as they like, but here’s a place where you CAN assume everyone is queer and/or trans* without giving up any real self-protection (except against fandom if it starts acting like shipping exclusively canonical m/f ships or writing about exclusively canonically straight-identified characters, is as queer as not ignoring the canon queerness that does exist in canon, relationship-wise and characterwise, but I’m getting theoretical here), so like. Why tho. Is what I would ask.

And that’s even without really getting into everything Kay was talking about with the polysexual polyromantic people exist, thing? I’m really just talking about cishet as a fandom default in this post here because Kay covered the rest pretty exhaustively but come on. Seriously now.

(via axewife)