navimum replied to your post: [discussion of heterosexism, internalized anti-GSM monosexist stuff] ok like another thing with (mis)labeling people’s relationships for them

Honestly if everyone is inherently anything I would say they’re bi…. inherently straight is a ridiculous notion. So. Yes. This.

Ack, I get how presuming a default identity that explicitly permits sexual fluidity for all sounds totes preferable to our current status quo, but…no no no I’m so uncomfortable with ANY “inherent anything” discussions, even jokey ones. Outside of my whole post being about why we need to not only respect but EXPECT differentiation wrt our experience of inherent orientations, and dismantle the defaults so this is possible on a societal level…people NOT experiencing societally expected sexual and/or romantic attraction is ABSOLUTELY part of queer identity. Nonnormative lack of attraction is vilified, pathologized, stigmatized as shit, especially if the people experiencing it are women (or perceived as women) and the group of people they do not feel attraction for is men. This is a driving force behind corrective rape. Any discussion or definition of orientation that does not make space for people defining both their nonnormative attractions and their nonnormative LACKS thereof — any queer space that talks up essentialized fluidity for all in such a way that puts pressure on people who have realized they lack normative attractions to talk constantly about (/endlessly consider) how they could have the POTENTIAL for more, that stomps over the fact that HUMANS DO NOT ALL SHARE ONE ESSENTIAL ORIENTATION — reproduces heteronormative dynamics (and often misogynist dynamics: women get the “ALL WOMEN ARE BISEXUAL but men are way more sexually rigid hehe” thing disproportionately, there are bullshit-science STUDIES trying to prove this, and some of this so definitely comes from male entitlement to female bodies and female desires) and is completely useless and imo, completely harmful.