The fact that some people actually blame tumblr shipping culture for the reason men can’t show intimacy to each other without being perceived as gay is fucking mind boggling to me

I'm up around 3am, thinking about incels and tradwives. (Note: If these are movements you're a fan of, or if you just want to fight with me generally, I will block you if you annoy me, and even if you behave there's a $20 fee if you expect me to actually reply to you in any way.)

This got started because of Khadija Mbowe's and F.D Signifier's videos about Black patriarchy, which has led me to pick up bell hooks' 2004 book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.

The thing that hooks says that really knocked my socks off in a "how dare you notice that" way is that a lot of people, men and women alike, are angry not just because of the male violence they've experienced, but because of the lack of male love they've experienced.

Which like, part of being human means that being seen and cared about is pretty viscerally equated with survival in our brains. We want it, we need it, we suffer when it isn't there. To be seen and genuinely loved by the people in our lives matters, so we are always affected when there's someone important to us who doesn't seem to see us, to love us, to care about our wellbeing, or to be proud of our accomplishments. It matters to be disregarded, rejected, or shamed by someone we want to love us.

But no power in the world can compel another person to give a shit about you—a truth most of us spend our lives frantically suppressing because being unloved is terrifying, so we work at being better, more attractive, smarter, more accomplished, more charming, sexier, or to be brutally honest, more lovable. But when we do experience a lack of love, a lot of us take that anger and decide to opt for second best. If we can't be loved, we can at least be powerful. Power can take a lot of forms, but because the lack of male love often goes hand-in-hand with violence, people who face it generally want, at the very least, to not be hurt anymore.

But there's another element in play. Patriarchal gender roles divide behaviours and skills in a very particular way: Boys and men are expected to use power to dominate, and girls and women are supposed to use emotions to tend and nurture. Anyone who fails to perform those roles gets harshly punished. Terrence Real talks about how this leaves men with very limited knowledge of their own emotional needs or how to communicate them to other people, and Paul Kivel talks about how boys are taught that this is women's work—that if they are masculine enough, they will attract a woman who will make sure that they feel loved and cared about. How a great deal of men's anger towards women is the feeling that women are witholding this essential service, or failing to fully handle men's emotions (which is pretty damn common, since humans aren't telepaths so it's basically impossible to reach inside someone's head and change their emotions for them).

So hooks notes that women are just as likely to uphold patriarchal gender roles as men, and one element of that is women's anger when men are emotionally vulnerable. Men who confess to their partners that they feel lost and ashamed and unworthy of love are doing exactly what women keep saying we want men to do, but the reaction many women have is a kind of incredulous frustration—"You want me to handle all this? Fuck no, I'm busy!"

Part of that reaction is that in patriarchal gender roles, it is a woman's literal job to completely soothe and manage her male partner's emotions—to diligently praise him, make him feel more accomplished, and to reassure him of her ongoing love and admiration in all things. And that is a lot of work that is quite likely not to succeed because it's really hard to talk someone out of a self-hating funk. (There's also an element of just plain sexism. Even without the implied demand for help, some women just think men's vulnerability is pathetic or laughable.)

The feminist response to this that hooks, Real, and Kivel advocate for is to spread the load a little more evenly; to work to reduce the violence with which gender roles are policed, to allow men to be soft and emotional, but in the process, give them the emotional skills to handle the shame and dread we all feel sometimes about not being lovable or or worthy, and empower them to form many different emotionally fulfilling relationships.

So the thing about incels is, they tend to be obsessed with finding a woman who will make them feel worthy, sexy, accomplished, admirable, and dominant, like a "real man". The prospect of getting a woman is the single potential oasis of love and support in an incredibly bleak desert landscape in which a romantic partnership is the only possible source men are permitted to seek love and care from. A man who hasn't gotten a girl is a pathetic loser whose life is meaningless.

What that entire worldview takes for granted is how the desert became a desert in the first place. How boys learn to fear the violence and rejection that comes from stepping out of their gender role by being emotionally vulnerable or by emotionally nurturing somebody else; how emotional knowledge and expression are punished by a system that says men should always seek to dominate. The desire for a female partner rests on a bedrock of learned fear and contempt for the idea that men can or even should have the kind of emotionally close and supportive friendships among themselves that women tend to have with each other.

Incels are the fucking allegory of the long spoons in action. They gather in huge numbers to discuss their pain, frustration, and disappointment about their difficulty attaining a relationship that provides emotional fulfillment, but it's impossible for them to try to seek or offer that kind of relationship with the many many people right there also looking for love, because violating the gender rules means inviting violence and ostracism. Affection and mutual esteem between men is super gay and doesn't count, especially when it's provided because of a mutual vulnerability instead of admiration for achievement. So it's incredibly hard for incels to in any way break out of the mental cage that says the way to be loved is to be as masculine, as stoic and unemotional and successful and admirable and dominant as possible. And because being dominant tends to require people to be better than, incels spend a lot of time criticizing each other for failing to be masculine enough, and therefore not worthy of love.

Meanwhile... tradwives.

If you're into men, the dream of being truly loved by a man who will take care of you and make your life materially better is fucking amazing stuff. That's just... that's just The Dream, okay? The romance industry's extreme popularity decade after decade will tell you what bell hooks also notes: Women who are into men want to be loved by men SO MUCH.

So it really seems to me that the basic appeal of being a tradwife is managing to be submissive enough to get the men they love to genuinely show up and fully commit to loving them. If conflict in relationships happen because men feel threatened in their masculinity or not fully loved by their wives, then gosh darnit, these women will plaster themselves over the cracks to make sure there are absolutely no problems. That will earn them a relationship where they are truly loved and appreciated.

(It's a trap. I hate to say it, but we're not a telepathic species, and you will never manage to be good enough to actually change what someone else feels. No matter how hard you submit, your husband will still feel moments of doubt and fear and inadequacy, because he's human and we're built like that. It's the cross we have to bear as a species. And it does not go well at all if both of you are used, in those moments, for blaming you for whatever you "did" to "make" him feel that way.)

Hey, as an ace-hetero person; fuck you. You have no right, no damn right to tell me where I belong. I don't think you understand how isolating it feels to be ace-hetero, and that's not to discount the struggles of those on the LGBTQ spectrum because there's no denying they deal with a hell of a lot, but that does not mean we don't deal with shit too. Being ace-hetero, I've always felt indescribably different from everyone I know.

My hetero friends wouldn't understand and my LGBTQ friends don't want me. It's like being inches away from two sides of a cliff but you can't reach either. And to have people like you, arrogant assholes who overestimate the extent of their knowledge, constantly discredit who I am hurts more than you could imagine.

The LGBTQA+ community isn't for you to decide who belongs and no, accepting ace people wouldn't take away from other issues, because being ace is not an issue and, although i can only speak from my own experience, most ace people just want to be accepted, and when people like you decide we can't be, it fucking sucks.

I’m gonna be nice and not air out your username, since your first message was on anon and the rest weren’t, and you might have genuinely misunderstood my stance on this. I’m also sorry you haven’t had good experiences in getting support.

I’m not sure how you got that I don’t accept or support ace folks, though. I absolutely do, I just use an understanding of power to establish my priorities when it comes to LGBT+ spaces, who is welcomed into them, whose voices should matter, who resources should be directed towards and made more accessible, etc. and that necessarily excludes cishet aro/ace folks because when I have to choose between their inclusion and the more marginalized people their inclusion would exclude, I’m going to stand with the latter. I’m going to support people who need those spaces and resources because they literally do not have anywhere else, whereas people with more power can find some semblance of what they seek elsewhere.

Here’s a bit of what I’ve said in the past

I’m saying that aro/ace folks are, and have always been, part of the community. Anyone who is out of their teens and has been active in meatspace LGBT+ spaces will be able to tell you that.

But my stance is that certain groups of people within the community who wield violent, oppressive power, regardless of their membership, should be removed from spaces and resources whenever possible.

This includes TERFs, white supremacists, cishet folks, among others, but the aforementioned three are pretty easy examples of groups that historically wield violent oppressive power to and within our community.

It’s not that they aren’t LGBT+, necessarily, it’s that they cannot be trusted as a group to not reproduce violence against the most marginalized of us, and we cannot weigh ideals and utopian goals of what we’d wish the community to be like, over the material realities of what the community currently is.

That, IMO, would be like SWERFs who want to abolish sex work and don’t care about the material impact their policies have on real living sex workers right now. Maybe in a fantasy world, a world without sex work could be better, but right now, there are people who need our help, and harm prevention needs to be the top priority. Allowing harmful groups to remain in our spaces, and in control of our resources, will only end up excluding those community members who need support, spaces, and resources the most. Like, any space that is welcoming to TERFs is automatically trans-exclusive, for example. That’s just a fact. Any space with white supremacist leadership would be poc-exclusive. Just a fact.Due to violent groups’ presence and power in the community, they wouldn’t be safe in those spaces and in accessing those resources and for many of them, there is literally nowhere else. Not potentially some places where they can manage to cobble some degree support or resources, even if it’s sometimes not ideal or sometimes isn’t quite enough, like cishet folks can, but literally none.

So, for your example, cishet aro/ace folks are indeed inherently LGBT+. But as a category, they wield too much violent power and oppression to outweigh any gains that could be made of allowing them to remain active in those spaces. Education is not a viable strategy to fixing that(it hasn’t worked for PoC, it hasn’t worked for disabled members, it hasn’t worked for trans members, it hasn’t worked for intersex members, etc.), but working to help develop resources outside of the community that might serve them better is viable and has been effective.

For instance, a lot of sexual support services have gotten material from within the aro/ace community as well as from within the broader LGBT+ community to help expand their services like sex ed, their hotlines, etc. to cover a more diverse population. I fully 100% support this endeavour, and I’m happy to know that gains are being made on aro/ace information and outreach and support in that sector in north america. That way, cis het aro/ace folks could get support, spaces, and resources they need without exerting violent, oppressive power against anyone. It’s a win-win. Just like LGBT+ TERFs being able to contact The Trevor Project is a win-win because that allows them to receive aid without running the risk of encountering anyone they oppress or spreading their oppressive bullshit in our communities.

Worst case scenario when some individual cishet aro/ace folks absolutely, for whatever reason, literally cannot get any aid elsewhere…yeah, cut them some slack. But they should never occupy positions of power. They should not be able to vote on resource allocation. They should never lead educational workshops. I’ve seen too many people wielding violent, oppressive power sneak into those positions of power/authority, and use their influence to shift voting towards outcomes reflective of their oppressive views/perspectives, or disregard certain forms of harassment inside the community, or promote certain harmful views in community events, or facilitate the social ostracism of unwanted outspoken marginalized people who are rocking the boat too much (often trans folks, poc, disabled folks, etc.), so IMO, it’s too dangerous to let them take root like that. They have too much oppressive power to be trusted to take up permanent space. It really isn’t much to ask that they be aware of how dangerous and distressing their presence can be to more vulnerable folks.

I say this as someone who has spent over half my life in and around these spaces, and having overwhelmingly heard similar stories elsewhere. Power is real, it functions in predictable patterns, and it needs to be accounted for when discussing how to run and facilitate our spaces and resources. Spaces and resources where violently oppressive groups are allowed access and to set down roots? Those end up growing toxic and exclusive against those who need help the most. Maybe one day things will be different, but right now? We can’t afford to let violently oppressive people remain in our communities.

I love aro/ace folks. I do. But power is something that has to be acknowledged, especially when it is directly tied to violence against community members. And those who wield violent power and oppress should not be welcome, and should be exiled by any means necessary, regardless of their identity or position

Ultimately, what it comes down to is whether I choose other trans women, or cishet aro/ace folks, and I will always, always chose trans women. If that makes me a bad person in your eyes, so be it I don’t mind. I know I’m not a bad person, and I’m doing what’s right for people like me. I don’t have the luxury of not being realistic about the generally predictable power dynamics in the LGBT+ community. 

My activism is all about harm reduction. Reducing harm is pivotal, and that means finding ways to make communities safer and resources more accessible to everyone, and that includes helping folks understand where they can appropriately take up space.

My top priority when it comes to organizing, shaping, and navigating our communities is to make community more accessible for trans women of all stripes because we’re a demographic with appallingly low community support and accessibility to resources, and that has to change. Trans women need to feel safe.

When communities bring in people with more oppressive, harmful perspectives, it passively and/or actively pushes more marginalized members out. I cannot abide that, and while I will do what I can to help aro/ace folks of all stripes, I cannot pretend that the inclusion is cishet aro/ace folks is not a zero sum issue because it absolutely is, whether people want to accept that or not. It’s a silent choice people are faced with...you can hate me for answering vocally but that doesn’t change that I had to choose, and I choose my people.

I will not be ashamed or feel guilty about prioritizing trans women when no one other than trans women will. I’m not arrogant for doing so or pushing for certain people to not take up space in our communities as a means to keep those spaces safer and more accessible to those who need it more. Because frankly, the most marginalized in the communities do need those spaces the most, and need to be prioritized. Ideally, everyone would have their needs met and would be safe and supported, but that’s not reality. That’s not how it goes down, not locally, and not online, so I need to be realistic. I need to prioritize.

My prioritizes don’t include cishet aro/ace folks when it comes to maintaining and operating in LGBT+ spaces. I trust the aro/ace community and general sexual support services to understandably pick up that slack, which they generally do well with. I want everyone to get the support and resources they need, but when the inclusion of one group virtually always raises obstacles for members of my group to access those spaces, the support they need, and the resources they need, I need to have their backs in that. Maybe that’s ‘ruthless calculus’ as Garrus Vakarian would call it, but like I said, no one else is looking out for trans women except trans women, so I don’t have the luxury of caring about anyone else when my people are put at risk of complete isolation (which can often lead to death for us). 

i am just one small part of forever

i’ve been on this almost-secret trip back toward the center of myself. mostly in preparation for very large transformations to come in my life, things i’ve needed and wanted for a long time, for all my life. i’ve been motivated by the intention of seeking the actions and experiences that fit the greater patterns and cycles of my life & cycles of wider social, political, cultural shifts. what i/we need to move forward. it’s not a new trip, i’m just owning it out loud.

because there’s so much more to us and what we’re capable of than these bullshit systems, barriers, these realities we’ve created or have been complicit in maintaining. their limitations and violences are constructed. failures. there are always other options, other ways. the answer to the question of “how?” frequently feeling elusive. or change feeling hopeless, impossible. and, yet, everything changes all the time. shifts in consciousness happen all the time, sometimes even driven by a generative hopelessness. it’s about harnessing that power, being able to come together, do something with it. it feels so physical. as in, of physics. energetic. so all about bonding and force. that i feel a pull toward the destiny of revolution, collective love/rage, creation in my body, that it feels deeper than my body, deeper than psyche. that those are the essential things, the real driving forces, the real truths, the real imperatives. i can’t feel this clarity all the time. but that we’ve had it once, or we’ve had it before, i can feel it in my circuitry. or, we have it all the time in small ways, in fleeting moments. people come together all the time, people force cultural shifts, people create all the time, people learn, people fight back all the time, people build. always have & when you trace those lines through the threads of time, there’s this overwhelming rush—a feeling of empowerment and potential. a feeling to keep going. the clarified knowledge that scarcity is a lie. & if we weren’t powerful, they wouldn’t want us dead or broken. self-fulfilling prophesies aid in perceiving only what we expect to see. the world will speak to us in the language that we provide.

been thinking a lot about my contributions in relation to all of this, my responsibilities to myself, others, my communities. i’ve been reflecting on the ways my sense of vocation and obligation are totally informed by my own positionality, which of course, has everything to do with the privileges i do and don’t have. that i have a lot of work to do, a lot of learning. that i have to show up and also be shown up for. about giving and receiving support, resources. from each, to each.

thinking about how i’ve had a hard time prioritizing my own needs in the past, how i’ve been even ashamed to tend to my needs, or to ask for anything. thinking it was selfish. but that’s what i was taught to do. poor/working class/white/catholic/femininity. how i did, at times, surround myself with people who required that i sublimate myself. or who just didn’t care. how it all has everything to do with the aforementioned bullshit systems. including my family system. how scarcity and power informed it. as well as abundance, nurturing, sharing. how we pass along treasures and trash, back and forth, down the line. help!

part of the solution to meeting personal and collective needs being that practices of care  and healing are constellatory, not singular. how my own healing is its own line intersecting with all the entangled individual lines of healing that make up that massive rubberband ball of collective struggle. if spirit is manifest in individual parts that get to grow and evolve and understand independently, they render the whole infinitely greater in their reconciliation. let’s go!!!! #ready

i’ve been thinking about my talents, my skills, what i have. how to channel everything i’m good at, how to put everything to good use, how to expand on sharing and giving. all of it. that this is something i’ve always been concerned with. i’ve always been able to give outwardly. but giving to myself and receiving have always been a struggle. & that’s a big deal. getting into why is too deep, but ultimately i need to honor myself and what i have to offer; i need to be generous with myself. i think of how much i admire the people i care about, how much i wanna be the cheerleader to their lives, to support them and reflect how amazing they are back to them. and how i’m working on having that relationship with myself. how it’s so much about learning how to be your own friend. the ultimate task.

and what it means to be your own friend, to love yourself, is the same as what we should strive for with anyone else in our lives.  we need the courage to connect with ourselves—all our parts. we need to be cautious and patient with the process. to be willing to make mistakes, to be vulnerable. willing to be  understanding. willing to be radically and deeply honest. willing to look at things we don’t want to see. willing to work with aspects of ourselves we don’t like. willing to surrender, to give in. willing to be open. willing to stand up. willing to take risks. willing to receive criticism graciously. willing to part with judgment. willing to part with a lot of things. willing to accept loss & change. willing to accept joy & love & newness. all the things that come naturally to us before we learn otherwise & before we get hurt, defensive. that we must master these things with ourselves and with everyone.

time doesn’t heal wounds, we do.

it sounds cheesy, but the experience of feeling like you were made to do something can be so real. we delude ourselves into thinking that destiny is tied up with inevitability, when in reality, it’s all about choice.

in my interview at the neighborhood playhouse conservatory for acting, the executive director asked, “why do you want this?” “because i want to fall apart, i want to break myself open. i’ve wanted this so much for my whole life and i’m terrified. and that’s exactly why i need to do it. i’m dying to do it.””dying?!” she said, “that’s great!” 

i remember when i gave up on that dream, i remember when i got quiet, when i got small. listening to the wrong lessons: shrink, disappear, don’t move, don’t speak, don’t make waves, don’t love or own yourself. i turned inward and couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t’ stop writing. i was always writing. at times i couldn’t be alone enough, but i  was part of a big family in new york city where there is no such thing as alone, no such thing as privacy. so, i created a space of aloneness in public space: at school, at home, on the street. in myself. an interior world, an ongoing conversation. i was other people in that world, as i chose. characters from movies, tv shows, books. strong-willed femmes with storied pasts, flawed and reaching, or closed. madame rose and gypsy rose lee. it wasn’t escape, it was immersion. into parallel experiences of feeling: my own and those of characters i admired. this & writing saved my life. & music & drawing.

so much of my exploration of self lately is concerning itself with shame, fear, anxiety. all the ugly parts, all the broken feelings. and when i just allow myself the space to sit with what’s broken, it’s like the shards are puzzle pieces and i wind up putting shit together, tracing the feeling back in time to influences, tracing the influences to lineage. this tapestry of brokenness. and then i get overwhelmed, i get angry because the shame and fear are someone else’s, instilled in me and echoing through the tides of my life from the tides of other lives.  i find myself looking for the first moments i internalized them & realizing that’s the wrong question: when.

when i was a kid i spent my days listening to the same records, watching the same movies obsessively, gobbling guzzling and focused. learning every line, every gesture, every sigh. committing every sound to memory. & i sang & i danced wherever i went. & i dressed up, & i put on my mom and aunts’ makeup, i used to sit on the closed toilet mesmerized as i watched my uncles shave their faces. i used to also revel in the process of shaving legs. the foam and the pink razor and the pink cloth robe. and at age 5, someone let me outta their sight for 2 minutes, and i cut myself “shaving” my face, and on another occasion, i cut myself “shaving” my legs. & i did get in trouble, but also we all laughed about it. & i begged my aunts, uncles, cousins to pretend with me. & i was a freak, i was 7-years-old & obsessed with susan sarandon (from jackson heights, too!). pretending to be her character from bull durham. haha, so inappropriate and strange. i wanted to be an adult so bad & i was called old soul and wise. & my aunt, the movie buff/cinephile, would indulge me and watch all the movies with me. but i was a kid and some experiences were too much. the movies and otherwise.

but, too, i think about how my experiences, traumas even, give me a range of depth and feeling to work with when it comes to acting and art. that what was always so inspiring for me from film/theatre was that ability to create a space where people connect to each others’ feelings and experiences in this really palpable way. that invisible stuff: not just sight & sound, but another sense. that draws you into a life, or a projection of one. a friend of mine joked, “i don’t trust actors. don’t you have to be a sociopath to be one?” “no!! you need to be an empath, i think!” to genuinely engage with a character’s experiences and truthfully represent them. i think the form has so much revolutionary, transformative potential in that way. representation is powerful. to provoke people to feel is powerful. to provoke people to remember or know something they didn’t is powerful. it’s challenging, too.

and expanding on that, just… what viola davis said in her oscar acceptance speech:

there’s one place where all the people with the greatest potential are gathered and that’s the graveyard. people ask me all the time ‘ what kind of stories do you wanna tell, viola?’  and i say, ‘exhume those bodies. exhume those stories. the stories of the people who dreamed. big. and never saw those dreams to fruition. people who fell in love and lost. i became an artist, and thank god i did, because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.”

WATCH THE WHOLE SPEECH AND BE MOVED

and as surrounded as i’ve been in my own life by death, by loss, bullshit systems & all they reap in our constellated lives, as much time as i spend in the graveyard myself, i remember what always drew me back to creativity was that: life. wanting to hold onto it, wanting to know what it was all about, wanting to share it, to choose it, wanting to know people. being so alternately enchanted and horrified by what we were capable of— magic & havoc. the triangulation between, magic, havoc, intimacy. ugh, life. even tho we would come to lose it, life, and each other. 

i wonder what it means to want to connect to havoc, to want to represent it. but, sometimes we just want to play evil. i think that’s the fear in me. it’s what i’m afraid of, for sure: exposure, letting it out. driving the impulse to hide. but, then, the opposing desire: to be seen, to release. that impulse to show what you obscure, the snarling parts. the things you keep to yourself. your other powers.

i’ve been so attached to my shadows, i think, while not fully understanding where they were cast from. and how shadow is just a matter of perspective, what point you’re looking from. and nostalgia is a yearning for an old [sense of] home, the past, but when the sun’s ahead of you and you’re looking backward into night, all you see is shadow. blue. not that night isn’t beautiful in its way, or without its virtues. but it’s its own point of perspective, and it isn’t the only one.