Heterosexuality is a couch. Nobody even bats an eye if you keep it in the living room for everyone to see–it’s simply expected. I mean, where the hell else would you keep it? Hidden in a bedroom? No, that would be weird.
Homosexuality is a bed. Having a bed in a public room is considered weird and gross–you’re expected to keep it in private bedroom you close the door to before anyone else comes over. Because even though there are a million and one things someone can do sitting on a bed
that aren’t sexual (and plenty of ways to have sex on a couch), the first and foremost thing anyone associates beds with is sex.
Bisexuality is a Western-style futon. Sometimes it functions like a couch, sometimes it functions like a bed, but whichever position it’s in at the moment, it’s still a goddamn futon. People who want to use it as a couch give you shit for not having a real
couch; people who want to use it as a bed give you shit for not having a
real bed. It’s acceptable in your living room, but only if you make extra certain to put it in couch position and hide the sheets before company comes over. Otherwise, you’d better hide it in a guest room.
Asexuality is a table. No matter how many times you tell people it’s not meant to be sat on, dickheads with no manners will try to park their nasty asses on it anyway.
I know a lot of lesbians that used to identify as bi who worried that coming out as a lesbian would contribute to invalidating bisexuality in some way, by making it seem like a “stepping stone” to coming out as gay. I’ve also known bi women who identified as lesbians and changed their labels later, and worried that they were contributing to some kind of idea about how men can ~turn lesbians. I just wanted to say that it’s no individual lesbian or bi women’s responsibility to fix straight people’s perception of us. Like, it’s not your duty to serve as a political symbol! It’s your duty to find happiness even if that means changing ur label at some points.
“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”
“Well…obviously
speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would
describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying
modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody
at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused.
And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto
people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep
in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us – like
getting married, having children, etc. – were just the way things were
back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including
non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got
married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse,
but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very
complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody
was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that
they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only
be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful,
overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you
know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any
reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”
I know this is supposed to be facetious, but it is a genuinely sound approach to take. Calling people who lived 500 years ago “straight” IS inaccurate. They weren’t straight, not in the modern sense of the word. (references: X, X, X)
I’m glad someone finally addressed this. Because I see this post floating around occasionally, and as a lesbian historian of sexuality, most of the replies just make me so tired. The issue with historians ignoring, redacting, or outright falsifying historical examples of gender non-comformity and same sex attraction is a matter of them being homophobic. The practice of academic rigor to not introduce presentist bias is not in any way at fault. The way people behaved and thought of themselves hundreds of years ago is very different to how we behave and think of ourselves now. What’s important is to recognize the truth of history, which did in fact include TRUCKLOADS of same-sex sexuality and love, as well as a huge range of gender non-conformity, without assuming that those things looked the same and were experienced the same way as they are now.
I have the ace one and I can assure you that it it just as beautiful in person as it is in the picture
Reblogging again for the link and also because the ace, aro and demi one are pretty nice low-key pride shirts which you can wear even if you’re not out, because strictly speaking they just show a dragon and a rather common symbol.
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