for clarification: the following post is being made because i
do want to have a dialogue with people that hold different opinions. i honestly disagreed with nearly everything you said in your original post
dice, but instead of attacking the post and nitpicking it, i tried to be more open and kind about my opposition to your opinion on things. if i didn't want to have a dialogue about this stuff, i'd either not post or make a very rude and/or shitposty post. i'm really sorry if my previous post came off rude; i genuinely didn't mean it, but it's sorta hard to not find things that are in pretty big opposition to whatever you say as not rude.
sjw is a pejorative that has been used to dismiss liberal and/or radical actors pushing towards progressive change. to employ it is far more of a strawman steelwithit's post. in fact, the usage of sjw shows that you don't want to even have discourse about issues and instead wish to silence the opposition.
i'm not gonna get into the debate about whether your views and/or the views of many LGBT communities at large are sjw or liberal or whatever, but i used the term SJW not to dismiss your views, but to sorta put a blanket around them + the views of other LGBT communities... i don't that i'm saying all your views are the same or whatever, just "bundling" similar views under 1 term for ease of discussion.
for many folx in the lgbtq+ community, our queerness is integral to our identity. consequently, it is important to discuss the conceptualization of queerness in these spaces.
i think that the relationship i have to my queerness is heavily affected by the interconnection of my queerness and environment. regardless of my proximity to others, my queerness is often a defining marker of my identity in many contexts. in spite of my initial push towards obfuscating my sexuality, it often come to the forefront of my life and, in turn, this pushes me towards a community of other ppl who have dealt with similar experiences.
in my previous post i sorta tried to address the huge focus on identity in the LGBT community. to reiterate, i do think LGBT people should recognize and be "proud" of their identities, and i do think there should be more casual and open LGBT communities for convenience. however, i disagree with such a large emphasis on the identity. i feel like it segregates (not as in black/white segregation of the past... i'm not trying to be drastic) the LGBT community from others, and sometimes it even causes divide within the LGBT community itself. i totally agree with you on being "pushed" towards a community of people with similar experiences. i just don't agree with how much value you (seemingly) and many many others place in their LGBT identities.
accepting your queerness is accepting marginalisation. you're embracing a historical baggage of being systematically pathologised by western medicine, sterilised, discriminated in work life and otherwise, being killed etc. our experiences and current context are affected by the history of those who have created this environment. that's why i'm trying to unpack my privileges and oppression. my own experiences in relation to those in the community still matter.
throughout history, the lack of intersectionality in marginalised communities has led to a systematic invisiblisation of folx. if you've ever had even cursory engagement with academic feminist literature, you would be aware of audre lorde's speech 'the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'. in it, she condemns the erasure of black women [and in doing so, the 'master' is the white women who are extracting labor (metaphor is indeed slavemaster)] in the second wave movement. black power + civil rights activism was geared towards men while feminism was geared towards white women. this left black women (don't get me wrong, others too e.g. gnc folx, genderqueer...) without a vehicle to attach themselves to.
the thing with all of this is that it happened in the past. two of my main gripes with modern liberalism / SJWism are these concepts of "oppression" and "privilege" (
Steel With It, this addresses your posts).
simply put, these things happened so long ago. yes, they are part of history; yes, we should recognize them and remember them. HOWEVER, we should not let them affect our own daily lives as LGBT people when they never happened to us. to make it clear, this
isn't referring to modern day issues. i revere the struggles of LGBT people in the past, but i just don't "care" about them today... it doesn't affect me. if we want to make
more progress on the current day issues, we need to stop claiming to be oppressed or underprivileged due to events of the past, using those events to shame the "more privileged" people. i don't think me accepting my "queerness" (another term i just don't understand, honestly) means i need to pick up historical baggage.
so why am i saying this? because my post was describing how i feel that these very systems of erasure are enacting themselves again in the queer community. why is it that queer spaces are predominately white? predominately thin? as someone who benefits in many of these axes of privilege, i am cognizant of how my life and experiences are drastically different from someone else's.
wrt your dismissal of certain privilege: the dominant ideology that is so pervasive in our culture is to frame beauty as natural and abiding. your post exemplifies this: it's colonialistic by nature. beauty is a power dynamic. what we deem beautiful is mutable: just look at the shifts in beauty standards throughout history. what determines what is beautiful? power. imperialism. white folx have always been seen as the epitome of beauty because they have dominated most societies. oppressive constructs which play into our conceptualisation of beauty such as the golden standard and bmi were drafted through and for white ppl (predominately male, too). our view of eurocentrism as the most beautiful and most represented phenotype is part and parcel to our own internalised and socialised biases.
in part, this plays into fat ppl, poc, etc. being systemically less appealing (both romantically and interpersonally... there is a lot of unpack here that would take up too much space). we live in a society in which these intersections of our identity are not given the time of day in more marginalised spaces. queerness as an umbrella tends to invisiblise more margnalised identities underneath it because of conventionally less oppressed folx having the power in these communities. this is the homonormativity that i described: and this is dangerous.
the western world is a european invention. whites are the majority. european things are considered most beautiful because most people are of european descent, and the core culture was created by europeans. this has definitely played into peoples tastes with things, but i don't see this as a bad thing. people are allowed to have tastes; i understand that those tastes
probably have formed over time due to things being eurocentric, but it makes sense for things to be eurocentric in the european invention of the western world.
as for the queer label accepting more marginalized identities underneath it: i don't think LGBT needs to be expanded so much. i think it's fine for these other marginalized communities and the LGBT communities to get along and work together or whatever, but by constantly adding letters onto this thing, it becomes harder for moderate (read: reasonable, but not liberal people) to take things seriously. i mean i personally think the T should just be removed since it isn't a sexual identity; it makes sense for gay/bi people to work together with transgender people (as in, being buddies or whatever).
to frame my experiences as some sort of 'guilt' is offensive and a complete misconception of my feelings. i don't give a fuck about guilt. guilt doesn't solve anything and is more of an impediment than anything. if you don't care about systems of oppression in our society which leave people disadvantaged, then i cannot force you to care. however, i personally wish to look towards a society and a community in which there is a plurality of discussion and viewpoints. i want an lgbtq community (and society as a whole) which is accepting of others and is able to unpack their privilege. i want people to stop dismissing issues of oppression as "unimportant" and making them seem like they "don't matter" because you personally don't feel that way.
i'm sorry i misunderstood what you meant. it genuinely seemed like you feel guilty for being white and stuff. i do care about systems that leave people disadvantaged (most of those aren't proper discussion for this thread, however). with that said, i don't think those systems are as big and powerful as you and many others make them out to be.
i don't want to get into "unpacking privilege".
my queerness isn't a badge of honor, but another part of my identity which has serious implications of how i relate to others. my queerness is, in fact, important. my queerness is ever evolving. and so are many others in this community who are often ignored by us. the aftermath and continuation of colonialisation, patriarchy, etc. isn't just a long-forgotten history, but is an ongoing struggle which affects people of this community too. telling others ignore issues you deem 'not serious' because you've accepted the notion that things are just meant to be like this is just fucked up.
i don't understand how queerness could be "ever evolving"... it's a pretty clear yes/no thing usually. you're gay or bi and/or trans. the constant addition of new labels (or the newest, hippest label: the lack of labels that gets flaunted as if it's a label lol) isn't doing anyone any favors. like with the expansion of LGBT to LGBTQIA+ or whatever, it just over complicates things for moderate people who don't really give a shit if someone is gay or bi or trans or whatever (for don't give a shit, i mean they aren't opposed to LGBT people and are fine with LGBT stuff).
just for me personally, i live in a conservative environment, and i rarely find people that are upset about gay people or actual transgender people. they usually get annoyed with "alternative identities" like being agender, genderfluid, pansexual, etc.. the only mean spirited jokes i ever hear about LGBT stuff by non LGBT people are along the lines of "attack helicopter XD", "le 72 genders XD", "LGBTQIA+ABC123", etc.. it's this overcomplicated, unnecessary representation of an EXTREME minority within an EXTREME minority that causes reasonable people to be opposed to LGBT people as a whole. things are already pretty rough... the last thing i need is some 12 year old who is a "pansexual genderfluid demiboy" or whatever to be making me look like i'm not valid for happening to be transgender.