Love, rage and pride
arborealmanager: OKAYdifference between pansexuality and...
Reblogged from insomniacslumber
“The bisexual community itself has always defined it as “same and other,” or more than one, not “both.” “
I’m sorry to say, but this is an outright lie. Definitions of bisexuality as “both” and as attraction to “men and women” abound in both past and present, activist and academic bisexual writing. Yes, there have always been people in bi movements which defined bisexuality as “same + different” or as “more than one”, but saying that this is the only way bisexuality has ever been defined by these movements is misleading and has nothing to do with the realities and histories of bisexual movements themselves.
Trying to paint a false image of these realities and histories is not only unfair (in that it is false and misleading), but is also not working in that it’s not fooling anyone, and it makes bisexuals look like wishful thinkers as best and liars at worst.
As bisexual people and activists, we need to be accountable about cissexist and binary language in our communities rather than pretend like it doesn’t exist. Just as we insist that binary definitions have never been the only agreed ones about bisexuality, so we must acknowledge that non-binary definitions have been and still remain contested. Cissexism remains a significant problem within many bisexual communities, and we need to learn how to be accountable and work on that without glossing over the problems on that one hand, and without scapegoating bisexuality and the entire bisexual movement on the other.
I’m sorry, but bidyke, I really do not like how your response seems to imply that being attracted to both men and women but not non-binary people is somehow cissexist. It’s really not. Many bisexuals are only attracted to just men and women - there’s nothing cissexist or binarist about that, just like there’s nothing cissexist and binarist about lesbians being only attracted to women.
Defining bisexual as “being attracted to both men and women” is not binarist or cissexist in any way. It simply states that you’re only attracted to binary genders - not that there are only two genders in existence.
I would like to invite you to read my post here.
There is nothing wrong with only being attracted to binary genders, and it’s biphobic to accuse that orientation of being cissexist.
TL;DR: “Men and women” is not binarist language if you’re stating who you’re attracted to.
Okay, so since you asked:
First of all, I don’t think that being attracted only to cis men and women is overtly transphobic and evil. I don’t think that such people intend to hurt anyone or to practice cis privilege on anyone’s back. However and notwithstanding, I do find that this tendency resonates with cissexist social standards.
People often like to think about attraction as a non-political, inborn, pure, uncontrollable quality which is somehow a given, but in most cases this is not so. More often than not, our attractions are shaped by social standards of beauty and attractiveness - of what/who is “allowed” to be considered attractive, and what/who is not. These standards of beauty are of course deeply political as they are shaped by dominant social beliefs and structures: to name just a few, white people are considered more attractive than people of color, thin people more than fat people, nondisabled people more than disabled people - and transgender/genderqueer people more than cisgender people. In Read My Lips, Ricki Wilchins argues that the reason why transgender people are considered unattractive is that their/our bodies are unintelligible in terms of sexual attraction, to a culture which constructs its sexuality upon cisgender bodies. In order to be considered attractive, one must possess a body that “matches” their gender identity. This means that cisgender bodies are structurally privileged in terms of sexuality and sexual attraction - and we know what structural privileging of cisgender identity is called (that’s rights, cissexism).
Lisa Millbank of A Radical TransFeminist writes very elloquently about how people need to challenge themselves in terms of sexual attraction to include people of marginalized groups, whom society teaches us to find unattractive: Significant Othering: Attraction Down The Privilege Gradient.
Second of all - I feel that you’re shifting the terms of the discussion from the practical level (which I was referring to) to the symbolic level (which I didn’t). So just to clarify - when I said that the mainstream bisexual movement is imbued with cissexist language, this is what I meant: Cissexism and transphobia in bisexual communities.
(Source: bellypebbles)
