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Original poster

Can anyone explain queer heterosexuality to me?

183 replies

featherland · 08/07/2017 22:40

I have noticed over the last few months / years more and more people I know on Facebook identifying themselves as queer, even though they are in heteronormative relationships.

For example, I went to a friend's wedding. It was very traditional - big white gown, all male speeches etc. she has been with her husband since she was a teenager and never (publicly) been in a relationship with a woman. She describes herself as femme and queer - and often posts photos of herself looking very beautiful and typically 'feminine' (makeup, pretty clothes ..) describing herself as such, with loads of pride emoticons.

I just .. Don't get it? I understand the desire to reject gender norms and heteronormativity. But surely those of us who are straight and in monogamous relationships can't just claim the word queer when we receive (willingly or not) all the social privileges of being straight?

And I can understand wanting to stand in solidarity with LGBTQ people. But don't we need to change heteronormative society rather than muscle in on the spaces created by and for people who are marginalised? Eg I am not married, mainly because I can't reconcile myself with the patriarchal history of marriage. I don't see that doing heteronormative tings and saying that you aren't is really queer? If there is such a thing as queer heterosexuality shouldn't it be about living in non normative ways?

OP posts:
Original poster
featherland · 09/07/2017 23:11

I'm trying to understand where all the confusion came from ... I don't think I wrote that I'm not a mother anywhere, just that I don't like the cultural conventions. Pretty standard feminist theory, I think?

But then I was (not paying enough attention to) looking after my children at the time so perhaps I got it all a bit muddled.

I'm very interested in how literally people seem to take these identifying categories, though. As I wrote earlier I've always thought they were politically but not personally representative. I don't get the erasure thing either - I don't feel like my identity is erased even though I pass as straight. My identity would be under threat if I was attacked for my sexuality, which I'm not. But many people are. And I want to stand in solidarity with them without pretending that I share their suffering.

OP posts:
LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 23:03

To be honest Feather I think you could just try getting on with your life.

Your troll comment is bang out of order by the way.

NotAnotherNoughtiesTune · 09/07/2017 23:03

Queer is an odd term for it but I do post as being bisexual or a non specific sexuality.

I find all bits attractive but more personality. I just happen to be married to a man and not dated a woman.

QuentinSummers · 09/07/2017 23:00

feather lass is not feminist and has had an exceptional career, amazing marriage and great children. Because she can do it we all can.

Original poster
featherland · 09/07/2017 22:59

Lass are you seriously saying that you don't think there are any limiting associations or effects of heteronormativity?

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LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 22:57

Lass ha ha I'm beginning to think you're deliberately trolling me!

Fine go ahead and report me.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 22:56

But I do try to challenge the cultural norms of being a hetero, middle class, white mother

I think you have a rather narrow view of what you think being a hetero, middle class, white mother is. You seem to have decided there is a fixed range of societal norms applicable to this group and you are going to rail against them. As if other hetero, middle class , white mothers don't just get on with their lives and their mothering style.

Original poster
featherland · 09/07/2017 22:54

Lass ha ha I'm beginning to think you're deliberately trolling me! No, mothers don't use another word. It would be ridiculous! That's my point. The fact that I find these cultural pressures difficult doesn't stop me being a mother. I simply try to challenge the cultural crap.

And yes, there are millions of women ignoring those things. I'm one of them. Tiring, though, isn't it?

I'm talking about the social construction of gender, and the social construction of motherhood.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_gender#Stereotypical_gender_roles

OP posts:
Original poster
featherland · 09/07/2017 22:47

So what I was saying about motherhood has nothing to do with what I was saying about being bi and on a spectrum of sexuality.

That was just that I used to assume everyone was like me, until I realised that wasn't the case. I never thought that the labels straight/ gay/ bi were meant to actually define your sexuality forever. I mean - why does anyone care what my sexuality is? I just assumed they were cultural labels used for the purposes of privilege/ oppression in a larger system, like gender.

Life experience has of course taught me that not everyone is bi. Although I still think it is an arbitrary distinction. E.g. I'm bi but not at all into BDSM. Why should people care more about one type of my private sexual activity than the other? Why divide us up according to the gender of our potential sexual partners instead of the type of sex we might like? Why was it ok for Victorian men to rape their servant girls but not to have consensual sex with men? This has nothing to do with people's sexuality and everything to do with society reproducing its own power in often violent and oppressive ways.

What bothers me about the queer hetero thing is not what sexuality someone is, but that using the word 'queer' in that context appears to be a way of avoiding the hard work of actually changing the limiting and oppressive cultural system that enforces these arbitrary distinctions. I am literally bi, but I don't claim it in a political sense - because I live with all the privileges of passing as straight. (My sexuality in a personal sense is none of anybody's business, unless it becomes politicised). But I do try to challenge the cultural norms of being a hetero, middle class, white mother, because I don't feel particularly comfortable with any of them (NB it's the cultural norms I'm not comfortable with, rather than the facts themselves)

OP posts:
LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 22:43

Rather than use another word to define ourselves (e.g , a mother identifying as not a mother)

Sorry but you have completely lost me here. Do some mothers use another word?

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 22:41

It doesn't make me less of a woman, although I still have to live in a world where I'm addressed all the fucking time as if I really care about the smoothness of my hair-free armpits

But you aren't. You really are not. Yes there are billions spent on advertising products and stuff no one really needs, but you only have to look round any office, street, shop, pub, train, park, whatever, to see women going about their lives ignoring it.

Original poster
featherland · 09/07/2017 22:35

Mother literally means female parent. All the extra baggage (like gender) is other people's crap they've heaped up on it.

Yes. That's it exactly. Other people's crap.

You can fight against the baggage and say that doesn't mean motherhood

Yes, that's what I mean. I'm really sorry for confusing everyone! I simply mean that all the cultural crap really bothers me. Just like all the cultural crap that is associated with being a woman bothers me.

I'm very happy to be a woman and a mother, in their true definitions. But I hate all the cultural crap that comes along with them. I experience gender as something very violent and oppressive. It happens because I'm a woman, but of course it's not actually because I'm a woman but because society has all these gendered ideas about what a woman is.

This is the opposite of the transagenda. I don't agree that men can identify as women or vice versa. I was trying to make the point that I don't really feel like any of us choose the cultural labels we find ourselves given. The labels are a function of society, not individuals. And so I find it quite strange that individuals think/ expect to be completely represented by cultural labels. Aren't we all floating in between? Rather than use another word to define ourselves (e.g a man identifying as a woman, a mother identifying as not a mother), we have to challenge the cultural stereotypes attached to the words that are used on us. Isn't this the essence of reclaiming words like 'queer' in the first place?

My example was - I don't personally identify with a lot of the cultural norms associated with motherhood, e.g. the nurturing aspect, the idea that I'm somehow more complete now that I have DC, or that I think my kids are more important than others. I mean, I don't know many people who identify with any of that, and yet we are trapped in a society that keeps on talking to us as if we are. For me, it's the same as the stuff about (for example) diet, body hair removal and makeup for women. I don't do any of that stuff. I think it's very violent, the way that women are made to hate their bodies and attend to them all the time. That's how I feel, anyway. It doesn't make me less of a woman, although I still have to live in a world where I'm addressed all the fucking time as if I really care about the smoothness of my hair-free armpits.

OP posts:
LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/07/2017 22:33

For me, I still identify as bi. I put bisexual on official forms

What official forms require you to state your sexual preferences?

for example, cara Delevingne's bisexuality was called a phase by vogue. erasure of any sexuality is a major problem, and it is simply occurring with more frequency towards bi/pan people at the moment

It is only a "major problem" if who you have sex with is the most interesting thing you can find to say about yourself and shock, horror , other people aren't interested.

QuentinSummers · 09/07/2017 22:25

Yes great post D4
I don't get the "erasure" problem either. Someone not getting my sexuality doesn't "erase" me. I'm about a lot more than who I'm shagging.
Homosexual people have a lot more problems, what with being imprisoned or murdered for their sexuality in huge parts of the world. Or beaten up for holding their partners hand. Or not having the same legal rights straight partners do.
Caravan Delavignes bisexuality being called "a phase" might be hurtful to her but it's not threatening her health or wellbeing is it?

DN4GeekinDerby · 09/07/2017 22:05

As a bisexual woman, I find the idea that lesbian erasure is almost nonexistent pretty...ununderstable - it's everywhere I see: in general media (gal pals, anyone?), LGBT media these days with a lot of focus on being "fluid" and not wanting to label people, and in LGBT spaces pretty much all of them have been eaten by other ~inclusive~ groups which then ignore them. Like, we can get barely female only spaces, lesbian spaces are incredibly rare and constantly under threat.

Also many lesbians don't "self identify" as queer, pretty much all the ones I know hate it and find the changes to it unhelpful and in the current age where it's gone from a reclaimed slur people fought together under to - and you can see this in pretty much any popular LGBT media - a term about defying and avoiding social labeling and calling those who use other words restrictive and narrow, I agree - it is not a term I would want applied to me any more - and I did fight under that word for years. Really, queer seems to have lost all point these days for me and I can't help but question who benefits from these changes.

How much erasure is a problem is debateable seeing as being highly visible, like lesbians, means nothing in terms of resources or anything else. Personally, gotta lot problems as a bisexual, erasure isn't usually anywhere near major. I'm quite happy to going and arranging events locally and no one cares. I have far more issues with intracommunity toxicity. I mean, let's look at the quote Bunlicker pulled up earlier "(I'm bi but aromantic with women)." That means they see women as fuckable but not loveable. That really messes with your head when you see it a lot - and I can't count the number of times I've seen variations of it from people looking for essentially expendable women for fun (and...I can't recall ever seeing anything like that for men though I have seen the reverse, women who can love but are asexual for men). That message fills so many so-called queer spaces and even spaces beyond - the polyamory communities are drowning in that concept, I think a lot of popular media feeds that idea to the point I see a lot of women, particularly lesbian and bisexual women, feeling like they should give up on their dreams of real romance.

ALittleBitOfButter · 09/07/2017 22:03

By the way I'm so sick of the term 'erased'. What does it mean in practice? Can I have some concrete examples of 'erasure'? Terfs are using it too, along with 'call out'. Ugh. Or am I too anachronistic?

ALittleBitOfButter · 09/07/2017 21:59

*sorry for typos, on phone.

ALittleBitOfButter · 09/07/2017 21:58

Ooh this thread is exciting now that someone is defending the fruitcake definition of everything unfer the umbrella.

Also invoking Stonewall definitions.

I'm a 1950s housewife wuth a male partner but I'm trans too! Wheee!

On the motherhood issue I just think that you're objecting to patriarchal objectification. No need to play wordgames with your identity. I agree it sounds like trans logic.

simplysleepy · 09/07/2017 20:41

QuentinSummers i didn't say lesbians had some kind of privilege? you'll notice further up the thread i said that lesbians also face hate within the lgbtqia* community, which has only become more accepting in recent decades

just because bi/pan people can pass as straight, doesn't mean the majority choose to. many openly bi/pan people are referred to as straight by the media, despite correcting them many times, for example, cara Delevingne's bisexuality was called a phase by vogue. erasure of any sexuality is a major problem, and it is simply occurring with more frequency towards bi/pan people at the moment

QuentinSummers · 09/07/2017 20:11

Wtf sleepy
Bi people can choose to be straight passing - now I'm older I realise that's why later I've done my whole adult life and it's only being put on the spot by a friend about it that made me think it through and realise that's what I've done.
Being lesbian it's not so easy to stay in the closet, unless you never talk about your wife/partners.
I don't think that's erasure of bi people though. And I certainly don't think lesbians have some kind of privilege. Quite the opposite.

simplysleepy · 09/07/2017 20:05

Bunlicker thats not what i'm doing at all, most lesbians self-identify as queer. there is a very prevalent problem with bi and pan erasure, especially when bi and pan people enter into seemingly 'straight' relationships.

there is a much much lower level of lesbian erasure, almost non existent within the community itself,

SylviaPoe · 09/07/2017 19:59

I also can't see a distinction between the mother label argument and the trans woman argument.

Bunlicker · 09/07/2017 19:55

its a word which can be used without judgement (parts of the community of the community are notoriously anti--lesbian for exampl

So why are you playing in to that then by using the word that is helping to 'erase' lesbians?

featherland I'm thrown by your use of mother as well and I agree with a pp who compared it to the transagenda.

Mother literally means female parent. All the extra baggage (like gender) is other people's crap they've heaped up on it. You can fight against the baggage and say that doesn't mean motherhood but when you have a problem with the word, it's a bit like women who say they're "non binary" as woman is problematic. They drop 'woman' and not the baggage of woman.

JigglyTuff · 09/07/2017 19:14

Yes Maisy. And also to attract (in my experience) some men who think you're going to act out a lesbian porn show for their delight Hmm

I'm a radfem and interested in your perspective on motherhood featherland. Can you explain further? Is it the endlessly nurturing/nothing is more important than my children/warm cupcake SAHM thing you object to?

Lurkedforever1 · 09/07/2017 19:13

I've never really thought about what the general understanding of bisexual is. In my mind it is no more difficult to understand than being straight or gay. A straight single woman doesn't become a lesbian because she's single, or vice versa for a lesbian. So just because a bisexual person is in a relationship, the sex of their partner doesn't dictate their sexuality.

I have heard the opinion that all bi women are either lesbians scared to come out or straight women trying to be cool, but only from people who I wouldn't take seriously on any topic.