Peter Tatchell says bisexuality will be the new normal for many

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

^In the future, as homophobia declines, most people will no longer define their sexuality so rigidly and exclusively. The boundaries between gay & straight are already blurring. Bisexuality will be the new normal for many.'

Really, Peter? I see this has attracted outrage from a number of gay men and lesbians already, and quite right too.

Denis Kavanagh on Twitter is on fiery form. twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1482103455460339713?s=20

As a straight woman, I look on at his weird shenanigans with incredulity. Does he have no judgement, no insight, no common sense? He was the best known gay rights campaigner in the country a few decades ago. What happened?

Thank for this film upthread very illuminating

It’s really good isn’t it? Calmly pointing out facts in the face of heckling abuse. The link between queer theory and paedophilia is incontrovertible.

@highame

What concerns me about this new wave of pushing at boundaries is that it appears to have done a lot of undercover work first and used Denton's as its guide and insisting gay be inclusive of Q+. However, no matter how 'normalised' Peter Tatchell et al think paedophilia can become, there is a complete disregard for how people feel. Young people aren't likely to feel paedophilia is normal just because someone says it is, or just because educators think wider discussions on sex will normalise. Nasty.

There'll be too much pushback and people will be very suspicious of those pushing this ideology

It also is hopeful that parents can be successfully separated from and disempowered from protecting their child. Whereas what is more likely to happen is that should police and authorities be successfully politically captured on this matter too - God knows they're more than half way there - and not support child safeguarding, communities will return to vigilante justice. Reminds me somewhat of the bit in How Green Was My Valley, Victorian Welsh rural communities, where a child molester was quietly disappeared by the community and the child's family, and when the mistrusted town police turned up, no one knew or had seen anything. At all. Nothing to see here, officer.

The lack of understanding of basic human instinct, or the capacity for empathy and attachment is stark in all branches of this political movement. It's all about using others and finding ways to make this ok, without recognising that those others are sentient beings who will have feelings about this and are very, very unlikely to just nicely co operate. And the more you compel them, the angrier and more resistant they are likely to become.

communities will return to vigilante justice.

People always forget that one of the reasons for criminal justice changes in the 18th century was to prevent mob riots after crimes had been committed, because those riots damaged so much property and affected the economy of rapidly urbanising areas.

You can make a very historically sourced argument that the State jails criminals so the mob doesn't kill them, disturbing the peace in the process.

And a lot of subtle vigilante justice took place prior to the 20th century. I've read reports of notorious individuals suddenly being found dead in peculiar places with enough money for their funeral in their pocket, for example.

Feminists/women have long been warning that one of the problems with TRA/genderist policies and legislation is that there will, inevitably, be backlash. It will not come from feminists.

Instead of anyone heeding the warnings, of course the whistleblowers and those trying to raise the alarm have been accused of being 'transphobic' and 'harming trans people' etc.

Transphobia exists. It's not feminists that are guilty of it. And it's not going to be feminists doing the vigilante justice. I mean, if the twitter activists think Mumsnet is a pit of terrifying vipers, I can't imagine what they're going to say when they meet the real world.

I suppose it will look a bit like

Gay people fought for years to make people understand that being gay is not a fetish or anything to do with paedophilia.

And then you have 'prominent gay rights campaigners' such as Tatchell, who just cannot seem to shut up about other people's, including fucking 15 year olds, sexuality and sexual experiences, and how grown men having relationships with boys aged 9-13 is OK if them kids themselves were OK with it.

@Omicrone

Gay people fought for years to make people understand that being gay is not a fetish or anything to do with paedophilia.

And then you have 'prominent gay rights campaigners' such as Tatchell, who just cannot seem to shut up about other people's, including fucking 15 year olds, sexuality and sexual experiences, and how grown men having relationships with boys aged 9-13 is OK if them kids themselves were OK with it.

Which in real terms is whether or not the adult making use of the child is able, through the power imbalance and by taking advantage of the child's trust and lesser experience of the world, has successfully convinced the child that the child is ok with it. And enjoys it. And if the child is not enjoying it it's probably their faulty perception or not doing it right/thinking right.

Most people who have experienced abuse would know the tactics well that an abuser employs, and the harm it leaves behind. ALL of Tatchell et al's work is to advantage those who wish to make use of someone with lesser power, and spin this as being justifiable. It does not in any way advantage the person designated as 'for using'.

Women are having a distressingly similar experience in making women's spaces mixed sex.

If bisexuals form the majority of people (not saying they do, but if they did) then a less judgemental society would mean more of those people having same sex relationships. That bit makes sense.

With regard to lesbians in particular being anti bisexuals, I think we have to look at how society actually is. A big part of being a homosexual is about being not attracted to the opposite sex. The fact that door is firmly closed means so much of society is alien to us. As pp mentioned, all the stories, films and songs are aimed at other people, not at us. Couple that with discriminatory laws and abuse, and you get a siege mentality.

I'm not saying that to be inflammatory; it is a part of my own experience of the world. It's why gay and lesbian people value gay and lesbian resources. Even being able to sit in a gay pub, knowing there are other people like you, and only other people like you, there, is comforting.

Bisexual people have other options open and therefore have less of the siege mentality. Being left for a man is galling for many reasons, and lesbian women who have had it happen to them feel betrayed. In reality, it's just one of those things, and perfectly understandable when you look at the number of available lesbians versus the number of available straight men. I think Pew did a survey showing 90% of bisexuals are in opposite sex relationships, and I was surprised it was as low as 90%.

Women who have been with men, either as bisexuals or as late bloomer lesbians, often learn how to behave in a relationship and in bed in a different way to how lesbians who have never been with men do. All that can be unlearned, and a "gold star" lesbian is just fortunate, not morally superior. But there is a reason why lesbians in general are wary of bisexual women. I had to unlearn my own biphobia which was linked to some deep rooted internalised misogyny (overshare moment).

There are also lesbian relationships between partners who are not suited to each other that begin out of a lack of other potential partners and continue longer than they should for the same reason. If you're only attracted to and attractive to 1 or 2% of the population, max - and of that tiny percentage many are closeted or partnered or you just don't find them attractive or they don't find you attractive - there's a good chance you might find yourself single for longer periods than you'd like.

There are a million reasons why even if society is non-judgemental, people with the option to form opposite sex relationships will do so over same sex relationships. Conceiving children, the larger number of potential partners, whatever. So in reality I don't think we will see a huge number of additional same sex relationships no matter what society says.

Bisexual women have a hard time too; high levels of abuse from male partners, assumptions of promiscuity, pressure for threesomes etc. I can see why a lot of bisexual women keep their bisexuality to themselves. Until "society being less judgemental" becomes "men stop treating bisexual women as just kinky" then those women are likely to stay closeted.

Also, straight women have no reason to partner with bisexual men, either. There is no shortage of straight men, and men in general are pretty homophobic, so it's not unheard of for outwardly homophobic men to have illicit sex with other men. The "MSM" acronym is used by organisations like HIV charities to get around those men's reluctance to even refer to themselves as bisexual (or indeed closeted homosexual but in an arranged marriage - there are a fair few men in that category).

I think biphobia is something that needs to be addressed, I'm hoping the LGB Alliance do some work on it, because there are a lot of issues that get swept under the carpet and bisexuals have their own needs that aren't really covered by any organisation at the moment.

Great post, @FlyingOink

Thank you

@JoanOgden

Great post, *@FlyingOink*

I agree! I have seen research that shows that bisexuals have worse mental health than lesbians or gay men, but we are all in such different situations that it's probably difficult to feel much sense of community.

Oink really interesting post thank you.

There's a lot going on here isn't there.

What are your feelings on my POV around the inversion of the importance of the label /those the label describes?

I am straight and so totally accept that your position is how it is Vs my outsider view.

In general I do think biphobia is rife across the population in general. If open about it, then there's a lot of wariness about getting involved from men and women.

The way that bi people seem to be thought of often as more likely to be promiscuous, unfaithful. Unlikely to get everything they need sexually from a monogamous relationship. Likely to 'need' to have sex with people the opposite sex to their partner. Irrespective of their personality, their feelings for their partner etc. That's really shitty.

Anyway.

Within groups which experience oppression. Where there is a word that is accepted and understood totally by the population, and is/has been used for rights activism, loads of writing and debate and slogans shouted at rallies and etc.

Is there a friction between different views within the group about who it includes, and the general usage, understanding, and importance in raising issues, activism, and so much other stuff?

And this is a thing people do a lot. Labour well known for division, splitting, forming of break away groups etc.

Ditto IME radical feminism. The constant arguments over a lot of things relating to opinions on what means person ok to be in those groups or not.

This sort of thing is so common esp with things broadly left politically.

The result is the infighting over definitions, who is what, splitting of the original group into pieces mostly with v bad feeling about it on both sides.

That distracts from the things about things from outside that are impacting whole original group.

I suppose it's individual Vs group. And about something fundamental and relating to whole life and deeply personal.

I suppose question is. Do you/ would you like to see activism etc within lesbian spaces groups etc to tighten up who is included, ok to be there etc?

Or is this a personal opinion which is totally understandable, and obviously no one can tell you shouldn't feel that way. Rather than (which I did get a feeling of from your comment) that action or something to change who goes where is needed.

No need to answer at all if don't want to obv.

[quote NotBadConsidering]That's a good spot. Why is it that some people are so keen to blur boundaries, remove barriers?

This video was in the replies to Tatchell, I hadn’t come across it before.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=n-NseFg2kno[/quote]
Just wow!

Queer theory jeopardy.

Answer for 500. The queer theorist who has spoken out against paedophilia.

Who is no one?

The Queer Theory Jeopardy vid is great.

For anyone looking into queer theory, this is a good read on Judith Butler:

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

Queer theory is a reactive theory that academics/followers/proponents believe should resist definition because it only exists to subvert, deconstruct and question.

Maybe interesting as an academic thought exercise; I'd say possibly highly dangerous and questionable premise to base legislation and regulation on - society depends precisely on shared definitions and agreements - queer theory attempts to undermine every shared connection in society, as far as I can see.

Whether intentional or not, that could be dangerous. A movement that seeks to destabilise and undermine consensus and understanding is not a movement that should be informing government.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory

'The term can have various meanings depending upon its usage, but has broadly been associated with the study and theorisation of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexual desire is ‘normal’.[2]

I guess he means vulnerable people will be coerced into crossing their boundaries and having even more sex with people they aren't attracted to than they do already. Progress!

I think this will be the likely outcome, as as FlyingOink says, the origins of biphobia are much harder to get around, even in an accepting (and not fetishising) society.

Personally I'm exclusively straight, but it turns out my ex enjoyed having sex with men occasionally - which wouldn't have been a problem if he wasn't already in a relationship with me, and thus putting me in danger of whatever he might catch at the sauna he frequented. Internalised biphobia is as harmful as that from other people I think.

This suggested blurring is nothing to do with inclusivity. It breaks boundaries that we all know predatory men will exploit to gain access to women and children.

I feel like we're nearly at the point with younger people where 'queerness' has become the norm.

[quote NotBadConsidering]That's a good spot. Why is it that some people are so keen to blur boundaries, remove barriers?

This video was in the replies to Tatchell, I hadn’t come across it before.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=n-NseFg2kno[/quote]
Thank you for posting this. Short and snappy. I think it should be piped into the homes of politicians and anyone involved in safeguarding on loop until it sinks in.

The Queer Theory Jeopardy video was interesting. It's a shame it's not close captioned well enough to be able to understand some of the talk or to know who he is citing but I think I have a correct overall impression.

@Kotatsu

I guess he means vulnerable people will be coerced into crossing their boundaries and having even more sex with people they aren't attracted to than they do already. Progress!

I think this will be the likely outcome, as as FlyingOink says, the origins of biphobia are much harder to get around, even in an accepting (and not fetishising) society.

Personally I'm exclusively straight, but it turns out my ex enjoyed having sex with men occasionally - which wouldn't have been a problem if he wasn't already in a relationship with me, and thus putting me in danger of whatever he might catch at the sauna he frequented. Internalised biphobia is as harmful as that from other people I think.

Sorry this happened to you. It's happened to a few women I know. It's not nice.

@ErrolTheDragon

I feel like we're nearly at the point with younger people where 'queerness' has become the norm.

The next generation are all going to have to be straight, Conservative voting, tweed wearing Church of England members in order to manage the necessary shock everyone and rebel against society thing. There'll be nothing left for them to do except swing the pendulum back the other way.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

The Queer Theory Jeopardy video was interesting. It's a shame it's not close captioned well enough to be able to understand some of the talk or to know who he is citing but I think I have a correct overall impression.

I can break it down if you like. It starts with this answer for 100.

A. Commonly called the Godfather of Queer Theory.

Audience: Who is [Michel] Foucault?

He then points out Foucault argued for the eradication of age of consent laws down to infants . Not mentioned in the video, but there have been people after Foucault’s death who have revealed his abuse of young boys in North Africa.

Next.
A. The author of the founding document of Queer Theory.
Q: who is Gayle Rubin?

A. 50%
Q: what amount of that document was a specific defence of paedophilia, specifically “boy lovers”?

He then quotes a passage talking about how “boy lovers” struggle to find people to defend their cause and how she compares paedophilia to a preference for spicy food .

A. Author of Macho Sluts
Q. Who is Pat Califia?

Before he quote Califia he’s accused of being a homophobe, which he rightly challenges with “wait, so I’m accused of being a homophobe because I’m against paedophilia?” [he doesn’t add the MN eyebrow raise, I added that].

He then quotes something Califia wrote about kids being allowed to masturbate and have sex with adults “should they want to”

A. The most famous Queer Theorist of today.
Q. Who is Judith Butler?

Before he quotes Butler, an audience member shouts how “we see you! You don’t care about trans people’s lives” which is remarkable that given the fact that blatant paedophilia apologists are being pointed out and this is the response they come back with.

He then quotes Butler’s views on how she doesn’t think all incest is necessarily harmful .

A. The Queer theorist who has spoken out strongly against paedophilia.

Q. Who is no one?

So those are the names he referenced.