I started wondering, in the wee hours of the morning:

[capri0mni]

(inspired by hearing clips of the July 31st, 2019 Democratic Debate – the one with Joe Biden – on the topic of South American refugees):

Did the intensification of TERF rhetoric around who “really” belongs in the LGBTQ community, and who’s “sneaking in, and taking up resources”* coincide with Trump’s anti-immigrant fearmongering during his election campaign, and subsequent residency in the White House?

‘Cause that would make a certain kind of sense if it did. It's basically the same rhetoric.

(I joined Tumblr in March of 2016, which I think [?] was right before the "Ace discourse" exploded... I wasn't around long enough before that to know what the Ace side of Tumblr was like before the current Age of Discourse, but that's the impression I get from reading the posts of people who were there.)

This connection occurred to me, because I had the same thoughts in reaction to the soundbites about our borders, as something I wrote on Tumblr in a general response to exclusionists (no one in particular, just their general arguments):

If you cross paths with someone who tries to tell you that some people don’t belong in the LGBTQ Community, because they’ll “waste resources meant for the truly oppressed,” then Darling, Sugarlump, my shiny little Periwinkle, I have something to tell you:

The People Are the Resources!

Comments

[mommy]

I think it comes and goes. I distinctly remember that resource theft arguments against bisexual people were a talking point in certain corners of the LGBTQ+ communities in the mid-00, followed by similar arguments against asexual people around 2010. The thoroughly debunked "passing privilege" argument was used as a way to explain away any possibility that bisexual and asexual people might possibly need those resources. As far as I can tell, Tumblr discourse repurposed those arguments for a younger audience. The whole "cishet aces" talking point certainly reeks of old-fashioned "passing privilege" rhetoric.

[capri0mni]

*nod* *nod*

Also, the whole idea of "passing Privilege" belies a complete misunderstanding of what privilege is (at least, in the social justice sense): the ability to go through life without having to even think of Problem X (If you have wealth privilege, for example, you don't have to think about choosing to pay your electric bill and choosing to eat, or if you're Christian in America, you can just take for granted you'll get your big holidays off, no questions asked).

But if you have to "pass" as something you're not, in order to survive in a hostile social order, then you are almost always thinking about it, and worrying about what would happen to you if you're "found out."

[bladespark]

Hmmm. I don't really do tumblr discourse, so I haven't heard the resources argument much. I'm more familiar with the "Those freaks making it harder for us perfectly acceptable queers to be accepted in the mainstream" argument, which gets deployed against a lot of folks but especially trans people, poly people, and kinky people, all of which I am. Probably why I hear that one more. :P

[capri0mni]

Yeah... I'm mainly Ace/Aro (though I'm also poly-mumble and pan-mumble), so I get the "dirty cis/het" masquerading as LGBTQ rhetoric... Which means I'm too mainstream?

Shrug. Can't win with these people. So I won't play their game.

I was just struck by the similarity between R.E.G. rhetoric and the MAGA anti-immigrant talk.

[zorilleerrant]

It probably did, but not so much because it was something clear to latch onto in either direction, and more because trends in TERFs and the alt-right/reactionary right tend to coincide. While they don't necessarily share purely political spaces, they tend to hang out in the same areas and interact with each other/be friends with each other a lot. The same thing probably inspired them both.

[capri0mni]

Yup. Fundamentally Right-wing in their morality and politics, all dressed up in a thin layer of Left-wing activist tropes (fighting The Power, etc).

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I bailed out of tumblr in 2016 due to biphobia, and I feel the socio-technical design of tumblr is crap. But I don't really see it as linked to Trump especially.

I work for an LGBT center and I fully agree on "The People Are the Resources." Groups die not because of hostile invaders, but because no one shows up to do the work. And Teh Discourse fails to take into account the reality that LGBTQ politics is based on multiple kinds of action, including:

1. Community outreach/protest events like Pride.
2. Open-door cultural events like art shows, performances, and family nights.
3. Semi-closed group meetings that are advertised in-network.
4. Fully closed group meetings where membership is vetted by a moderator.

[capri0mni]

Groups die not because of hostile invaders, but because no one shows up to do the work.

Absolutely!

As I noted in my opening post, I just noticed the similarity between anti-immigrant rhetoric and exclusionist rhetoric, and was wondering if the Resident Lord Dampnut normalizing it made people more comfortable to be loud and obvious with their bullying in public.

It certainly doesn't help.

[22degreehalo]

This is super late but: I 100% agree with you on this! It was a comparison that occurred to me continually during exclusionist discourse: the idea that the LGBT (no plus!) community is a cohesive set of people who share a single kind of experience, and that outsiders are trying to invade to steal all of the resources and bring in all kinds of bad stuff based on them being the 'wrong' sort of people. The idea that these people could be bringing in good things - or, for that matter, that most of us had been here for decades already - was unfathomable.

I was on tumblr from 2010, though I didn't come to realise I was possibly aro until around 2015, which was exactly round about when the ace discourse started to blow up. (Ace discourse didn't make me realise it, that was just an unfortunate coincidence.) Before then, identity gatekeeping was a lot less common - IME, it was widely accepted that we should accept and welcome as many different kinds of people as possible. Which didn't mean things were perfect, but the discourses were different (and much less hostile) - whether biphobia existed or not was a huge one, plus straight-passing privilege and whether bi people should be allowed to bring different-gender partners to pride. I feel like scrutiny of bi people was a much bigger conversation topic through the early 2010s, but I identified entirely as bi back then so I might have a biased POV. I don't remember ever seeing the terms 'sapphic' or 'wlw' or 'mlm' until maybe 2014? As that kinda faded away.

But yeah, it was definitely around 2015, and then rising sharply in 2016, that we got ace discourse, plus anti discourse, and 'queer is a slur' discourse, and truscum. Which is to say, all of these things existed before then, but suddenly became much more common, intense, and openly enforced.

I do think there are multiple reasons why this happened, though. Part of it is indeed the seeping of right-wing ideas into LGBT communities, absolutely. But as much as all of this hurt me very deeply, I want to be sympathetic. Trump's campaign, and then presidency, scared LGBT+ people badly. A lot of them were so angry and afraid, and they took it out on people around them they could safely lash out against, trying to find control where they could take it. Support of bi and to an extent trans people was a lot more vocal and organised and well-established, so they weren't the easiest targets. Arguments against ace, aro, and nb people came a lot more easily. And since we'd always dealt with especially strong erasure, and representation for us outside of LGBT+ places has taken even longer than other groups to exist, it wasn't hard for them to all but argue us out of existence and portray our very identities as fake, taking away any rights we could have to basic decency.

We were convenient scapegoats, I really think, or maybe just punching bags. Either way, they were angry - at Trump, at politics, at the world - and attacking us made them feel a little less weak. They made up the reasons to justify it as they went.

[capri0mni]

Thank you for this -- both from your differing point of view, re: orientation, and in terms of time (You need to see things from slightly different angles to get a three dimensional view).

A few years ago, there was a documentary on PBS about the blackout that happened across all of New York City in 1977 -- when the city itself was facing bankruptcy and basic services had been cut. There were riots and arson, and all the minority groups turned on each other. One of the interviewees made the point that it's like siblings with abusive parents. They can't fight back against the people who are really hurting them, so they beat up on each other...

I looked to see if I could find a trailer for that documentary on YouTube. But instead, I found the whole thing: American Experience: Blackout (It's just shy of an hour).