because I trained myself out of real anger a long time ago. Thanks, patriarchy!
I’ve been meaning to make an asexuality post, but wasn’t quite sure which idea to write about. Oh, I have ideas — so many ideas! — but none of the current discussions have particularly inspired any response other than “yeah, me too!” So I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be nice if something interesting popped up in the asexosphere?”
And lo, the Elder Ones of the Internet heard my prayer, and bestowed their bounty upon me. Truly, the Internet will always provide to its faithful.
Yesterday, polisci-prelaw at tumblr posted this description of sexual privilege.
“Sexual privilege” doesn’t (here) refer to a single axis of orientation-related privilege. That would be straight privilege. “Sexual,” in this case, is being used as it often is in the ace community, to mean “not asexual” rather than “relating to sexuality.” Thus, sexual privilege is the privilege which constantly, invisibly, and pervasively benefits and normalizes sexual people at the expense of asexual people.
I was, I’ll admit, startled. Oh, not at the idea of sexual privilege. I’d always taken that as a given. It was that this is actually a matter of debate. Sexual privilege is so far from being taken for granted that it actually had to be pointed out, and people still refused to see it. I just kept thinking, how can you not notice this? It’s everywhere!
And then: oh right, they don’t have to notice, because that’s what privilege is all about.
So, I have thoughts.
It is not, not, not straight privilege. Neither does it deny straight privilege. They’re not mutually exclusive, they intersect. Patriarchal society revolves around heterosexual, romantic, male-dominated pair-bonding and enforces a binary conception of gender and sexuality. Thus, along the gender-sexuality metric, society grants certain privileges to people who are male, who are straight, who are romantic, who are monogamous, who fit neatly within the male/female or gay/straight binary, who are cisgendered, so on and so forth.
I’m not arguing that these are necessarily equal privileges. I’m not saying they’re independent, or that there are units of oppression that you can add and subtract. You can’t say, “okay, he gets fifty points for being male, then there’s fifteen for fitting the binaries, but take away thirty for being gay and another ten for aromanticism.” Male privilege can make the experience of, say, polyamory very different from what it is for a woman, as well as simply making the experience of being a man or a woman different.
Likewise, the interplay of sexual privilege with other privileges can also be … complex. For instance, as an asexual aromantic, my society has assured me that any relationship I have with anyone will be less meaningful than whatever sexual relationships that person has, and certainly less than their romantic-sexual ones. I shouldn’t lead people on to expect something I won’t be able to give them (it’s very much asexuals’ responsibility to manage sexuals’ reactions to them which doesn’t remind me of anything at all), but I deserve the opportunity to form meaningful relationships as I understand them, but I don’t intend to spend my life feeling abandoned and devastated, either.
There aren’t really any resources. We have the online community, which is great, but it’s not like there are asexual resource centers or clubs. I could confide in my best friend, but he’s largely convinced that, if asexuals exist, I’m not one, my mother doesn’t think I should worry about it too much (you’ll meet the right person someday!) or “diagnose myself,” and I can’t talk about it to my psychiatrist because she could diagnose me. These are things that asexuals have to take into account, but that sexuals, by virtue of being sexual, do not have to worry about if they don’t want to. That is a privilege.
However, it’s also important for heteroromantic and aromantic asexuals to be aware that many of us do benefit from straight privilege. We aren’t straight, and obviously we don’t get the whole package, but if people take us for straight and correcting them and explaining and dealing with the fail bingo and all of it is just too much for us today, most of us don’t have to. We can choose whether we want to have that conversation or not. If we don’t, we can just let ourselves be taken for straight and enjoy the privileges that come from that. This choice is available to many asexuals and bisexuals in a way that it isn’t for gay and lesbians.
At the same time, the gender-sexuality binary rewards everyone who fits within it. Straight males obviously benefit the most from it, because of the intersection with male privilege and straight privilege, but everyone who fits in gets a measure of visibility and validation that’s denied to everyone who doesn’t. The genderqueer, intersexed, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, we’re all silently erased from our own cultural narratives, our experiences denied and then dictated to us.
As asexuals, we live at a place where these privileges intersect. An asexual can benefit from straight privilege, or be taken for gay and suffer from it. The normalization of the sexual experience erases asexuals; the insistence on binary oppositions compounds it. Elevation of romance as the zenith of human experience grants a veneer of normalcy to romantic asexuals, who don’t necessarily have to think about the double-whammy faced by aromantic ones, subhuman twice over. The responsibility of managing sexuals’ reactions to asexuals is placed on asexuals, and especially on asexual women. And so on.
Experiencing sexual privilege does not deny other oppressions. It does not prevent you from being underprivileged in some other way. But, like other privileges, sexual privilege gives you the choice to not concern yourself about real, systematic oppressions faced by people who aren’t you. Society privileges your interests, grants you arbitrary advantages, and tells you — and everyone else — that what you are is normal and fundamental to being human. This is what privilege means.
What got me about the negative comments I saw in response to that post was that a lot of people seemed to think that the idea of sexual privilege is totally incompatible with heterosexism which is totally incompatible with, say, the idea of privileging people with matching sexual and romantic orientations over people who have different ones (e.g. romantic aces, aromantic sexuals). Intersectionality: it still exists! Thanks for laying that out in such a neat and well-organized way.
I do have to say, I think that for aromantics, bisexuals, pansexuals, etc–queer people with a “choice,” for lack of a better term–gender presentation is really really important when it comes to “deciding” whether you can take advantage of passing privilege. I kind of hate to be That Aromantic, but I’m a girl with short hair and a gender presentation that is not all that feminine beyond that, and when you pair that with aromantic and not displaying interest in men, well… let’s just say that people who are looking for queerness at all tend to think I’m not straight.
I’m cisgender, yeah, but the way my gender presentation works, the way I’m most comfortable presenting myself, those seem to cue people to look harder at my sexuality in a way that I think women who are more femme don’t necessarily experience. (Or maybe they do. My personal experience isn’t exactly all-encompassing.) My point that is for me as a (probably) aromantic asexual, being taken for straight is something that I often can’t do without actively lying and consciously modifying my presentation. I’ve also experienced a ton of people feeling free to inquire into what my sexual orientation actually is, whether or not I particularly want to discuss it at that point.
But then, that ties back to the concept of different combinations of fitting and not-fitting societal expectations creating very different experiences for different people again, which I think mostly serves to strengthen your general point about intersectionality. Thanks again for the nuance.
The idea that privileges are mutually incompatible makes absolutely no sense to me. I mean, that’s mostly what this post was responding to (my initial reaction was just flailing and INTERSECTIONALITY, IT HAPPENS), because … I honestly don’t get it. Privilege is everywhere, along probably millions of different axes.
Oh, you’re absolutely right about gender presentation. My own experience has very much been “straight until proven otherwise” — I don’t have to do anything except not out myself, and I’ll be taken for straight. It only belatedly occurred to me that there are asexuals who are definitely not assumed to be straight, and can only pass with active deception, so I’m sorry about that exclusion.
(It really came up because I keep seeing asexuals bring up “but we can be mistaken for gay, and suffer homophobia too!” Which is a relevant point, but I think it clouds the issue of privileges asexuals are denied as asexuals.)
Excellent post; clearly and calmly lays out the issues. (I’d also recommend Sciatrix’s post from a while back on passing and privilege as a companion piece to this, if anyone hasn’t already read that!)
I’m not sure how convincing it will be to the people who most ought to read it, however, but one can hope. So many of them seem so intent on clinging to their double standards. And – I harp on this a lot – those double standards are what really get me about these conversations. Homosexuality implied to be a disease or unnatural? Homophobia. Homosexuality left out of everyday discussions about sexuality? Heterosexism. Few gay couples on TV? Heterosexism. Homosexuality in the DSM until the 1980s? Homophobia. All problems, all examples of privilege… until similar things happen to asexuals. And then, suddenly, everything’s all about hate crimes and legal matters.
(For the record, I’ve got no quarrel with activists who really *do* think hate crimes and legal matters are the only truly important things. It’s not a position I agree with, but it’s consistent and cogent.)
Thank you. I’m a bit conflicted about appeasing, but it seems to make people less defensive, anyway.
(Heh, that’s one of the posts I was thinking of when I wrote it. There’s also another by swankivy, though I don’t have the title off the top of my head.)
I could seriously quote your entire second paragraph, because yes, yes, yes. I really think that attitude has completely pervaded our community — how often do asexuals begin with apologetic disclaimers like “we’re not really oppressed, but” or “I know we don’t have it as bad …”? Just — no.
I don’t know if it bothers me more because I come from a very conservative, very religious background where asexuality (and specifically male asexuality) is little short of a sin against God, but — no, just no. It should be possible, in my opinion, to own the privilege we do have without denying our own oppression. I’ve never seen microaggressions interpreted as anything other than systematic oppression — except when it comes to us, and then it’s “bawwwww” and “you get beaten up in the street, then we’ll talk.”
Funnily enough, asexuals frequently bring up the fact that our orientation has been declared, by sexuals, to be a mental disorder for decades. The replies seem to almost always veer into talking about something else. That’s not a familiar tactic at all!
(I can’t say I’ve ever run into any of those activists, but I agree that it would be much less offensive, even if I disagree.)
“I don’t know if it bothers me more because I come from a very conservative, very religious background where asexuality (and specifically male asexuality) is little short of a sin against God, but — no, just no.”
In my case – at the risk of being all long winded and TMI, but I’ve already said all of this in my blog, so onward! – I’ve had a stupidly hard time coming to terms with being ace. Like, suicidally depressed hard time. Lots of internalized stuff, you know? And finding a therapist is a crap shoot, because you never know if they’re going to be helpful or if they’ll take the DSM’s line and make things even worse. And the thing is, I didn’t grow up in a conservative family, and I think I would have had a much better time of it if I’d been gay. I would have had a much larger community (including media like books and some TV) counteracting all the negativity I got from the mainstream, so I think rooting out all the internalized stuff would have be much easier. I wouldn’t have felt so alone. I wouldn’t have spent years as a teenager miserably confused about what on earth was going on with myself. And I could go to any reputable therapist and be pretty confident they wouldn’t trigger me by declaring me broken. So it’s very upsetting for me to hear asexuality dismissed in this way.
Oops! I’m an idiot. That should have been a direct reply to anghraine’s reply to me.
Also at the risk of also being TMI, I — understand. We have to keep it from therapists (not to mention psychiatrists) unless we’re absolutely sure they won’t saddle us with a diagnosis that will follow us for the rest of your life, we often have nowhere to turn, we have nobody to model our experiences in a remotely positive way (it says something that the best one is a sociopath), and our only possible resource (as non-heteronormative people) is such a mixed bag that we never know if we’ll be welcomed or hated. Of course it’s upsetting!
Sciatrix said it best, I think: Invisibility is not a fucking privilege.
[...] Ace Anghraine: this makes me feel… mildly annoyed [Sexual privilege] is not, not, not straight privilege. Neither does it deny straight privilege. [...]
This is an excellent post, and I thank you for writing this. I’m heteroromantic and asexual, and many times it’s hard for me to stand up and say out loud that no, I’m not straight, and being heteroromantic is not the same thing as being heterosexual, largely because I’m aware I have passing privilege. I’m cisgendered and outwardly, I look like a “typical” straight female, and I will never suffer societal or legal discrimination if I’m ever in a relationship . On the other hand, contributing to my own erasure is definitely not a healthy thing to do, as the game changes entirely if I do enter a relationship with someone who’s sexual. It is definitely a balancing act of trying to assert one’s (seemingly invisible) identity while keeping in mind the privilege you get from its invisibleness.
Oh, you’re welcome! I agree that it’s important to be aware of our passing privilege — but also to recognize that passing privilege =/= straight privilege, and that it’s not mutually exclusive with sexual privilege, either. I didn’t even go into the ways sexual privilege specifically harms romantic asexuals, but it’s a huge thing and being aware of your passing privilege shouldn’t mean erasing yourself.
Thanks!