72 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
72 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
# Yup, we are inclusive
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<small>2021-08-31 | Collective</small>
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We are a queer collective. All of us know perfectly well what it's like to have our identities
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questioned, ridiculed and invalidated. And we definitely don't want to make our queer siblings suffer the same.
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That's why we're inclusive. When we say ACAB*, that also includes the _identity police_.
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<p class="small">
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* If you have a problem with us saying ACAB,
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please <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACAB" target="_blank" rel="noopener">learn its history</a>,
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it originated in the 1920s in the UK and doesn't have to have anything to do with your US-centric view of the world.
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The US isn't the only country in the world,
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connotations of words and phrases might differ vastly.
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We're predominantly based in Poland where queers regularly suffer at the hands of the cops.
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The police don't need any Black people around to be bastards towards the minorities.
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</p>
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Our team of volunteers creates (among many other things we do) a tool to create a card where you can present
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your pronouns, names, identities and more.
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We're not policing what people put there, as long as it's all in good faith and not harmful.
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So we are banning for example people who use [the „Super Straight” flag](https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Super_Straight),
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which is an obvious transphobic [dog whistle](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dog%20whistle),
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or who use the flag of the Third Reich, or who use the n-slur in their profiles…
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But we'd never dare to ban a person just because they put both the bi flag and the lesbian flag in their profile.
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Queerness isn't a set of neatly defined boxes that everybody has to nicely fall into.
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Our definitions might differ slightly, our definitions can change in time (as does everything in language).
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Even a brief look at [the LGBTA Wikia](https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Lesbian) confirms
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how ambivalent and rich in history the term “lesbian” is:
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> Lesbian is a term that defines queer attraction to women.
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> This attraction is most commonly used as exclusively wlw/nblw attraction,
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> as communities surrounding exclusive wlw/nblw have become the primary part of the lesbian community.
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> However, there is no one perfect definition that encompasses all experiences of lesbianism.
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> This term includes butch, femme, non-binary, anonbinary, cusper, and multigendered people.
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> The majority of lesbians are exclusively wlw/nblw, including all NBLW, WLNB, and NBLNB attractions.
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> However, despite this, for some lesbians, the attraction is not exclusive,
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> as m-spec lesbianism (especially bi-lesbianism) is a historically seen identification.
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There's plenty of perfectly valid reasons to use the label “lesbian” or “gay” along with an m-spec label,
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out of which probably the most prominent example is the
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[Split Attraction Model](https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Split_Attraction_Model_(SAM))
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– used mostly by a-spec people, but not necessarily restricted just for them.
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It's perfectly possible to be, for example, biromantic and homosexual, or bisexual and homoromantic.
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We don't think it's our place to police people's identities.
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We don't necessarily all define the same labels in the same way,
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and we're not saying that you can't have a more strict definition of lesbian,
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but we're not going to tell people that they can't put “bisexual” and “lesbian” in their profile,
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if it makes sense under their own definition,
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which has also historically varied and is more complex given the various attraction models.
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No more so than we would say one has no right to identify as non-binary lesbian
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which some would also claim to be lesbiphobic.
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We're a multilingual site that has profiles of people from different countries and cultures,
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where the same or equivalent terms might often be understood differently
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and have slightly different predominant definitions.
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Just because we don't police whether people use the more narrow or the more broad definition of a word,
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doesn't mean we're attacking in any way the people who use the narrow one.
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The very existence of multiple definitions doesn't mean that one of them necessarily has to be evil or incorrect.
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We might not agree on this, but the least you can do is assume our good faith, as we assume yours.
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Even if you don't understand or don't agree with someone else's description of their identity,
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don't automatically assume it's done in bad faith or with any intent to harm –
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maybe their experience of gender, sexuality and romantic attraction is just too complex to fit in one definition.
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Let's not turn queer people against each other.
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Let's not alienate other parts of our community just to feel better about ourselves.
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The more we fight internally, the more power our oppressors have against all of us.
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