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Tequilx_Wolf wrote (edited )

I haven't read other posts talking about this but there is something distinct that that people are talking about when they talk about straight culture. It's bound up in patriarchy but not the same. There is plenty patriarchy in gay men but they don't suffer from straight culture.

It refers to the dull prudish repressed homogeneity of straightness-as-norm as contrasted with the liveliness etc. of normative queerness.

Also similar to how POC will mock white people for having bland food as white culture, but that's not racism.

I'm not invested in this since I don't use this language, just trying to point out the distinction I think people are making.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Blaming sexual orientation for patriarchy is some grade A vicitm blaming.

OK, but imho you are shifting goalpost. The other thread conversation was about acknowledging how normativity reproduces itself in practice. Not about "blaming" people. I agree that blaming individual people for a systemic issue is ridiculous and hurtful.

Acknowleging one source of patriarchy, doesn't mean you reduce patriarchy to that one contributing factor, nor that you "blame" women reproducing or benefiting from patriarchy for the consequences mostly they or other women will suffer. It's just saying, well, this is more complicated than is necessarily comfortable for straight people to acknowledge.

Beyond this...Have you really never seen straight women put others in danger because of their particular expression of straightness? I can think of multiple personal examples of women i've known who have enabled, or even been complicit/participate in, specific patriarchal crimes and violence, bullying, etc.

Beyond that, there is the statistically measurable association of normative identity with reactionary discourse online, if you'd like something more traditionally quantifiable instead of personal narratives. Just count the posts and posters on the twitter, survey the open source data on the subject. This is all evidence to point to the underlying reality: There are far more straight fascists than gay fascists. They are disproportionately more white fascists than brown fascists, in white-dominated societies. This appears to be because, generally speaking, people who defend hegemony, are part of that hegemony in some way or another.

So, I will definitely hold the individual straight people who have weaponized their straightness to hurt others, whether intentionally or not, accountable for those actions. And while I do not blame them for the whole systemic problem, they did contribute partially to it through their actions in daily life.

Of course, this is not all straight people. But the "not all straights" discourse is vapid and shallow, why even defend this? There is a vastly more interesting conversation to be had, about heterosexuality and power. It's not like straight people are threatened in any major way, by queer critique...

The argument I mentioned was not about blaming people as a group, but understanding how social positions are constantly reproduced in daily life. the conversation I am trying to start isn't about blame, it's about understanding the process of social reproduction. It's not about criticizing heterosexuals, but about understanding heterosexuality and its relationship to power.

This conversation is starting to remind me of conversations I've had about whiteness. At the risk of seeming rude...I'm thinking, just don't take this that personally? It's a theoretical and social question, not an attack on you personally. Or, if you are not straight identifying, do not defend straights getting upset about critiques of their hegemonic identity? ...Please?

This post is 100% the classic anarchist stereotype. Ideal forms > material relationships, wokescold > serious interrogation...why do you do this? Why shut down marginalized people talking about hegemony? Why do anarchists so often reinforce the existing hegemony, reproducing it in the microspaces, to the point of pushing out the most divergent people over and over again? I am beginning to believe it is just an irreconciable difference between me and the rest of you, and that there really isn't too many people who think like I do. I suppose you can all feel good and secure about that, but I want to ask everyone who upvoted this: do you want to be safe from annoying someone on the internet, or a little more threatening to power than that? Do you want to have a politics of social capital, or an anti-politics of clear analysis? Disagree with me as you may, but perhaps consider what I said, if you are willing.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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celebratedrecluse wrote

So, keep on with the fucking attacks if you want.

I was going to reply, until I got to this point. I don't want to force you into a conversation you don't want to have, so I'll let you decide if we continue or not.

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Dumai wrote

not invested in whatever debate spawned this post but heterosexuality isn't just an orientation or an identity, its an institution of patriarchal social reproduction in the first place. correct that its not the cause of patriarchy because patriarchy predates it but its part and parcel of how patriarchy is lived in the modern age

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GlangSnorrisson wrote

Ironically this was actually the point of the original post, sadly things spun out of control.

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lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

Regarding the body of your post I agree with the point you are making. There are plenty of queer people who uphold patriarchy as well and can be given a pass if patriarchy is conflated with straightness.

I didn't read the post this is a Response to so I'm not going to say anything about if your call out is right or wrong. I just don't know so I'll keep my mouth shut. I just said that so it doesn't feel like I'm purposefully ignoring the reason for you saying straight culture is the same as patriarchy.

I do think there may be some connection between straightness and patriarchy. I.e straightness relies on well defined differences between two genders. Patriarchy coerces women into acting and presenting a certain way which causes 2 defined genders which enables straightness to be a thing. Tho that's not what u seem to be critiquing.

It seems to be quite a logical failure to conflate straight culture and patriarchy. There are similarities and these concepts do kinda reinforce each other but are vastly far from the same thing. So I honestly just feel like I'm missing something. What u are saying seems to be pretty obvious statement to me. So I don't understand the backlash. Especially the ones that seem to respond to your post with derision. Maybe I'll do some sleuthing later so I can understand this whole situation better.

But as it stands now the basic statement that patriarchy and straight culture or whatever that means are different seems pretty obvious that I'm surprised it had to be said. Nerveless most main users disagreeing with it.

Edit:

In straight world, everyone knows how the women side is expected to be passive and contemplative while the men side is the one that makes the advances, pushes with a plan, talks first, etc.

This is literally calling opressive behavior in which women are forced into passive roles whether or not they want them a "culture" and a sexuality. Reading that last night made me make the post. And the constant "are the straight women okay?" meme is really talking about women stuck in abusive situations and blaming it on their straightness. All of the talk around "straight culture" I see seems to be leading to this - that all the abused women are to blame because they were attracted to men.

If this is what you are responding to your critique seems valid. I mean if we are talking about mainstream gay culture the patriarchal notion of the bottom being passive while the top pushes with a plan replicates itself. While this notion doesn't effect women directly it reinforces patriarchal ideas which hurts women. I could think of a few other examples.

Based on the paragraph I do think it's fair for you to call it out for conflating patriarchy which can be alarming bc patriarchal ideas are often reinforced in queer communities too.

Still not sure if I know what is going on bc I don't really see you saying anything controversial. Your worry seems very valid and correct imo.

Edit2:

I think I have a theory for the backlash to your post. I've been recently thinking about this phenomenon that I keep noticing over an over again.

Raddle User One: Makes take X

Asshole: critiques take X in a very bad way

Raddle User 2: Critiques take X or a take similar to X in a vastly different way than the asshole.

I think due to the asshole attacking position X first Raddle User one is primed to defend against that argument. This fundamentally changes how Raddle User one viewes and reads critiques of take X in the the very near future. So even if Raddle User 2 is not saying anything similar to the Asshole they will be lumped in with the asshole and raddle user one will assume raddle user two has some or all of the positions of the asshole as they are critiquing the same concept in a similar time frame.

Not blaming people or saying they are bad for doing this. It might have something to do with humans work. I think I've done this myself and prob will do it in the future. This is a work in progress idea so its still pretty rough.

So I think people are already primed since there have been complaints about attacking straightness and comments about how raddle should be nicer to straight people. So when you critique someone attacking straightness I think the backlash is partially coming from people assuming you are trying to defend straight people rather than promote attacking the institution of straightness in a way that doesn't contribute to victim blaming or help cover up how many queer people uphold patriarchy.

So even though comments with a completely different point and purpose addressing a different thread are not at all similar to your argument they are changing how your argument is perceived due to both you and those defending straightness critiquing raddle users attacking straightness today.

Thats just the closest thing I could figure out to what is going on bc the arguments of people critiquing you don't really seem to make sense to me. I could be totally wrong but I was quite curious and this is the best I could come up with.

also I'm like 90% sure I'm not onto something and just the drugs I'm on are giving me an inflated sense of my own intelligence. So if anyone reads this and thinks the theory is shit blame drugs lol

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[deleted] wrote

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Thank you for the long, thought-out reply. I really appreciate it. I agree with pretty much everything you said. But I want to point out one thing you did in your argumentation:

<3

The onus here was put upon women. I think toxic masculinity is legit the same thing - it is defining genders. But, you didn't call men out. I find it interesting how often women are to blame for society and not men. I know you so I know that's not what you meant but it's one of those things you have to be attuned to noticing.

I thought about talking about toxic masculinity but I didn't want to be that guy who brings up the poor poor men suffering under patriarchy every time a discussion on women being victim blamed is brought to discussion. But yeah you're right. Though my logic was a bit different than it came across. It seems it was understood as women succumbing to patriarchy are the blame for straightness when I was more meaning to say straightness requires the victimization of women under patriarchy to function.

So I was trying to present women as those who are required to suffer for straightness to exist rather than the one to blame. While men also suffer I try to avoid bringing it up a ton to avoid feminist discussion being dominated about how the poor poor men are suffering. I was trying to weigh on the safe side bc letting a discussion about women's problems getting transitioned into men's feelings and suffering is like how like 90% of life works. So maybe I should be careful to not left feminist discussion devolve into centering around the problems of men too.

This occurs in lesbian relationships, too. I honestly found it difficult to navigate relationships with women because this was still expected and was enforced almost more harshly than it is with men. And, as a gender non-conforming person, I was often expected to be in the butch role and a lot of that toxic masculinity stuff was foisted on me and I didn't care for it.

I had heard about how some butch women would act toxicly masculine to help present more masculine. It made sense to me but I never read it from a source that I completely trusted not to regurgitate queerphobic shit. So your negative experience was mildly helpful to me. Bc thats what truly matters after all, lol. Nah that sounds like a shit experience :(.

I probably shouldn't have gotten into it.

Thats what most regular raddle users tell themself on a regular basis. Yet we all know most of us are gonna do it again. Honestly tho, I don't really stop myself from getting into stuff that prob won't lead anywhere bc sometimes some interesting discussion can happen.

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zoom_zip wrote (edited )

when people are using the term “straight” here, are they talking about people who are attracted to people of the opposite sex? or something else? some greater idea about a “straight identity”. it’s not clear.

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moonlune wrote (edited )

yup, straight = heterosexual. It's often implied that they're also cisgender but not necessarily.

Straight culture is all the "gender reveal", "blue/pink", "straight pride" religiously-loaded performative "straight" shit people do. Anything actively not queer.

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[deleted] wrote

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moonlune wrote

Yeah I agree, that's why I made the distinction between "straight" (the sexuality) and "straight culture" the queerphobic patriarchal phenomenon of society.

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[deleted] wrote

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moonlune wrote

I'm not the only one who uses it. I feel like it's more specific/practical.

It doesn't feel like just a synonym to me. But then again, I'm not the most well read on feminist literature.

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zoom_zip wrote

ugh…

i have some personal questions about this but i don’t really want to post too personal stuff publicly. would any regular poster be willing to have a dm conversation to help me out with some confusion?

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groovygardener42069 wrote

Imagine, if you will, a hot stinky steak fart.

You can't separate the heat and stinkiness from the fact that it came from an old ass raunchy bag of steak 'ums. One feeds the other. It's clear that if you remove the steak 'ums from the diet of the offending crop duster, the hot stinky steak farts will stop.

However, we can complain about the steak farts and their source independently from one another, and this is key. The farts are particularly rancid and awful, and it makes no sense why someone would eat those nasty ass steak 'ums knowing that for the next five hours they need to stay in a well ventilated area to avoid a tragic methane explosion. There's the discourse around the pain we feel after a particularly raunchy wet blast of ass, as well as the intellectual pain of knowing both knowing the cause of our olfactory oppression and the fact that we have no way to stop it at the source.

I didn't read the OP but I still hope this metaphor is helpful in some way

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Nah I just think this is a rewrite of reality ignoring how there are lots of queer people who enable mysogyny to oppress women.

It ain't just straight people upholding patriarchy.

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groovygardener42069 wrote

Admittedly, it was a bad metaphor. Didn't mean to come off so south park-ish

Also admittedly, I didn't read OP so I'm missing a lot of context

But yes all of that is possible and actively happens in our culture under the matrix of oppression

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