This video talks primarily about the way that a lot of gatekeeping discourse in queer circles actually hurts closeted and questioning people, and how some of it copies transphobic narratives about trans women, ect.
I have been thinking about this for AWHILE now. I remember having an argument with my girlfriend (who has since changed her mind about the issue, though her position is now apathy) and my now ex-best friend (not over this argument, lol, much bigger issues) about the whole “only queer actors should take queer parts” issue. And for some reason at the time I didnt think of the “that would seriously hurt a closeted actors by basically becoming forced outing” at the time (but I thought of it before Sarah mentioned it in this video lol, it was bringing it up to my girlfriend that made me learn that she had shifted her position).
The thing about “men wearing skirts are predators looking to take advantage of women” seems especially toxic to me because it is literally the SAME thing said about trans women just targeted towards GNC men who still identify as cis instead. Its one of those things that for me should seem bad ON ITS FACE in a way to the people saying it, sort of like how I was shocked to see people who say they hate TERFs echoing ace exclusion discourse) .
I’ve also been against faux-progressive/social justice language being used for bullying and gatekeeping for a long time now.
So this is just another manifestation of that.
So like 4/5 years ago there was a trend of “discourse blogs” on tumblr that argued about whether “cishetero asexuals” should be included in the queer community. Unfortunately i discovered this because a few people on tumblr who I used to be friends with/respect who I was checking up on one day had fallen into the exclusionary side of this argument. This post here is one I saved because I summarizes a lot of their talking points, CW: for potentially triggering content, particularly if you’re sexual and/or romantic orientation are somewhere on the spectrum of acearo
Ace exclusion discourse basically cribs notes from TERF discourse heavily (as you can probably see from that link). But they’d always deny that and also say that they hate TERFs, suport trans people, include them in the LGBT community, ect. If they had a “Do not interact” list TERFs would be on it. A lot of these people would at least on the surface level SEEM to be otherwise progressive people and be very good at misappropriating and twisting social justice language to make excluding asexual and aromantic people from queerness sound progressive.
Ahhh, yeah. Now that you mention it, I’ve actually run into that attitude before, with LGBT people saying asexual people should be excluded because “They’re not oppressed.” Shit sucks.
Its luckily “fallen out of style” on tumblr and a lot of the people who were into the exclusionary side of the argument have backtracked with a pithy, disingenuouss little “well we lost that argument so I dont do discourse anymore, asexuals are included now” so while the fact that they just fell back in and blended in (or found new exclusionary causes to champion instead) sucks but the fact that it fell out of style to support those narratives so you’re seen as a crank if you still do it is at least good.