this is your sign to watch Heartstopper (2022), if you haven’t already.

oh spoiler alert i guess?

“What people do in the bedroom is none of my business” isn’t the epitome of allyhood, despite what some may like to think:

First of all, being queer is not simply about what happenes in the bedroom, and that is an objectifying and reductive narrative that leads to fetishization. queerness has less to do with your aesthetic or who you sleep with and more to do with decolonizing your understanding of gender.
defining queer in the limited scope of “what happenes in the bedroom” isn’t simply ignorant. It’s a warning, it’s a demand by the faux ally: “keep it in the bedroom.”
“Don’t shove it into my face. Why is this character in this netflix show gay?”
Queerness is not a costum. It’s not something i wear for cosplay in the bedroom, it’s not lingerie, so i can’t simply take it off when i’m outside of the bedroom and just stop being queer unless i’m having sex. It is part of my identity and I carry it with me everywhere.
This reductive definition of queerness also contributes to the erasure of asexual people and those who are genderqueer. Are trans people only the gender they identify as “in the bedroom”?
They say it’s “none of their business” but they’re actually doing business with queer people. This is their deal: “don’t exist “too loudly” and i won’t lobby against your rights.”
Secondly, “what people do in the bedroom….” is not an actual belief system. Rather it’s a sentence used to deflect and shield oneself from different ways of thinking and above that, different ways of existing. It allows for oxymorons such as “Christian ally” to exist. It results in a case of “split brain”, where on one side, the “Chrisrian ally” receits all sorts of bigoted and hateful things in their local church, and on the other hand they just avoid the responsibility of recognizing other people’s different reality and actually having to think about them by saying “it’s none of my buisnuss” and shrugging if off. This way, they can keep their bigoted beliefs and they don’t need to do the hard work of thinking about the possible harmful consequences of their prejudiced beliefs and digging into their own brain. It requires minimal self reflection to think like this. Even if this line of thinking qualified as allyhood, it would be the laziest way of being an ally. It’s very close to dealing with queer people by just ignoring them all around, instead of actually asking yourself why is it that you believe the things you believe?
The christian way of being an ally is just “turning the other cheek”.
They tell themselves, “out of sight, out of mind.” But will they settle for this? Or will they continue their bigotry in the safe haven of their churches untill queer people are not only out of the Christian allys’ mind, but also out of jobs, out of public schools, out of the political scene and etc.? It’s none of their business until it is. It’s none of their buisnuss until it’s their own children who are queer. Which brings me to my third point:
In “It’s none of my business what people do in the bedroom”, bedroom is code for “outside of my territory, outside of my house”. What happenes if a queer person is very much in the christian ally’s “territory”? What happenes if it’s their own child is queer? Conversion therapy?

#commentary

content warning// conversion therapy, suicide.

نمی‌دونم چقدر آلن تورینگ رو می‌شناسید، امّا امروز ۶۸ امین سالگرد خودکشیشه. آلن متولد ۲۳ ژوئن ۱۹۱۲ بود و به عنوان پدر علوم کامپیوتر، زیست‌شناسی نظری و ریاضی و هوش مصنوعی شناخته می‌شه. برای جزئیات بیشتر راجع به زندگی‌اش می‌تونید فیلم The Imitation Game (2014) رو ببینید. امروز بیشتر می‌خوام راجع به علت مرگش صحبت کنم، خودکشی با سیانور. سال ۱۹۵۲ بود که آلن به جرم "بی‌شرمی" (بخوانید به جرم هم‌جنس‌گرا بودن) دستگیر و به عقیم‌سازی شیمیایی (یکی از انواع کانورژن تراپی اون زمان) محکوم شد. برای اجرای حکمش باید روزانه دوز نسبتاً زیادی از استروژن و دیگر هورمون‌ها و داروها رو تزریق می‌کرد و همین باعث ضعف بسیار زیاد فیزیکی‌، سردردهای متوالی، حالت تهوع و غیره شد. این عوارض بودن که باعث شدن آلن در نهایت تصمیم بگیره که مرگ انتخاب مناسب‌تری از زندگیه. سال ۲۰۱۳ ملکه‌ی بریتانیا "جرایم" آلن رو "بخشید" و رکوردش رو پاک کرد، در حالی که آلن نباید بخشیده بشه، باید تصمیم بگیره که ببخشه یا نه، چون دولت نیست که آسیب دیده، دولته که آسیب زده.

داستان آلن و میلیون‌ها داستان‌ مشابهش یکی از هزاران دلایلی هستن که ما به این ماه (pride month) نیاز داریم و نیاز خواهیم داشت. کانورژن تراپی شیمیایی هنوز هم که هنوزه توی خیلی از کشورها (از جمله ایران) قانونیه و خیلی‌ها هنوزم مجبور به تحملش می‌شن. چنین مدل "درمانی" اساساً یعنی هویت جنسی یه آدم رو ازش بگیرن تا به خیال خودشون گرایش جنسی‌اش رو "درست" کنن. پراید مانث مسئله‌ی تخت خواب نیست، مسئله‌ی جنگیدن برای وجود داشتن، حق ابراز هویت داشتن و صرفاً بودنه.

در راستای همین بحث کانورژن تراپی در لینک زیر می‌تونید داستان ۷ نجات‌یافته رو بخونید!

content warning// conversion therapy, homophobia, PTSD.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/seven-survivors-conversion-therapy-describe-its-lasting-damaging-impact

trigger warning// transphobia, body and gender dysphoria.

happy demisexual pride day! 🖤🤍💜