The Unit of Caring

terpsikeraunos:

avoidcats:

it’s just incredible to me, how selfish and self centred you have to be to demand lgbt people don’t kiss or hold hands in front of you bc it makes you uncomfortable. my friends, that’s called homophobia, and if you honestly genuinely believe that lgbt safe spaces should be pda free, you’re a homophobe and a bad person

op is an anti-aro/ace bigot

This particular intercommunity dispute really really exemplifies the competing access needs thing. 

Some lgbt+ people have to conceal their relationships in nearly every context, and have to police their own affectionate gestures lest some stranger take offense and physically assault them for it. These people obviously need and deserve a safe space to be affectionate without being terrified. This need is valid. The existence of communities that validate it and have strong norms protecting it is good.

Some people are either triggered by or extremely uncomfortable with PDA. It is good that spaces exist - and good that lgbt+ spaces exist - where those people can feel comfortable, because everybody deserves a space with norms that let them feel comfortable.

These can’t be the same space, obviously.

But because people don’t have the concept of competing needs - that something can be a valid and necessary requirement for people to feel safe, while also being incompatible with what other people need to feel safe - instead of saying ‘yep, let’s have different spaces with different norms’ they feel like one has to triumph over the other, like the validity of one necessarily implies the invalidity of the other. You’re ‘selfish and self-centered. You’re ‘a homophobe and a bad person’. You’re an ‘anti-aro/ace bigot’. 

Because if the only way to get your needs met is invalidating everyone else’s, if anyone’s statement of their own needs is a declaration about all norms everywhere, then you have to deny the legitimacy of any needs but your own. 

Imagine if instead we could say “I don’t want to be in an lgbt+ space that prohibits PDA, because lgbt+ spaces are the only place where I don’t have to police my interactions with my boyfriend to make sure no one takes a swing at us’ and ‘I don’t want to be in an lgbt+ space that has PDA, because it turns my stomach’ and go ‘hmm, sounds like a reason to have two different spaces’ instead of ‘so who’s the lying wrong undeserving oppressor?’

• 19 September 2016
• #lgbt[a-z]*
• 22159