Maybe what I’m getting at is that I think people have sort of passively adopted the idea that you must get consent from someone in order to be attracted to them, and if you experience attraction without consent, you are behaving badly and doing something wrong.
Attraction isn’t something you can switch on or off and it isn’t a set of behaviors or actions, it’s just an internal fact of the brain. You can be attracted to someone without making it their problem or making them aware of it at all. You don’t have to stare or comment or ask for their number or follow them home or assault them—those are actions you can refrain from, but attraction itself is just… there.
im sitting here wondering what could’ve even PROMPTED this post. what discourse suddenly declared “you require permission to be attracted to anyone” that could’ve even provoked a post that can read like pedophilia apologia – honestly, why even mention stalking or assault? why pretend abuse is about attraction and not power dynamics?
honestly, completely baffling at best, absolute rancid at worst.
OP I don’t know if you intended this but this post literally reads like MAP/pedo apologia
Weird ‘cause children were never mentioned and this post is about the psychological hell of internalized lesbophobia and the overwhelming fear of being predatory merely by finding a straight woman attractive.
It was a direct response to being aggressively hounded about the specific intersections of my gender and sexuality by people who seemed to think that a mismatch between my orientation and that of another meant it was inherently wrong, disrespectful, and abusive to privately crush on them.
No goddamn children involved.
Also: the reason I didn’t say ‘This Is Specifically About Lesbianism’ in my original post is because it’s not about privilege dynamics. A straight man also isn’t committing thoughtcrime by finding a lesbian attractive–it would likely be awkward and uncomfortable for her to know about it, but unless he’s crushing on a telepath, nothing about his internal experience is violating anyone else’s boundaries unless he acts on it. He’s not being predatory unless he behaves in a predatory fashion, which privately thinking “that person is attractive” is not.
ok so ur like… trying to rebuff predatory lesbian myths by… confirming that lesbian attraction could very much result in stalking or assault…?
either way, maybe in cases like these you SHOULD be specific cuz relying on vagueness, especially when it comes to Attraction, is a very popular strategy of pedophiles and their enablers.
like idk what rock you’ve been living under but “um attraction can’t be helped u just dont need to act on it! <3″ is literally the NOMAP anthem. you may not have meant it, and i believe you, but you have to recognize your wording could mean literally anything if you’re not specific.
I mentioned assault because assault is a bad thing. It is an action a human—any human, yes, including lesbians, including straight women— can take, which is bad, and which is not interchangeable with or the inevitable result of being attracted to someone. You can think “this person is hot” without it automatically leading to inappropriate behavior, up to and including assault. What part of that is controversial? Are you objecting to the idea that a lesbian could theoretically assault someone?
I go out of my way to avoid reading things written by, for, or about pedophiles. I do this intentionally because I do not want to be forced to think about or discuss those things and I do not appreciate strangers jumping in to publicly accuse me of sounding like a pedophile for making incredibly basic assertions.
And you know what? Virtually all arguments supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and destigmatixation can be co-opted by pedophiles. That’s not my burden to carry and I’m not going to spend my life worrying about how my identity and experiences might be maliciously appropriated.
Sometimes I think a Greek deity placed a curse upon this entire godforsaken Webbed Site. It can’t actually be natural to have this much bad faith malicious misinterpretation concentrated in one place, can it? Surely Aries took a great big shit in the middle of the HTML and that’s why everyone is forced to be unreasonable and bellicose at all times…
omg you eat food? you feel hunger?? CANNIBALS JUSTIFY THEIR CANNIBALISM WITH HUNGER. its cannibal rhetoric. you’re normalizing cannibals by speaking about this experience. i bet you’re a cannibal yourself, Ship. *nods sagely to myself*
did i get a good grade in mental gymnastics and performative outrage? oh i hope i got a good grade.
