problem: people have fallen into seeing exclu/inclu as lists of things you reject or support, resulting in worse shitcourse
solution: we need to cohesively tie together what they call "inclusive" beliefs into principled Ideology™ to prevent cherry-picking.

a thread.

I have written before about how you can trace all queer exclusion back to political lesbianism in what began as a manifesto of sorts trying to accomplish the very same, but my aim widened. ( https://degeneratediaries.home.blog/2021/01/13/the-queers-arent-alright-consequences-of-political-lesbianism/)

Important details however: in the 70s, radical feminism was a Thing and the beliefs were basically:
- yes sexism is bad BUT
- we're transphobic ideologically, so do we really have a full nuanced analysis of sexism?
- suddenly, lesbianism is a choice?

about that: the idea was that women should choose to separate from men, however this was not a "component", if you will, necessary to lesbianism prior to this movement, also known as lesbian separatism (affectionately I might call them lezseps as, spoiler alert, they're back)

point is, they wanted to make "lesbian" about nonattraction to men rather than attraction to women/lesbians. (i specify lesbians because so many lesbians have and have had a genderqueer experience, now and historically, and it'd be incorrect to call lesbians women.)

this forced universal definition for the term lesbian, obviously not 100% successful but still forceful and violent in nature, was a disaster not just for lesbians and feminists, but for the upcoming queer communities. let's talk abt that.

among bioessentialism, here we see prescriptivism - the idea that, and im paraphrasing to fit the context, labels choose and define you, rather than the other way around. the idea that lesbian, or any queer identity, must mean just one thing, is prescriptivism.

a given alternative to prescriptivism is descriptivism, or: "labels are descriptive, not prescriptive". for queer identity, we have different relationships to the same words, and that's alright. they can all be true, that's the social constructedness of it all.

hate to quote Proudhon but what's that about wanting a society where i am hanged by radicals as a "conservative" for not being radical enough? it's a weird quote, and i like it in a reserved way, but I think you could say it's good to want a world where queers challenge you.

queers should trample over respectability politics, allocishet decorum, and cross every line. uncomfort is transformative, after all. i for one fully embrace a day where someone's identity makes me say "hmm" for a bit before i find a way to translate it to my way of thinking.

anyways, knowledge about each individual discourse doesn't necessarily mean one has tied them all together, and unfortunately queers gotta be cautious of inclus as well as exclus because of the cherry picking that happens as a result.

seeing as one learns about each discourse gradually, if ever, rather than starting out knowing who is being excluded and where and how and with what language, it's really important to keep an open mind about identities and note the history of LGBTQ+ prescriptivism + exclusion.