Woke vs anti-woke: asexual, bisexual and non-binary discourse.

It's interminable, so let's terminate it.

I’m not a joiner. I’m a bit too woke for the anti-woke left, and a bit too anti-woke for the woke left. When I’m interacting with other leftists, I see myself as anti-woke because, within the left itself, woke is pretty hegemonic, and, being the fussy pedant I am, I am irritated by incumbents.

However, one of my disagreements with the anti-woke left is that many people under its aegis seem to scoff at the notion certain groups of people- asexuals, non-binary people, and bisexuals, face special difficulties or oppression. Let em’ all in I say- the more the merrier. In what follows I’ll make my argument.

Terminology

First, we need to fuss around with terminology a little. That means this section will be inside baseball, I apologize for that. The terminology has been muddled, partly because the concepts themselves are contested.

There is a group of people in our society, with sometimes overlapping experiences who are diverse or different from the average or recognized norm in their sex, gender, sexual experiences and/or sexuality. An incomplete list (recognizing that many items partially or wholly overlap) includes intersex people, gays, lesbians, trans people, bisexuals, asexuals, non-binary people, sex workers, BDSM aficionados, poly people, people with fetishes, etc.

Now within this category of people, there is a subset that is covered by labels like, “queer” or “LGBTQ+”, or whatever else you might prefer. The conditions of membership in this subset group, and the political benefits that come with it are deeply unclear and under-defined. Some people are what we will be calling queer maximalists - they think this subset should include more or less everyone in the list above. A more commonplace position is probably that it should include a lot of people above, but stop somewhere before including BDSM, polyamory, heterosexual fetishists, heterosexual sex-workers, etc.

Increasingly, many on the anti-woke left are queer minimalists. Queer minimalists want to include gays, lesbians, and trans people (often with restrictions on the latter group-e.g. only binary transgender people or only transgender people who experience dysphoria). Bisexuals are allowed, but sometimes only if they are bisexual “enough”- usually either meaning that they are dating a same-sex partner, they can “prove” their same-sex attraction or that they have had “enough” same-sex sexual experiences. Obviously, individual queer minimalists are more or less inclusive about different things.

I acknowledge this terminology of queer minimalism and maximalism isn’t ideal, because the term “queer” is controversial- often especially among those I am here calling “queer-minimalists”. However, I’m not sure what other terminology would work here. For example, if I were to say “LGBTQ+” I would be close to begging the question, because in choosing what letters to include I would have already prejudiced the issue. When terminology is part of the terrain of the fight, the terminologist is screwed.

Some thoughts on minimalism v maximalism

Despite having anti-woke sympathies, I have very little sympathy for queer minimalism. I don’t know whether I’d call myself a maximalist, but I’m closer to that than minimalism.

For me, queer minimalism reproduces some of the worst tendencies of wokeism. It’s judgmental, paranoid, based on a transactional understanding of human relations, sober when it should be silly, and silly when it should be sober. It seems petty rather than magnanimous, in the same way that wokeness often does.

The argument is sometimes made that we need to be queer minimalists because otherwise, people will identify as “queer” for free brownie points in the marketplace of identities. I can’t deny this is possible. People are pretty cynical. Anyone who thinks no one would lie about their identity in a game of finding ultra-niches to sell yourself needs their head examined.

What I would say is that if people are getting activist points from having any identity whatsoever, that’s the real problem. The right way to combat this is by not giving people brownie points on the basis of their identities anymore, not by narrowing the criteria for which identities grant brownie points.

Empirical data on the barriers faced by bisexuals, asexuals, and non-binary trans people

Three of the most contested groups are bisexuals, asexuals, and non-binary people. Although it doesn’t necessarily prove that I’m right, I thought it could be interesting to review some statistics around suicidality for these groups- as a metric of general social stress.

In “Mental health and interpersonal functioning in self-identified asexual men and women”, Yule et al. (2013) look at the mental health of a sample of asexuals. 26% reported thoughts of suicide, compared with 12% of heterosexuals and 24% for aggregate bisexuals/homosexuals. The difference was significant at the 0.001 level.

In “Suicide Attempts Among Gay and Bisexual Men: Lifetime Prevalence and Antecedents” Paul et al. (2002) found that 30% of self-identified bisexual men had planned suicide at some point in their life, compared with 20% of self-identified gay men.

Turning now to bisexual women, Koh & Ross (2006) in “Mental Health Issues A Comparison of Lesbian, Bisexual and Heterosexual Women” found that female bisexuals were more likely to be suicidal, and had poorer mental health, than both straight and lesbian women.

What about the non-binary? In “Non-binary and binary transgender youth: Comparison of mental health, self-harm, suicidality, substance use and victimization experiences” Rimes et al. (2019) found no subcategory of transgender adolescents, binary or non-binary, had a rate of suicidal ideation less than 63.8%

All of this suggests that bisexual, asexual, and non-binary people require extra support. Although it doesn’t prove it, it is certainly consistent with the view that these groups are victimized in various ways by society.

I want to be clear that this isn’t a competition or queer Olympics. We can pretty safely say that, to the degree that mental health and suicidality are measures of quality of life, asexuals and bisexuals do not, on average, have it easy. Arguments over which groups have it worse are pointless.

Social imagination

One of the arguments that is frequently trotted out around this topic is that the interlocutor can’t imagine how these groups are oppressed. Let’s consider as our example asexual people, one of the groupings that most frequently attracts wonderment. People will argue: “In no country in the world is it illegal to be asexual. There are very few slurs directed at asexual people etc. Mental health statistics aside then, how could they be oppressed?”

I think the concept of “oppressed” is part of the problem here. It narrows the social imagination down to a few key examples- slurs, violence, and so on.

Consider though, our society has very nearly fallen apart. Civic institutions that gather people together to support one other have been flayed. We are all, to quote Putnam “bowling alone”. Unions, churches, sports groups- these are all much diminished. In our lonely world, having a partner takes on extra significance- it can feel almost essential. For many asexuals though, finding a partner will be difficult- and for some not desired. The alienation of late capitalism may then fall especially hard on them.

Thus, the collapse of civil society has the potential to be especially damaging to asexual people. We would not normally classify this as oppression, yet it’s a structural issue that differentially harms a particular group. Hence my concern that “oppression” may not be the best conceptual lens for understanding disadvantage here.

Or consider poverty. Bogaert (2004) in “Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample” found that asexual people- both men and women- were substantially more likely to be poor than non-asexual people. Part of what explains this is probably that asexual people, for obvious reasons, are more likely to live in single-person households than others, and people who live in single-person households are more likely to be poor. As so often, poverty is one of the main pathways through which the disadvantaged are disadvantaged- yet another reason never to neglect the centrality of class.

But I just don’t want to talk about it

Another argument I hear from queer minimalists is that they’re sick of talking about these topics. These problems, they argue, are simply taking up too much agenda space. To answer this argument on its own terms, I can absolutely, 100% promise that queer minimalism will lead to more time spent debating asexuality, bisexuality, and non-binary genders. Pushing back at people doesn’t make them go away, nor does it make them less visible. The Streisand effect is in full bloom in all matters of sex, gender & sexuality. If you want to keep talking about asexuals, all the time and forever, a great way to guarantee that is to insist that they’re not queer.

Ultimately I don’t understand why this is being made into such a big deal. Much of what we must do to address all of this is the same stuff we’ve got to do to address other problems anyway. Build civil society. Increase mental health funding. Encourage a general “live and let live” tolerance to other people, their manner of dress, etc. It’s all quite natural.