Athena is a bi gay that protects mspec lesbians from exclusionists. pic.twitter.com/xb4NhjpPyB

— radically inclusive lesbian positivity✨ (@incluslesbians) April 10, 2021

Exclusionary definitions with hard boundaries (for others) require essentialist definitions of folk to function at all. In that way, sexualities that focus on preserving “purity” end up mirroring oppressive but fragile straightness; they can invert hierarchies but not dismantle them.

It is not enough to memorize that homophobes are wrong or transphobes are wrong. You also need to reject the underlying logic and practices that allow them to exist so that you do not create them in miniature.

From experience, there end up being about five to 10 “Mad Lib”-style exclusionary arguments that get made for every issue of this sort, and at this point it’s probably worth taking the time to just list them all so they’re easier to reference when seen in the wild

• “Words have meanings”; relatedly, “attack helicopter” variations;
• “gatekeeping is good” especially with comparison to sexual predators;
• “they’re destroying our community” (by existing in it);
• “people have made them confused”; but also “they’re going to confuse other people” sometimes with a threat of danger attached to legitimate members of the category;
• stolen valor (e.g. “they’re not X enough to count as X”);

If we can think of more or they’re suggested later, we’ll add them in, too.

So, here’s a good example:

Alt text (and word length) will confirm the original for you, but is it…?

1. [Lesbophobia], [lesbian], [exclusionary], [lesbian], [lesbian label], [bisexuals], [lesbian], [attraction to men]
2. [Misogyny], [woman], [transphobic], [woman], [the word female], [transes], [woman], [penis havers]
3. [Anti-Christian bigotry], [marriage], [homophobes], [marriages], [weddings], [gays], [marriage], [same-sex relationships]

None of this is to say that you can’t exclude people from spaces or conversations when it’s appropriate. “Good-faith self-identification” as the only workable guideline for who people are doesn’t mean that everyone gets to be everywhere or take on any identity. The “Pretendian” phenomena where someone is “falsely claiming Indigenous ancestry for personal and exploitative gain” is applicable here, too. “Good-faith” is a crucial part of that whole “good-faith self-identification” thing. Statuses like race and ethnicity are different than gender and sexuality given that it seems pretty tough to inherit a gender or attraction, but, for the latter, maybe it turns out that someone learns more and learns that a label they found for themselves doesn’t involve them finding other people sharing their same experiences as much as they thought. In that case, maybe another label or more specific one is necessary. In that case, seeing what didn’t fit was actually useful, too.

That’s almost getting away from the more pressing issue of exclusionary definitions in that someone can be the exact dead center of your definition of some thing and still be an abuser. That sort of person can still be a predator. In a more structured setting, the platonic ideal of your identity can be disruptive and talk over people at your meetings, or keep returning to settled issues to derail matters. Regardless of identity, the skill of, “If you want to do that, that’s OK. But the thing we want to do is this, and that’s what we’re putting our work into right now,” is a useful one. Regardless of identity, pushing abusers out is necessary for safety.

There is not an ontologically good or ontologically evil category of person who is not capable of those counterproductive or harmful things. You cannot screen them out and keep people safe with a questionnaire or purity test, and words did not speak us into existence; we made them up to serve our needs. Our lives are too rich and complicated for mere words to bound us, and when they stop being useful to us, we must set them aside in favor of life and people.

That is, words do not have meanings; life has meaning. And we should treat one another accordingly.