my advice to brown and black girls and women today: don’t trust anyone who tells you to “decolonize your desires” when what they actually mean is “if you don’t have sex with people like me, specifically, you’re evil” !!!
reading some of the latest discourse on “desirability politics” genuinely makes me see red. when has one (1) single marginalized group of people ever benefited from becoming an object of sexual desire? when has that (hyper)sexualization ever not come hand-in-hand with dehumanization? ask any woman of color: never.
as people catch on to the fact that “desirability politics” is being criticized by feminists, they’ve jumped to say we’re misrepresenting their arguments. their rebuttal has been, “no one’s telling anyone they have to fuck x, y, or z! we’re just asking that you acknowledge how society has shaped your ideas of beauty!”
and here’s the thing: that is a conversation feminists have been having for ages. beauty ideals have always worked against women’s liberation: be it “ugly” women being ignored or scorned by men in positions of power (teachers, bosses, judges, doctors), women and girls having a high prevalence of eating disorders, makeup company ceos and plastic surgeons (mostly men) earning a living off women’s insecurities, single “unmarriable” women living in poverty because they lack access to capital, etc.
when women’s worth is dependent on their physical appearance, “undesirable” women are inevitably cast aside. but here’s the catch: “desirable” women are not exempt from misogyny! they’re exploited by it! when feminists critique beauty ideals, we don’t want these ideals to be expanded to include “ugly” women, we want women’s worth to be detached from their romantic/sexual desirability.
the issue with “desirability politics” as popularized is that it often neglects to humanize the “undesirable” and instead asks that they be considered potential sexual/romantic partners. and often, though rarely explicitly, this does translate to telling people they should fuck x, y, or z. comparing a woman to a white supremacist who wants to “preserve the white race” just because she doesn’t want to have sex with someone absolutely counts as pressuring her to have sex. in a world that demands women be sexually available, telling her she has “unpacking to do” absolutely counts as pressuring her to have sex.
and ultimately, this rhetoric doesn’t even benefit the “undesirable” because they become sexualized objects instead of humans who should be able to live a good life independently of who includes them in their dating pool.
call me a terf, call me a sex-hating feminist, call me a boring lesbian, I don’t care. if you’re a young girl, all I ask is that you consider my words next time you feel bad about not being attracted to someone.
