acey observations

Why prefer GRSM to MOGAI

[ GRSM = Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities

MOGAI = Marginalized Orientations, Gender identities, And Intersex ]

“the term mogai has good intentions but the big problem with a broad umbrella term like that is that it has no gate to keep the assholes out.”    Source 1

An “asshole” doesn’t always show themselves and all their inborn orientations before it’s too late. But a discourse calling people assholes due to their tendencies is harmful and also a big problem with broad gatekeeping statements like the one above.

In some people, tendency does not luckily lead to action. I hate to admit this but there are rapists and child sexual abusers included even in the conventional LGBTQ community, and probably among asexuals spectrum and aromantic spectrum people as well.

A person doesn’t become an asshole before that assholeness, i.e. actions that shouldn’t be done, manifests itself in their life.

Sexual and physical acts are and should be based on mutual consent and this is something that non-asshole people should know all too well and obey.

By the way, there’s a similar stigma society applies to perceived “predatory” homosexuals/homoromantics, trans* people, and cis-males in general.

I don’t have any preference on the words “marginalized” vs. “minority”. Rapists and pedophiles are as much minority as they are marginalized. But I know that “Marginalized Orientations, Gender identities, And Intersex“ does erase people who not yet have reached their peak of visibility work or got a fair share of public awareness. Namely, the romantic minorities.

It does NOT suffice to mention “Orientations” even at the start without explaining that two major groups are being meant by it, the sexual spectrum and the romantic spectrum. The MOGAI acronym seems to equate sexual minority orientations with the “matching” romantic minority orientations. Regardless of what some people say, those two have surprisingly little correlation and will impact very differently on the individual’s lives. (At the time of writing, we yet have to wait for some data from the 2014 AVEN survey.)

Many cross-orientation persons such as allosexual aromantics, as well as asexual aromantics have trouble identifying themselves or fitting in, as long as society and lousy acronyms erase or at least equate those spectrums.

“- - it’s still an extremely problematic label because it allows “sexual minorities” which some people interpret as pedophiles and non-intersex cishet kinksters, which is also pretty horrible.“   Source 2

I view MOGAI as a lot more problematic than GRSM but less problematic than LGBTQ. It all comes down to accurate usage coupled with reading skills.

No heterosexual-romantic rapist ever showed up to claim that rapists deserved inclusion in MOGAI or GRSM, or LGBTQ, for that matter.

We have to make the definitions from inside our own GRSM community. We cannot just blindly take all criticism and suggestions that allosexual and alloromantic people, mostly making up those “some people”, are throwing at us.

“grsm had good intentions too but that was immediately jumped on by kinky heteros and awful people like pedophiles as a term that either included them under the queer umbrella or ‘legitimised’ their extremely dangerous paraphilia as merely a sexual/relationship orientation that required a little more acceptance.”

Pedophilia, as it seems to me, indeed isn’t an independent sexual or romantic orientation. It more resembles additional attributes such as sapiosexual/romantic, akoi- etc. I don’t think pedophiles should be included under the queer umbrella, or in MOGAI, or in GRSM. Even asexuality isn’t always included there because of recent history of being similarly labeled as a mental disorder.

Again, orientation or attraction does not equal action.

Many critics are apparently mistaking pedophilia to always mean child sexual abuse (which obviously is not the case but just the criminal part that gets the media coverage). What’s absurd is that the same critics don’t see heterosexuals as probable rapists by the same definition. As heterosexuality is not defined as a psychiatric disorder, whereas pedophilia is (and perhaps could remain), this whole debate comes down to neuronormativistic and heteronormative bias.

A few decent persons known to me have pedophilic tendencies. I have no trouble hearing this because I also am pretty sure they are, as said, decent people who will go by consent in their interpersonal lives, also known as virtuous pedophiles (a bit of a misnomer, since not abusing other people is not only virtuous but a basic part of being a human).

Link 1

Link 2

This particular orientation is so very important to heteronormative society to have its own word. Even then, it does not differ notably from any other sexual-romantic-aesthetic orientation or attribute. It sure does take a lot of discipline to not go by one’s

“extremely dangerous paraphilia”.  Source 1

But isn’t any kind of strong sexual orientation, together with high sex drive, a dormant threat to all surrounding people?

But hey wait a sec… the same kind of discipline is what society demands from all “predatory” heterosexual cis-males!

“the problem with lgbtiq is that it’s a gate keeping term and not every sexual or relationship minority earns a representative letter in the acronym. the good point about lgbtiq is, on the other hand, that it’s a gate keeping term that’s limited and focused and designed to keep out the assholes and creepers, even though it’s at the expense of people who could do with a bit more representation.”   Source 1

Exactly. Not thought-through acronyms tend to leave their mark on and exclude people, in this case, marginalized romantic minorities.

Please do refer to my ramblings above. We shouldn’t let MOGAI become such a gatekeeping term.