friendlyfreakazoid

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diana ross photographed by terry o’neill for daily express magazine, april 16, 1973

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Stevie Nicks, 1977

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A lot of men write hate comments on women’s posts because it’s the only way they’ll get any female interaction. Stop entertaining them.

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Cinnamon rolls (x)

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Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake

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Ngl it’s kinda crazy to me that the general public is only just now realizing that Ethel Cain is racist. Like how did the “edgy southern/Appalachian Americana preacher’s daughter” aesthetic not tip anyone off? That’s literally just a racism aesthetic. Maybe I’m more perceptive than the average Joe but I knew from the very first time I saw this mf’s photoshoots that something was off there lol

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"Ain't I a Woman?," April 1971

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hold on i have a take that’s going to upset people

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Peach Cobbler Cinnamon Rolls

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The small kitchen is screened from view by a partial wall but remains connected with the dining and living areas. The table can function as a countertop extension for the kitchen or as an eating area.

The Not So Big House - A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, 1998

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we entering yet another courtneykilledkurtnaissance

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spitballing here but i see a fair amount of tumblr trans masc kids fixated on the idea of being a pretty boy (instead of a pretty girl). this is interesting to me because i think it often shows the socialized want of females to be desired - “what girls learn is not desire for the other but the desire to be desired” as naomi wolf put it in the beauty myth- clashing with the subconscious knowledge that being desired as a girl usually means objectification and degradation. being a pretty boy is the perfect mix- you still fulfill that socialized yearning to be beautiful and desired while avoiding the misogyny that would be leveled your way if you were a pretty girl instead of a Pretty Boy

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I can’t believe that after lesbians defended Jojo Siwa by saying she was a young lesbian who was just figuring things out and needed to be left alone, she turns around and thanks us by telling the world she was “pressured” into coming out as lesbian, and “fuck the L”. Homophobes are having a field day with this. They’re so excited to be able to claim that homosexuals groom poor innocent straight women into calling themselves lesbians. They’re so excited to be able to claim that lesbians just need to find the right man. In a time where lesbians are already experiencing pushback against our boundaries and increased hatred, this is only further harming us when we’re most vulnerable.

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Amphicar modèle 770 Beach Sand White de 1964, moteur Triumph Herald 70ci

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I can’t really speak on the femme side of things because I’ve never actually known anyone who specifically identified as a femme lesbian, but I refer to myself as a “butch lesbian” online because I just sort of want people who interact with me to have a basic idea of who I am, but in real life I don’t really go out of my way to specifically call myself “butch” mostly because other people tend to just assume that based on my appearance without me telling them anything.

I feel like the way a lot of people recently have been acting towards the terms “butch” and “femme” is similar to the whole “gender identity” thing. It’s the idea that you need to essentially “curate” your identity to fit a certain aesthetic, rather than just exist as you are. I had always been very tomboyish growing up and as an adult that didn’t change. I have never actively tried to change myself to fit under the label of butch, I have always just existed as I am most comfortable. As I said before, in real life I don’t often refer to myself as butch, other people just tend to view me that way just as they used to view me as a “tomboy” when I was a child.

I will say that I have had some negative experiences from women I’ve dated who made assumptions about me based on my butch appearance, including multiple women expecting me to be very dominant in bed without discussing this beforehand and getting angry at me when I wasn’t comfortable doing the things they expected. I have also had experiences of women who I wasn’t dating be overtly sexual with me to the point of arguably sexually harassing me because they assumed based on my butch appearance that I would enjoy it.

There’s also the phenomenon of women who basically just want to be transmasc but have vaguely enough self awareness to know that being transmasc is cringy as hell so they just call themselves “butch” instead, but they are still very clearly acting like transmascs. Like they’ll go on testosterone and get top surgery and tell people to call them he/him or they/them, all the while insisting that they are butch lesbians because they think that saves them from being viewed as cringy. It does not. Plus there’s the phenomenon of TIMs who call themselves butch lesbians, which is just so utterly ridiculous I don’t really have any commentary on that. Because that’s just like. A normal ass man. Not even trying at all. And the trans community eats it up for some reason lmfao.

With this all said, I do still like the term. It is helpful to me to have a term that describes the specific experiences I have based on my appearance. As a woman with a buzzcut, very very hairy legs and armpits, no makeup, and who tends to wear clothing purchased in the men’s department, everyone who looks at me can tell that I am a lesbian. This has had a tremendous effect on my life. I have lived for the past 5 years in a rural, conservative state, and because of my appearance I have been physically assaulted by men, had bottles thrown at me from cars, had slurs shouted at me, been trailed my police cars for absolutely no reason at all multiple times, and had the cops called on me multiple times while just walking around my own neighborhood. All of this is directly tied to my appearance. I have known many other lesbians and bisexual women whose appearances do not immediately give away their sexualities, and they have never had any of these experiences from strangers. All of this would still affect me regardless of whether or not I personally “identify” as butch, so obviously it’s not the identity itself that causes these things, but I find the term helpful when discussing my experiences online with people who wouldn’t know what I look like.

The other reason I still like the term is because a lot of my personal heroes used it. As a kid I knew other little girls who where called tomboys, but as I got older and started nearing my teens I found that most of these other girls grew out of their tomboy phase, and I was expected to as well. It was very isolating as a kid to be the odd one out who was still acting tomboyish after reaching the age where it’s no longer cute. Every single adult in my life was constantly telling me that I’d grow out of this phase any day now and soon I’d love makeup and dresses like all the normal girls do, and it honestly terrified me. The way adults acted like it was inevitable that I’d change into a “normal” girl made me scared that I was going to completely loose who I was and become someone totally different. I didn’t want to become someone different, I wanted to stay myself. At around the age of 11 I stumbled upon Alison Bechdel’s personal blog, where she just spoke about her day to day life as a butch lesbian in her 50s, and this was completely mind blowing to me. It was proof that I could continue to exist as myself. I spent a lot of time as a pre-teen and teenager learning about and from older butch women, and it was from them that I learned that there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman. The older 50+ year old butch lesbians who I learned from, who were part of the lesbian community long before the whole “gender identity” thing, weren’t trying to act like men, or act overly masculine, they recognized themselves as their own thing. So for that reason I don’t think I could bring myself to abandon the term “butch lesbian”, even if nowadays it’s starting to gain a negative reputation.

TL;DR, I like the term butch because it’s a useful when speaking about my specific experiences as someone who is visibly a lesbian, and because many of the lesbians I learned from identified themselves with it, but I do feel like as of late people are using it more as a “gender identity” rather than simply as a descriptive word, and this is causing people to try to force themselves into rigid boxes based on gender stereotypes just like they do with their trans identities.

Also sorry for rambling like this on your post lol. If this sounds like the ravings of a crazy person it’s because it’s very late at night and I’ve been sick this week. So I do apologize for that lmao

Once again begging the lesbian community to have critical discussions on the way butch and femme have become The Categories for lesbians, and have literally just become gender man and woman But For Lesbians TM.

I’ve tried having this discussion in libfem spaces, but I’m shut down as soon as I bring up any criticism of gender, and rarely get any engagement in the first place.

Lesbians of radblr, please please let’s have discussions about this! I feel like I can’t talk about this with anyone and none of my friends irl are lesbians.

My asks and DMs are waiting, not to sound desperate but I do think this is an important discussion to be having.