#comphet critical

[michellezagenda]

if you have a male exception you are not and will never be a lesbian

[anticomphet]

i think part of why so many women falsely call themselves lesbians is that lots of them believe that being a lesbian is an ENTIRELY different experience than being a bi woman with a strong female preference. that there’s NO overlap between the experiences. that being bi entails a significant amount attraction to men and minimal feelings of attraction are irrelevant. that you’re either fully willing to date/fuck men or you’re not at all attracted to them.

the truth is, there will be overlap between a bi woman with a 99% female preference and a lesbian. if you’re barely attracted to men, you will feel like you need to force yourself to feel more attraction than you do.

being a lesbian doesn’t mean being attracted to men but not wanting to date/fuck them. being a lesbian doesn’t mean having celebrity crushes on men. it means having no attraction to men.

[bi-sapphics]

whats the difference between lesbian repulsion for men, and febfem repulsion for men?

ive been so confused about whether im a lesbian or febfem. with either one i wouldn't engage with men, but if im febfem, and wouldnt be romantic or intimate with a man ever, how do i know im attracted to them?

okay, listen. i'm gonna assume you're using "febfem" in good faith like i once did, but unless you actually are a radfem on my blog for some weird reason then please don't. i literally use the term "bi sapphics" instead to emphasize wlw attraction and i'm not sure how you missed such an obvious replacement for a problematic term if you're asking me somewhat-advanced questions like this. i'm not mad, just a little shocked you're talking positively about febfems in my inbox and i wanna address that first.

but to answer your question, at the end of the day the most general answer is you're the one who indicates that. if you think comphet is valid, you might wanna look into the lesbian masterdoc - you can probably just google it or search for it on twitter or tumblr. i have some beef with it personally and am very critical of it because it definitely contributes to bi erasure and was written without the consolation of bi women so it kinda tends to list very common bimisogynistic experiences as lesbian experiences, buuuuut i think it does actually provide some genuine and helpful relief in the longrun. i think comphet is conditionally real, all in separate lesbian contexts, wlw contexts, and women in general contexts because that's just how the patriarchy functions. maybe see which one is affecting you the most and figure out if that helps.

but like i said before all that, i really can't tell you because i don't live your experiences. what i will say is that i used to identify as a lesbian for a year because i went through something very similar, but then i realized my attraction to men just wasn't comphet. it might be the same for you, it might be different. maybe you'll go with bi sapphic and later realize it actually was comphet instead. nothing you do from here will be morally wrong and you shouldn't let anyone, especially radfems & exclus, tell you otherwise, because they will. even then, you could be super perfectly confident and still end up being wrong in the future. really only you can figure this out, with help of course, but i can't give you a definitive answer. hopefully my suggestion will get you somewhere.

if other lesbians and bi women want to add on, please feel free!! all opinions on the "am i a lesbian?" masterdoc are welcome.

[redditreceipts]

that's what transbians sound like

[myimaginationplain]

so many online conversations about "comphet" feel like they begin with the assumption that the subject is in fact a monosexual gay person who's tricked themselves into believing they're attracted to the opposite sex, & then work backwards in order to justify that preconception.

the (in)famous "lesbian masterdoc" was a prime example of this. the document reads as if it was written with the assumption that anyone & everyone who read it would be a lesbian, so every single train of thought leads to the only conclusion the author ever intended to make—the reader is a lesbian. if you're attracted to feminine men you're a lesbian who's seeking womanhood in male partners, if you're attracted to masculine men you're a lesbian who's overcompensating. if you've never consciously felt attracted to anyone before, don't worry, that somehow makes you a lesbian too.

but that attitude didn't begin & end with the lesbian masterdoc; I still see it all the time in sapphic spaces, constantly, often in reference to fiction but all too often in reference to real people too. of course you'll never see any evidence of other sexualities being possible (namely bisexuality, but asexuality as well) if you're only willing to entertain the notion of lesbianism. of course every crush a sapphic woman has on a guy will look like a lie to you if you begin with the assumption that it's a lie.

[bloomingjellies]

Throwing myself into the sun at all the people in the community perpetuating comphet with Petra and Crow this season I'm so tired already

[princessefemmelesbian]

Op is a terf.

[jasontoddssuper]

I love the bi Dick Grayson headcanon but saying he 'has a thing for redheads' rubs me the wrong way cause like.I get that people who say this are trying to use canon to back it up-Which i normally highly encourage when it comes to diversifying characters!!!-and including Babs since she's one of his love interest's but she shouldn't be...?

She was originally created to be a love interest for Dick's dad and has always had an age difference with him while being friends with him since he was Robin(iirc)and then there's the ableism and misogynoir in addition to it.Babs has had her disability erased again and again to keep her as Batgirl for the sake of Dick///babs and Kory gets put down again and again to prop her up-By both canon AND the fandom,mind you!!

I am 100% down for him being bi but please don't do it like this💀Let's just erase Dick///babs entierly,please

[lesjasmine]

You could stay hurt that you spent so much time looking up to fauxbian larpers, or you could move on with your life and try to rebuild everything you tore down by being a bootlicker.

[warningsine]

I just feel there's more room for nuance. Like, not every queer person feels like they arrive into existence with an attraction to, like, a specific kind of person and that's okay too.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

I just thought of something. I was thinking, how could a “means to an end” person like Pggy object to the possibility of using Steve’s blood in Big Pharma? Yes, as the audience we know that the project wasn’t going to be entirely altruistic, rather a way for Howard to fatten his bank account and heighten his influence on the government, but we can say the same thing about another project she and Howard participated in together, you guessed it, Operation Paperclip. Why does she trust the government to employ Nazi intelligent officers but not trust them to do good with Steve’s blood? Well, because she’s a patronizing person who has deluded herself into believing that the man she talked to four times was the love of her life and thinks only she deserves to have this last remnant of him. Letting Howard have the blood would mean she had to share him! As “Cap’s Best Girl” (her entire identity in AC season one) she couldn’t have given up such a valuable possession, because then what else would she use as proof of their grand love affair; the nonexistent love letters? The fact that they don’t have a single photo of each other that wasn’t cut out from a newspaper or stolen from a case file? The fact that he only until asked her out when he knew he wasn’t gonna make it? How he didn’t once say “I love you” even though the Valkyrie scene was the perfect opportunity to do so? Yeah, bye Felicia. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying she should’ve let the government have the blood. I just mean to say that she’s not as different as she thinks from the profit-centered US government she tries to “protect” Steve from because for years she WAS the government. She upheld their every value, didn’t bother to quash OP, oversaw the immortalization of Zola (until TWS writers decided to gloss over this fact and dump all that load on the lap of a black man). Pggy was the least deserving person to receive Steve’s blood and decide what to do with it. I admit the decision to dunk it into the sea was the best possible choice to preserve Steve’s legacy, but she shouldn’t have been the one to make that call.

The people writing/playing her think she is principled and moral. 

The fact that she’s in AOS saying she did “consider” making deals with Nazis because their work is “valuable”, that she has worked with Zola in three separate universes now. Also the fact that she has way, way more in common with Howard Stark than she ever had with Steve (even when she’s stolen all Steve’s shit in WhatIf, the fact that she immediately goes after the Tesseract and then delivers it to the SSR? That’s Howard Stark behaviour! Steve would’ve left it in the ocean!) 

None of that hypocrisy registers with them. 

HA & PC have the image of her as decorous and moral and loyal, so even though her hanging onto Steve’s blood is transparently about jealousy and dog-in-a-manger possessiveness, she thinks it’s because she objects to people making money off Steve. 

(But... she did. She dined out off being ‘Cap’s Girl’ for the rest of her life. She even did interviews for the Smithsonian about it when she was married to someone else, FFS! 

But nothing is ever bad if Pggy does it, is it? 

Only if other people do it instead of her.) 

What also just occurred to me is that Bucky’s Family, who knew Steve from a child, would still have been around at this time in AC. If anyone could be deemed Steve’s next of kin, and to have the (legal and moral) right to decide what happens with Steve’s remains, it should be them! 

But that would unmask the lie of Pggy being the only important person in Steve’s life wouldn’t it? Because Bucky and his mother never existed! 

[fuck-comphet]

Fun comphet memory of the day

One time I was visiting out of town friends with my at the time boyfriend (now ex obvi lol) and one of his friends (I had never met her before) was like…. really physically affectionate with him, like basically cuddling on the couch, holding onto his arm, etc etc etc but it was very obviously her love language with the way she was interacting with all of her other close friends

At the time I still felt really jealous but like a weird jealous and I could never quite put my finger on it? Because I legitimately was not bothered or threatened by this girl in my relationship? Her boyfriend was there too BUT I knew that she identified as bi and frequently had threesomes

Anyway it occurred to me just now that I was not threatened or possessive of my ex (I actually didn’t care at all about him getting cuddly with someone else), I was jealous of my ex because he was getting attention from her and not me 😬 I was like why does he get all the attention from this pretty girl?? She could be cuddling and hugging me like that but she’s not?? Like I wanted to trade places with him so badly 😩😩

[bi-sapphics]

I see and hear you. As a lesbian how do I support bi people better?

thank you, i really appreciate your solidarity. ♡

my best advice would be to just hold biphobia accountable when you see it. considering material reality, it might mean more if you (general lesbian population) do it than me (general bi population). obviously you're here now listening to me but oftentimes we just get dismissed as whining about nothing and/or being lesbophobic. but lesbians listen to other lesbians. for example, i personally am critical of the lesbian masterdoc and the concept of comphet (not against it, i do think it's a real thing, just a little wary) but it ultimately took tribades, another lesbian, to voice agreement in order for the argument to be listened to. that isn't to say it drastically changed anyone's mind, but rather that the post was actually read and at least considered, even if the suggestions were rejected. it's important that lesbians play a part here because it's all turned into this whole ridiculous unrealistic thing where it's almost like only lesbians can hold other lesbians accountable without coming across as bigoted.

with that in mind, please note that i'm not asking you to treat every single little thing like it's biphobia. dissent is not inherently biphobia just because you're not bisexual. if you think critically and can provide reasons and evidence then you shouldn't be dismissed as wrong, although i would say the bi community should be the primary speakers on bi issues so that we don't get spoken over. i trust you to just use common sense. does it sound necessary to defend actions of bi sapphics here, or am i just being performative by assuming this is what i need to do? is this malicious slander, or is it a genuine critique? are these ridiculously silly and false accusations, or is there really a problem of their own fault that needs to be addressed? things like that. i hate radical outlooks that operate on black-and-white solutions. everything is a grey area and is almost always situational.

my other advice would be to follow and listen to blogs similar to mine that do my job but better. non-bi-narism, nb-n-bi, bakerybutch, nebula*****try (racial slur & i'm white), jocularly-ambidextrous, pippii-punkstockings, femmebis, marcebubble, justsayouhatebisexualwomen, femmebisexuelle, firstgrave, boytoykisser, yrbutchgf, butch-bakugo, bifey, and of course many more that i'll probably continue to add onto in the future if i make this a reference post. and obviously i'm not telling you to follow all of them, those are just some of my favorite suggestions thus far. i'd also suggest mediumkravitz and pinkvampyr, although they have me blocked because i was briefly stupid a while back and i couldn't get ahold of them without being annoying. :,)

that's it, i hope it's simple enough lmao. i demand a ton of shit from non-bisexuals all the time generally but i don't want to put lots of pressure on individuals directly, especially if they're genuine and also because i've been led to believe that support is usually conditional. (҂-̀_-́) but yeah, i hope this guide is good enough!!

[redditreceipts]

i wonder

[sovereignrat]

First Book Of The School For Good And Evil Series Spoilers

I need to calm my nerves.

Right. I just finished reading the first book and all I have to say is what the ever living fuck?

I cannot tell you how upset this book made me, I almost cried in some parts I was so frustrated.

I'm just so confused, why the hell would you queer-code Agatha so much to the point where, I was convinced that she was a canon lesbian, but then make a fall in love with a prince. Not only just a prince, but a sexist and misogynistic prince. A prince that was literally bullying her for the entire book up until the point where she miraculously finds her self-confidence and starts to change appearance to a more acceptable and palatable way.

I am flabbergasted, I am shocked and I threw this book as hard as I could across the room because of how pissed I was.

I cannot tell you how pissed off certain parts made me.

What makes me even more annoyed is that I know that Agatha and Sophie are for some god awful plot reason made out to be sisters.

What the fuck?! WHY? Why? Why would you do that? Obviously it's probably for the overarching story but I don't give a fuck.

Why would you do that? this character is so obviously queer coded like I can't even lie, I can directly quote from the book supporting this:

"Here in this safe, secluded world, the two of them would make their own paradise"

"Agatha gagged. Who could ever love boys?"

"She grabbed her shorn hair and flaccid robes. 'I'm- I'm-'

'Still a princess.'

Sophie looked at her. 'And the only we'll get home,' said Agatha, forcing a small smile. 'So we have to make this kiss happen.'

'We?' said Sophie.

'We," rasped Agatha.

Sophie hugged her tight

'We're going home, Aggie' "

"Agatha met Sophie's lucid, beautiful eyes."

" Agatha scowled. 'That's not my fault.' 'I think it's because deep down you don't want me to find love, Agatha,' Sophie said, voice calm.

'What? Of cour-'

'I think you want to keep me for yourself '

Agatha's whole body went rigid."

"She broke into a run and charged towards torture and death, wishing that someday she and Sophie would find each other in a different world, a world without princess, a world without pain......."

It doesn't even stop there.

There's a whole part where Sophie dances with her, in her evil form (this is really important and I'll tell you why later), to fucking love music.

Don't even get me started on Sophie sacrificing her life for Agatha and then Agatha bring her back to life with a true loves kiss, she revives her with a true loves kiss?????? EXPLAIN.

Now. Rage aside, let me get onto the more put together part of this post.

I want to pay attention to the whole running thing the book has that evil and the school for evil students have with how "shameful" and "disgusting" and "unnatural" it is when they love someone.

Do you know what that sounds like to me? It very much sounds like the type of things said and thought about queer people throughout history.

A lot of the evil students have loved and they were told it's shameful and wrong.

Not to mention multiple characters drawing the conclusion different=evil.

(This could also be seen in multiple different ways and I really wanna get into that at some point in time but this is not what this post is about and I've already typed a lot.)

So let me go back to Sophie being her in her 'true evil form' when she dances with Agatha.

This is important as it can so easily represent queerness. Going back to the fact that in this book, looking 'ugly' and 'disgusting' is paired with being evil, it kind of feels strange that Sophie and Agatha dancing together in a ballroom-type setting, with romantic music in the background, and Sophie leading the dance, filling in the 'male' role, while looking ugly and 'evil' . Sophie even initiates the dance, sinking to one knee and holding out her hand for Agatha to take, like what the princes do.

I'm just really frustrated that the sisters storyline and the true love bullshit between Agatha and Tedros is the direction this series is taking.

That Agatha is loosing her ability to call out the flawed way the whole system works and eventually even just ignores the blatant sexism and misogynistic views ingrained into everyone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And before anyone crucifies me and calls me a proshipper, I do not support incest and I don't ship Agatha and Sophie anymore because they are sisters. Even if it was a bullshit, unnecessary plot point pulled out of Chainani's creative asshole near the end of the series because god, what will we ever do if queer people, sapphics specifically, get actual good representation for once????!!!! I'm just confused why you go through all the trouble and effort of writing their relationship and other queer coded relationships in the series like that if you're just going to make them straight anyway?

What's the point.

And don't even get me started on the movie, that whole thing was just one big backhand to the face. The fact that they made the actors for Sophie and Agatha kiss fully on the lips in a dramatic climatic moment, with music and everything?

Also the casual fucking antisemitism in Sophie's transformation?

[cuterocks]

american ppl reviewing lgbt content made outside of the usa: well this doesn’t make a lick of sense, there is no american lgbt woke terminology and no content about exclusively american lgbt experiences. since my usa point of view is absolute and there cannot possibly be any other kind of life or opinion in the world, this work is problematic af and i’m gonna clog the tumblr tag for this media with long ass rants, because everything in the world must cater to me and my us-centric mentality, and if you don’t agree you’re racist and homphobic uwu