#inherently woc are taught to not love themselves the way they are

[riarevenge]

Stupid question from a dumb American. In England is it a thing where white girls who have some questionably dark tans use POC emojis? I feel like I’ve seen that a lot recently from English white girls I’ve run across on Insta. (Also this is not me saying white girls in America aren’t ignorant. Just that the two groups seem to do ignorant differently)

yeah, i see it quite a bit. and really, not to rant, but i just think it’s a marker of other behaviours for most of em. people are shocked jesy nelson still has supporters but it doesn’t shock me, she got away with this for YEARS when poc were the only ones talking about it because it sparks a conversation i think many girls, especially british ones, find uncomfortable. the fact is, it feels like the majority of white girls here tan and/or get lip fillers. and that in itself isn’t an issue, but a very large portion of these girls do this to the point of looking almost racially ambiguous. and for a lot, they’re tanning very dark, to the point it’s problematic, and getting lip fillers but it doesn’t hide the fact it’s clearly a white woman. and i think these girls keep quiet during conversations about jesy nelson, or defend her, because it’s easier to do that than have to examine your own behaviours and inspect if you also are a culprit of stn like this. it’s to the point where a lot of woc are being accused of black/brownfishing themselves, like jade thirwall! because people can’t even tell who’s white half the time here. i have olive skin, (my fam calls my natural skin colour light caramel but i hate the food reference😭), but because i live in a fucking cold country, have severe anemia/vitamin deficiencies and an ED, im a lot paler than usual at the minute and yet, for the most part, people can tell i am not white by my features. these girls that overly tan, a lot of them you can tell, but some get so many fillers and work done that you can’t even discern who is under all of that work. and let me be clear, i don’t care at all about people tanning, getting surgery or cosmetic procedures done but i do care when it makes woc have to constantly explain ethnicities and backgrounds bc nobody can tell who’s white anymore! it’s frustrating because they get to look how they want to look without facing what woc have to because of looking that way. nobody is racially abusing lydia smith from edinburgh because no matter how hard she tries, she’s a white woman! she can still make herself look racially ambigous and not receive the abuse woc get. and like under all that tan, you’re still 👱🏼‍♀️ this! i don’t care if you make it the slightly tanner emoji, the older members of my fam use 👩🏽‍🦱 for all the girls in our family bc they deem it the most similar even if certain ones of us don’t use it ourselves, i have poc friends who use a shade lighter or darker depending on hair colour. but when emily from newcastle and lydia from edinburgh are using 👱🏿‍♀️ instead of 👱🏻‍♀️. that’s weird.

[b-bisexual]

Out of all the issues I have concering stag/tomcat/doe, this is what I will say. Especially in regards to the recent motion to make them “for all bi people”.

Loving women as a woman is inherently antithetical to (western) womanhood, where womanhood revolves around and is taught as inherently dependent on men. Straight womanhood is the performance of all aspects of your life to be palatable to men, and all your actions regarding womanhood (eg. relationship dynamics, gender roles, presentation (in terms of how you dress, how you talk, how you move), and your own perceived self-worth in relation to the “ideal desireable” womanhood that you should display) are taught as though it must be for the sake of men, and must be approved by men for you to be a “real woman”.

In this sense, loving women as a woman, breaks this taught connection that “good womanhood” = “mens approval”, and can complicate the relationship with womanhood because suddenly all these dynamics that have been taught as an inherent part of womanhood just aren’t there, especially in the case of lesbians and bi women who are fully divorced from men.

I don’t like putting too much stock in an inherent divide between the experiences of all lesbians and all bi women, because that’s not how it works. But, I do think that some bi women, especially bi women who spend a lot of time around straight men but also men in general, can have a different kind of conflict in relation to womanhood that lesbians may not experience, because of our desire for authentic reciprocation from men. However, our love for women still confounds the “ideal desirable” version of womanhood that men look for, so we’re left struggling between the thought that has been drilled into us forever that “a good woman = men approving” and our desire to love women (which is a struggle that lesbians also face, however some bi women may authentically want that reciprocated approval from men which just creates a different nuance on the issue).

The problem is that men (and nbs with no connection to womanhood) will never experience this particular issue because manhood and what it means (in a western context) to be a “good man” in society doesn’t revolve around the approval and sole dedication to women, in the sense that your worth as a human and a man isn’t stripped from you if a woman disapproves of you (No, in that case she’s a bitch, or a whore, or a slut, and the man isn’t at fault, as far as society is concerned), which is why it doesn’t work to take terms that were made in the context of a bi women’s relation to womanhood and declare that anyone regardless of gender can use them, even people who don’t have a connection to womanhood.

And it’s extremely hypocritical and horrible to me, to make a big deal out of “connecting the community” and “making terms for all bi people regardless of gender” yet not acknowledging and caring, that stag/tomcat/doe IS inherently exclusionary of bi women of color. They have been saying this. It’s not a rumored thing that’s been mentioned in passing. It’s an explicit thing that a lot of anti black racism and anti black propaganda revolve around comparing poc (especially woc) to animals. It’s not cute, it’s disrespectful to the women who built this community and it’s so incredibly flippant and imo inexcusable to say “well they don’t have to identify with them!” I thought the point was to make bi terms accessible to all bi people?

Seriously, regardless of your opinion on the usage of butch and femme (which the need for an alternative for bi women is where these terms came from in the first place), there are better alternatives. Damme and Tomme are ones that come to mind but there are many proposed alternatives. There are experiences and a need for a name to those experiences, that only bi women face. A fundamental misunderstanding of what the terms mean and why they were created, doesn’t mean that they suddenly apply to everyone. I do think that bi men and nbs who aren’t connected to womanhood deserve their own terms, but taking the culture that bi women (and applicable nbs) have made for themselves in an attempt to name their very unique experiences with womanhood (especially when, at the current moment, the most popular terms are inaccessible to bi woc) isn’t the way to go.