#it feels like most the irl women around me are femme4femme

[handsomegentlebutch]

Extremely excited for 2024 bc I'll be visiting some friends in the UK over the summer :3

[violexides]

i don’t know how to phrase my point admittedly without getting heated or convoluted BUT. i think for lesbians especially it is critically important that you engage with lesbian spaces off of the internet and have your queer experience as offline as possible. because while there are many lesbians online that have helped me redefine my attraction in a more affirming and healthy way, i feel as if online lesbian communities are sometimes... not very welcoming of lesbians, in a backwards way. as a person who rarely, if ever, experiences attraction to guys, i still feel deeply unsafe in spaces where lesbianism is defined BY the lack of attraction to men, as its sole facet. obviously that’s important for a lot of lesbians experiences-- not being attracted to boys growing up, fun fact, played a major role in the homophobia i faced and trauma i endured! but i think this being the fixation point, rather than just a part of the story, cycles back on itself and makes lesbian spaces feel very unsafe. 

which is why like, interacting with queer people IRL is very helpful! because being around my queer friends is like... i’m a lesbian, but i can still talk to them about wanting a dick without them pushing me on what that means for my sexuality. i can make side comments about finding some men attractive without people immediately assigning the label of bisexual to me (which is a fine label i’ve gone by at certain periods of my life, but just isn’t very expressive of my experience). and i interact with a lot of sapphics who love men and women and a lot of bisexuals who mostly date men but find a lot of girls hot, and lesbians who are exclusively attracted to women and some lesbians who have some interest in men. and i think the spectrum of experience is so much broader when you actually can engage with real-life people on this because it’s a lot more validating? i don’t know, that might just be a me thing, but i don’t particularly find many internet spaces great for talking about how my mom wants me to still marry a guy and my brother wants me to stay away from men entirely. because that’s just my experience and i think that’d get distorted here.

i don’t know. i get it, i think, because there’s a part of me that still gets reactionary to the fact that like... my experience is not being attracted to men, most of the time, and i want a space to discuss that and how that’s affected me. but that’s... there’s a lot more space for that in the world than you think. there’s a lot more space for mspec lesbians in real life than you think. both groups have existed in history for years. and i think what was healthiest for me is like... stop trying to build my community here. start looking for ways i can find my community off the internet, because that’s safer.

i don’t really know how to articulate all this so i’m sort of rambling. but anyway that’s why i get angry when i see people who are anti-mspec lesbians, or anti-lesbians who identify as men. because when you look at lesbian history, and look at who we are in the world, there’s such a wide spectrum of what lesbianism looks like. and that’s beautiful. dykes that are men, femmes that are attracted to women but are married to men, dyke4femme and femme4femme and dyke4dyke and bisexual4lesbian. queer4queer

maybe it boils down to this: in the world, i find solidarity with experiences that are different to mine. online, there are many forces trying to dissolve that solidarity. and i think that’s really important for lesbians to know, who might not be cis, or who have/had sex with men, or who have/had dated men, or who just don’t fucking know but they KNOW that lesbianism is important to them. 

read the archives. support dyke marches. i know it’s not possible for everyone; if you can’t interact with people face-to-face about it, try to learn the history in the area you live in. archives, written-pieces, photo-collections. because that history brings solace, too. 

[goodlesbianadvice]

Hey! So I'm a lesbian who prefers femme women, and I often find it really hard to tell if they are interested in girls or not. There aren't a lot of dedicated LGBT spaces that are dating-oriented, and the gay bars in my city are full of straight hipsters these days. I also deal with the fact that I have social anxiety and I also think some internalized homophobia that makes me feel "creepy" (partly thanks to straight women treating me that way when I tell them I'm gay). What can I do?

Hey, Anon!

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’m going to have the most insight on this, since I’ve always had a strong preference for butches. I know meeting people irl can feel a lot more natural/ideal, but since your lesbian dating spaces are limited there, I think giving online dating a shot might be a good idea. 

OKCupid, Bumble, and Tinder are both kinda designed to help you filter by location/meet someone local, so it isn’t as if this would necessarily lead to a ldr. (There’s also Her, ofc, which is meant for just lesbians/bi women, but I’ve heard mixed things about it.) Of course, online dating also means you’ll have to filter through a fair amount of bullshit (whether that’s people looking for threesomes or whatever), but it can hopefully help a bit with your worries about being creepy, since if someone’s on a dating site, they’re probably looking for someone to date. And they often have their sexuality right on their profile! I think the fact that there’s less guessing room with interest/sexuality when you meet someone online is a big reason lesbians are kinda infamous for meeting each other through the internet.

Before I met my wife, I had some luck on OKC - nothing long term, but I met some good people and got to get past my dating-women-again jitters a bit. One of the good things about that site, compared to others, is that they have all those questions that can help you decide if someone sounds compatible. I would say give each dating site a shot and see what seems the most popular in your area (I imagine it might vary by city).

As for approaching women IRL…I understand worrying about feeling creepy, since I still struggle with that sometimes myself (even with my own wife, rip), but I think the fact that you’re concerned about it at all shows that you aren’t going to be a creep. The way straight women react to you has nothing to do with you as a person, and everything to do with their mental image of lesbians. (I know that you already know that, but I just want to affirm it!)

Gauging interest is always going to be hard, but I think being on the lookout for things like intense eye contact, physical contact, compliments, etc, can help guide you a bit. And even if the LGBT spaces in your city aren’t dating oriented, I think spending time around other lesbians can help hone your gaydar (for lack of a better way to put it). Its a cliche, but mentions of lesbian culture to see reactions can also help you figure out if someone might be interested in girls.

Imo, there’s also nothing wrong with being direct and asking someone for a low-commitment type activity, like grabbing coffee or something.

- mod d

i feel like our group is very butch-oriented in attraction. oops! #problematic

mod d had a lot of good comments so i’ll keep mine short and angled more towards the second question. i don’t know where you are, but i’ve heard that this can vary depending where you are; some cities have major butch/femme scenes, some cities it’s all snapbacks dating snapbacks, etc. so that may just be the biggest scene where you live, but that’s not all it is! there are certainly butches who are into butches and femmes who are into femmes!  i don’t think there’s any real trick to finding them, other than putting yourself out there. it’s easy enough to state your preference/search other lesbians’ preferences in dating profiles at least.

one thing you might try is meetup groups. again, it can depend on where you are, but in boston where i live i know there are at least a couple meetup groups aimed specifically towards femmes hanging out with each other. these groups aren’t meant for dating but i’m sure it comes up and it would be a good starting place to find a community of femme4femmes!

- mod j