#lesbophobia

[angelsaxis]

Being a lesbian shouldn't be this difficult like why cant people just accept the fact that there are people who do not have room for men at all and we have chosen to call ourselves a specific thing to ID ourselves, communicate as much, and find one another. Why must "sexuality is expansive" be applied to things that have strict and common definitions. Make up your own word then! Come up with your own shit! Yall never do this to gay men!

[our-lesboy-experience]

hiii!!! so uh, this is sorta about 'contradicting' (?) identities in general, but i only recently found out about, like, lesboys and gaygirls and all of that, but what is it exactly? like how does it work? or is that weird to ask? i'm trying figuring myself out but a lot of stuff i've seen doesn't exactly... explain it (or explain it well), and while i guess i do get why, it's just kinda hard to understand it myself for my own identity

also, probably a question you get a lot in a hating way, but isn't the definition of lesbian nonman loving nonman? so then how does lesboy work? like is it for people with more complicated gender identites, like fluctuating genders and bigender? just genuinly confused, my apologies...

sorry for not getting to this sooner- been busier lately and didn't have the time to collect everything I needed to respond!

About what it exactly means to be a lesboy or a gaygirl ('turigirl' is the more common term, 'turi' meaning turian, another word for gay attraction to men. so I'll be referring to it as that from now on), there isn't exactly....one right way to call yourself such. it really depends on the person, but I can give you a basic definition and a list of common reasons someone may call themselves such

im gonna put a read more because this ended up being super long so sorry

lesboy is a term for any lesbian who may have a connection to manhood and/or masculinity. turigirl is just the opposite of that, a gay person (mlm/nblm) who may have a connection to womanhood and/or femininity. common reasons I've seen are:

being multigender or genderfluid

being cusper/in between trans and cis gnc (in between trans man and cis gnc woman, in between trans woman and cis gnc man)

being a system who uses lesboy/turigirl as a collective identity or when identities blur together

a person who uses man/boy or woman/girl as a means of masculine or feminine gender expression but not actually identifying as such

being a trans man/ftm or a trans woman/mtf who still identifies as lesbian or gay for personal reasons

those are far from all the reasons, everyone has their own unique experiences, but the gist is these people may have some sort of connection to manhood/womanhood while still having a queer attraction. personally, I'm multigender, genderfluid, and transmasc. lesboy I find is a nice label to express being both my bigender self and being a lesbian, as it forces people to acknowledge both without separating the two. it's cute and makes me feel validated!

as for "nonman attracted to nonmen" definition of lesbian......it has its issues. it's received criticism all around from all sorts of lesbians in the community. this definition is very new - it emerged only in the recent years, and someone on twitter had date searched it and found it didn't even really exist before 2019. and having that as the one and only official definition that every lesbian has to abide by, when lesbian is a centuries old word with so much history behind it, is a bit ignorant. people who are multiple genders or ftm or bi being lesbian is not even remotely new, going back decades upon decades, and it never stopped existing too. It's a bit weird to have a whole new definition that doesn't include all sorts of lesbians that have been here for so long and just tell them they're not welcomed anymore, right?

that's not even close to the only issue there is with it. it's been disliked for centering lack of attraction to men, or defining lesbian in relation to men, rather than who we're actually attracted to. putting nonbinary people in a new binary of either being "men or nonmen," which not all feel comfortable putting themselves into. especially when considering a definition of gay being "nonwomen attracted to nonwomen," man-woman bigender people are simultaneously excluded from being both lesbian or gay. It inherently overlaps with mspec identity ("attraction to nonmen, which is more than one gender" and "any orientation that involves attraction to more than one gender" kinda obviously overlap), despite people insisting that a lesbian can never be mspec. people have found multiple loopholes in it, (which I can elaborate on if someone wants me to, for the sake of trying to make this as short as possible), and lastly, and term "nonman" (and nonwoman) were found to have existed before to describe the degendering of black people in society. this isn't the only source I've seen for this, but sadly I can't exactly find it (or find it without going back to that hellsite called twitter and I'm not doing that to myself)

oh and as the link points out, defining lesbian by these words also ends up excluding a lot of two-spirit people from ever identifying as lesbian, myself included. which is also really racist. I don't know how you're gonna end up excluding a whole cultural gender that's common for indigenous americans to describe themselves with and try to prove it somehow isn't racist, to be honest

and lastly, some surveys/polls have shown that the definition isn't the most widely accepted by lesbians as people make it out to be. there's this simple poll that someone posted asking how lesbians felt about the definition that received 1,529 responses, and 61.1% of voters said they disliked it. comments gave lots of reasons I've stated already. there was another survey put out that received 211 responses that for any lesbian who had a genderqueer or unique relationship with gender, and one of the questions asking opinions on the "nonmen loving nonmen" as a definition. the average among the group was slightly negative (average 2.838), and reported that the group who tended to feel the most positively about it didn't consider themselves to be trans, with the other positive leaning group considered themselves to be somewhat cis. the group that felt the most negatively sometimes considered themselves to be trans. and of the multigender participants, the average opinion was 2.255 (more negative than the overall average). When concluding, the original poster stated, "When divided by gender, the only groups to feel positive about this definition were "not trans" and "somewhat cis" participants. Multigender participants felt especially negative about this definition"

all of this shows that this definition isn't nearly the best for everyone who considers themselves a lesbian. I know it's been a way to include nonbinary people who are lesbian in it's definition, but I think it really misunderstands why nonbinary people are included in lesbianism in the first place, and just assumes that all nonbinary people aren't men and fails to recognize that multigender/genderfluid people are nonbinary too. and it's not like lesbian has to only have on definition- it can definitely have multiple and depend on each person's experience with it. if someone personally defines them being lesbian around being a nonman attracted to nonmen, and takes pride in not being attracted to men, that's totally fine. what becomes a problem is forcing all lesbians to define themselves like this and make it the standard, or else they're "not real lesbians." it is ahistorical and ignorant to require this or else you'll strip them of their lesbian status, and is really at the end of the day, lesbophobic. especially as a requirement that primarily exists in online spaces. im sure the lesbian who is not at all connected to these circles doesn't particularly care about strict requirements or whether someone is a "nonman" or not. in conclusion, it is not the best nor most accepted definition of lesbian, and deciding which lesbians are valid or not based solely on that definition is pretty exclusionary and ends up policing a lot of lesbians, myself included

[homunyas]

Happy Lesbian Visibility Day!!! 🧡🤍💖

reminder that bi "lesbians" are tantamount to rapists; trying to include men in lesbianism is rape rhetoric.

support actual lesbians and make sure these freaks have no place in the LGBT community! if you claim to support our community, prove it and stop staying silent when we ask you to speak up with us

non-lesbians are encouraged to reblog this

[anarkiddo]

man imagine posting this shit under a lesbian’s autobiography knowing that your review is A) one of few one star reviews B) will contribute in preventing people from reading it. this makes me dread publishing shit

[linuxbian]

There these seemingly contradictory societal double binds that are used to enforce conformity.

Example: A Lesbian is told that "everyone is actually bi" while a bisexual woman is told to "pick a side". Seems contradictory but really they just want us to be straight lmao.

Another one: A woman who does not perform womanhood to society's standard is not a real woman vs. You can never change the gender you were born with. One is butchphobic/anti gnc women, the other is transphobic. Clearly both enforce transmisogyny.

The insidious thing is that these double binds also foster inter community division. Its easy to hear one side of these, for example: "everyone is a little bi" and assume that means bisexuality is more accepted. But on the other side bisexual people are getting the same shit.

None of these are contradictory when you realize that bigots simply don't want lgbtq+ to exist at all.

[beefcake007]

I’m still mad about something that happened on tiktok last week and I want to do a post about it and explain an aspect of transphobia I’ve observed.

A cis user made a video asking that trans people share more banger music that they make, but clarified saying “by trans people, I mean trans women” because trans men only make that “sad ukulele” music. There was much discourse, he doubled down and said trans men couldn’t take a joke, other trans people threw the offended transmascs under the bus, or insisted that they can also make club music, yada yada.

I want to know if the queers who haven’t been queer as long as I have know that this exact drama was had with gays and lesbians. Do you know that some transphobia is repackaged homophobia and lesbophobia? I feel like that’s something we should be allowed to say and examine without someone shutting you down and insisting you’re conflating the gays and transes.

But yeah, for decades the joke has been that gay men are the fun flamboyant ones that make good art and dance music, and that lesbians are angry and dress ugly and make sad folk music. It’s pretty much an identical bias and resulting disrespectful jokes.

And it’s shit! I’m not going to let anyone, let alone a cis person, get away with transphobia just because it’s directed at trans men. It’s rude and harmful to devalue our art, and our art doesn’t need to be easily consumable to you. We’re allowed to be pissed and offended when you write us off, minimize the harm you’ve done, and exclude us from the conversation. It’s obvious when you only tolerate the queers who can serve you, and that you don’t actually care to listen or learn about our lives, struggles, and art.

[tiredyke]

[irlwakko]

I love all the dunking on James Somerton but I don’t think we’ve focused enough on all his lesbophobic rhetoric because the things he says are genuinely so astoundingly ahistorical and insensitive and it infuriates me that he was allowed to get away with it so long.

He literally said lesbians didn’t face police violence on the same scale as gay men when that’s just demonstrably untrue. Lesbians, ESPECIALLY butch, GNC, and trans lesbians, faced MASSIVE amounts of police violence AND STILL DO and if he gave a single shit about like. Women as people. Or even just LGBT history in general as he so proclaims to care about, he would know that. I’m going to start beating people to death with copies of Stone Butch Blues until they fucking listen

And I’d really love to know which fucking planet he lives on where lesbians apparently have all this great representation, and where we as lesbians are allowed to write our own stories, because I’m really not seeing that pretty much anywhere in mainstream media. I’m still seeing lesbians portrayed in stereotypical or fetishistic ways, and that’s when I see us portrayed at all. And yes cartoons are great and fine but there is so painfully little lesbian representation written by lesbians geared primarily towards adults.

But at this point, the wider community’s general lack of a reaction to lesbophobia in their ranks disappoints but doesn’t surprise me. It’s sad and somewhat astonishing that he’s escaped accountability for his lesbophobic comments up to this point, but again, not surprising. We need to stop letting our community, especially people like James Somerton who get held up as voices for the community, get away with lesbophobia.

[princessefemmelesbian]

Not to be rude but a lot of white lesbians on here will see an attractive white(and especially if they're skinny, conventionally attractive, cis, and feminine) woman and go "omg she's so pretty and gorgeous and elegant, gosh, why are women so beautiful! I want her to hold me and hug me and kiss me!" but the second you see an attractive non-white woman(especially if they are fat, trans, dark-skinned, or butch, but lbr y'all do this to femmes of color as well due to how masculinized we are), suddenly y'all's brains short-circuit and you don't know how to complement us without depriving us of our humanity because you still internalized the idea that woc are wild impure animals and so out comes the "omg I want her to step on me and choke me and slap me across the face and make me her slave!!!" and y'all think it's okay because you're making yourself "subservient" to us but really all you're doing is reinforcing harmful stereotypes of woc as more aggressive, sexual, violent, inhumane, and less feminine, sweet, loving, and/or gentle than white women, and you guys think it's a compliment but it's really fucking not and I'm here to tell you that being a lesbian doesn't invalidate your white privilege if you talk about and fetishize lesbian woc this way. 😡

[dyke-on]

You can tell how much lesbians and trans men are ignored within the queer community when queerness is associated with pink and glitter. There's no room for us boring, dull, masculine queers, in fact we are traitors meanwhile straight women are "one of the girls"

[museumofferedophelia]

This is actually hilarious because:

Wasps are not bees. They are both members of the Hymenoptera order, which also includes ants. You wouldn't say that an ant is a bee just because they're both members of the same order, so why would you argue that a wasp is a bee? Would you argue that a camel and a giraffe are the same species because they also share the same order (Artiodactyla)?

Out of the some 20,000 species of wasp, NONE produce honey. There is a genus called "Brachygasta" including 17 species that keep stores of nectar and honeydew in case of food shortages, but none produce honey. And certainly not from meat.

So yet again, you have a TRA blatantly lying in order to turn something into what it's not. "The wasp is right, and the bee relies on untrue myths to explain itself," is such bullshit.

Sadly, this post got something like 2,000 notes. People will blindly believe what a TRA says, especially if it's a lie constructed to undo a radfem point. So many logical fallacies.

Wasps are not bees. Men are not women.

[hard--headed--woman]

friendly reminder that it's okay and normal for lesbians to like breasts and ass and pussy, to find other women attractive, to look at women, to have sexual thoughts about women. you're not "like a man" for finding this woman on that pic attractive or for having a soft spot for boobs or anything. lesbianism is healthy and natural. stop shaming lesbians for having sexual desires

[homunyas]

I think the main thing it comes down to is: the LGBT community is full of rampant misogyny, but so many people think that because they're a minority, they're somehow less accountable to analyze their own behavior.

This is why lesbophobia is especially prevalent; it's the intersection of homophobia and misogyny. The same is also true of transmisogyny; the intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

So many people who consider themselves progressive will support lesbophobic or transmisogynistic concepts without so much as batting an eye. They think they've done the work already, I mean, you're LGBT! How could you have unchecked misogyny in your interactions with the world and others? Well, quite easily, as almost any lesbian or trans woman could tell you of our interactions with other LGBT people.

You all need to take a long, serious look at your behavior, and start actually listening to lesbians and trans women when we tell you things are harmful to us. Because right now, most of our issues remain incredibly insular, with only a small number of allies uplifting our voices.

[hadesoftheladies]

very insane to me how women lesbophobes can call "liking women a "man thing". like virtually no heterosexual men have liked women in the past 6,000 years. liking women, centering women, adoring women is a nearly exclusively woman thing to do.

lesbians invented liking women. apologize to the lesbians right now.

[tiredyke]

so many of y’all are too busy trying to define lesbianism as explicitly inclusive of men and making sure we’re nice and palatable to straight people and making people feel secure in the fact that anyone can still like men, even the dykes! that you straight up ignore or erase the very prominent part of lesbophobia that comes from us not liking men, and you talk over and ignore us whenever we talk about how isolating it is to not like men when everyone else around you does because it doesn’t fit your narrative that queer labels and identities are one-size-fits-all and the mere idea of lesbians existing shatters your ideal world where everyone has wiggle room in their sexuality. reinventing the “lesbians aren’t exclusive, there’s a man for everyone! they just need to find Mr Right” isn’t progressive just because you throw in a couple buzzwords that sound good and give people warm and fuzzies