#like were we not all just reblogging the post about 'lesbians and gay men historically had sex and it was still gay bc they're gay'?

[anachrennism]

am I missing something re: "bi lesbians" apparently being super problematic or whatever? can someone bring me up to speed on that?

[yourfavismspechomohet]

love, there’s no such thing as a “bi lesbian.” someone can’t be bi and a lesbian. Coming from a lesbian myself it just doesn’t happen that way. Being a bisexual means that you like BOTH, being a lesbian means you ONLY like non men. It’s a mockery of real lesbians, it’s not a real sexuality.

Let’s take this apart separately, shall we?

“There’s no such thing as a Bi Lesbian”

Tell that to all the Bi Lesbians that follow me, and like my posts, and request for posts.

Tell that to the Bi Lesbians I reblog from and talk to occasionally.

Tell that to the older queers that identify as Bi Lesbians.

I guess apparently they don’t exist then. 🤷

“Someone can’t be Bi and a Lesbian”

Ah, this is a very popular one on this blog that I keep getting. I could link you to those, but I won’t. Here’s some ways you can be Bi and a Lesbian at the same time:

Biromantic Homosexuals

Homoromantic Bisexuals

Bi people who label themselves as Lesbians, to reclaim queer history. Because ALL Sapphics, regardless of if they were attracted to men or not, were referred to as Lesbians.

Bi people may also label themselves as Lesbians to reclaim being called a Lesbian by Biphobes trying to get them to pick one.

Bi people who lean more towards women, may call themselves Bi Lesbians.

Abroromantics/Abrosexuals may label themselves as Bi Lesbians because their orientation only swings back and forth between those two.

“Coming from a Lesbian myself, it just doesn’t happen that way.”

Well, for the second part, “It doesn’t happen that way”, just go back to the previous comments on “Someone can’t be Bi and a Lesbian”. It does and can happen.

Now for the first part “Coming from a Lesbian myself”. I hear this a lot. Not just from Lesbians, not just from queer people, but people of all different communities, one thing I hear all the time is “Coming from a [Blank] myself”. You need to understand that you are not the only Lesbian on earth. And Lesbians are not a hive-mind. You’re not all the same, and you’re not all going to have the same opinions. If that were the case, all Lesbians would look, talk, act the same way, and have the same views. But you don’t, because you’re not a hive-mind. Simply implying that all people of the same sexuality should have the same opinions is wrong. Believe it or not, I’ve seen all different kinds of lesbians who were Pro-Mspec Lesbian, who were Anti-Mspec Lesbian, and were neutral on Mspec Lesbians. And if all Lesbians had the same opinions, you would not be separated on these different opinions.

“Being a bisexual means that you like BOTH, being a lesbian means you ONLY like non men.”

Being Bi means that you could just about like any gender. It doesn’t just mean both, as in men and women. Bi people could definitely just be attracted to women and men, but they’re also Bi people attracted to all different kinds of genders under the Nonbinary umbrella.

As for being a Lesbian, it means that you’re attracted to women and Nonbinary people. And if we can agree on that, we also have to agree that there are other Nonbinary genders where one identifies as a woman AND a man, that you may also be attracted to. Saying that Lesbians don’t like men excludes Multigender people. Even if that’s not how you mean for it to sound, I can tell you that a lot of Multigender people feel that way.

Also, a common misconception is that Non-Men and Non-Women is okay to use for Gay and Lesbian definitions. It’s not. What you probably didn’t know, is that the terms have racist origins. Black and indigenous queer people have literally been talking about this since this definition was coined. “Non-Men” and “Non-Women” are terms that have been historically used to describe the degendering of black people.

Forcing these terms for queer definitions is Anti-Black, I could forgive you if you didn’t know that and stop using those definitions after now knowing the origins.

But if you still use these definitions even after knowing this, congratulations! You’re racist! Pretty sure there was a book about this, “Bad faith and anti-black racism” by Lewis R. Gordon.

“It’s a mockery of real lesbians, it’s not a real sexuality.”

Mspecs have just as big a part in Lesbian history as Lesbians.

All sapphics were Lesbians regardless of if they liked men.

The term “Bi Lesbian” has been around since the 70s. I’d like to see you try and tell an older queer Bi Lesbian, that they’re “mocking” Lesbians and that their sexuality isn’t real. They probably accomplished more than you have in your entire life, because you want to fight with people on queer labels that you think are and aren’t valid because apparently no queer identity is acceptable unless you agree with it.

Love, wether you like it or not, Bi Lesbians and even male Lesbians have always existed and will continue existing. And they don’t need your permission to be themselves.

[populationtyre]

Why do you reblog pride post’s while also posting transphobic and transmisogynist posts? Pride was started by TRANS WOMEN throwing bricks at cops. Maybe do some research before blindly following terfs? I feel like maybe you’re better than that but I could be wrong. Idk do some soul searching

pride absolutely was NOT “started by trans women”. that’s a MYTH that has been debunked multiple times. Marsha P. Johnson wasn’t even THERE at the start. He showed up after the riots had already started (yes, he. He self-identified as a GAY MAN who was also a radical drag queen). Sylvia Rivera was also not there at the start either.

It was a BLACK BUTCH LESBIAN —believed to be Stormé — who kicked it off by resisting arrest, and the GAY MEN in the bar threw bottles and drinks in protest (the bricks also came later).

i know you think i might be uneducated and have no idea what i’m talking about, but i actually used to believe the gender stuff too when i was younger. i believed it and wholeheartedly tried to spread it FOR YEARS. in fact, i myself was on the verge of transitioning as a teenager when i did some SOUL SEARCHING and found that i had just been regurgitating absolute horseshit, and took it upon myself to rethink some things about my feminism. 

then i ACTUALLY looked into the information out there, i looked at the research and i listened to the stories and i read the books and had real life discussions with real people. i questioned what i was being told and i drew my own conclusions. and it wasn’t just an overnight change of heart. it took at least a couple years while i came to terms with the new information i was being exposed to and took my time to consider it and mull it over.

like, my dude, i come from a family of academics, and i have a degree in psychological sciences. i think i’ve got a pretty good handle on research.

further than that, i’ve been an active, passionate feminist for over a decade now. i’ve been writing essays and learning and exploring this topic for years. i’ve been exposed to a variety of feminist movements, attended a variety of feminist gatherings and consciousness raising meetings, and been involved in a variety of feminist circles. I’ve met with women from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, and listened to their experiences. I also came out as same-sex attracted when i was twelve, and attended a bunch of groups and volunteered with a bunch of events for the alphabet community. we had our own dances and camps and trivia nights and regular meetings to talk about our experiences and learn from eachother and our elders. i’ve watched how this community has treated eachother, I’ve seen it first hand.

this is not some new hobby i just picked up in lockdown. this is not some passive interest. i have been active and involved and i come from a place of actually being informed, and continue to learn new things every day. if you think i’m just blindly following others, you clearly don’t actually know anything about me.

ANYWAY, if you’d like to do your own research, there’s some wonderful resources out there.

I have a few recommendations but I encourage you to seek more out yourself.

I’ll start with my favourite. It’s an incredible analysis of the mythologising of Stonewall, looking at the derailing question of “who threw the first brick?”, challenging the ahistorical reporting of who was there and how they were involved, and remembering the significance of homosexuality’s criminalisation.

«If Johnson and Rivera didn’t throw the first brick — who did?[...] Maybe we simply don’t know. It was a collective effort by a group of angry homosexuals.

All the Stonewall rioters, they had no reason to riot if homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. They would not have lived the lives they did if homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. Yet today, the hagiography of Stonewall is weaponized against homosexuals, used to say that homosexuals ‘owe’ transgender people their time, movement, and rights.

The brick-thrower, whoever they may be or even if they exist, did not then single-handedly create fifty years worth of LGBT activism. That was a collective project. It’s okay to acknowledge that. We do not need to mythologize the brick-thrower. I feel that any attempt to find the ‘first brick thrower’ or the one person who started Stonewall, or doling out credit for Stonewall marks a departure from historiography [source-based accounts and facts] into hagiography [mythologisation and idolisation]. No single figure was responsible for Stonewall, nor any single demographic, group, or social class. But one thing united them. At that moment, the moment the lesbian fought back, the moment the first objects were thrown, that one thing was their homosexuality — their love for the same sex. It’s time to re-establish that historical fact.» via Sue Donym’s ‘Stonewasn’t’ https://archive.is/tn6tl

More resources under the break.

Sue Donym also has an incredible archive of well-researched, sourced articles that are a valuable asset to the feminist movement. She got banned from Medium.com, but you can find her archive here: https://archive.is/eUOLD

Here’s a masterpost of TRA lies about stonewall: https://transgenderlies.tumblr.com/post/165438110827/countering-transgender-lies-about-stonewall

Here’s another masterpost of more resources you can look at: https://auntiewanda.tumblr.com/post/178824977986/feminism-what-kinda-terf-y-bullshit-all-that

And here’s a few neat little summaries regarding Stonewall, if you don’t feel like reading actual articles. But i do recommend you come back at a later time and actually read the articles, because it’s important for you to be able to engage with the literature and draw your own conclusions instead of having it spoonfed to you.

Here’s a masterpost of receipts regarding things the TRA movement has stolen and been disingenuous about.

Here’s the masterpost of all masterposts, on a wide variety of feminist topics, so you can look at resources and receipts to your heart’s content https://evil-wrongthink-lesbian.tumblr.com/post/652918840174460928/masterpost-of-masterposts

Here’s yet another masterpost: https://radfemhancock.tumblr.com/post/620852335187542016/masterpost-links-gendercrit-trans-people

Mind, you don’t have to read any of those links. It’s your choice what you read and what you look into and what you consume. I’m just trying to suggest that you maybe consider that you possibly haven’t looked at all the facts necessary in order to take an informed stance. If you read all these resources and still hold the same beliefs, then okay. I just ask that you try to look at some perspectives outside of your own.

Anyway it’s almost midnight and this is the longest thing i’ve written in quite a while so I’m gonna go tf to bed now peace XX

[violettomcat]

Hi! I'm running a server for a nonprofit that helps trans youth and working on explaining sexualities and gender identities through research and I thought I'd ask a bi person/someone who seems to strive for bi advocacy about how to define bisexuality and what the difference is between bisexuality and pansexuality. I totally understand if you can't answer this by the way, just thought I'd ask ^^ I also apologize for the spam, I'm reblogging stuff I need to research later

Good to meet you! This will be a long post, please be prepared!

What is the Difference Between Bisexuality and Pansexuality?

First, we need to talk about Bisexuality and it’s history.

Bisexuality is an identity that is rooted in reclamation. Bisexuality was coined by the same man who coined homosexuality and sadism in Psychopathia Sexualis, by which bisexuality was described as a sexual deviancy and dysfunction. Someone “suffering from bisexual tendencies” was a person who was intimate with both men and women, those genders being what the standard was in 1886.

Bisexual has also referred to androgynous and intersex characteristics, as well as a way to describe co-ed spaces. In fact, even today on the Purdue OWL page for Queer Theory, Bisexual’s definition is that of androgyny instead of an identity.

Bisexuality, then, has had over 100 years of definitions and meanings and connotations. As early as the 1950s, bisexual was reclaimed for use as an identity (up until this point, Ambisexual was often used, though there were references to bisexuality as well). That’s also over 70 years of erasure, misunderstanding, and biphobia. Historically, bisexuals have been at the forefront of the gay rights movements, but were often banned from joining groups. Even at the peak of bisexual activism in the 1970s, bisexuals struggled to find acceptance and visibility.

Since the 1970s, and even in Alfred Kinsey’s famous 1948/1953 studies that developed the Kinsey Scale, bisexuality has been described as either not having a preference in one gender or as an attraction to all genders. And of course, bisexual activists have also defined it as such.

We are in a day and age in which non-binary people have more visibility than ever. It has introduced to us the concepts of nombinary sexual identities, which range from non-binary exclusive terms like trixic, to non-binary lesbians. It depends on the individual, and their alignment (or lack thereof) to decide where they fall, of course. But the existence of non-binary people makes room in pre-existing identities for additional definitions.

Bisexual has never really meant “two genders” or “men and women”. Like non-binary, bisexual describes tens of thousands of experiences and attractions. It describes preferences, and it simultaneously describes lack of preferences. Many activists will tell you that bisexuality isn’t binary, which refers both to it not being a system of “two” and also not being “men and women”. So even if you define bisexuality as “attraction to any two genders” you will be speaking over bisexuals of years past, and present.

I am bisexual, and non-binary. I’m attracted to all genders, and so are most bisexuals.

Bisexuality refers to being attracted to all or (most) genders, in my opinion. I often say it exactly like that to others. Because I do meet bisexuals who have fallen under the “most genders”. Don’t use “two” in your definition at all (even for “two or more”), or “more than one”. Especially because non-binary lesbians and gay and straight non-binary people exist!

Now, on to pansexuality! This is also a shortened version because tumblr still limits lines on posts and I don’t wanna push it.

Pansexual is also a reclaimed term. It’s been through a lot as well. Pansexual had many meanings, including a state of genderlessness (as in, no assigned sex) as referred to in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case For Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone. It was also used to refer to androgyny, mostly with regards to David Bowie and Mick Jagger (this is best noted in this Atlantic article for Mick). Pansexuality has also been defined as a sort of unhinged promiscuousness, as well as “the eroticization of all social relations”. The term “pansexual pervert” comes up in many, many writing pieces predating 1990 which is just terrible.

One of the earliest “other” versions of pansexual to be used was by Alice Cooper in a 1974 interview. To him, pansexual was being down for anything with anyone, across age, race, and gender (x).

In 2005, a GLBT ally guide was printed defining Pansexuality as a “term of choice for people who do not self-identify as bisexual, finding themselves attracted to people across a spectrum of genders”. Interestingly, bisexual was defined as an attraction to “both” males and females. You’ll notice that the definitions for gay men and lesbians only use “men” or “women” and don’t use biological terms. The glossary begins at page 63 (x). One could argue that this is because of an intersexist belief that regardless of your gender, you’re either male or female, hence bisexuality being described those terms as well as “both”, which implies there are only two of something.

Pansexuality has had a more recent start. And many will say that it was born from a misinterpretation of bisexuality. It has gone through some particularly uncomfortable iterations, including the definition of “attraction to men, women, and trans people”, to “caring more about personality than gender”. Both of these imply that lesbians, gay people, and bisexuals, and straight people, are incapable of loving or being trans/non-binary people as well as caring about more than gender.

I am not the best person to speak on Pansexuality because I do hold the belief that it often encourages people to treat bisexuality as a cis/regressive/binarist label from my own personal experiences as well as the communities online. I won’t speak on that here from now on though. Below is an infographic I found while doing some research for this ask. It’s blatant misinformation (again, with the bi means two thing and not knowing bisexual history). Please don’t do this or show these types of things. This is the exact wrong thing to say!

Anyways, back to the discussion.

So how are they different?

Pansexuality is more often nowadays described as an attraction to all genders. Bisexuality is also an attraction to all genders.

Well, you might think, “That infographic says the difference is that bisexuals have a gender preference”.

Please keep in mind that preferences of any kind do NOT make or break a sexuality. Liking green eyes doesn’t make you a verdeoculosexual, nor does liking tall people make you an acrosexual.

To say that a person is only bisexual because they have a preference for a gender is essentially recycling “bisexuals pick a side” biphobia. The same with “not caring” about gender. It implies everyone else is picky and debase others to their body parts.

The truth is, they aren’t different fundamentally. Bisexuality is an older label. It has more interpretations, including transphobic ones (like “cis men and women”). Pansexuality as a label is fairly new but is growing in use. It has many interpretations, some of which are harmful to other groups in the LGBT community.

Both really need historical context when teaching about them. Especially bisexuality! Obviously if you’re working with minors, only some things need to be mentioned. All in all, education about their histories is what will help people decide what’s right for them, and ensure they won’t mistreat others or treat others rudely because of misconceptions.

[androgynepositivity]

I feel ... I feel like it’s not only an insult to trans men, but it’s an insult to butch lesbians and masculine nonbinary people who don’t identify as men to lump us all together. Or even the subtle things like the social dysphoria I feel when a woman smiles at me and says, “Oh but you understand this specific part of my experience as a cis woman, because you were raised as a girl.”

No. I really don’t get your experience as a woman. Yes, I’ve had periods. Yes, I’ve had menstrual cramps. Yes, I’ve been spending the entire first chunk of my life being treated like a woman. But I never want anyone to ever compare my experience to a woman’s experience again. Or to even imply that at one time my experience was aligned with it, because it wasn’t. And for the record, my experience wasn’t exactly a cis man’s experience either. I will never ever identify as a ‘cis man stuck in a woman’s body’, and to the transmen who feel that way, that’s YOUR identity. Not mine.

Butch lesbians are pillars of the LGBT+ community and I have nothing but love and solidarity for them and the historical butch lesbians who’ve fought for us. There’s also lots of crossover historically between butch lesbians who have fought for their identities as butch lesbians, and so do not change their terms despite feeling closer to identifying as a transman. No matter what, how they’ve identified themselves is what should be respected. Each person is their own case and should be treated as such. But there’s lots of examples of the communities of butch lesbians and transmascs intersecting and overlapping, and I am not here to tear that apart. I have nothing but love for the butch lesbians in my life, and the trans butch lesbians in my life, too. But I need to be defined apart. I deserve to be defined apart.

Masculine nonbinary people who do not identify as men also have miles of my respect because it’s so hard trying to define to others how you want to be seen, especially if it changes from day to day or week to week, but you know that you don’t want to be seen as that, whatever that is to you, and that is the worst thing imaginable most of the time. “I know what I am not, so please do not call me what I am not.” I think any trans person can relate to that much and should have respect for those of us who do not have solid terms for their identity yet or at all. But just because their is no solidity, it does not mean that they should get swept into the pile. They deserve to have their own place, too, apart from butch lesbians and transmen/transmasc people.

So the spotlight does not need to get jerked around because I’m literally just asking people to not make us share a spotlight. Give us our own spaces and stop lumping us together because you’re too lazy to spend the time we deserve from you to learn the differences at least from friend to friend. If you care about us, you will read this long-ass post and LISTEN to what I’m asking of you. This message is to cis women and cis men who call themselves allies.

Stop being cheeky and subtly cruel to your transmen and transmasc friends. We’re not your gay best friend who’s ‘safer’ to be around than your cis male friends. Like, yes! Of course I’m not going to do something horrible to you but that’s got nothing to do with my gender identity??? And even to compare transmen/transmasc people to cis men in that way is equally insulting. I’m not ignorant; I know cis men have the reputation for a reason. I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself. But I am also not a cis man and I’d appreciate not being compared to them, either.

I’m not your genital 'sibling’ that you get to claim ownership of without my definition of terms and permission. My experience with my body has never been and never will be that of a woman’s experience and I need everyone to stop smiling at me and implying that they understand just because they’ve had periods before. It doesn’t matter how I was raised. It doesn’t matter what my physiology is. I define my identity and the terms that I apply to all its parts, and you respect my definitions as gospel unless I learn something new and change. That’s all there is to it. Stop nodding your head when your trans friends speak and actually listen to us.

We deserve to have our unique identities respected apart from others, even if we share community and solidarity among each other.

We deserve to not be compared to the binary, which is often seen as a standard of humanity while we are the divergence, when our experiences are specifically unique to us.

We deserve to be heard as individuals and given room to speak or not speak on the way we identify or DON’T identify.

We deserve respect as unique identities apart from each other despite our apparent similarities.

.

Yes you can reblog this but cis people please do not add commentary.

[star-anise]

do you have any sources on the claims you made? im always willing to change my stance if you have legitimate backing for it haha

So first, I’m sorry for blowing up at you the way that I did. I’m not proud that I reacted in such a kneejerk, aggressive fashion. Thank you for being open to hearing what I have to say. I’m sorry for mistaking you for a TERF, and I’m sorry my response has caused other people to direct their own hostility towards you.

So, here’s the thing. “You can’t call bi women femmes” is pretty intrinsically a radfem thing to say, and I am deeply opposed to letting radfems tell me what to do. I’m trying to write this during a weekend packed with childcare and work. I’ll try to hit all the high notes.

The one thing I am having trouble finding is the longass post I talked about in my reply, that was a history of butch/femme relationships in lesbian bars, which had frequent biphobic asides and talked about “the lesbophobic myth of the bi-rejecting lesbian”; the friend who reblogged it without reading it thoroughly has deleted it, and I can’t find it on any of the tags she remembers looking at around that time. If anyone can find it, I’ll put up a link.

As far as possible, I’m linking to really widely accessible sources, because you shouldn’t intrinsically trust a random post on Tumblr as secret privileged knowledge. People have talked about this at length in reputable publications that your local library either has, or can get through interlibrary loan; you can look up any of the people here, read their work, and decide for yourself. This is a narrative of perspectives, and while I obviously have a perspective, many people disagree with me. At the end of the day, the only reason I need for calling bi women femmes is that You Are Not The Boss Of Me. There is no centralized authority on LGBT+ word usage, nor do I think there should be. Hopefully this post will give you a better sense of what the arguments are, and how to evaluate peoples’ claims in the future.

I looked up “butch” and “femme” with my library’s subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary because that’s where you find the most evidence of etymology and early use, and found:

“Femme” is the French word for “woman”.  It’s been a loanword in English for about 200 years, and in the late 19th century in America it was just a slangy word for “women”, as in, “There were lots of femmes there for the boys to dance with”

“Butch” has been used in American English to mean a tough, masculine man since the late 19th century; in the 1930s and 1940s it came to apply to a short masculine haircut, and shortly thereafter, a woman who wore such a haircut. It’s still used as a nickname for masculine cis guys–my godfather’s name is Martin, but his family calls him Butch. By the 1960s in Britain, “butch” was slang for the penetrating partner of a pair of gay men.

Butch/femme as a dichotomy for women arose specifically in the American lesbian bar scene around, enh, about the 1940s, to enh, about the 1960s. Closet-keys has a pretty extensive butch/femme history reader. This scene was predominantly working-class women, and many spaces in it were predominantly for women of colour. This was a time when “lesbian” literally meant anyone who identified as a woman, and who was sexually or romantically interested in other women. A lot of the women in these spaces were closeted in the rest of their lives, and outside of their safe spaces, they had to dress normatively, were financially dependent on husbands, etc. Both modern lesbians, and modern bisexual women, can see themselves represented in this historical period.

These spaces cross-pollinated heavily with ball culture and drag culture, and were largely about working-class POC creating spaces where they could explore different gender expressions, gender as a construct and a performance, and engage in a variety of relationships. Butch/femme was a binary, but it worked as well as most binaries to do with sex and gender do, which is to say, it broke down a lot, despite the best efforts of people to enforce it. It became used by people of many different genders and orientations whose common denominator was the need for safety and discretion. “Butch” and “femme” were words with meanings, not owners.

Lesbianism as distinct from bisexuality comes from the second wave of feminism, which began in, enh, the 1960s, until about, enh, maybe the 1980s, maybe never by the way Tumblr is going. “Radical” feminism means not just that this is a new and more exciting form of feminism compared to the early 20th century suffrage movement; as one self-identified radfem professor of mine liked to tell us every single lecture, it shares an etymology with the word “root”, meaning that sex discrimination is at the root of all oppression.

Radical feminism blossomed among college-educated women, which also meant, predominantly white, middle- or upper-class women whose first sexual encounters with women happened at elite all-girls schools or universities. Most of these women broke open the field of “women’s studies” and the leading lights of radical feminism often achieved careers as prominent scholars and tenured professors.

Radical feminism established itself as counter to “The Patriarchy”, and one of the things many early radfems believed was, all men were the enemy. All men perpetuated patriarchy and were damaging to women. So the logical decision was for women to withdraw from men in all manner and circumstances–financially, legally, politically, socially, and sexually. “Political lesbianism” wasn’t united by its sexual desire for women; many of its members were asexual, or heterosexual women who decided to live celibate lives. This was because associating with men in any form was essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

Look, I’ll just literally quote Wikipedia quoting an influential early lesbian separatist/radical feminist commune: “The Furies recommended that Lesbian Separatists relate “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege” and suggest that “as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits”“

This cross-pollinated with the average experience of WLW undergraduates, who were attending school at a time when women weren’t expected to have academic careers; college for women was primarily seen as a place to meet eligible men to eventually marry. So there were definitely women who had relationships with other women, but then, partly due to the pressure of economic reality and heteronormativity, married men. This led to the phrase LUG, or “lesbian until graduation”, which is the kind of thing that still got flung at me in the 00s as an openly bisexual undergrad. Calling someone a LUG was basically an invitation to fight.

The assumption was that women who marry men when they’re 22, or women who don’t stay in the feminist academic sphere, end up betraying their ideals and failing to have solidarity with their sisters. Which seriously erases the many contributions of bi, het, and ace women to feminism and queer liberation. For one, I want to point to Brenda Howard, the bisexual woman who worked to turn Pride from the spontaneous riots in 1969 to the nationwide organized protests and parades that began in 1970 and continue to this day. She spent the majority of her life to a male partner, but that didn’t diminish her contribution to the LGBT+ community.

Lesbian separatists, and radical feminists, hated Butch/Femme terminology. They felt it was a replication of unnecessarily heteronormative ideals. Butch/femme existed in an LGBT+ context, where gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people understood themselves to have more in common with each other than with, say, cis feminists who just hated men more than they loved women. 

The other main stream of feminist thought at the time was Liberal Feminism, which was like, “What if we can change society without totally rejecting men?” and had prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, who ran Ms magazine. Even today, you’ll hear radfems railing against “libfems” and I’m like, my good women, liberal feminism got replaced thirty years ago. Please update your internal schema of “the enemy”

Lesbian separatism was… plagued by infighting. To maintain a “woman-only” space, they had to kick out trans women (thus, TERFs), women who slept with men (thus, biphobia), women who enjoyed kinky sex or pornography or engaged in sex work (thus, SWERFS) and they really struggled to raise their male children in a way that was… um… anti-oppressive. (I’m biased; I know people who were raised in lesbian separatist communes and did not have great childhoods.) At the same time, they had other members they very much wanted to keep, even though their behaviour deviated from the expected program, so you ended up with spectacles like Andrea Dworkin self-identifying as a lesbian despite being deeply in love with and married to a self-identified gay man for twenty years, despite beng famous for the theory that no woman could ever have consensual sex with a man, because all she could ever do was acquiesce to her own rape.

There’s a reason radical feminism stopped being a major part of the public discourse, and also a reason why it survives today: While its proponents became increasingly obsolete, they were respected scholars and tenured university professors. This meant people like Camille Paglia and Mary Daly, despite their transphobia and racism, were considered important people to read and guaranteed jobs educating young people who had probably just moved into a space where they could meet other LGBT people for the very first time. So a lot of modern LGBT people (including me) were educated by radical feminist professors or assigned radical feminist books to read in class.

The person I want to point to as a great exemplar is Alison Bechdel, a white woman who discovered she was a lesbian in college, was educated in the second-wave feminist tradition, but also identified as a butch and made art about the butch/femme dichotomy’s persistence and fluidity. You can see part of that tension in her comic; she knows the official lesbian establishment frowns on butch/femme divisions, but it’s relevant to her lived experience.

What actually replaced radical feminism was not liberal feminism, but intersectional feminism and the “Third Wave”. Black radical feminists, like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, pointed out that many white radical feminists were ignoring race as a possible cause of oppression, and failing to notice how their experiences differed from Black womens’. Which led to a proliferation of feminists talking about other oppressions they faced: Disabled feminists, Latina feminists, queer feminists, working-class feminists. It became clear that even if you eliminated the gender binary from society, there was still a lot of bad shit that you had to unlearn–and also, a lot of oppression that still happened in lesbian separatist spaces.

I’ve talked before about how working in women-only second-wave spaces really destroyed my faith in them and reinforced my belief in intersectional feminism

Meanwhile, back in the broader queer community, “queer” stuck as a label because how people identified was really fluid. Part of it is that you learn by experience, and sometimes the only way to know if something works for you is to try it out, and part of it is that, as society changed, a lot more people became able to take on new identities without as much fear. So for example, you have people like Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, found far more in common with gay leather daddies than sex-negative lesbians, and these days identifies as a bisexual trans man.

Another reason radical feminists hate the word “queer”, by the way, is queer theory, which wants to go beyond the concept of men oppressing women, or straights oppressing gays, but to question this entire system we’ve built, of sex, and gender, and orientation. It talks about “queering” things to mean “to deviate from heteronormativity” more than “to be homosexual”. A man who is married to a woman, who stays at home and raises their children while she works, is viewed as “queer” inasmuch as he deviates from heteronormativity, and is discriminated against for it.

So, I love queer theory, but I will agree that it can be infuriating to hear somebody say that as a single (cis het) man he is “queer” in the same way being a trans lesbian of colour is “queer”, and get very upset and precious about being told they’re not actually the same thing. I think that actually, “queer as a slur” originated as the kind of thing you want to scream when listening to too much academic bloviating, like, “This is a slur! Don’t reclaim it if it didn’t originally apply to you! It’s like poor white people trying to call themselves the n-word!” so you should make sure you are speaking about a group actually discriminated against before calling them “queer”. On the other hand, queer theory is where the theory of “toxic masculinity” came from and we realized that we don’t have to eliminate all men from the universe to reduce gender violence; if we actually pay attention to the pressures that make men so shitty, we can reduce or reverse-engineer them and encourage them to be better, less sexist, men.

But since radfems and queer theorists are basically mortal enemies in academia, radical feminists quite welcomed the “queer as a slur” phenomenon as a way to silence and exclude people they wanted silenced and excluded, because frankly until that came along they’ve been losing the culture wars.

This is kind of bad news for lesbians who just want to float off to a happy land of only loving women and not getting sexually harrassed by men. As it turns out, you can’t just turn on your lesbianism and opt out of living in society. Society will follow you wherever you go. If you want to end men saying gross things to lesbians, you can’t just defend lesbianism as meaning “don’t hit on me”; you have to end men saying gross things to all women, including bi and other queer women.  And if you do want a lesbian-only space, you either have to accept that you will have to exclude and discriminate against some people, including members of your community whose identities or partners change in the future, or accept that the cost of not being a TERF and a biphobe is putting up with people in your space whose desires don’t always resemble yours.

Good god, this got extensive and I’ve been writing for two hours.

So here’s the other thing.

My girlfriend is a femme bi woman. She’s married to a man.

She’s also married to two women.

And dating a man.

And dating me (a woman).

When you throw monogamy out the window, it becomes EVEN MORE obvious that “being married to a man” does not exclude a woman from participation in the queer community as a queer woman, a woman whose presentation is relevant in WLW contexts. Like, this woman is in more relationships with women at the moment than some lesbians on this site have been in for their entire lives.

You can start out with really clear-cut ideas about “THIS is what my life is gonna be like” but then your best friend’s sexual orientation changes, or your lover starts to transition, and things in real life are so much messier than they look when you’re planning your future. It’s easy to be cruel, exclusionary, or dismissive to people you don’t know; it’s a lot harder when it’s people you have real relationships with.

And my married-to-a-man girlfriend? Uses “butch” and “femme” for reasons very relevant to her queerness and often fairly unique to femme bi women, like, “I was out with my husband and looking pretty femme, so I guess they didn’t clock me as a queer” or “I was the least butch person there, so they didn’t expect me to be the only one who uses power tools.” Being a femme bi woman is a lot about invisibility, which is worth talking about as a queer experience instead of being assumed to exclude us from the queer community.

[a-new-lesbian-flag-blog]

It’s Lesbian Visibility Day– Lesbians Deserve An Inclusive, Easily Reproduced, and Symbolic Flag to Stand Under!

Oh boy, yet another flag proposal... What’s wrong with the flags that already exist, anyway??

No decently circulated lesbian flag currently meets all of the standards that must be met to make a pride flag great– a pride flag design needs to be inclusive, easily reproduced, and symbolic to be able to become a widespread, representative icon of a community!

What’s wrong with the labrys design? 

The labrys design was created in 1999 by a gay man. Having a lesbian flag that wasn’t even created by a lesbian is a glaring issue by itself, but a second reason many lesbians have rejected this flag is because of its association with TERFs, which stand for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, a group of people that do not believe trans people are the gender they identify as, and wish to exclude trans people, especially trans women, from the LGBT community and feminist movements. 

What’s wrong with the seven striped pink flag design? 

This flag design is made almost entirely out of very specific shades of pink. These shades are extremely hard to translate into physical dyes, fabrics, and other materials used to create pride designs, causing the flag to be inaccessible to many people. Also, the flag was originally intended to be representative only of lipstick lesbians– many lesbians do not identify with this flag because of the very feminine design as many lesbians do not subscribe to traditional feminine roles and presentation. Also, the creator of this flag has made many racist, butchphobic, and biphobic comments on her personal blog, which is yet another reason why an increasingly large portion of the lesbian community has rejected this flag. 

What about this flag with the orange on top and pink at the bottom? 

I really appreciate this flag for its goal to step away from the exclusive femininity of the ‘lipstick lesbian’ flag and incorporate some deeper symbolism into the design. But there are still some issues with it that remain– one of which is that it does not fix the issue of accessibility/ease of reproduction. The shades of orange and pink are still extremely similar to each other which again, makes it very hard to replicate with dyes/fabrics/other materials. Not even the five-striped variation of the flag fixes this, as the shades of orange and pink are still very specific and are still two different shades of the same color. A pride flag needs to be able to be replicated with limited material options in order for it to be fully accessible and become widespread in the community and beyond. There is also the issue that the two-tone design of the flag is mainly meant to represent butches/femmes. Butch and femme culture is absolutely an extremely important and historical aspect of the lesbian community– but it is not everything the community encompasses. There are many lesbians that do not identify with butch/femme, and this flag leaves those people out. 

What about any other design already out there? 

This is not meant to be a bash on any individuals that have taken the initiative and courage to propose their own designs to the community– the community-wide effort to design a new lesbian flag is what inspired my own! But no proposed flag I’ve ever seen out there has met all three criteria that is needed to make a pride flag successful and widespread, and those are again, inclusivity, ease of reproduction, and symbolism. 

Okay, what’s this new flag look like? 

Many things were considered in the design process of this flag. 

It could not be overly feminine (no major focus on pink, no pastel shades)

It needed to be easily reproduced (no multiple shades of colors, no obscure colors, no complex symbols)

 It needed to incorporate historical and cultural symbolism in every design element (more on that later)

It would not focus solely on one aspect of the lesbian community (not just on femininity, not just on butch/femme, et cetera.)

What do the stripes symbolize? 

Red, embodying passion and bravery– our loud voices and larger-than-life legacies, our bullheadedness and righteousness, our anger and joy and liveliness that is infused in every facet of the lesbian community, and every soul that calls themselves a part of it. 

Orange for integrity and hearth; our wholeness despite the notion that a woman's life is incomplete without a man, as well as the home and sense of belonging we find in our identity and community. It is rejecting the notion that lesbians are cold, harsh, and untrustworthy. This stereotype is especially aimed at butch/masculine presenting lesbians, which is why the stripe also represents butches. 

White symbolizes our inherent rejection of dichotomy in multiple senses of the word. Lesbians are not tied to the patriarchal and heteronormative standard of male versus female in our relationships, lifestyles, or identities. We reject traditional standards of both masculinity and femininity to instead establish our own unique methods of presentation and identity that cannot be tied to a binary norm. It also rejects the notion that lesbian love is automatically dirtier and more lustful than heterosexual love. It is not a coincidence that the purity stripe also represents trans and nonbinary lesbians– this is rejecting the notion that the lesbianism of trans and nonbinary individuals is somehow invalid, lesser or diluted compared to the lesbianism of a cis woman. In the current political climate surrounding many lesbian circles today, I found it more necessary than ever to impress the fact that trans and nonbinary lesbians are just as representative of the lesbian community as cis lesbians, and their inclusion is critical in honoring and acknowledging the community at large.

Purple, the color of violets and lavender, for our history: our lesbian predecessors who dedicated their lives in making the achievements of today possible, our traditions and symbols that have been passed on, redefined, and expressed through every new generation. The purple stripe acknowledges the contributors to lesbian achievement of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Black– resilience and certainty, grounding our identities and community in the foundation of knowing we are exactly where we are meant to be in life, and that our identities are an inherent, permanent, and powerful facet of who we are as human beings. It rejects the notion that lesbians are confused or unstable in their identity, or that they are wrong or broken for not loving men. It also rejects the notion that a “gay lifestyle” is inherently unstable or unsustainable– lesbians are just as capable of marrying, settling, and living comfortably and happily as a straight person is.

I really like this flag! What can I do to support it? 

Spread it any way you can! 

Reblog this post! Non-lesbians are absolutely welcome to– in order to make a pride flag universally known, it has to be seen by *all* members of the community!

Make the flag your profile picture! (I will make free edits of the flag with any character/icon/other pride flag upon request! Just send an ask! Examples of edits I’ve done previously will be posted on this blog soon!)

Go to the twitter and instagram for the flag! 

Like/retweet/repost the flag on your accounts!

Make irl pride art and show it off! 

Tell your friends! 

I hereby release this design of a new lesbian flag into the public domain. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, or use the flag design, including selling merchandise for profit! The last thing I want to happen is for the circulation of this flag to end up entirely based on one social media platform or occur strictly online. I intend for this flag to be able to be displayed and flown in online and real life spaces alike, by lesbians of all different backgrounds, experiences, cultures, locations, and ages. 

Finally, there is a website that goes even further into describing the design process behind the flag and the symbolism incorporated into it! All the information about the flag has been included on this website so all anyone needs to do to help spread the word is share this link!!!   

❤️❤️❤️ Lesbians deserve a flag that represents *all* of us and can be spread to be seen by the entire community! I need YOUR help in making this flag known! Thank you so much for your time in reading and your support! ❤️❤️❤️

[starryrogue]

Hey. Below the cut is a LONG (2 page google docs) rant on being a gay sff book fan and the intersection of being a gay man in m/m spaces and book stuff. Just me ranting into the internet void. probs gonna delete this later so dont reblog/ or @ me or w/e

Before I get started, a disclaimer. This is a series of observations and rants based on my lived experience as a gay man in book and fan spaces. This isn't a formal critique or callout or call for action. Just an expression of confusion, frustration and desire. This isn’t me trying to dictate who can read and write and express m/m fiction. This isn't me saying “How dare women find enjoyment in things” since shaming women for “liking thing” is a long and complicated history. None of this has been checked for numbers and stats. There are a lot of generalizations below. There are probably more lgbt people engaging than I perceive. THERE IS A LOT OF GENERALIZING. This isnt an argument or formal essay.   I emphasize, this is me, a gay man, ranting and reflecting on my experience. Now that we have that out of the way

On a fundamental level, M/M book spaces are predominantly women filled. Starting at the top of the process, authors (check goodreads), Publishing (my industry and the results of a recent survey showing employment stats in publishing), Readers and engagement (harder to say stat wise but checking goodreads comments), and Fandom (more just a lived experience) are mostly women . So as a Gay Dude its confusing. On one hand, I feel kind of if I'm entering a space not meant for me, a man entering a women’s. But on the other hand my identity is the subject of so much work, both properly published and fanwork. Is this a space I can enter? 

Why is this the case? Why are women writing about this? Why is it finding an audience with other women? Is it a result of all of the above aspects just being woman heavy and it's a statistical result that most genre fiction being written/read by women? Fandom, shipping and M/M zines and fic are historically not led by men? Why? At the inception of fan culture, were there gay men engaging in shipping and using that as an avenue to explore male sexuality? Why have I only heard of fandom moms and not dads? 

Please read none of these as acuistory. I am generally inquisitive and would like an answer with historical context and data. Again, it's hard finding a balance between being a man commenting/genrailizing on a genre/hobby predominaltey for women and also being gay and wanting to engage in M/M content since again, its part of my identity being reprisented and commented on. Obviously not all the people i'm generalizing are straight, or cis. There are probably a lot of wlw, trans and nb people in these circles but I can't imagine it's the majority.I’m worried this might come off as misogynistic?

But then comes the real life scenario where I go to Scifi/fantasy book events that feature mlm leads and relationships and at a glance) I’m like one of 3 guys in a room of straight women? (again, generalizing) and I think, “why are y’all here? I'm here b/c I’m gay, and this book is gay? What are you getting out of this relationship? Where are my Gay SFF bros?”

A lot of YA SFF M/M content seems to be coming from author moving out of fan spaces, using fic as a way to practice their craft. Is this an equivalent of stright bro enjoying lesbian porn? Maybe not in YA SFF but BL/Yaoi has alway been pretty for women, by women? What about all the Mass Market romance? Straight up romance and smut between guys? Is it enjoyable b/c its two dudes making out and the author and audience are attracted to men so why not make it two men? Is it the “cultural taboo” around gayness that makes it hot? In all fairness I’ve only read 2 or 3 Mass Market/Ebook gay romances and they were Okay (like 7/10ish?) but that's not a good sample size. Again, why are women/ straight or otherwise getting to depict and dominate a market about gay men? I really suspect that women who are into men drastically out number MLM and also women being into men has been less stigmatized (Generally) than men depicting gay romance and sex. 

I wrote a post about being a gay man and liking love between men for a masculine. A kind or romance and intimacy seeped in masculinity kind of  thing and a lot the likes I got (or could identify) were women. As a gay dude i want to intereact with other MLM about M/M media since like this is suppsoed to be depiciting our kind of sex and romance but it hard to find any? (I'm not looking craaaazy hard but it's frustrating that its not a default) but where are the mlm talking about gay relationships on tumblr and goodreads?

I’m not trying to dictate who can write and read and publish this stuff. It's just isolating. There are a couple things I could go on about like depictions of mlm in shipping culture or like why all the top Tapas comics are BL but I think that's a separate issue. 

And now for some content rant 

As far as canon m/m content in books, up until recently it came in 3 flavors. Literary Tragedy, YA coming out Angst, and Mass Market Romance. Comics are a little better but not by much. Growing up I had like Magnus/Alec in that C.Claire series and Wallace Wells from Scott Pilgram and I think that was it. There has been a recent move in Sci-fi Fantasy (SFF) to be more diverse but generally its a lot of YA with a little less coming out angst. All my faves are still genreally written by women but I think the queer women and NB authors do it best IMO. 

I love SFF, but also I’m an adult so I am aging out of YA. Also YA coming out stuff especially contemporary is an easy way to get me anxious AF. Long story short, being a gay teen is tough and Id preferer not to relive coming out. I wish I had things like Carry On and How to repair a Mechanical Heart as a teen, but alas, I did not. Not that these books have no value, just there is still a gap in the market fot gay adult genre fiction(also why are straight women depicting coming out stories? Altruism?)

Give me that adult genre fiction with a gay romance b-plot please. (shout out to TOR for being market leaders but i need to do a deeper dive into indie presses). Shout out to things like Witchmark and Amberlough and The Last Sun. All great SFF stories in other worlds and full of magic and plot but also, dudes kissing. The one thing is gay authors have a tendecy to make thier books have darker topics like abuse, sexual assult/rape, homophonia, hard core drugs and violence, which i’m not going to deny. Let authors navigate the waers of gay culture in thier art. But I just want to read things like Juno Steel, queer AF but none of the homophbia and trauma attached. These asks are purely self interested, but I know there is a market for it.

(Also, there is this weird trend of Homophobia-Lite ™ where we arnt going to have the characters be bullied or outed or beaten/disowned but they need to “grow up” and get wives and families. Which on one hand is not great but on the other hand I like the way it reflects the lived experience of being ashmaed of your secuality but without the harsher traumas of the world. Its like me being gay in NYC in an artsy inudsrty. No one realy cares I’m gay and out but there are still little things that give me pause and some shame b/c interlized homophbia is a think. I think the SFF book makes it the best of both worlds of exploring homophobia without the darker themes. Ok end sidebar)

I have more thoughts on podcast content and fan spaces/shipping culture but this rant is already long. So I’ll leave it here. 

Probs gonna delete this after a day or 2. This was mostly an exercise for screaming into the void at some gay nerd frustrations. This rant is not without flaws or critique. But again, just a rant. A gay dudes nerdy rant about fantasy books. 

[discourseful]

(*1) not trying to start anything and IA that ace people who aren't gay shouldn't add onto posts for gay people but... i personally don't think it's helpful or useful to exclude bi people from posts for gay men or lesbians... of course there are certain experiences that bi people can't 100% relate to, just like they are bi experiences that lesbians/gay men can't 100% relate to but in many ways, we are the same, we're treated the same and we deal with the same issues. idk.

“(*2) like, it IS offensive to see a post for questioning lesbians and tell them that they might be bi or pan, so this isn’t about that!! but the anon you got, where they went “Like they can’t stand being excluding from something that they can’t truly relate to” sounds kinda… bi women deal with comp het too, have traumas related to men, have very difficult relationships with men as a class & individuals… i feel kinda uncomfortable with pretending lesbians & bi women are inherently different(*3) like i said i really really don’t wanna start anything!! pls don’t take this the wrong way. i just hate this unnecessary divide between lesbians and bi women (and can’t speak for a divide between gay men and bi men cuz i’m a woman).”

look. there are plenty of spaces and posts about all wlw/sapphics as a group, and then there are spaces and posts that are just for lesbians and just for bi women. it would be equally wrong for lesbians to pile onto posts only for bi women with “ME BUT IM A LESBIAN!!”. we are ALLOWED to want to talk about unique experiences as lesbians. lesbians and bi women do have lots of ways we can relate to each other and that is wonderful and should be celebrated! but we ARE still different, and recognizing that isn’t wrong. why is it fine to keep questioning posts only to lesbians but not say “wow i love being only attracted to women, smash that reblog if you agree!” or make a meme meant for lesbians?

we are similar groups with very similar and overlapping issues and experiences, but that doesn’t make us the SAME. if we were the same, we wouldn’t have separate labels. we don’t even entirely have the same issues! lesbians have certain issues unique to us and bi women have certain issues unique to them! this whole “we’re actually the same in every way” argument is why people have misused historical lesbian terms so much - like comp het IS a lesbian experience, because it is about our LACK of real attraction to men and feeling compulsory attraction! bi women genuinely have attraction to men. butch and femme are identities for lesbians and dyke is a slur that targets lesbians for our lack of attraction to men - which is exactly what makes us a different group from bi women.

we aren’t treated the same! we both are oppressed by homophobia, but lesbians specifically experience lesbophobia and bi women specifically experience biphobia. i cannot relate to many of the experiences bi women have that are because of biphobia, just like they can’t relate to what i experience as a result of being a lesbian. it is helpful for BOTH of our groups to recognize our differences AS WELL as our similarities, or we end up diminishing the unique experiences and problems that we both face.

i know you’re not trying to start shit, but i am tired of being told that i do not have unique experiences or that it’s wrong for me as a lesbian to want something specifically for lesbians. there is a lot of biphobia that comes from lesbians, but there is also a lot of lesbophobia from bi women! there is a LOT to why there is often a divide between our communities, and it isn’t just because lesbians are asking to not have non-lesbians comment on our posts. there is lateral aggression from BOTH sides, and again, we both have unique experiences that both lesbians and bi women deserve to have recognized as unique. i agree that the divide is a problem, and i WANT more solidarity for all wlw, but that isnt going to be achieved by telling lesbians we’re greedy bitches for wanting a few things for ourselves.

[dreamofbecoming]

ok, gonna clear some shit up and then be done i did not comment on that post looking for "is queer a slur" discourse. i could not care less what personal identifiers people use, beyond respecting their choices when asked to use or not use certain words when referring to certain people. i commented on that post because op screenshotted a reaction to an existing post, which contained lots of detailed explanations and historical context for the comment, then made a post bashing the person who reacted and complaining about the lack of context. that's a shitty thing to do, regardless of your politics. i also reblogged it specifically because i wanted the person i reblogged it from to be aware of the missing context, because they're someone i trust and whose content i enjoy, and it's easy to get caught up in manufactured outrage. i've certainly done it. i wanted to bring to their attention that the post was heavily edited and if they were looking for an explanation, there in fact was one, that had been deleted by op in an attempt to shape their argument. (again, shitty. we have enough real debates happening, you don't need to manufacture new ones.) i don't believe everyone who dislikes the term "queer" is a terf. i do believe that, if your first instinct when you see someone reclaiming a term you don't identify with is to tell them they're a bad person for using it and try to shame them out of them community, you need to examine where that impulse comes from. terfs are gatekeepers, who try and police who is and isn't allowed to be part of our community. there are other groups of lgbtq/mogaii/queer/non-cishet/whatever you call yourself people who use similar tactics to silence and police other queers. they all have common ancestors in the (white) gays and lesbians in the late 20th century who decided that trans people and bisexuals and drag queens and queers of color were dragging down the image of their community, and waged campaigns to vilify and ostracize them. queer was the identifier of choice for many of those targeted groups, and deliberately targeting those who use it as "not good enough" or "not one of us" is a tactic that's been used from the beginning- it may not be your intention, but those are the origins of the rhetoric you're using so examine that for a minute. "queer" began as a slur. no one is debating that. but there are literally no widely used terms for anyone in our community that have never been used as slurs, in addition to there being very few umbrella terms for people whose identities don't fit into neat little boxes. i, for instance, am still figuring my shit out. i've dated men, i've even been in love with men, so i don't think i'm a lesbian, but the longer i'm out the more i feel i'm only interested in women and femmes. does that make me a lesbian? maybe. does that make me pan with a preference? maybe. i don't know what that makes me except "not straight," and the only word i feel expresses that feeling is queer. i'm also just starting to explore my gender, but i really have no idea what i'm feeling about it, so queer is the only thing that works. it's ok if you don't want to use queer. i never use it for someone without asking, and i appreciate when people ask me first before using it for me. when i talk about the queer community, i literally mean "people who identify as (or at least are not uncomfortable with) queer." otherwise i say not-cishet or lgbtq or "our community." i'm not forcing the term on anyone. i don't want to force the term on anyone. but using its history as a slur to silence people and police their identities is a tactic used by terfs and other gatekeepers, and that is a fucking shitty thing to do. just because you personally don't hate trans women doesn't mean you can't use the same rhetoric as those who do to alienate innocent people. you might not be a terf, but you sure as hell quack like one, and i don't take any fucking chances. so please stop trying to make it sound like less of a shitty thing to do and leave me alone.

[imkerf-uffle-d]

if you're gonna use the term "misandrist" seriously do all lesbian/bi women a favor and stay away from posts by and for us :) you completely missed the point and brought straight women into the discussion which was not at all what the OP was talking about. Lesbian/bi women have spent so much emotional labor on gay/bi men to get nothing in return so bugger off with your "misandry" bs. Yeah you wrote a lot but you wrote a lot while missing the whole damn point. Let wlw fucking live damn.

(Okay, first off, if you don’t understand why “positivity post for men: why are you evil” is a problem, then I really don’t know what to tell you.)

I literally only brought up straight women one single time, and at no point did I talk about them exclusively. My exact words were: “It’s only a problem when women, especially straight women, fetishize those ships.” That includes all women. I’m talking about all women. Lesbian, bi, pan, everyone. All woman. Same-sex male relationships are fetishized by both wlw and straight women, so yes I am bringing them up, because they’re involved in this issue too.

Yes, historically the LGBTQ community has a lot of problems with gay men trying to steal the spotlight from women in the community, but I honestly have no idea how that’s so damn relevant to the fetishization issue that it needs an entire, multi-paragraph post linking the two (so if anyone wants to explain that to me, please, please do). If wlw were the only people (or the majority of people) being “screamed” at, then that would be a different matter entirely. But they are not. On this particular issue, these men don’t give a shit about whether a woman is straight, gay, or asexual because the woman’s sexuality isn’t the problem here. 

Let’s look at it this way. Say it wasn’t only straight men who liked jacking off to lesbian porn, and gay/bi/pan/etc men did it too. (look i’m just gonna use “gay” and trust you know what I mean and that I understand the issues with me using that as an umbrella term, okay? bc listing everything out each time gets old fast, and you don’t like the only other decent option.) In this situation, I’m betting your problem wouldn’t be with gay men specifically; it would be with men in general, because their individual sexualities are extremely secondary to the fact that they’re fetishizing a type of relationship they have no part in.

It’s the exact same issue here. It’s not misogyny; it’s not lesbophobia; it’s gay people not wanting to be fetishized. We can all agree that lesbian porn made for men is a monumentally shitty thing, but you can’t deny that a lot of fic/art about gay men made by women does essentially the same thing. That’s what I mean by “gay porn.” “Gay porn” is not the same as “mlm media.” One is fetishistic smut created by and for women with little to no regard for how actual gay men feel about it, and the the other is plain old healthy media with gay guys in it. I thought I made that clear in my reblog, but it sounds like I didn’t, so I’m sorry for that miscommunication on my part.

But once again, and for what I hope to be the final time: gay men are not criticizing or attacking wlw “for trying to find refuge in gay/bi male spaces or media.” Of course it makes total sense that you would do that; there’s practically nothing made just for you! And that’s a huge problem, definitely, but, again, not the issue here. The vast, vast majority of gay men have absolutely no problem with wlw participating in gay ships and fandoms. (I don’t doubt that there are men who do try to ban wlw from those spaces, because behind every reasonable, widely accepted idea is a handful of assholes with extremist views, but you can’t define the whole by only its shittiest parts.) It’s only when enjoyment crosses the line into fetishization that gay men actually take issue with it, and whether it’s done by straight women or wlw is actually pretty irrelevant because the outcome is the same.

Maybe I missed the OP’s point; maybe I didn’t, but you two are clearly missing the original point that gay/bi/etc men are trying to make.Honestly I don’t know how many more ways I can say “fetishization is bad.” It doesn’t matter who’s doing the fetishization or who’s being fetishized; it’s bad. Period.