#so if you think this is biphobic instead of me - a lesbian - getting fed up with people acting like being bi and being a lesbian is the same

[lesbienneanarchiste]

I stg 90% of the time, people will ask for lesbian recs for things and y'all recommend stuff that features explicitly bi characters. If i wanted a general f/f rec i would say so. I want lesbians and so do people who ask for lesbian recs. Just say you dont read books about lesbians and move on.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

I’ve been reeeeaaalllll fed up with how people have been treating me lately. I don’t feel welcome in bi or gay spaces at all without having to hide the other half of what I am. I would love to talk about my experiences of being a man who likes women in a bi way and men in a gay way (and for nonbinary people it depends on the nuances of their gender identity obviously) but so far when I have shared that I’m not *just* bi in bi spaces I’m shunned. And vice versa for gay spaces. I’m honestly worried that no one will ever really get it... are these worries unfounded? Should I put myself in general queer spaces instead? Where can I talk about my experiences without being called a fake?

I would not say that your worries are unfounded. It’s clear that you’ve made certain negative experiences and that sucks and biphobia is a real thing and it would not be helpful to invalidate it by saying your overreacting.

Personally I totally get what you mean. I feel much more welcome and at ease in groups that are either explicitly m-spec oriented or explicitly open to all queers - regardless of sexual orientation and/or gender identity. (For example I do not feel comfortable in women-only spaces because they are often lesbian-dominated and make little to no effort to be inclusive of m-spec sapphics. At least not where I am and in the experiences I have made here.)

Not to mention groups that explicitly welcome cishet people! So many m-specs are dating cisgender straight people and it’s real fucking nice when my cishet partner get a chance to take part in my queer life. I don’t want to exclude him from that because my love for him is queer so for my, personally, the best groups are those which explicitly say “bring your friends, family members, partners - doesn’t matter what their gender (or sexuality) is”!

So yeah... if you’ve made those experiences that you’ve described then I would definitely recommend you try to find other queer groups that are more “mixed”. That’s not a guarantee that there won’t be some biphobic individuals there but I think it’s likely that more people would have your back there.

Maddie

[perpetuallyfive]

genuine question why do u think asexuality is part of lgbtq

The obnoxious easy answer is probably “because they are” or “because they’ve been here the entire time.” 

Other obnoxious answer: “I don’t think it; I know it.”

All of those things are true, but I’m guessing you’re looking for something more than that.

Hey, this is going to get long.

This is a really, really hard question to answer eloquently because there are a lot of facets you could be coming from with your own questions and uncertainty. I’m going to go ahead and assume you are seriously asking with the best of intentions, since you’re presenting yourself that way, and do my best to answer thoroughly, however inelegant that might end up being.

In a lot of ways I’m not the right person to speak on this topic because I feel like it’s a bit like me talking over people I actually know. Like, frankly, I feel like a lot of people only don’t think ace people are part of the community because they… don’t know any? I’ve known ace people in the community for as long as I’ve been a part of it myself, and that’s a pretty long time. (I’m not actually old old, but I’m tumblr old, you know?)

First of all, we all know that LGBTQ identifying people of all kinds are relatively rare compared to the cis het majority. Ace people are even more rare. In my personal direct experience, ace people who are cis and also heteroromantic are even more rare. Most of the ace people I’ve met who engage directly and frequently with the LGBTQ community are ace aro or ace homoromantic, yet the fixation on policing identity seems to be centered around a minority within an extremely vulnerable minority as somehow being a major “problem.”

I think to an extent this question kind of comes down to how people define their space within the LGBTQ community. I don’t think being a lesbian is primarily about sex and sexual expression, personally. I think that viewpoint is actually kind of homophobic. Like obviously for people who aren’t ace, sexual desire is totally healthy and a part of who they are, but the idea that queer identities are innately sexualized is something the hets put on us. I don’t think we need to make it our primary definition of what makes us a community.

Because what does that say about trans people or non-binary people? It’s pretty obvious that the community is not, centrally, defined by sexual desire, at least as long as we believe trans, non-binary, and gender queer people all have a space alongside us. (These questions of who does and does not belong almost inevitably lead to complicating rules that help to divide and I tend to question the intentions of the people who invest a lot of personal stakes in strictly enforcing who does and does not deserve a space, particularly since a lot of them are eager to accept actually cis het “allies” while seeking to exclude ace people.) 

The community, for a long long time, has been defined, primarily, by separation from the mainstream identification of gender and sexual expression. That’s why it’s not actually about who you’re sleeping with or have ever slept with, and asexuality is pretty fucking far away from mainstream understandings of both gender and sexual expression. It’s so far away that even a lot of queer people have trouble really wrapping our heads around it, because it’s so removed from any cultural context we know. 

I constantly see people saying really flip things like, “oh wow, demi is literally just not having sex until the second date, lots of people do that, you don’t need a special name for it,” which is absolutely not at all what being demi is. But the idea of an actual literal lack of sexual desire, not just abstaining from it or choosing not to act on it, but literally not having it is so removed from how we understand the world. 

An ace friend of mine articulated it really well to me, when I told her I was writing this post actually. This impulse to divide or separate really ignores the reality of how people tend to figure out their gender and sexual identity. Sometimes, sure, it’s clean and easy, and you just know. But that’s not everyone; I don’t think it’s even close to how it works for most people. If you’re someone who thought you were bisexual because you felt equally attracted to both genders and then realize that equal attraction is, in fact, a lack of attraction and you now realize that you’re actually aro ace, do you… have to leave the community you’ve been a part of, that helped you figure out who you are? Are you no longer welcome? And why is that?

I just don’t, personally, understand the impulse to eject or entirely reject. I don’t know who it helps, except for the straight majority. I don’t define my identity as a lesbian, as a queer woman, as being about my oppression. I don’t think that people who grew up in more liberal areas, with an accepting family, are any more or less welcome in the community than people whose experience was more harrowing. I think if you have been force fed an idea about sex and gender from the mainstream that does not align with your own, if you have had to spend time figuring out who you are, and your answer led you to the LGBTQ community, then I’m not sure who I am to say you don’t belong. I don’t have to like everybody’s label, you know, or even everyone who is a part of it.

I’m a lesbian who can’t stand plenty of other lesbians. Why the fuck should I care? I don’t need to invite everyone to a cookout; I’m just also not going to work as hard as I can to help divide and conquer on behalf of the straight majority. I understand that, for a fair number of people, they question or feel confrontational about ace inclusion because of a very personal context and experience. 

I get it. I used to be a biphobic dickhead because of my own personal context and experience. I was closeted and self-loathing and knew a lot of bisexual girls with boyfriends in high school who were out and I resented them, a lot, because their experience with oppression didn’t mirror my own. Instead of getting mad at the systems of oppression, I resented someone else who I thought was getting it easier than I was. We’re conditioned to never actually fully blame the mainstream that we want to eventually be a part of.

But fuck that, honestly. I’m done defining myself and my community primarily through our relationship to pain. I was wrong when I fell for exclusionist impulses, and the new wave of exclusionists are wrong now.

Ace people are a part of the LGBTQ community because almost every argument about why they aren’t sounds like hateful shit straight people would say. 

I’m not interested in acting like I’m a straight loser during pride.

[gufyresthere]

Ok, I haven’t been active in quite some time because of real life business, so I’m only checking Tumblr every now and then for notifications and comments. I’m not the kind of person to publicly try to “shame” someone, but I’m so exasperated and fed up with this kind of childish and cowardly behaviour (this person could’ve just contacted me in private if they really had a point to make, instead they chose to rant publicly about nonsense under my own art making me pass for some kind of monster).

And now, the weather.

@renalani Hi there. I have no idea why you feel so compelled to express your so-called "frustration" under my art. With the premise being that one thing does not exclude the other, where do you get the idea that if in a piece of simple fanart about fictional characters, if two people of the same sex are portrayed together they automatically become gay/lesbian only AND that the author of said picture automatically becomes biphobic? Isn't it extremely RUDE of you to just assume so? :D My tags are pretty simple (trigun - trimax - milly thompson - milly meryl - insurance girlfriends etc.) and I shouldn't even care to explain to you that - lo and behold!, I am pansexual myself, so the joke's on you, my dear outraged-for-nothing fruitcake. "Bisexuals! Bisexuals! Bisexuals!" Isn't it so homophobic or heterophobic of you to say??? Oh my. What will other people on this blessed mudslide of a website think??  "Why is Tumblr so biphobic?" Really??? I think the American teenagers that nowadays unfortunately represent the majority of Tumblr are doing a pretty good job defending any kind of stupid self-inflicted label while bashing the others in the process. Isn't it funny how it works? (While people fighting real battles for their identity are doing their best to get rid of labels, how ironic.) I even took a couple of minutes out of my time to check out your blog to find this: "Frustrated: Why is Tumblr so bad at embracing bisexuality or pansexuality in its characters and fandoms? Sometimes it feels downright biphobic". Tumblr is just a website. People make the website. The majority of people, alas, are a bunch of screeching frogs shouting at each other about topics that should be discussed like adults outside of fandoms. Don't use other people's shit to spread nonsense about your "personal battles" and to create useless misunderstandings, especially when said shit isn't offensive in the slightest and you're only seeing what you want to see with your engorged-ego-tinted goggles. The most overlooked thing is that you people often tend to forget that all fanarts and fanfictions are based on works by other people and that most authors in most cases never declared anything specific about their characters' sexual preferences or made them hetero by default, so any fanmade portrayal is pure non-canon speculation for self-satisfaction or to appeal to the fandom.    Have a nice day.

[gffa]

I just wanted to send a quick message about the Sabe/Tonra scenario by saying that just because Sabe and Tonra were m/f, having a bisexual or pansexual character is still hugely important. And the m/f relationship should not be treated as lesser than the f/f relationship in any way. I understand what you're saying, but stuff like this fuels biphobes and people who look down on bisexuals who are in m/f relationships.

This is a complicated topic and I’m largely in agreement with you, that the way bi/pan people are portrayed in media tends to fuel so much of the shit bi/pan people in real life get and that was an undercurrent of the feelings I was working through on the post I made about it.  And that’s why I specifically said, “And, hey, part of being bi/pan is that the m/f relationships are just as valid as the f/f and m/m parts of those relationships (and with f/nb and m/nb as well), so I’m not inherently against this scene!“ on that post.But let’s not pretend that bi/pan characters (especially women) aren’t routinely written as defaulting to the m/f pairings, that the bi/pan part of them is treated as a ~quirk instead of a genuinely queer character, who might end up in a same-sex relationship or an opposite-sex relationship.And, yes, I get just as frustrated when someone reblogs a bi/pan f/f couple and labels them as lesbian (let me tell you, I spend a lot of time being frustrated in Adventure Time and Legend of Korra fandoms) because being bi/pan and in a f/f (or m/m or with a nb person) relationship does not make you a lesbian any more than being in a m/f relationship makes you any less bi/pan.  Nor is it only “half-queer” or lesser than being “full gay”.My problem is that f/f or m/m is not inherently more valuable than m/f (other than that queer people are starved for representation in a way m/f pairings aren’t, which is a pretty big “other than” of course) but that I wasn’t advocating for the f/f part to be more valuable, but that I was advocating for the balance of the two in Sabe’s life to be more overt, instead of just one line vs a whole scene.  Because we do not have nearly enough bi/pan characters/relationships that aren’t weighted towards the m/f parts of them having more meaning.I hear what you’re saying as well and I don’t disagree!  But there’s also a very real trend to treat bi/pan characters as defaulting towards m/f and how that dynamic is more real, so having this scene more prominent fed into that for me, as well as it feeds the idea that bi/pan people aren’t REALLY queer, that bi/pan people are just straight people PRETENDING to be queer for cool points or whatever.And, yes, I’m saying this as a bisexual person myself.  (I’m bisexual + aromantic, though, I don’t think that overwrites others’ feelings and opinions, but it does mean that I have given this a lot of thought, that I’ve felt a lot of that prejudice against bi people, and I’ve spent a lot of years of my life unpacking bullshit like, “Bisexuality is just saying bye-bye to heterosexuality.” or the idea that being bi is half-gay and half-straight instead of its own thing, or my favorite that “women’s sexuality is just more fluid, they just don’t mind who they bang, so it doesn’t actually mean anything, you’re really just straight”.  When I say the above, that this is coming from a place of how I want bi characters to be represented as genuinely bi, I mean it.  We may disagree on how to go about achieving that, but I think we can trust that we’re both coming from a place of how dealing with biphobia is a really shitty feeling.)

[theashesofthefirststar]

Why Bisexual Lance is So Important

Alright guys, I want to get a little bit personal with you. I can't explain just how important bisexual Lance is without explaing the journey to understanding my own sexuality first, so bear with me for a little bit.

When I was a kid, I spent a ridiculous amount of time agonizing about my sexuality. I knew I liked boys, but there was also this part of me that felt drawn to girls. In fact, I have vivid memories of going to church with my grandparents and hiding away in the bathroom, quite literally praying that god would give me some kind've grand epiphany. Seeing that part of my upbringing was rather conservative, of course I didn't want to like girls, and I remember thinking that god wouldn't be so unfair, that if liking the same sex meant being sent to hell - as my fudemental church taught me - then god wouldn't set me up to lose like that.

This part of my story is an universal experience amongst a lot of people in the LGBT community. But this is where it gets tricky.

My mom came out to me as a lesbian when I was about thirteen. I had my suspicions, but the point is, she never told me. I had already internalized my sexuality, and because she hid hers from me, it was only natural for me to do the same. In fact, the only person I told about my possible bisexuality was one of her girlfriend.

Fast forward several years and I'm seventeen. I have only dated boys and am currlently with my boyfriend of one and half years. He was a good guy, but ignorant. We both were. He use to say that he was fine with me making out with my female friends because it was "just fun". Lol, spoiler alert 2011 boyfriend, that's not the way it works.

So I inevitably developed a crush on one of these girls I'm having fun with, and after some Freaks and Geeks style Teenage Angst™, I tell my well meaning boyfriend that I think I'm a lesbian and break up with him.

It's a big deal for me. I come out. The conservative part of my family holds an intervention, my mom makes some joke about receiving my How to be a Lesbian handbook in the mail. I had a few girlfriends. I genuinely felt as if I was strictly attracted to girls. It was great...until it wasn't.

Eventually, I do start dating sleeping with guys again. At first, I make excuses. "Oh, no girls want to date me anymore." Or "I'm just lonely. It was one time." And I did have to make excuses. My friends would constantly interrogate me. My ex took me to be some lying slut instead of the sexually confused individual that I was. And perhaps worst of all was the fact that I grew up with a mother who was biphobic. She - like a lot of lesbians I know- had an issue with bi woman. And look, I love this woman to death, but growing up she would say horrible things about bi woman without realizing her own ignorance.

This is the first differentiator between what its like to be gay and what its like to be bi. Over fifty percent of the LGBT community identifies as bisexual, and yet are subjected to more decrimination than any other fraction of said community within their own community. In the straight world, bisexual people are treated as slutty or confused. In the gay world, they're simply treated as if they don't belong.

This stems from a much bigger issue. When my friends would interrogate me, they'd always ask, "So do you like boys or girls?" Or, it was always or, never and. Once I accepted my sexuality, this infuriated me. At least until I realized that I was the same way. We are conditioned to compartmentalize things, sexuality and gender especially. People are assumed straight until proven gay. Bisexual is never on the bracket. Most people dont even realize that liking both boys and girls is an option.

And for many people, when they finally do, there's such an internalized biphobia that accepting it becomes actually painful. Accepting it means constant judgment. It means being ostracized by your gay friends.

"You can come the party, but you cant bring your opposite sex partner," says my lesbian friend, completely ignoring the B in LGBT.

"Oh, I know you're bi, but if you haddddd to choose," says a thirty something year old, gay man - my friend.

"Becca, if you convince my husband that he's bisexual, I swear-" says another gay friend of mine who constantly rejects his partners sexuality because godforbid he be married to one of us two-sex loving heathens.

Theres a reason why Bisexuals are said to be apart of the "phantom spectrum". Because we are constantly treated as if we don't exist. But it doesn't have to be that way. Media is one of the biggest and long lasting influencers in our lives. It shapes who we are and how we view the world.

I'm twenty three, and it wasnt until I was twenty one that I begane to proudly wear the label of bisexual. Its too late for me. I can't go back in time and change those formative years, but with something as simple as explicit bi representation, we can save a generation of kids the same confusion and stigma that many bi people experience today.

So yeah, I'm a little bit fed up with people treating me as if wanting Lance to be confirmed bisexual is the same as me pushing my Big Gay Agenda on them. If that's what you really think it's about, then you are willfully ignorant to the unique experiences of Bisexuals.

[colorisbyshe]

so i’m a lesbian and i’ve always thought that butch/femme should be exclusive to lesbians, because they’re based in lesbian identity- but now that i found out lesbian meant bi&gay women until well into the 60s i’m doubtful of that. basically my only bother that remains is that there are terms right now that do reflect the experience of bi women/are based in bi identity like tomcat, stag/doe (i know they're not super widespread but language can evolve ect) (1/3)

i’m just confused bc like, my gf says she would like different terms for bi women? maybe it’s good to have different words because they are different experiences, since there *are* different words now. basically my question is since the meaning of lesbian has changed wouldn’t that also change the meaning of butch/femme? (2/3)             

and i have another question: after bisexual was established as a separate identity from lesbian, were butch/femme identifiers still used in bi groups, or did they “split” with the butch/femme identifiers? if they continued using them it’s obviously completely fair for bi women to use butch/femme. sigh. i wish lgbt history was easy to come by! (3/3) p.s. id like to clarify that im not approaching with malicious intent or nything! im very curious abt this discourse & i just love our history!  

How do tomcat, stag/doe reflect the bi experiences in ways that butch/femme don’t? Those words were made up in reaction to a racist, transmisogynistic, and biphobic expulsion of women and not in a genuine response to what it means to be bi. Like... can anyone even explain in depth what those words mean, where they came from, and what community of bi women (if there even ARE solid communities just for bi women) has heavily adopted it?

Like you, I’m not trying to be malicious with it, I’m just wondering why decades upon decades of bisexual history where in REAL spaces that aren’t full of tumblr idpol bi women HAVE continued to use butch/femme in ~sapphic spaces and appropriately (ie not while in relationships w/ men, not outside of sapphic spaces) should be erased in favors of “Someone on tumblr said you should use these words instead?”

Most of my friends are bisexual and lesbian women, absolutely none of them use tomcat or stag. Not to mention how fucking ridiculous these divides get when we use them to refer to OTHER women--”God, she’s such a hot butch.” Does that mean we have to assume that shes a lesbian. When lesbians say they prefer to date butches or femmes, does that mean they only prefer to date other lesbians? Should they have said “butches and stags, femmes and does” or whatever the fuck?

Especially since femme/butch still exist outside of lesbian culture ANYWAYS. Like... again, it was a part of bi culture. Gay men use it too and similar ways (not the same, no but similar).

And while I understand and am sympathetic to the desperate leave to cultivate language for your own experiences, I’m getting more and more fed up with groups planting their flag in what was once shared ground and saying, “Mine now” without any historical or cultural evidence to back it up besides “I was told it’s this way and it should stay this way.”

Especially when the reason it’s “This way” is radical feminism, especially when it’s transmisogyny, racism, and biphobic.

While you mean well and aren’t trying to be malicious, your question essentially boils down to, “Shouldn’t we maintain the tradition of this more bigoted separatism because we’ve gotten so used to it?”

In the right contexts, separatism is fine. Lesbians deserve their own spaces, language, and whatever else they want. But not at the expense of taking away spaces and language bi women helped cultivate and have lived and used for decades upon decades.

Much in the vein that I turn to bisexual who complain about some things lesbians have and say “Well, create what you want then, do it for yourself.”

I would much the same say that to lesbians who complain about the fact that some bisexual women are refusing to be complicit in the very passive but once aggressive erasure of OUR history and OUR culture. If you think you need this language, create a new one.

But butch and femme were never about the gendered experience when wholly excluding men because lesbians at that time... weren’t defined by their exclusion of men but rather for their love of women. And if bisexual women (who can, y’unno, exclude men from their lives, just to remind y’all) who focus on their love of women, prioritize it, and are, y’unno, currently involved in women and intend to stay involved in women want to use language to reflect their gendered experience of having the choice between the genders and choosing women over and over again and how that affects their presentation, their gender, their lives... can a single person given me a compelling reason for them to stop?

I’m sorry that this ask seems hostile and overly long. I’m in a bad mood (not because of this discourse but something else) and I’m also tired of being made to feel like an invader to my own history, my own culture, my own lived experiences.