#they're lesbian gay solidarity btw

[vileidol]

@withsappho unfortunately, the angel and the devil on your shoulders are both recommending murder

[caliburn-the-sword]

other than the entire adultery plotline, the only thing i would retcon in the entire season 1 of ouat is the fairies are cursed to become nuns in storybrooke. WHAT EVEN WAS THAT??? so many characters became their exact opposites, so why was blue the exact same stuffy woman both as a fairy and in storybrooke? in my mind, the fairies became a giant lesbian commune (so essentially what they already were in the enchanted forest) living on the outskirts of town. and because storybrooke shouldn't have any contact with the outside world, the fairies collectively own a farm that sources most of the food for all of storybrooke. when the curse broke they were like hey actually this is pretty good. and kept being a giant lesbian commune.

[the-feminist-philosopher]

You just doubled down on your argument that believing transgenderism is misogynistic automatically aligns you with conservatives.

I could give you a big list of horrible atrocities being committed by right wing men with access to guns, the mass shootings because of a lack of gun control, would that convince you that we need to disarm the proletariat? Does wanting an armed proletariat mean that you support right wing violence, because you agree with conservatives that people should have the right to own guns, even when those guns are being used to kill innocent children?

Maybe if feminists weren't being attacked by the misogynistic male left, and could actually have a voice in the left, desperate women with no resources trying to find support for our human rights wouldn't feel like the right wing is the lesser of two evils.

I mean, when trans activists are nailing dead rats to rape shelters, deplatforming feminists who speak out about misogyny, shutting down and controlling any conversations about women's rights to make sure that men are being centered, and witch hunting any lesbian who refuses to take penis, and sometimes even going so far as to rape and murder women, it's not like feminists are going to get any solidarity with so-called left wing movements, who prioritize males over women. Your movement is literally cannibalizing feminists and then wondering why these desperate women are going, "Hmmm, well left wing men want to get rid of all women's rights forever in one fell swoop by controlling the legal definition of woman, and conservatives want to chip away at my rights slowly over time one by one... I have no resources, who can help me?"

Idk, maybe let women speak about our oppression freely in left wing spaces, provide resources to feminists, allow women to have female only spaces and organize around our class consciousness rather than trying to maintain male control and male hegemony and male definitions of womanhood? And then women will come back to the left, where we used to be, until this trans movement (which btw has all the same goals of the Men's Rights Movement: destroy female class consciousness, destroy female only space, etc...) took over.

You just doubled down on your argument that believing transgenderism is misogynistic automatically aligns you with conservatives.

Because it does. The only people who believe this are on the right, often the far-right, of the political spectrum. You must not like to read?

So I am going to lay it out for you again (because copy-paste is easy for those who refuse to read):

Politically, TERFs have put their eggs in the same basket as people passing anti-abortion policies, people trying to pass girl's genital inspection policies for sports, people trying to ban LGB books, people who want to repeal the right to gay marriage, and people who believe that a woman's "place" is in the home- serving a husband and children all to score a political point against trans people.

Literal white supremacists and white supremacist organizations (See: Richard Spencer’s Radix) are trying to turn TERFs into “race realists.” And they're actually having a lot of success because 1.) the movement is chronically white, 2.) the movement is built a lot on social fears, and 3.) the movement often uses crime statistics as a recruitment and justification point. Literal white supremacists are using the TERF's social grievances and crime statistics to "enlighten" these supposed feminists about what they call the "race question." Over-policing and capitalistic deprivation of resources have devastated black and brown communities, making members of those communities the disproportionate victims of incarceration. Simply pointing out crime and incarceration stats without nuance, which TERFs like to do with their "trans women are all sexual predators" crime argument, has actually helped the bottom line of white supremacists.

They're also using the standard TERF's belief in the divine feminine-- the idea that natal women have a unique biology which should be protected and venerated-- to convince them that there are "masculine" and "feminine" energies and turn them onto the trad life. And they're tapping into the TERF's unaddressed "benevolent" sexism-- a type of sexism that positively rewards people assigned female at birth for observing their sex-assigned social prescriptions from presentation to roles to a cis identity, and which holds that women should be protected (by the [masculinist] state) and revered, most especially for their unique biology-- to convince them that "modern society" and "modern feminism" is diseased and the antithesis to their liberty. And it's working. It's working precisely because TERFs are so eager to separate people into "biological" castes so that men are men and women are women (and never the twain shall meet), define women as "the sex that can bear offspring or produce ova," and reify gendered associations, specifically the association that men are Aggressors and women are passive Recipients of said aggression. This ideology actually does quite a bit to uphold patriarchal ideas that define women as a discrete biological category and it also encourages a system whereby men act on behalf of and choose for women (the Aggressor v. Recipient social prescription does a lot to justify rape culture, or men acting aggressively on behalf of and choose for women).

^This is why notorious misogynists like Matt Walsh have shown open support for high-profile TERFs and have taken the "Adult Human Female" slogan and run with it. There's a reason these men on the "right" of the political spectrum can't stand the existence of trans people, but will voice support for TERFs and their ideology and use their language. The TERF ideology is sexist and they're sexists, so it follows.

Additionally, over the last several years, many rad fem leaders and organizations have come to ally with LGB &T hate groups and the Christian right because they, "know who real women are." It is these christian right groups like the FRC and ADF who are behind many of the anti-abortion, anti-women movements through the U.S. and Europe. They're also behind a lot of anti-trans policies and legislation.

You can read a bit about who is behind funding these policy initiatives, and how much money goes into these campaigns below:

European Parliamentary Forum

Southern Poverty Law Center on the ADF

Southern Poverty Law Center on the FRC

And you can read about the connection between these groups and trans-exclusionaries and radical feminists below:

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Far-Right Anti-Trans Laws

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Anti LGBT Campaigns

Political Research Associates on Partners with the Christian Right

An "Unlikely" Ally

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) even accepted a $15,000 donation from the religious freedom giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom. They've also co-authored anti-trans parenting guides with the Family Policy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation. They've held conferences and panels with Christian-right organizing groups too

We've also seen countless radical feminists appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight and the Ingraham Angle, two Fox hosts well-known for whipping up anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiment in America's Christian Nationalist movement. Speakers included: Meg Kilgannon, Kara Dansky, Tammy Bruce, and Julia Beck.

The term "gender ideology" even has it's origins in conservative Christian circles. And don't even get me started on their use of "hygiene" to describe cis people and the fact they co-opted the idea that certain people (in this case, trans people) have "contaminating" genes. Plus, TERF complaints about the supposed existence of "cancel culture" and "woke culture" echo conservative and right-wing rhetoric.

would that convince you that we need to disarm the proletariat

Some of your favorite pseudo-feminist anti-trans leaders are billionaires and business owners who run sweatshops to bring you the pussy hats and "Adult Human Female" shirts and pins that say transitioning is conversion therapy and rape culture.

You don't give a shit about the proletariat. Otherwise, you'd care about impoverished and prostituted trans workers. If you cared about the proletariat, you'd care about the trans workers packing your Amazon shipments and making your Starbucks and building your smart phone and striking alongside other factory workers and subduing exactly those mass shooters you like to mention again and again. And if you cared about the proletariat, you'd listen to prostituted trans women on the sex industry.

The US has a white supremacy problem. And there's a reason many of it's terrorists mass attack bars and events full of trans people.

You don't give a single damn about the proletariat.

Maybe if feminists weren't being attacked by the misogynistic male left, and could actually have a voice in the left, desperate women with no resources trying to find support for our human rights wouldn't feel like the right wing is the lesser of two evils.

So, let me get this straight. The people stripping others of abortion rights, forcing children into genital inspections, who want to ban gay marriage, who are burning books, who want a Christo-fascist empire are the "lesser of two evils."

"[T]he progressive and conservative elements of Fascism [are] bound together: the 'progressive' cause... is but a means to a 'reactionary' end, the destruction of the parliamentary form of government. Women thus [have] key social and political roles to play in the battering ram fascism [takes] to liberal democracy."

They literally believe in creating a white-supremacist, christo-fascist nation and you think "Yah, these are the guys to side with. But only temporarily until we can destroy those libs!"

You'd rather choose white supremacy over advocating for trans people even though advocating for trans people in no way attacks women. And then had the audacity to suggest I am misguided in saying you're motivated by hatred:

You cannot claim to have a genuine desire to free women from oppression while thinking white supremacy is the lesser of two evils.

deplatforming feminists who speak out about misogyny, shutting down and controlling any conversations about women's rights to make sure that men are being centered, and witch hunting any lesbian who refuses to take penis, and sometimes even going so far as to rape and murder women,

Only people being deplatformed are misogynists and sexists.

Men are not being centered in any trans-positive discussion of human rights or misogyny or sexism. You're just a bigot who cannot see trans women for who they are.

"How one becomes a woman is not, I think, our job to police, even as everything about that process is worth inquiry and detailed understanding. Having been surrounded by born women who do not identify as women particularly, and reject feminism as having nothing to do with them, it has been inspiring to encounter transwomen who do identify as women, actively oppose violence against women including prostitution (in which those who engage have little choice), and are strong feminists. “Woman” can be, in part, a political identification. To be a woman, one does have to live women’s status. Transwomen are living it, and in my experience bring a valuable perspective on it as well." -Catharine Mackinnon

Trans women are women.

No one is hunting down lesbians who don't want to suck dick. This is an outrageous outrage-buzz point. No one is forcing this. This is not a thing. There is no observable pattern of behavior among all trans women that suggests lesbians are systematically pressured into taking dick. The trans community- the community, the whole- recognizes that it is okay to not want to have sex with someone. You can say no or yes to anyone you want and literally do not need to justify it.

(But, please, for the love of fuck, do come up to someone- even a trans person- and, unprompted, talk about how you don't want to have sex with them and think their genitalia is disgusting and thay are just *so* unattractive. That is sexual harassment. Rule of thumb: if you'd slap a man for saying it, don't repeat it to a trans woman.)

it's not like feminists are going to get any solidarity with so-called left wing movements, who prioritize males over women

And the right-wing prioritizes women? They find solidarity there? I'm sure they certainly don't prioritize traditional gender roles or anti-abortion, or marital rape (/sarcasm).

THESE are literally the people who are trying to deny you your rights in "one fell swoop." They are hardly the lesser of two evils. In the US, most of the most prominent anti-abortionists are being investigated for child sex trafficking. They want to murder all Jewish people and start a race war. They believe we should be ruled by biblical law; that we should put people to death for being gay, trans, or an adulterer. They literally support child-marriage. They're dismantling voting rights, dismantling Title IX, dismantling bodily autonomy rights, and dismantling non-discrimination laws and you think they're the "lesser of two evils?"

Your movement is literally cannibalizing feminists and then wondering why these desperate women are going, "Hmmm, well left wing men want to get rid of all women's rights forever in one fell swoop by controlling the legal definition of woman ...allow women to have female only spaces and organize around our class consciousness rather than trying to maintain male control and male hegemony and male definitions of womanhood

Okay, so, again, feminists- true feminists- reject the attempt define womanhood because it is inherently subjective. They understand that defining a woman and one experience of women ("womanhood") 1.) will leave a lot of women out, and 2.) is ultimately about power.

We can no longer ignore how biology, biological discourse, and the terms and words we use to refer to our material reality are structured by historic and current social and political views. A biological reality becomes cognitively significant through this discourse and these terms we use and concepts we engage with. So, defining “women” as “females” -- and thus emphasizing a label that is ascribed to all at birth along patriarchal standards of "correct" genitalia and "best" fertility -- is itself a political choice influenced by one’s socialization rather than one that can claim to neutrally reflect what the world is “really” and "materially" like.

The reliance upon one standard definition not just for the women's-experience, but also for the female-experience, is laughable, at best. And not just because definitions are inherently imprecise and inadequately encompass the entirety of our lived experienced and the material world. But also because the definitions of words are literally socially constructed. They were created and have since been defined and influenced by oppressive structures like the patriarchy and white supremacy and colonialism. This defining of our experiences is influenced by cissexism, intersexism, heterosexism, and sexism.

There isn't a single property that makes "womanhood" or "femaleness." And that's pretty widely accepted. There's no single thing that single-handedly makes for "womanhood." It's not like after a certain number or configuration of properties converging at a particular time, you get "womanhood." There should never be some one standard against which all bodies are compared or measured for the correct amount of "femaleness" or "womanhood."

So, when people want to create a standard measure for "femaleness" or "womanhood," we need to ask WHO gets to set these standards or properties of "femaleness" or "womanhood" and WHY they're the authority. In any claim about which measures or properties are adequately "woman-enough" are assumptions about power and authority. Who has the power and authority in our society to decide who is "woman-enough?"

The fact society defines "women" as ova producers and child bearers (i.e. the very definition of human female; the sex that has the ability or potential to bear offspring or produce eggs) or even as vagina havers and uterus havers (i.e. the insistence that, "only someone with a uterus or vagina is a woman") is a result of socialization in a male dominant society that has striven to define "woman" as a discrete biological class, female.

Even radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon (an actual radical feminist, and she supports trans women) understood that to be defined as female is to be an object. You do not get to consent to yourself; to your femaleness. It has been defined and ascribed to you and for you. Because male dominant society must see to it that female is a woman and "clearly" a woman, opposite that of "man." It must see to it that women are women and men are men and that the two ought be separate because this allows said society to prescribe certain bounds to each group.

Certain bounds of behavior. Certain bounds of public life. Certain bounds of private life. Certain bounds of presentation.

And this all helps foster the reification of gendered associations that decrease the perception of women as empowered agents and even human. These bounds of behavior assign to men the role of Aggressor and to women the role of passive Recipient, helping to reproduce sexual violence against women by decreasing their agency. These social prescriptions encourage men to act on behalf of women from making financial or relationship decisions, to deciding when and where and how a woman has sex, to the definition and social prescription of "female," and to the reproductive alienation of those assigned female.

Thus, "female" is far from a neutral scientific observation and "woman" is far from a scientific category.

“Any attempt to catalog the commonalities among women … has the inescapable result that there is some correct way to be a woman. This will inevitably encourage and legitimize certain experiences of gender and discourage and delegitimize others, subtly reinforcing and entrenching precisely those forces of socialization of which feminists claim to be critical.” -Carol Hay

And then women will come back to the left, where we used to be, until this trans movement (which btw has all the same goals of the Men's Rights Movement: destroy female class consciousness, destroy female only space, etc…) took over.

AKA... restrict trans people's bodily autonomy and existence for my own comfort because you don't have any actual ideas for how to advance a woman's life unless your work is tied to suppressing the rights of some other group. You don't want to liberate women, you want to throw trans women under the bus and use their backs as a stepping stone or ladder so your skirt doesn't get dragged through the mud.

You guys hate femininity, so have no solution to the arbitrary gendering of clothes and clothing standards beyond shaming women for wearing them as "not feminist enough." And then when they walk into a bathroom looking a little too "male" for your liking, they're harassed, forcing women into a double bind where they aren't feminist enough for you if they are feminine, but also aren't "female" enough for you if they are not feminine.

You don't want to do anything to attack the gender binary or the idea that if female->woman->feminine, if male->man->masculine. You simply don't. You don't want to challenge the idea that certain types of dress and behavior and standards *must* apply to people on the basis of the sex caste they were assigned into. I mean, the transphobe go-to insult for trans women is "men in dresses," which makes no sense as an insult unless you think that dressers are inherently lesser because society deemed them "feminine" and because you think men "shouldn't" wear dresses.

You don't want to tackle gender differentiation- of the idea that men are men and women are women and they fundamentally must be two separate and impermeable castes.

You don't want to tackle benevolent sexism and the deification of (certain) women (as long as they follow certain behaviors). You're group will claim that having a period is materially neutral in one breath and then in the next say that people should be celebrated for their fertility. Without any consideration for how the necessity of (white) female fertility is a patriarchal and white supremacist construct.

You're all unwilling to use epicenic language, like person-first language (person with the capacity for pregnancy), second-person language (if you can get pregnant...), or gender-neutral language (chair/chairperson, camera operator, parent, child, etc...).

You all literally do not want to abolish gender or the gender-sex binary. You don't want to create a society of gender-non/existent/neutral children. You all think that's indoctrinating them into "transness." All you want to do is legislate trans people out of existence. You want to make their identities non-existent. You don't want to abolish gender, you want to abolish the chance for permeable gender expression in favor of a gender that is acceptable to you.

You want to silence trans voices, not uplift women. You want to use trans bodies as your platform from which to preach and evangelize your ideal binary and the standard for which you believe all women should meet to qualify for "womanhood."

Modern feminism holds that social categories intersect at the individual level to reflect multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the social-structural level. Intersectionality is about overlapping systems of oppression and privilege, and how inequalities operate together and exacerbate each other.

The TERF's insistence that cis women (“females” as you’d put it) are a culturally subordinate caste while trans women are members of the oppressor caste entirely discounts the ways in which sex, gender, and cis/trans status intersect. “These intersections produce more complex, shifting, and context- dependent power relationships than are captured by [a simple, binary] M > F formula.” This M > F formula also leads to an over-emphasis of sex subordination in TERF circles to the point that many believe that the patriarchy is the most pivotal and consequential axis of oppression. Too many completely write-off or ignore the intersection of privileges and marginalizations, from racism to cissexism to homophobia to intersexism to classism.

This has led the rad fem movement to fail to address how these systems are reproduced within their organizations, which is why the movement remains chronically white and middle class and predominately straight. This also lead them to ignore the way women play a part in the reproduction of oppressive systems (and even the degradation of democracy), making it easy for anti-pluralistic ideologies which deny these oppressions to spread among TERF ranks.

This is also how we get reductive takes like, "It's empowering to deny a homeless man socks when you're a woman, because he's a man." And this take is all over TERF twitter, calling them "moids."

Trans women do not have systemic power over cis women. They do not have access to the patriarchal power structure and are unable to wield it in their favor. The patriarchy literally hates their existence. All the misogynistic men who rush to the defense of white women like JK are all well known for despising trans people. There isn't a single "MRA" who doesn't want trans people dead.

The fight for bodily autonomy and freedom to live and let live; to identify however one sees fit is hardly "cannibalizing" the left. Transphobes will not be accepted in feminist and liberation movements, period. That isn't cannibalizing our own, that's letting reductive and reactionary movements know they aren't invited and we will not tolerate them. You've made your bed with literal Nazis. We don't want you among our ranks. You are not a feminist. And now you feel put out because you have to sleep in the bed you made.

Amazing. Everything you just said is wrong.

The only reason that femininity (defined as: the attributes or characteristics of a woman) is considered "weak" is because the patriarchy has convinced you that women are "weak" and that anything feminine is inherently "lesser." Nothing about femininity is inherently about being weak or pretty or demure or delicate or graceful. Even "feminine," the adjective that oft refers to those traditional standards has more than one application. As a noun, it literally just refers to a gender or the female sex.

It's literally just the characteristics you use to define your own femaleness. There's nothing capitalist in self-identity and forging your own path of "womanhood."

But the patriarchy has convinced you that anything and everything the female sex does is "lesser;" that any attribute a woman characterizes herself with becomes "weaker."

"Online alt-right corners have demonized feminist paradigms in an incredibly effective way. They saw the disaffection women felt toward the idea of convenient incrementalism and how it failed to liberate women. So, they made feminism synonymous with stagnation.

They saw women's legitimate grievances against systemic violence and oppressive structures and how addressing them would challenge male-dominance in society. So, they used those grievances to convince some women that other women with less social capitol and power are a threat and the reason for their insecurity.

Suddenly, liberal feminism no longer referred to a paradigm; to a type of feminist theory that held that laws are the primary barrier to civil emancipation. It was a boogeyman. And its existence was a threat to women. So it must be destroyed.

Women have key social and political roles to play in the battering ram that fascism takes to liberal democracy. The white man needs the white women. He cannot hope to uphold white supremacy and the hierarchy of race and sex without her.

Convincing women that feminism is really just their oppression repackaged in pink sparkles was one of the smartest things the alt-right could have done. They've been convinced that feminism has become 'girlbossing' and denying your material reality and the exploitation of your labor and alienation from your reproductive functions and the destruction of happiness and family and community and inherently capitalist. It isn't your liberation. Its your prison; the place of eternal double-binds where you aren't "woman-enough" if you can't have kids but you aren't "feminist enough" if you chose to be a mother." X

[lollylandgirl]

I made some wlw mlm solidarity fanart in this pride month. It's a tiny scene with Scarlet and Coco from RWBY Before the Dawn.

I posted it on ko-fi and I made Scarlet my spoilers account pfp with a rainbow flag background soooo maybe I could take some Ko-Fi requests like that?

[sharkmobster]

tombstone and olivia octavius share the same brain cell and you can’t convince me otherwise 

[violetbane]

Fucking ramble time ny'all

Ok so like. Ravenbarley bugs me. Barley is just. So much older than Ravenpaw? They meet when Ravenpaw is p young? So hear me out:

Ravenpaw has to go to Thunderclan for something or other. Maybe to tell Firestar something, or to ask for some herbs that don't grow on the farm. On his way there, he gets sidetracked by someone yowling a greeting from atop the fence that borders Twolegplace. A black and white kittypet jumps down, introduces himself as Smudge, and asks his name. When he tells him, Smudge replies with: "Oh, you're one of those clan cats! Do you know R-er, Firestar?" and Ravenpaw has to explain his whole situation, and that he does know Firestar, and Smudge takes this as an invitation to just hang out and talk for a while. Ravenpaw is a little frustrated at first ("I really do need to be going,") but he eventually finds himself warming up to this kittypet. Smudge is a lot less intense than a lot of clan cats are, and he can be pretty funny, when you get to know him. Ravenpaw eventually gets on his way and completes whatever task he was doing in the forest, but as soon as he gets back to the barn he just goes "bARLEY HOLY SHIT I MET A KITTYPET BUT I DON'T HATE HIM AND I WANNA SEE HIM AGAIN??? HE WAS SO NICE AND FUNNY AND HE HAD THE CUTEST MARKINGS ON HIS MUZZLE AND LITTLE STRIPES ON HIS TAIL AND I WANNA TALK TO HIM MORE?" real excited. And Barley is just.

"Son, I think you're gay. This sounds like gay."

Shenanigans ensue, Barley is the Best Dad and tries to help his dorky son get a date with the friendly city boy down the street.

Bonus: Smudge sees Hattie the next day and just goes "Oh my god. He's. So handsome. And he's so talented like he hunts and he can fight and he lives on a farm where he gets to do whatever he wants and his housefolk don't even stop him, isn't that cool?" And she just. Looks into the camera like she's on the office before saying "Dude that's literally just clan life. You're describing clan life. You know several clan cats." And Smudge is just "Well, he's not in a clan and he's cool! So there!" Bc Smudge is the only cat who can out-disaster Canon Leafpool talking about Mothwing in arc 2.

[howtobake-remaking]

I know I promised to go to sleep but I just realized Saphire and Ruby are butch twink solidarity

[bi-sapphics]

HELLO !! i've been working hard tonight and now i'd like to propose a term & flag using the style of this post. (please reblog instead of just liking, btw!!)

may i present to you.......

BUTCHCAT.

what is "butchcat"? well, it's essentially a combination of the terms "butch" and "tomcat" and it's exclusive to bisexual sapphics.

it can be used a few different ways:

to mean both masculine and androgynous, whether that be presentation-wise, for relationship dynamics & roles, gender identity, or 2-3 together

same as above, but in-between masculine and androgynous rather than both at the same time

same as above, but to be fluid between the two

to be two different but separate identity labels that one identifies with

next, i'd like to explain my flag design.

to start, the brown stripes are supposed to resemble cat fur. the blue inclusion was inspired by this butch bi flag in particular, and the mint colors are supposed to spice up androgyny, like a breath of fresh air (y'know, how mint tastes like even though i don't actually like it irl lmao).

the stripe meanings are as stated here (the ones in the bi format are essentially just simplified), but i'd also like to expand on what i mean with them:

"freedom of gender expression" is supposed to refer to both butch and tomcat separately, but the latter two meanings are each designated to one or the other. i found it difficult to assign something that would refer to tomcat particularly, so i just took inspiration from @doetomcatstag's answered asks on their blog and went with how other bi women have described its significance to them: "fluidity in performance, authenticity in (nby) womanhood and sapphicism." the existence of tomcat is there to help us define the experience of being both bisexual and sapphic in our own way, which in this case as opposed to doe/stag, is combining femininity and masculinity into androgyny for ourselves and other women, or being fluid between them. and of course i made sure to be nonbinary-inclusive. the wording is still a bit strict but as long as you consider yourself sapphic it is designed to resonate with you. "butch chivalry" is a common phrase within our community that honors our code and sworn role as butches. including this acknowledges that we are no less butch, neither for being bi nor for also simultaneously being tomcats.

androgyny & masculinity are self-explanatory.

the middle stripe describes the intersection, which is basically just the already-stated definition of the term, as well as what i said above about the first stripe from the top.

"bisexuality, biromanticism, and recognition that bisexuals are also sometimes gnc and can experience complex relationships with their gender" is deeply important to me personally. this kind of bi erasure is so common, both intentionally and unintentionally. unfortunately we are usually subconsciously dismissed as always being feminine for the availabilty of men, which isn't just biphobic but misogynistic. there are also many lesbians out there who think that only they can be gnc because they're "real" gay women, neither of these statements are true. to be butch and/or tomcat is to inherently bc gnc, which is why this stripe is so important.

expanding on the bottom stripe of the bi-formatted flag - "bisexual sapphic culture; allowing bisexuals the usage of butch/femme from their own history while also honoring the new bi-exclusive terms." this ties in pretty similarly to my point about bimisogyny, except it's slightly different in that it originally neglected the mention that we also have to fight hard to be able to use butch/femme and other "lesbian" culture without backlash. you may have noticed a huge part of this blog is dedicated to fighting that fight, so i thought this would be necessary to include.

moving on, i'd also like to add that i do, in fact, have assigned meaning for the little minty cat symbol as well:

there is no butch bi or tomcat bi or butchcat bi community without bi solidarity. we have to be there for each other, and stand up for each other when our non-harmful identities are challenged. what does it mean to put on a performance for other (bi) women if you won't even play your part?

i hope you like it. and please tag me if you use either of these flags for whatever!!

don't forget that this term is exclusive to bi sapphics!! (why?)

also please let me know if this flag design is too similar to another, please & thank you!!

[posi-pan]

(You don't have to publish this if you don't want, it's lengthy and I guess I'm just looking for some reassurance than I'm not losing my mind...)

Aren't pan people the expert in the experiences we deal with as pan? I think so! People generally agree that talking over others' experiences with their own labels is bad. So that goes for us, too.

Aren't pan people the ones who will catch panphobic dogwhistles the easiest because some of us are aware it's directed at us and it's bad faith? Absolutely!

With all that said... I've come across a post (that I'm sure someone talked to you about it here before, around February) where the gist of it was a prominent bi talked about typical bi things (and there was no mention of pansexuality) but a lot of pan people caught on the dogwhistles right away. Some digging through that person's blog and there we have... *Babs. Then a bunch of bi people became defensive saying stuff like how it's not about pan, and bi people saying "bi is not transphobic etc" is not a dogwhistle... And that shutdown the conversation and didn't address the elephant in the room: a bi person saying "innocent" bi positivity statements that read as panphobic dogwhistles and this same bi person associating with *babs being just a coincidence and not at all related /s.

So then we have a bunch of bi people unwilling to hear pan people (and other non-bi mspec) and call out anti-pan and anti-mspec sentiments in the bi community, and you have a bunch of non-bi mspec people terrified of the (much more visible and bigger) bi community because of *babs, because of being mislabeled as bi... And everyone is unhappy but especially non-bi people get shunned out and silenced (much like in aspec discourse, trans men/transmasc discourse, and so on).

It makes me wonder if people even know what a dogwhistle is... The point is exactly to be stealthy and look like something completely ordinary and inoffensive... it's literally why it's called that. I wouldn't count on bi people understanding panphobic (or any mspecphobic) dogwhistles because these can come disguised as bi positivity! But I would at least expect them to stop and try to listen, see it from our perspective, you know like... in solidarity with their mspec siblings. And I'm glad many of them do! I just wish it was a community-wide effort.

A lot of the time I feel like the "I'm mad when it's not about me" and "read this manifest/book/article/magazine, it's the bible of <identity>, no I don't care about your, actual, real life experiences" and "well, I won't listen/do anything about it because it doesn't affect me personally" and "well, I'm <identity> and I don't think <thing> is that bad, you're overreacting" are things that are so pervasive in the community, especially from mainstream labels and binary people... like... in some kind of hierarchic, oppression olympics, way and people don't even need to say it explicitly like that... And this is why you see so many new labels, mogai, xenogenders, bi lesbians, etc getting so much hatred all the time. Somehow it's threatening to Certified(/s) lesbians, gays, bisexuals, binary trans people, and it's so depressing... I hate exclusionists. I don't really have a solution. I wish I didn't have to be blocking a lot of panphobes/mspecphobes everyday :( thank you! (I don't mean to be antagonist against mainstream labels btw, I believe solidarity and union can make us all much stronger.)

*Babs are not the only panphobic/mspecphobic types out there, but they're pretty public about being assholes. It could be anyone, really. And unironically, *babs also harm fellow bi people because their rhetoric is biphobic too.

just........everything you said. yes. you are not losing your mind. you are spot fucking on.

[armandyke]

u make a rly good point abt how lesbians have a specific experience even from bi girls and in the wave of kind of blind inclusivity and general lesbophobia no one wants to listen. lesbians are 100% isolated from the patriarchy–theyre neither men nor attracted to them. but a lot of ppl see oppression as some sort of competition, so they get mad when u talk about experiences that don't overlap because they think ur saying they're more privileged than u. which ur not. (gay trans guy sayin this btw)

Yeah exactly like I’m not trying to say one group has it worse than the other like bi girls have to deal with just as much stuff that lesbians will never experience as well but like we can’t just.. ignore that in the name of solidarity. Bi girls and lesbians are sisters and we gotta stick together but we can’t act like we’re The Same because then a lot of issues end up getting overlooked.