#we are literally the same variety of butch

[snekdood]

oh you want to force the label "butch" on to me? well looks like its time to go back to strictly fucking cis men

[shadowsandsunset]

Realized I have a long distance QPR with my best friend today.

We've been friends since 6th grade. We met the first day of middle school.

She's my favorite person in the whole world and I love who she is as a person.

She's straight though and I am not attracted to her, even though I think she's beautiful. It would be like being attracted to the sunrise, I think. Something necessary, beautiful and beloved but not in any way that is sexual or romantic. She's family and my sister but also so much more than that.

But I was just thinking about her and realized that she and I have both agreed that we're "stuck with" one another.

And no matter what's happened in our lives in the past, we stick together and we're always there for each other.

I've literally offered to marry her before, because it wouldn't change much but the tax breaks would be nice.

She lives some hours away and eventually I'm planning on moving to be with her. It's been agreed upon that when my current job ends in a few years, I'll move to be with her.

I am queer as fuck, I've been in love with women and men and others before. I've had meaningful romantic relationships with all genders, I've had really good sex with a variety of people and I hope to have more in the future. I'm a soft butch, pansexual, genderqueer/gnc, afab. I play with sexuality and gender expression like they are Legos. To say that my romantic and sexual desires are complicated is understating it, to be honest.

This is all to say: nothing compares to the depth of my devotion and love for her. And I can say the same goes for her. She's my person. I'm her person. We are it for each other in a very platonic way.

And I wouldn't change a thing.

[vaspider]

I have a question, and you seem to be very good at explaining things. My understanding is that transfemme/transwoman/femme? are all the same, and mean someone who was assigned male at birth, and currently identifies as transgender. And the same for transmasc/transman/masc. Just, yknow, the other way around. Is that correct? Or am I getting my terminology wrong? I've always been kinda shakey on that, but wasn't sure who to ask without seeming rude, or like I was mocking them.

"Femme" is a word with multiple meanings. It can mean:

"Woman" - since it's just the word 'woman' in French, and this is where all of the other meanings come from.

"A femme lesbian, that is, someone who fits the 'femme' dynamic or presentation within a butch/femme relationship, or simply on their own." - This is regardless of actual gender, pronouns, cis, trans, whatever. Butch and femme in this context come to us from Polari, which is a theater cant from the UK commonly used by Travellers, theater people, sex workers, and queer folx (and all the intersections thereof). The butch/femme dynamic in lesbian (and gay!) relationships and communities goes back at least seventy-five years. This has way more context to it than I can cover in this, but, like, if you look at movies like Paris Is Burning or read any of the older lesbian zines, you'll see many many examples.

"A transfeminine person, that is, someone who was assigned male at birth and is moving in a feminine direction with their transition, or presents feminine rather than masculine OR a person who presents feminine regardless of gender." - 'Femme' is often used as a catch-all term for anyone who is "femme of center" when discussing gendered issues. This can include cis women, femme non-binary people regardless of gender at birth, binary trans women, and many other varieties as well.

You'll sometimes see "women and femmes" used to describe who belongs in a particular space, but this is falling out of favor, thankfully, as it was often used as a low-key misgendering of AFAB non-binary people and trans men. What people usually meant by that is "people with vaginas and also trans women I guess," and it ended up with a sort of 'woman lite' implication for the word 'non-binary' and excluding non-binary people who didn't present feminine enough (usually meaning 'they have a dick and are non-binary'). The whole phrase is a mess and I'm glad we're moving more toward talking about "marginalized genders."

My wording on this may not be perfect, and it may not match every single use of femme as other people understand it -- and I'm sure I've forgotten some usages of it. The point is that it's a contextual word. What it means often depends on the conversation at hand, who's having the conversation, what community they're part of (whether that's the lesbian community, the queer community, the trans community, what region or country they're from... ), etc. If you're confused by someone's use of 'femme' contextually, it doesn't hurt to ask for more information. (Though I would avoid saying things like 'define femme' bc that's often the sort of thing that TERFs and the baby-TERF exclusionists do, and you may come off unintentionally as one of them. Asking 'hey, I know this word has lots of contextual different meanings, would you mind clarifying for me' is probably better.)

That's one thing, honestly, I think we need to get a lot better at as a community -- and here I know I'm going on a tangent -- recognizing that a lot of our words are contextual, lots of them don't have single, fixed, universally-recognized meanings, that the US isn't the single defining experience of queerness and other countries use other terms which are as correct as ours, and that even regionally there are lots of different terms or slightly different definitions. This sort of dogmatic 'there is absolutely only one definition, and it's mine, and I'm going to redefine your experience and your identity if it doesn't fit my definition' is something I've seen far too much of lately, especially from younger queer folx.

I know it's like, really tempting to want to have singular rigid definitions for every word, but that doesn't fit people's experiences of gender or sexuality, and the trend I've seen toward literally telling people "you are not X, your experience doesn't fit X, you are Y," is some nasty-ass stuff and it really needs to stop. I've seen it most often with younger lesbians telling older (in some cases decades older) lesbians "you're wrong, you're bisexual/pansexual, you're not a lesbian," but I've also seen it with gender, people telling others what their gender is, and that's the shit that TERFs and other transphobes do, we can't be doing that to each other.

Anyway, femme means a lot of things, depending on context. Ask people if you're not sure. And before I hit post on this, let me make clear that I don't tolerate discourse around whether butch and femme are "lesbian exclusive" terms. They are not, they never have been, and if someone comes into my notes trying to start that old bullshit up again, they will not get the serotonin of a reply from me. They will get blocked without response.

[yrbutchgf]

hey, i'm feeling a bit insecure in my identity rn and i was wondering if you have any... tips, or anything like that. i'm a lesbian who feels more comfortable in a masc role, and i think i would identify as butch... but i feel like i'm too emotional. i cry SO often. my mental health has been less than stellar for the last 10 years or so lol, so that plays a part, but i'm also just a crier. things that make me cry: criticism, heated discussions, presentations, movie/game/book endings, all music with violins, some music without violins, christmas commercials, those miniature food clay charms... literally everything. and it's always in public too, which is embarrassing enough as it is. and i know that doesn't have to mean anything for my gender identity, but the whole "boys/men don't cry" thing kind of did a number on me lol. i always feel like a little girl when others watch me cry, even though i want to be the protector. sorry for rambling, but i feel like you always have good takes on butchness and stuff like that, so i was wondering if you have any tips on feeling more secure in my butch/masc side :)

ok before i say anything else, thank you, i’m honestly really flattered you think that highly of my takes lol <3 i do try my best, i’m glad i’m able to help people to whatever extent i do with my posts. also, bit of a length warning -- i always set out with the intention of writing succinct responses to asks, but it always gets away from me, and this time "getting away from me" meant "turning into a manifesto." well, oops. c'est la butch/femme.

now to start this answer off: i definitely relate. i’m also pretty emotional. when i get stressed i get really shaky, especially in my hands, and then after that my body turns on the waterworks. i also have a fairly exuberant personality in general, and i'm very expressive with my hands & body language. the only times i’ve ever really fit the stoic archetype have been on accident, usually when i’ve felt uncomfortable in a social situation and it’s come off as strong silence. at the same time, i also don’t like when people see me cry or be emotional in general, especially in public. it makes me feel vulnerable in a way that i don’t like to give most people, and the fact that i can’t fully control when or if i do is uncomfortable. and i think disliking that feeling is totally normal, or at the very least it’s a common boundary to have. regardless of sexuality, gender, or presentation, there’s a social urge to cover up when we’re feeling our feelings, but even beyond that there is, i think, a reflexive, self-preservation level urge to cover up what can be easily damaged. so to an extent, i think it’s natural to shy away from vulnerability.

at the same time, the urge to push down one’s tears is not necessarily a HEALTHY urge, only a COMMON one, because you’re right: emotionality has no bearing on your gender or what roles you can take up. some of my best butch and masc friends are also extremely emotional people, and they’re very open about it, and in a lot of ways that openness almost feels to me more masculine or more butch, because they’re embracing their feelings, and that’s obviously a really hard thing to learn to do, so it’s powerful, admirable, and also to be honest, it’s attractive! the ability of someone to be brave enough to be vulnerable can in many situations make the people around them feel more at ease, and i think it can become a very steady, very stabilizing sort of masculinity. in other words, someone who is very comfortable in their tears is also very good and healing to be around. so i think in a lot of ways, when you learn to own your emotions rather than push them away, that can very easily augment your butchness rather than take away from it.

now obviously everyone views butch/femme differently, whether as genders/sexuality labels/dynamics/what have you, but for me no matter what at the center of these terms there is always this nexus, this core focus, of care. in the dynamic, butch/femme is about butches & femmes caring for one another in complementary ways both in- and out-side of romantic relationships. so when we talk about butchness standalone, you and many other people reach for words like “protector,” and i don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, i think protection can and often is a key role, but my point here is, where is that urge to protect coming from? it’s from love, from caring about the people you love. and i think it’s important to remember that and to frame it that way, because when you do, it becomes pretty simple: your emotionalism is more than anything a sign of that urge to care/protect/provide in you, or a driving force to those urges, however you want to frame it. far from taking away from your butchness, your emotions are at the very foundation of what it can be. i talked about this in the butch/femme server a bit, and thren @lesbiandaemon said it perfectly:

i genuinely think i (and many others!) would feel so much safety and security being w someone who allows themself to be vulnerable and earnest abt their emotions and it definitely augments butchness, from my perspective as a femme. i envy and care deeply for the butch whose emotions and vulnerability are on display, there's a strength in that imo, even if you've been made to feel self conscious and dysphoric and "less than" bc of that. i think of phrases like "the strength to remain tender", "the violence it took to be this gentle" in the lens of trauma but if that applies and you're ok w it, i think it could also apply here too [...]

whether ppl know it or not, sometimes the way one carries themselves can be projected onto others; there's already an example in how anon mentions the "big boys/men don't cry" thing, vulnerability being shut out and dismissed/disparaged isn't going to make anyone more eager/open abt their emotions. and like, going back to the butch/femme dynamic, it does feel so much more stable and steady if someone has the courage to acknowledge and let themselves feel their emotions, it's very welcoming and validating, knowing that someone can have a strong image and show their tenderness, knowing that you're safe and free from mockery/scorn to do the same when someone protective of you knows how it feels and will care for you because they feel touched to their core and have let you know in more than one way.

and i want to add an important caveat here: obviously not everyone who cares very deeply is going to be outwardly emotional or show it in the same ways. that’s true for all kinds of reasons. i think a lot of the stoicism we see in traditional depictions of butches can come from how people relate emotions to masculinity (that is to say, how people view masculinity as inherently based around a distance from one’s “softer” side), but also, honestly, i think this may also have roots in the historical coping mechanisms that a lot of butches took on in the face of a world that was unkind to them.

in stone butch blues, for example, there’s a lot of talk about this idea of “hard” versus “soft,” or “going stone,” especially when jess is first getting into the bar scene and she’s still fresh-faced to violence. and going stone in this context isn’t just about sexuality, it's also about how so many butches learned to stop letting people in even at a basic emotional level. for them, hardening up was an inevitability of circumstance, not an inherent facet of their personality or a building block of butch identity. i’m sure plenty of old-school butches would be glad to know it’s no longer inevitable or necessary for a butch to close themselves off completely in order to survive.

of course there are also plenty of butches who are just naturally reserved with their emotions, and that’s also fine -- that doesn’t mean they don’t feel things, or that they don’t care. they care -- all of us do! some of us showing it more or less than others doesn’t reflect badly on any of us, whether we’re of a more stoic or a more open variety. but some of us really can’t help showing it, and that’s okay. that’s just how the love spills out. the right person won’t see that as weakness or a crack in the fine china of your masculinity or whatever, they’ll see it as a lovely and endearing part of your whole and warming butchness. so embrace your emotions. do your best to honor the role they play in butch/femmeness. try to love your emotions, or at the very least not to be afraid of them. and remember: you are strong. your tenderness will not destroy you. in fact, it’s what built you to begin with.

[creacherkeeper]

Hi! Do you have any advice to share for people who've started questioning their identity after feeling secure in a label for a while? I feel pretty lost and off-balance and I'm not sure where to go from here.

as someone whos identity labels have changed about a hundred times in the last 15 years, yeah i do

broader (cishet) society has kind of conditioned us for the "born this way, come out loud and proud" view of queerdom where our big mountain to climb is being honest about who we are, and once we're Out, the hard part is done and we can just live comfortably as ourselves. this is ... almost entirely fabricated and has not been the experience of almost any queer person i know. realizing youre queer is the first tiny baby stepping stone for the rest of your journey. ahead of you there is a long and slow and, sometimes arduous, potentially joyful, process of figuring out the things that make you comfortable and happy

because that's really the thing, isnt it? identity labels are HIGHLY dependent on society and culture and time period, and are in no way Fixed and Inherent Facts about the universe or even about human beings. its a name for a collection of similar experiences that, like many things, have more variety within them than between them. two lesbians may have vastly different experiences, while a lesbian and bi woman may be almost identical. a trans man and a butch person may view their masculinity almost the same way but come to different conclusions. three people with similar feelings on gender may identify as nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer because those are the labels that speak to them the most. defining yourself as an identity is not a test you can pass or fail. its a word that you are using as a tool. and that tool unlocks things for you - experiences, community, feelings of safety, comfort, joy, expression

it is natural that our conception of ourselves will change as we grow because we are constantly changing and morphing as we have new experiences, see new things, learn new terms, meet new people. and the terms we use will change too, because that's just what society does. i feel comfortable identifying as nonbinary, and often do, but the term that makes me feel the warm fuzzies is 'genderqueer', because that was what i had as a child when i desperately needed something, and, to my point, the term nonbinary wasnt even a thing yet. literally no one was using that term when i needed it, i wouldnt even hear it used until 7 years after that. and i now am feeling more comfortable identifying as a trans man, even though, many many times, i asked myself "am i trans? am i a dude?" and thought, nah, not me. and then one day it clicked. and my attraction to men clicked. and i thought "well, okay, not a lesbian anymore. lets find out whats comfy now". and it was scary, for sure. but theres also been so much joy in the process of discovery

i kind of think of it like putting together a really big puzzle. youve got the pieces but dont know the picture its making. and you finally find a collection of pieces and say, oh, theyre blue. theyre all blue. this is definitely the sky. and you feel so satisfied in calling it the sky for a while. and then you find a piece with a ripple and think, water? okay, not sky. water. and over time you realize its a lake. now you have the word lake, and that feels good, but you dont know whats around the lake. you still dont know the scene. and for a while all you have are your blue pieces, and you cling to those little ripples, until one day your hand falls on one thats green. grass. you find the forest. and eventually, you find the sky, and you realize it wasnt blue like you thought, but instead a beautiful sunset. you definitely couldve chosen to stick with your little patch of blue and said this is my sky, this is my sky, this is my sky. you couldve ignored the ripple. you couldve thrown the green piece away, and let it fall into a corner where you would never find it again. but you would never have seen the trees. you never couldve marveled at the colors of that sunset. and maybe in the last few little pieces, the last empty spot, you find the cabin, and you make that your home

i think youve hit a crossroads, because once you start questioning, you cant go back. you can deny your feelings, but youll know that you had them. and that kind of thing sits and stews when you arent looking at it. maybe you go exploring down the path and it leads you right back to where you were before, thats fine. now you feel confident you can find your way home. or maybe you find something completely new and different that you never wouldve known was there if you didnt go looking. that can be scary. a lot of times growth and progress and change is uncomfortable. you have to break in your new self like a new pair of shoes. but it is worth it. discover yourself and honor what you find. maybe that new identity wont be permanent, but thats fine. maybe youll think its the sky for a while. let labels be a tool of expression, community, discovery, and joy. and eventually youll get to see that sunset, and youll find your cabin

[knight-iapetus]

Does This Outfit Make Me Look Gay?

Queer Fashion, Identity and Outside Perception

Just a decade ago, "That shirt's gay," was a tried and true insult. These days? Say it to the right person, and you're likely to be thanked for your compliment.

As a queer adult in this polarized age, I make every effort I can to connect with other members of the LGBTQIA+ community wherever I am, as they are people I find comfort and camaraderie in. However, coming out to everyone I meet would be awkward and time consuming — instead, I simply telegraph my queerness through the way I dress. I dress gay.

If you're straight, you're probably asking yourself either, "What do you mean by dressing 'gay'?" or "Why on earth would you do that?" Both have pretty simple answers.

First, dressing "gay" is defined by a few specific traits:

It's asynchronous (and sometimes anachronistic) to current fashion trends. Dressing gay is all about looking as different from the mainstream as possible. We love asymmetry, clashing patterns and colors, and even throwback items that went out of style five or six years ago. Gay attire specifically highlights unique, unusual and unpopular fashion to signal a departure from the norm, as LGBTQIA+ identities are a departure from heteronormativity.

It's niche. A lot of "gay" fashion has roots in specific movements that developed their own sense of fashion — harajuku fashion is one, and punk is another. So much of "gay" fashion has punk influences because punk is rooted in dismissing any authority that seeks to oppress you, much in the same way that dressing gay is a direct contradiction to the heteronormative fashion trends that dominate and homogenize the popular market.

It's extreme. Gay fashion is typically either monochromatic or the biggest mishmash of rainbow hues you can fit on one person. Queer people who indulge in dressing gay want to stand out and be noticed, and we do so by drawing the eye. The easiest way to go about this is to cover yourself in an unholy amalgamation of colors and patterns until you're literally impossible to ignore, or to do something stark, like all black. Monochromatic looks tend to experiment with textures and layers to enhance the variety of the outfit without straying from their thematic color.

It is inclusive. Your skin has warm undertones but you want to dress in cool greys and blue lipstick? Go for it. You have a penis and you want to wear a dress and dye your hair pink? Welcome to the club! You weigh 300 pounds and feel like showing your midriff with a crop top? Nobody's stopping you. No matter how your body is built or shaped or colored, you can wear whatever you want, because dressing gay is about being free.

Dressing "gay" may seem like a new thing among milennials and Gen Z, but it's always been present in the fringes of fashion. In fact, there's a lot of historical precedent in dressing gay; it simply began to bleed into mainstream styles of dress as homosexuality and gender divergence became more socially accepted. And there's no reason to stop now: fashion and social norms will continue to evolve as we move towards a progressive future. 

As for why, well, let me put it this way…

Fashion exists as a tool for expression. What we wear when we dress gay is a direct expression of how we perceive ourselves: glittery and colorful, or dramatic and dark. We put on clothes that reflect our authentic self, which will not be bent into submission by trends or the 'norm'. Dressing gay also has to do with consent: when I dress butch, or goth, or like a clown ate a peacock and threw up on me, I AM DETERMINING HOW YOU VIEW ME! You are no longer assigning me traits based on your perceptions of how I talk or act or miniscule things that you think define my identity. "Gay" becomes a compliment because expressing ourselves through our fashion is our way of consenting to outside perception of our gayness. It is no longer a point of shame, it is a source of pride. We will wear it gladly on our sleeves.

Want another great guide to dressing gay? Check out this video by Strange æons. And here's a great article on how to do it more subtly.

[homosociallyyours]

Nosy meme: 2, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 22, 29, 33, 47, 50. 💜

OMG thank you Brynn!! So many questions to answer :) I’m putting it under a cut bc I know it’s gonna get long...AND YES IT DID. 

2) What are you obsessed with right now? Below Deck, this ridiculous Bravo show that follows a charter yacht through an 8 week season of trips. It’s dramatic and full of wealthy people like most Bravo shows, BUT it’s also following the people who staff the boat, not the guests, so it’s more relatable than Real Housewives. I just wrote a one shot ficlet about 2 of the women on one of the more recent seasons yesterday. Ridiculous. 

6) Describe your dream home. I feel like I always have a slightly different answer for this. Right now: my ideal home would be pretty small, maybe 700-800 sq ft, with a single bedroom, painted a vibrant pink and accented with green and white (think climbing vines with tiny, bright white blooms) and a small alcove done in a pale blue that housed a murphy bed for guests. The kitchen would be ultra organized to optimize space (I would NOT be the one to do this) and would be equipped with an air fryer, slow cooker, instant pot, and microwave in addition to standard brand new appliances. There’s a fold down table that can seat up to 4 in the kitchen, though it’s usually just set up for me. The bathroom has a shower done with celadon green tile with a bench seat built in and glass doors. The living room is small and simple, but there’s a big comfortable grey couch and a tv. The whole house has hardwood floors, and the windows each have a bit of stained glass in them up top so the light is sometimes colored as it filters in. There’s a covered carport with a doggie bath area and a chest freezer, and in the fenced back yard there’s a hot tub and comfortable lounging furniture among all the greenery. The house doesn’t have a lawn tho, fuck that. You can’t hear sounds from the street-- it’s a quiet house. I live alone unless i want a visitor. It sounds so nice.  

12) What’s one of your fantasies? Having my dream home as above, lol. But really my most typical fantasy is being able to afford a weekend away at a fancy airbnb by the ocean that allows dogs. It turns out the owner is fat butch dyke who loves dogs and we end up playing scrabble together sitting at a picnic table outside. She offers to cook me dinner; I put together a cheese plate while she grills steaks and broccoli, and we basically fall in love, turning my silly 2 day vacation into a lifetime of slow, sweet, happy love. ://////////

13) Do you have/would you get your nipples pierced? I would, maybe? But also idk bc they’re extremely sensitive already and I don’t want them to lose sensation BUT i also don’t want them to be more sensitive bc that could cause legit problems. 

19) If you could change your name, would you? What would you change it to? Nah, I like my name. Though if I were going to change it I think I would just go by a variation of my first name-- Dottie. 

20) What is something you’re obsessed with? Other than Below Deck? Yorkshire Gold tea. I bought it bc Louis Tomlinson drinks it and my whole life changed for the better. It’s SO FUCKING GOOD, ok? It rarely tastes bitter, even when you accidentally oversteep it, and the flavor and aroma are surprisingly complex for a simple black tea. I have been into teas since I was a teenager, and while I could never entirely give up some of my single origin black teas, Yorkshire Gold is my current (forever?) go to for a daily cuppa. 

22) Tag someone you think is hot. HELP I don’t experience attraction this way anymore :p Literally idk who to tag?? WAIT @mxaether!!! Kams is super hot in all the ways, I adore them so much. 

29) What’s the most overrated movie? In general anything directed or written by a white man who’s made lots of movies. I really try not to watch slogs like that anymore, but the last movie I watched that genuinely made me want to yell was The Dark Knight. Do I remember the plot? NO bc my ass was BORED BORED BORED and when I kinda thought it was about to be over NOPE! there was another hour of the movie left. Fuck that garbage. I haven’t seen it but I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same about that Snyder cut of Justice League. I read a long synopsis/breakdown of the movie (from someone who loved it!!!) and spent the whole time frowning with disgust bc it sounded like The Worst Thing I Could Ever Sit Through. 

33) If money was no object, what would your wardrobe be like? For the most part, not that different? I would have an endless supply of incredibly soft, comfy leggings with bright, eye-catching colors and patterns along with stretchy, form fitting dresses that were equally loud. Soft, loafer style slippers in a variety of colors. All my under things would be high end and custom made (also colorful! no white underpants! ever!) I would also have access to ultra fancy party clothes: stretchy, body con jumpsuits with plenty of sparkle (picture: a coppery jumpsuit that fits tight through the hips and ends with a high waist, the top slit in a deep V but draping softly with a bit of volume. The back has a light, diaphanous, cape of sorts), twirly dresses, etc. Everything is INCREDIBLY comfortable and easy to move in, but glam and fun and whimsically sexy?  

47) If you could marry any celebrity, who would you pick? None celebrity, left beef. :P Truthfully tho it’s Alex Guarnaschelli...she cooks for me, I serve her in any and every way she wants or needs. Would also say Lizzo but I worry that her partying days are still here and I know I wouldn’t be able to keep up. 

50) What’s your favorite kind of weather? Sunny but breezy, almost cool in the shade, for midday. In the evening the temperature drops enough that you’re grateful for a sweater but not so much that you’re ever actually chilled, and around 2am there’s a light but steady rain for an hour or two that’s barely noticeable by noon the next day. 

If anyone read all of these and for some reason wants to send me more, the asks are here

[orbees]

i am facing the literal hardest animal crossing decision of all time because i realized recently i have 2 peppy villagers + 3 normal villagers.... and no smug villagers (i have every other kind) so i kinda feel like maybe i should kick someone out so i can get a smug villager because their dialogue is so good (i had kyle for a while) but at the same time im not rly in love w/ any of hte smug villager designs?????

i also really, really, really want coco but shes also a normal villager....... why are so many villagers normal type... please god

so at this point im kinda debating btwn kicking fauna, gayle, marina, and gabi which is like THE HARDEST decision ever becuase i love literally all of them. its like 

#1: fauna: shes so iconic to the history of my island, i have her yard designed, she was my first AC friend... but also i think if not for this history i wouldnt have as much of a problem because im not as in Love w/ her design as i am the others... however she has Also already asked to move out once.

#2: marina: literally a cute pink pastel octopus with an absolutely adorable house. can you name anything more alyxcore? no. but im not as close to her as i am w/ fauna. also i have some ideas for her yard design

#3: gayle: probably the one im least close to but she is relatively new. still i forget about her sometimes which is a shame because. SHES SO CUTE. SHES A LOVECORE ALLIGATOR.... WITH HEARTS ON HER... AND WEARS A CUTE PINK FRILLY DRESS? i think its because i have so many normal villagers that i forget about her sdfdsg which. makes me apprehensive about coco but at least coco would bring something new designwise to my island, and gayle and marina both fit the same kinda aesthetic.... however: she does have Gay in her name

#4: gabi: honestly only on here because i have another peppy villager, plus if i bring coco there would be... two rabbits. i need Variety. however, gabi is an iconic butch lesbian, we have also been friends for a long time... can i truly betray my fellow butch......................... however, her house is ugly 😔

i guess if i had to pick one it’d probably be gayle but even that choice sucks because i likeeeeee gayle :( why must i be limited to 10 villagers............

[normalayasstuff]

It's just some Deltarune fanmade funny dialogue scene :b

I honestly made this out of boredome. Just imagine the situations. Got inspired by this vid on youtube

Enjoy~ >:3

Deltarune Café

Seam: *clap clap* Alright, boys! We already discussed this last night, make sure that all ingredients are in place! I won't tolerate any mistake for this one particularly important event, understood!?

Everyone: Yes, sir!

Seam: As you all already know, today we're gonna have a special guest. The so-called Great Rouxls the Gourmet will pay a visit to our distinguished Café later this evening. So, as the manager I will serve him personally and all of you will make the best dishes as we already get the result from voting last night. And if I heard any problem while serving him, you KNOW what will HAPPEN NEXT.

Now, get to work!

Everyone: Right, sir!

_everybody busying themself with their own job, Seam watching their works_

Seam: What in heaven are you doing, Jevil!?

Jevil: You're not blind, sir. As you already can see I'm build a champagne tower-

Seam: So why the hell did you fill the glasses with vegetable oil!? It was supposed to be filled with wine!

Jevil: Oh, didn't notice that. The color was the same, tho.

Seam: (palm-facing while groaning)

Jevil, I want you to clean this mess up before I came back in 10 minutes.

Jevil: But sir, that's-

Seam: Oh, are you scared of failing? Of course you are. Then, who's the freak that told me all the time that he can do ANYTHING!? NOW, SHOW ME WHAT F***ING SKILL YOU GOT, FREAKING CLOWN!

Jevil: ... Is that a CHALLANGE? Fine, don't regret this one decision you made later, MR. SEAM. *Unholy scream-laughing*

Seam: SH*T-

***

Kris: Sir, we ran out of blueberry!

Seam: But we just re-stock it last night! Where the hell all of that blueberry gone in one day!?

Kris: Uh, Lancer made all of it as a decoration on the wall near the front door, sir. (Point out at the wall)

Seam: (exhale) NOT AGAIN. Ralsei!

Ralsei: Yes, sir?

Seam: Where's the patissiére ingredient stock I told you to keep as backup?

Ralsei: I'm sure I put it in the storage and re-check it 3 hours ago, but somehow all of them was gone when I checked just now.

Seam: How on earth did boxes full of ingredients gone in only a mere 3 HOURS!?

Susie: Oh, did you mean that variety of fruits and condiments that hanging in front of the window store? Yeah, Jevil said he just put them there as a welcoming gift or whatever for the gourmet.

Seam: FOR THE LOVE OF KING SPADES, JEVIL I SWEAR-! (Trying to calm down, deep inhale-exhale)

Seam: *sighs* FINE, I'll collect it and make the parfait myself. I will hear no more excuse from you twerp! Now get me that fu***ng blueberry at once!

Susie: On it. (pull out an axe and readying to cut up Kris)

Seam: JFC, I mean get it from the store, not from the literal product, Barney! This is why you've no friends.

***

Kris: Sir, the gourmet's here!

Seam: S**t, already!?

Jevil, stop trying to put the vegetable oil in the black hole to concealed your mistake and just start cook the main menu! And Lancer, please stop decorate all the wall of our café with hanging the stock ingredients or I will seized your fire bycicle in the basement! AGAIN. We don't have any decent backup stock right now, AM I CLEAR ENOUGH?

***

Seam: Jevil, what in the dark world are you doing?

Jevil: You say to start cooking the main menu, just wait a moment Mr. Seam, I'm currently cooking the ingredients.

Seam: Then why, pry tell, did you put all the kitchen furniture UPSIDE-DOWN!?

Jevil: Woops, forgot to put that back again.

Seam: (throw tantrum with upside-downing again all the furniture)

Okay, that's IT!

If you won't do it, then I will! Now, GET THE F***ING HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN AND HELP THE CINNAMON ROLL MAKE THE PARFAÍT! And don't try to make any chaos on it!

Jevil: Okay.

***

Seam: Kris! Go and serve the great Rouxls yourself! This steak can't cook itself if I'm not cooking it!

Kris: But, Mr. Seam, I-

Seam: NO EXCUSE.

Kris: ... Yes, sir.

Seam: Susie, stop butching all the eggs with your AXE! You messed up all the FLOOR!

Susie: Then how the hell am I supposed to do it!?

Jevil: Just put them in the blender.

Susie: Oh, okay. (put all the eggs in the blender)

Seam: I SWEAR TO GOD JEVIILLL-...!!!

Jevil: *insane laughter* (run out from the kitchen)

***

Seam: Can anyone tell me where the hell's all the ketchup gone to!?

Ralsei: I'm sorry, sir. There's this one skeleton customer that only order all of our ketchup we had in stock to be put as his main dish just now.

Seam: What the fff-!?

*inhale-exhale*

Never mind, just make sure Kris doesn't see that skeleton at any cost.

Ralsei: Huh? Why?

Seam: They're gonna make a real big CHAOS more than when Jevil call a storm inside the kitchen IF they ever MET, UNDERSTOOD?

Ralsei: Okay, sir.

***

Kris: How do you like our cuisine, Mr. Rouxls?

Rouxls: It's pretty decent and mediocre, but understandable. I must admit you really put an effort on decorating the welcoming gift on those wall near the front door. May I know who's the F**KING IDIOT put effort in making all of those?

Kris: Oh. Well, that's-

Lancer: That would be me, Lesser Dad! (Running and stop in front of Kris and Rouxls)

Rouxls: Oh my, no wonder it was look very exquisite. Good job, son. *Pats head* However, what are you doing here exactly?

Lancer: I'm helping Mr. Seam with his Café business! My role is serving the customer, or the waiter as he said! He said if you would give him a good comment on the magazine, he will be really happy! And if my friend happy, I'll be really happy too! I know you'll do it, of course since this is a great Café! You'll do it, right? (*Pleading-baby face mode on)

Rouxls: I-i... *arrow stab into the Soul*

Of course son, anything for your happiness. (Hug Lancer)

Kris: ... You sly kindergarten trash.

Lancer: Hehe. *wink*

***

Jevil: Here's your order, Mr. Skeleton! One plate of Grimburger with extra 20 bottle of ketchup as the side dish!

Sans: Thanks, pal. Hey, have we met before?

Jevil: I believe this is our first meeting, mister.

Sans: Oh, alright the-

Jevil: -in this timeline, that is.

Sans: ... is that so. I guess my guts were right, you really are THAT certain CLOWN.

*Eyes socket darkening*

Sans: Now, we don't need to be hasty. Just tell me, where's that freaking shadow old man right NOW?

Jevil: *chuckles* Well, never thought I will met the Satan himself this soon!

(Pull out jevilknife, Chaoslovania mix intensifies)

Jevil: Are you really up to this tho? Because if you want any answer, YOU HAVE TO PLAY AND GET IT MY WAY.

Sans: (Gaster Blaster appears, eyes glitching with yellow and blue light) come at me, you freaking chaosholic clown.

*battle screech from Jevil and Sans gaster blaster laser intensifies*

Seam: I heard a loud ruckus from the kitchen, what's going on here!?

Ralsei: Jevil fighting that skeleton customer, sir!

Susie: Wow, this mess can't be more f***ed up.

Kris: (sees Sans, ignore Jevil that fight him currently and trying to get closer)

I FOUND YOU, YOU F***ING FURRY. *pull out the lightner sword*

(Pointed the sword towards Sans that still jumping around avoiding jevil attack)

Kris: YOU BEFRIENDED MY MOOOMMM!!!!

(The world revolving, megalovania and kris theme mix intensifies)

Susie: Welp, it's really just getting worse. Go grab some popcorns, Lancer.

Lancer: Wow! It's just like in those action movies! Susie, can I filming this?

Rouxls: Sure, just don't forget to pull off the lens cap like before.

Lancer: Okay!

Seam: *face-palm* Lord, I can't with this people.

---

End(?)

[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.

[dadfashion]

so i wanted to make a blog to talk about this largely because i feel like i dont know many people who i feel comfortable talking through the entirety of it with yet. so. i started taking testosterone around a month or so before my 15th birthday, which i feel is too young for any child to start medically transitioning. however, I was even more vulnerable as i was dealing with (and still do) severe mental illness- I was fresh out of a stay in a psychiatric hospital for my first suicide attempt and was having very serious issues with anorexia. despite that, i and my parents were able to go through the "informed consent" process not requiring me to go through any therapy to get a prescription. and I can't blame my parents over it as they had a seriously unwell child and had no idea how to deal with it but wanted to do the best they possibly could. and it was obvious to both them and me that something in my life needed to change, and i think all of us thought that was the logical change.

i had come out and was very confident in my identity as a lesbian since i was in middle school, and had always begged to cut my hair and dress masculine. in high school, my mental health took a downward spiral and at the same time i began vocally asserting that i couldn't stand being seen as a woman, that i couldn't stand being called a woman, i couldn't stand being expected to look or act like a woman, and i couldn't stand my own body. and my parents are very kind, supportive types of people, and just wanted to do their best but just didn't know better having never experienced anything at all like this. despite the fact that all the adults in the room should have seen that this was not the right time to make that decision, the rhetoric from my doctor, saying "allowing trans kids to transition literally saves lives. would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?" really impacted them.

so i took testosterone from age 15-18. i passed as male probably 85% of the time, if a very small "effeminate" looking male. (one of the first things i really hated about it was the constant assumption that i was a cis gay man because of my ""feminine"" voice patterns) but one of the first things i felt was this incredible liberation from the expectation to perform femininity every day that i didn't even know i experienced until it was gone. i (mostly) didn't get harassed on the streets anymore. my confidence in my appearance skyrocketed. but eventually, especially as i started working in restaurants, i got to know a lot more adult men and (usually) be treated as one. and i realized i didn't think that was the life i wanted for myself.

but what i hated the most was how my relationships with other women had changed. there was suddenly a distance there that while i absolutely understand, kind of killed me. it was an impact so significant that i had never once considered because i was literally a young teen when i decided to transition. the sudden lack of love and solidarity from other women was an incredible absence in my life. but it really wasn't until finally hearing the stories of butch lesbians across history and talking with them that i actually realized i was allowed to be a woman looking like i do. yknow, that i didn't have to be a man to experience that sense of liberation. because i realize that i really didn't want to be a man, i was just struggling and young and didnt know what else to do. because i had never seen any other narratives! i had never met adult butch women! at the same time, i began to truly realize the implications of long-term use of an extremely powerful hormone that we literally do not know the impacts of. like it really disturbed me to ask my doctor questions like "hey so what is happening or will happen to my internal organs or my fertility or my or my brain chemistry" and have her say not a single person actually knows for sure! it really shocks me to this day. so i eventually couldn't bring myself to do the shots anymore, and have been off t for around a year.

my voice has gotten a little higher, my face is slightly more feminine, and i have extremely irregular periods that i have been working on accepting as a natural function of my body. i still have dysphoria, for a variety of reasons. but while i get called "she" maybe 50% of the time now (which i really don't know how to feel about yet) i haven't changed a single thing really about my appearance otherwise. but i think how i carry myself is different and i think it feels a lot better. i still don't really know what to call myself when people ask me about my gender (even though "none of ya business" is like a totally good response) depending on the space i usually call myself butch or transmasculine. i know that i love women, and i'm beginning to experience the deep connection that i missed again. idk though even though as i first began questioning if i was truly a man i was really upset because "i thought i already had that shit figured out" i now am much less focused on finding one specific word for my experience than like, working on being healthy and building relationships with people who love me. im learning to live with the ambiguity in being a butch lesbian struggling with being called a woman. so i didn't expect this to be that long but thanks for reading i hope someone can see their some of their experience reflected and take some comfort in that, because i know other people have definitely had that impact on me.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

I don't know if this is inappropriate or not but how do we know if we are a top/bottom/vers? Does you being butch/femme automatically mean you are top/bottom? Also I'm bi so does that mean that if I get with a lesbian that I'm automatically a bottom?

That’s not an inappropriate question to ask, don’t worry. I’m try to give my best at answering that but note that somebody else might explain it differently and if my reply doesn’t help then you can ask other resource/advice blogs to explain it to you as well.

Whether you are butch or femme (or neither) doesn’t say anything about whether you are top/bottom/vers. And neither does your sexual orientation say anything about it. A lesbian isn’t automatically “more top” than you. Lesbians can be bottoms, straight women can be vers, bi women can be tops - literally any combination is possible.

You can be femme and still like to be the one who’s giving in bed (top) or you can be butch and prefer to be on the receiving end (bottom). And then there’s a whole bunch of sapphic women who don’t identify with the butch/femme terminology at all (here, it me!) but still have a preference for topping or bottoming (is this a word?).

I’d say, inexperienced people probably tend to take the bottom role at first but it doesn’t have to be or stay that way and you might at one point realise that you do in fact want to top your partner.

Also, since you are bi: It’s possible that you prefer to be a top with one gender and a bottom with another gender. I cannot tell you if that’s the case for you because you have to figure that out for yourself - but it is a possibility. And your top/bottom preference might also change throughout your life and/or depending on your partner. “Vers” can mean your preference changes from time to time with the same partner but it can also mean that it changes between different partners. For example, I used to be a (submissive) bottom but now I’m mostly a (domme) top. For me it really depends on the dynamic I have with the person I’m having sex with. And right now I don’t really see myself bottoming for a man again any time soon (due to bad experiences) but I am open to it if I ever get to have sex with a woman or non-binary person. So… you see… things don’t have to be rigid. In fact, I think, most people are versatile without even thinking much about it, simply because a bit of variety keeps things exciting.

If I can give you any advice it’d be to not get tangled up in terminology, especially not when you’re just starting out your sexual ventures. If you have a partner, talk to them about what you are curious about and what you are comfortable with. You don’t have to say “I’m a top/bottom/vers” and then stay that way throughout your relationship. And if someone asks you if you’re a top or a bottom you can simply say “I don’t know” and any decent human being who’s worth your time won’t make you feel bad for that.

Maddie

[ladyloveandjustice]

Fall 2018 Anime Overview: Double Decker! Doug & Kirill

Double Decker! Doug and Kirill follows a special police force devoted to dealing with cases involving “Anthem”, a highly dangerous super-drug that can be both fatal and grant uncontrollable superpowers. The squad is divided into three pairs of partners. The eponymous Kirill is a enthusiastic newbie who partners with a deadpan, “kind of an asshole” veteran named Doug.

It’s hard to say when a show crosses the line from “dumb in a fun way” to “just mind numbingly dumb” but I’d say Double Decker crossed that threshold around about the midpoint of the series. Which is a shame, because I was rooting for it. It seemed like an anime with a lot of potential- it was humorous, irreverent and bombastic, it seemed fun and colorful with a varied cast, it had a nice variety of ladies in the squad, and two of the ladies, Max and Yuri, were heavily coded as a couple right off the bat-

-with Max (on the left) in particular going putting off some Impressive Lesbian Energy with her aesthetic...and early on Doug announced that his life goal was to “eliminate poverty and class”, indicating the series intended to deal with social issues. 

It IS possible to be a cheesy, fun show that is also inclusive and deals with social ills, but Double Decker’s clumsy, simplistic attempts to balance this with the larger goofy plot ultimately meant it fell short of being an truly entertaining romp AND was utterly disastrous at being socially aware. 

Double Decker acts like it wants to say something about tolerance at points, but is ultimately gutless, toothless and halfhearted, sometimes verging on offensive. It became apparent the show wasn’t going to be truly LGBT inclusive with a character’s uh, “gender reveal” scene midseries that is a just...a mess. Some characters reactions to the “revelation” are just blatantly transphobic (thinking its hilarious, saying the character in question should “tell the truth" about their sex, etc) and this was never called out or challenged. It’s finally explained (baffllngly late in the series) that rather than actually being trans, this character is a cis man who just disguised himself as a woman for flimsy plot reasons, it doesn’t make how the reveal scene was handled and how it was painted as being “funny” any better. It’s not my lane so I won’t really go into it, but this article at Anime Herald covers the whole mess in detail. The whole thing is SO stupid and honestly there was no reason for it to be a plot at all.

If that “reveal” episode had me feeling wary about the show, the episode following sunk any hopes I had for it. Double Decker didn’t even have the guts to have Max and Yuri be explicitly romantically involved, instead just giving vague, baity hints. What’s worse, the episode focusing on Max was boring as sin. It was painfully bland and on the nose “critique” of high school proms SO rote it even had the girl who wanted to be popular transform into a literal “queen bee” (GET IT). The only thing we actually learn about Max in her supposed focus episode is that she hates proms because a bunch of kids rejected her trans friend at one which caused her friend to turn to drugs and disappear forever. Yep, not only can the show not bother to give us actual lesbians, trans people are just tragic props (and the attempt to say a thing about how trans people are treated badly would have felt a LOT more sincere if transness hadn’t been treated as a joke in THE EPISODE JUST BEFORE THIS ONE).

Doug also only became aware of poverty existing because of a tragic prop- his backstory amounts to a dead little shoe-shining street girl so one dimensional and cliche I’m surprised she wasn’t found frozen in an alley clutching a book of matches, and that one incident made him realize Poor People Shouldn’t Be a Thing so now he’s, uh....well, he’s not really doing anything about it, but he says he wants to, and that’s good enough right?

Yeah, that’s about the level of nuance we’re dealing with here. It’s nice that Double Decker tried, I guess, but if this was going to be the level of its effort, I wish it had just stuck to being a goofy sci-fi show. As it was, even the “goofy buddy cop” aspect felt really hollow because the show didn’t give us a reason to be invested in these partnerships or these characters.

I wanted to be invested! I was SO ready to appreciate the punk butch and her robot girlfriend, but instead we barely learn anything about them or see them interact. I was READY to be tremendously invested in the straightlaced office girl and her vulgar pink haired partner, but we didn’t learn anything beyond their surface personalities- nothing substantial about what drives them or where they come from or anything. Doug had his eye-rolly dead-little-girl backstory and admittedly sometimes amusing snarky asshole personality, but he spends so much time being insincere there wasn’t much to latch onto with him.

 Kirill was pretty much the only one in this show who felt like an Actual Character, and I did find him extremely likable- he was utterly sincere in everything he did, full of heart, dumb and enthusiastic in a fun way, and incredibly sweet and supportive to his friends and loved ones (he was also the only one who was chill and accepting about the not-really-trans character too so that earned him some points) but all the stuff going around him was so empty it didn’t matter.

(ending spoilers here)

The show didn’t put the work into making you connect with these characters, but it DID still expect you to be invested in them. One of the kinda-lesbians appears to have died at one point in the show, but it makes zero impact because you knew basically nothing about that character anyway- it instead just feels annoying, like “wow, you’re just gonna kill that gay without bothering to develop her huh” but the show clearly expects you to be devastated. Then when it’s revealed at the end “PSYCH she’s alive for this ridiculous jokey contrived reason haha really pranked you huh” it’s just even more annoying. Just because I’m relieved you didn’t actually bury the gay doesn’t mean you pretending to bury her wasn’t insulting and pointless. All you did was bring my attention to how little you bothered to develop this character and how willing you are to use her and her kinda-girlfriend’s pain as a plot device, so thanks?

(spoilers end)

The humor of the show basically followed “you thought THIS thing was gonna happen but instead WACKY TWIST haha now the narrator makes a snarky comment about it” and while that was fun at first it just got old without anything going on besides that. And as for the plot, it’s...generous... to call it a plot. At the end it jumps straight to “AND SUDDENLY THERE WERE ALIENS” with almost zero foreshadowing and it just gets stupider from there. Such a ridiculous development would work on a show that was either a) a pure farce or b) something super wacky but with enough heart, drama and character to keep you invested, but DD was neither of those things. It was an anime that wanted you to care, but gave no fucks itself. 

(Also this show is supposed to be related to Tiger and Bunny but I honestly have no idea how these two anime are connected in-universe. Is this a prequel? sequel? Are they happening at the same time? WHO KNOWS, THE CREATORS SURE DON’T)

The animation was also nothing to write home about, with a lot of awkward CGI shots and pretty ugly clothing designs- it was colorful enough to distract from it a lot of the time, but definitely not winning any aesthetics awards.

So yeah, Double Decker is very far from the worst anime I’ve ever watched, and I like the concept I think it was GOING for- but what we ended up with was something completely mediocre. The first couple episodes were fun, but by the end it was a chore to watch. I finished it because “well I’ve come this far might as well” rather than any real investment in the show. It wasn’t painful (except for the clumsy attempts at dealing with trans issues), but it was so completely stupid and forgettable, which is sad, because it seemed like it had so much potential at the start.

[endersdead]

8, 21?

8. do you all share a fashion sense? are there fights about picking up an outfit?

no we definitely dont share a fashion sense lol. there are a lot of fights over outfits like literally even pjs its such a headache 😮‍💨 we mostly compromise by dressing like the most basic butch ever in the same outfit every day lmao. although people do still get annoyed/dysphoric over it sometimes so its not a great compromise 🤷🏻‍♂️ someday if we ever have any money it’d be awesome to have some more variety in our clothes so everyone can have something they’re at least semi-happy with

21. any headmates with different world/political views than the host? how do you guys menage that?

nah thankfully not, i could imagine that would be difficult!

- van

[ajora]

Hopefully this will work because I am in a restaurant on my tablet and mobile tumblr is weird asf.

Yeaah. I get frustrated in SU fandom (a medium with mostly female main characters, incidentally*) especially because Jasper, Bismuth, and Amethyst get so much hate and guess what? They’re not the standard slender femmes. Jasper and Bismuth are subject to a fantastic amount of butchphobia, especially from guys who consider themselves “woke” and make jokes about them being unreasonably angry. And that’s especially suspect with Bismuth because she’s *coded* black*. The same guys who, incidentally, think Lapis is a poor pretty uwu delicate water angel who doesn’t want to hurt anyone honest uwu (nevermind, of course, that I think RS?, has gone on the record saying that Lapis wanted to take her problems out on someone and Jasper was convenient. Jasper was a) much less powerful than Lapis, b) subject to months of emotional abuse at Lapis’ hands. But, of course, it’s Jasper that’s the abusive brute and Jasper who’s painted by fanfic authors as an animal who deserves Lapis’ abuse and shattering at her hands). When a slender jasper turned up on the show, Jasper fans were told to stop liking the original because Skinny Jasper is the good jasper, even though she appeared for like a minute and we know nothing about her. When Topaz appeared, we were told that we finally have a "nice" butch to like and can stop liking Jasper and Bismuth now. And so on. 

And Amethyst? She’s a tiny little chubby who is coded Latina, and lapidot fans rip into her and her fans all the time because she’s “fat” and gross and totally doesn’t deserve to be shipped with Peridot. Up until I turned off anon asks a few months ago, I was still getting “kill yourself” messages from angry lapidot fans for daring to like Amethyst. And, of course, if anyone vents frustration about Lapis getting away with things (abusing Jasper for months even though Lapis herself is more powerful, creating a living situation where Peridot did not feel safe enough to express herself or thoughts she felt might incur Lapis’ wrath) and her fans being assholes, we’re all suddenly just mad because she’s ~*~depressed~*~ and secretly we all just hate women.

So, yeah. Woman-majority mediums has their problems, too.

Anyway! I think you’ll like B5, too. Just some notes: It’s not DS9 and was intended to be a novel for television, so it has a lot of novel-variety overwriting in the dialogue. I think it’s fun, though, and enjoy rewatching to pick up all the foreshadowing. Also, B5 really didn’t make a whole *thing* about its same-sex representation the way Dax’s ex-wife did when that episode came out (or, say, evil!Kira falling into Evil Bisexual tropes). It’s just really kinda subtle and you get whammied with the admission in season 3 if you weren’t already open to the growing relationship between those characters. And, of course “you’re just a nice couple on honeymoon” said to a couple of guys going spying to another planet. So I thought that was nice. And the science felt a lot more natural to me. 

Anyway, I love B5. I like Star Trek, too, but B5 filled in all the little cracks in my soul when I was a lost, angry, hurt little late-teenager/young adult and I’ll always love it for that. To quote something I needed back then: “Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another. It changed the future and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly, though, I think it gave us hope, that there can always be new beginnings. Even for people like us.”

* Although boy is it telling that most of the male fans all glom onto Steven and the minor male characters/townies or create male gems outright rather than bother with writing the gems, who are generally coded female and stated by RS to be nonbinary women. 

** I would argue that Jasper is coded some variety of minority, but I’ve seen crewniverse human AU art that suggests otherwise and lord who even knows anymore. But she’s Native to me because a) her birthplace is literally on reservation land, b) that whole thing with her being made in a crappy Kindergarten and her sisters being substandard to gem norms. Peridot trash-talking the place sounds a lot like gringo tourists going through the reservation and trash-talking the housing situation and lack of amenities. (NB: While I have been living on the reservation for the past few months, I’ve not grown up here and don’t have the long-term effects of growing up here. *But* I have memories aplenty of spending every summer in a poor, tiny little village in Mexico and crossing the border every time because my parents didn’t want to deal with me, and that had a huge impact.)  

[thearchivist88]

5 and Red Hill

“Hnnnnnnnnghhh”

Saru’s sister Casey was lying face down on the living room couch making pained noises at their mother who was perched over her gesturing violently.  

“I don’t see why you can’t do this one thing for your father!  You know this isn’t really about you, Katherine”

“That’s not her name, Mom.”  Their mother sighed dramatically as Casey rolled over to take him in.

“I was just telling your sister that if she wants to dress inappropriately on her own time thats her business, but for an important event like a funeral it is imperative to look halfway decent for once.”  Saru made a non-committal noise, somewhat disgusted.

“Halfway decent?  Meaning a dress and heels?  Possibly a wig?  I don’t think Dad cares at this point.”  Casey sat up, and revealed a pretty standard SoCal formalwear outfit of Aloha shirt, tailored slacks and leather sandals.  Saru was a little impressed their mother thought that over 50 years of harassment would eventually cure Casey of being a butch lesbian.  Thats commitment - to a dumb goal but commitment nonetheless.  There wasn’t any point to getting involved.  Once his mother was off on a tear -

“You know what I mean!  Sometimes as an adult -”

“I’m 53 years old Mom”

“as an ADULT - you have to do things you don’t want to do, and -”

“heteronormative gender police.”  Casey crossed her arms and stared pointedly.

“I just want you to look respectable for once!”

“It’s not really a mystery what you want when you won’t stop telling us.”  Jimmy came in from the garage.  He didn’t know what was going on (he rarely did), but was always up for needling their mother.  He was wearing essentially the same outfit as Casey, but they had compromised by having him change to a different color aloha shirt.  Jimmy and Casey had the same haircut for years and kept a low key social media comment war going on who styled it better.  He plopped down in an easy chair with an aggrieved huff.  Their mother spun to face him.

“Now don’t you start!  I just want Katherine -”

“-Casey”

“I, uh, well...this is a formal occasion and dressing like a slob-”

“Do I look like a slob, mom?”

“No of course not!  But your sister -”

“-They identify as nonbinary, mom.  They've told you that.  We’ve all told you that.”  Clare walked in from the kitchen holding a sack of chips and an open container of hummus.  She was wearing a black sheath dress that was a little too short, but god help you if you said anything about that.  Saru got chills at the very thought.  She was barefoot, and he noticed her toenails were painted in a variety of cheerful shades.

“Oh she has not!  I don’t even know what that means!  And Katherine has never said anything like that to me!”

“BOOOOOOOOO!”  Clare started the boos and they quickly spread to all four of them.  MG heard the noise and wandered in.  She had a quizzical expression and about half of her hair extensions in on one side of her head, giving the look of a slightly demented doll.  “What’s up guys?  Why we yelling at mom?”

Saru said “She’s harassing Casey again”

MG frowned, pulling on her fake hair.  “Not cool, Mom.”  Speaking in a very condescending tone “It’s 2035 and we respect divergent gender identities now.”  Their mother curled up her face in frustration and yelled:

“You guys are so cruel to me!  All I want is a nice ceremony, but you are hell bent on ruining it!  If your sister cared about me at all, she could put on a nice dress for one day and let me have some halfway decent pictures, but I guess she just doesn’t care!  What spiteful, hateful children I have!”

Silence.  After a beat, Casey mutters “heteronormative gender police.”  

Jimmy - “heternormative gender police!”

Altogether now: “HETERONORMATIVE GENDER POLICE!”  Saru dared a smile as their mother threw her hands up and literally fled from the room.  Casey had a dark expression flash across her face for a moment, some private rage not meant for public consumption.  Then 

“I look amazing and it’s sad that she’s so jealous.”  They all concur heartily.  Saru pushed Casey’s feet off the couch and took a seat.  He stammered a bit and said “So, uh. . .you guys are here.”  Flashing quickly through a thousand conflicted feelings, he tried to pin down what he wanted to say.  How happy he was to see them all in the same room.  What a dump Orange County persisted in being.  Most of all, what a prick their father was and how he was glad the man was dead.

“You guys want to play Mario Kart?”  They all wanted to play Mario Kart.  

“Okay I’ll hook it up, Jimmy’s out first”

“What?!  NO that’s not fair!”  They laughed uproariously as their mother banged pots together impotently in the kitchen.