#yes nonbinary people can be ‘’gay’’ but some of y’all are being just as pedantic as you’re complaining Gaiman is being

[biceratops7]

You know what I have to talk about it a LITTLE because something is pissing me off. I won’t be explicit about what exactly is shown but in an over abundance of caution the rest of this post is under a cut.

I’m sorry you were made cynical by queerbaiting but guess what, we were ALL queer baited at least once. It doesn’t give you an excuse to shit on people being excited about a thing or assuming the worst about a creator who, at worst, doesn’t understand literally every solidarity detail of the queer experience there is to know. There is absolutely no context to indicate this is going to be a big fuck you no homo moment, I would expect it from Supernatural but I’m sorry, good omens has always been aggressively queer friendly in many casual and colorful ways. I’m sorry, but fans are not stupid for trusting a creator who has been nothing but trustworthy, and not assuming we’ll be smacked in the face by a show that has always made us feel safe and accepted.

[fandomshatewomen]

I can’s speak for the previous anon, but I think there are non-biphobic, legitimate reasons for people to be troubled by seeing Sappho’s women-only sexuality being questioned. Abusing men have been trying to get into lesbians’ skirts for a long long time and, while I don’t think you guys would reblog something with that motivation, I’m concerned that that’s the motivation behind this questioning Sappho’s sexuality thing.

None of the mods over here are men. Even the OP of the post we reblogged isn’t a man so it’s not a bunch of men trying to abuse lesbians and get in their pants. It’s literally me a bisexual person being frustrated that not only to lesbians and gay men like to hold claim or cast out confirmed bisexual people but lesbians specifically think it’s so damaging that someone who is bisexual and not a man says “Sappho could be bi. Like all we know is she was a wlw”  In the anglosphere many wlw chose to call themselves “lesbian”, after the place Sappho lived.  Some call themselves “Sapphic”.  I don’t mean to be pedantic, I’m no scholar and y’all probably know more about this than I do about her, but … just… I want remind everyone just how important this women is to lesbians, and the way people talk about female sexuality.  While Sappho is a real woman who actually lived and deserves to have her sexuality respected and remembered accurately just like everyone deserves, why is it important to revisit what we know of this particular person’s sexuality right now, so publicly, and without presenting any evidence as a necessary part of the conversation?  Why not Cleopatra?  Or Queen Victoria of England?  Or Zora Neal Hurston?  Or Harvey Milk?  Or Plato?  Or why not discuss known female bisexual icons, like Marlene Deitrich, or Angelina Jolie?

Why do you think it’s disrespecting her sexuality when we’ve got no definitive proof either way that she was a lesbian or that she was bisexual? Yes she made a fake name probably for her husband. I made up fucking fake names for boyfriends when I was younger does that suddenly mean I have never been sexually attracted to boys/men? No it doesn’t. I’m not even 100% trying to say yes she was bisexual. I’m just saying she could have been

Why is it important? Because this was a conversation about gay men and lesbians either calling CONFIRMED bisexuals lesbians/gay/or straight but going into an absolute tizzy when someone even suggests a historical figure whose sexuality none of us can actually confirm outside of she definitely likes women being. So this isn’t about bisexual icons. It’s about the hypocritical behavior of lesbians in this moment.

I feel like I’m bending over backwards to accommodate the possibility of good intentions here because, from everything I’ve seen on this blog, y’all do have good intentions towards women.  But I just have a really hard time seeing how questioning Sappho’s sexuality isn’t lesbophobic when there’s not some compelling reason to do so (and if there a compelling reason let’s see it!)  Lesbophobia is a legitimate problem lately with Michfest ending and few lesbian-only bars available.  It’s especially important right now that we include people who not only identify as queer, but as lesbian.  Women do not need to sleep with or be romantically involved with men if they don’t want to.  Women-attracted men do not need to rewrite Sappho’s life and works to be happy and included in society just as they are, nor do we need to do so to be inclusive of bisexual women.

What was the compelling reason to claim she was a lesbian, to begin with? What’s the compelling reason for lesbians and gay men to call other bisexuals straight or gay and constantly erasing us? This entire conversation stemmed from someone coming into our inbox and acting like I was some random straight person, probably a guy, trying to force heterosexuality on a “confirmed” lesbian icon. Which none of that was fucking true, to begin with. Like I even happily said I’d do some research on the subject and then a follower who I know knows their shit spoke on the post and I was fine with the possibility that she wasn’t a lesbian. That thought had nothing to do with me hating lesbians but everything to do with lesbians getting mad about a nonbinary bisexual person saying she could have been bi while often calling actual confirmed without a shadow of a doubt bisexual people lesbians or straight. I don’t hate lesbians or gay men for that matter. I hate their actions and their hypocrisy.

Like lemme revisit part of the original post:

sappho wrote love poems for both men and women and yalls response to the idea that she might have been bi is “there was no concept of bi/gay back then!! let’s focus on the fact that she was sapphic!!” to the point where her name has become synonymous with gay and she’s called a lesbian icon and y'all only seem to have issues with “concepts” and labels when the concept/label is BI. why am i not surprised?

This behavior is garbage absolute garbage.

Lesbians have ALWAYS had visibility in this damn community. For as far back as my knowledge goes [granted it could be farther] lesbians have been visible in this community along with gay men and that same group like to gatekeep places from bisexuals, trans people, aro/ace people ect. Like I’m all here for supporting lesbians against any crap from the straights because we “are” a community but I’m not to suddenly act like they are some underrepresented part of our community that needs protecting over all others. 

I never said that women have to sleep with men. I never said women have to date men. In one reblog of a post I even said a woman sleeping with a man doesn’t even automatically make her bisexual or exclude her from being a lesbian. All I have said is a) there’s a possibility that Sappho was bi and b) it’s garbage that lesbians get in a tizzy about this but don’t care when they erase bisexual people whose identities are 100% without a doubt confirmed. Nothing else you said even applies to anything I’ve said.

I am not a woman-attracted man and even if I was I still wouldn’t be coming from a place of “oooh lemme get in them pants lemme me corrupt the pure lesbian icon” it would still be about everything I’ve said. NO ONE IS RE-WRITING HER WORK. Like there are swaths of her work missing. Postulating that she could be bi doesn’t suddenly erase anything she wrote or anything we actually know for a fact about her life. 

Of course lesbians don’t have to be inclusive of bisexuals. They never are. 

If you do read this, thank you for reading, and thank you for your blog, I’m a woman and you’ve passed on helpful information to me in the past.  (And I’m new to tumblr, sorry if I’m not doing something right.)

mod v