#also only recently working through a lot of internalized lesbophobia

[sadistcoyote]

ive rly been anti labels towards myself in the last few years but. butch definitely fits so well and doesnt feel like im having to label myself for others convenience of understanding my identity

[nothorses]

hey sorry if it comes off as weird, but i'm a bit desperate. i had a real bad time figuring out my identity growing up and for like, the past 4~5 years i've become really comfortable and happy whenever i referred and thought of myself as a gay nb trans man; i experience legit gender euphoria whenever ppl address or acknowledge me as such, and the most connection i feel is to gay/bi men/men-aligned ppl. that said, i've struggled with obsessive/intrusive thoughts since i'm like, 12~13 due to (1/?)

a phobia, and they often appeared when i was already feeling low/stressed/anxious over unrelated stuff. y'know when you're having a good time and suddenly your brain goes 'oh hey, remember that thing you have doubts about and makes you distressed? and you think it's not true? well, here it is again (: you're welcome!'. that's it.

so social isolation due to the pandemic has taken a toll on my mental health and recently i have been... struggling a lot not only with dysphoria (i was supposed to start hrt last year but it was postponed due to, well), but also with obtrusive/intrusive thoughts over 'how i'm faking it, i am actually a cis lesbian' (i never felt attracted truly to women, even tho i had kissed two before, and i am Positively attracted to men in a way i can only describe as 'gay').

it has gotten to a point where i cannot think about, y'know, woman characters from stuff i like that i feel like this is somehow a sign i'm actually a lesbian; i have been dreaming a lot of situations i'm either framed as a lesbian or a straight girl, i have been hyperaware of how cis ppl perceive me (pre-transition, as 'girl') and obsessing over little shit like, if women are looking at me in certain ways when i have to go out (sometimes even 'wishing' it, as if it wanting to 'prove' anything).

i feel...... exhausted, none of these make me feel good, all of this makes me feel distressed. i get dreadful when i take 'lol ur lesbian' results at stupid internet quizzes too. i feel like i cannot talk to anyone about it bc i feel like they're gonna try to feed me either 'internalized lesbophobia' or terf rhetoric, which is smth im v aware of, and part of the reason i've been obsessing over as well.

i had mild doubts about stuff before (like if i was rly a binary trans guy or nb, or if i was bisexual) but none was... like this, y'know.  i was also dumb and read a bbc article about detransitioning ppl which opened with 'studies say most trans ppl dont doubt' etc. featuring two cis lesbians that detransitioned after entering a relationship with one another. i feel rly rly rly dreadful i wish i could go back to feeling like myself (gay and guy) like i did before.

i'm sorry for the longest fucking ask btw, and also, tumblr hadnt let me send the rest for like, Hours, i'm deeply sorry

[Edited for formatting]

I think a lot of this is very normal, especially for transmascs.

We’re constantly fed this idea that we can’t really trust our own perception of reality, that we don’t know ourselves as well as others do, and that the things we believe about ourselves are temporary, silly, and “signs” of some deeper reality that someone else knows for us. It’s only natural that we’d internalize some of those feelings, and struggle to trust even the most irrefutable evidence of our own realities.

If it helps to have some tools in those moments, a couple of reminders:

Cis girls do not typically dread the idea of being girls. They might dread the social repercussions or expectations, they might hate girls who look/act in certain ways, but they do not typically hate that they are girls.

If you are feeling dread over the idea that you might be attracted to women, you probably aren’t! It’s good to work on feeling more at peace with the possibility, because orientation can be very fluid for some folks, and being ready to accept yourself if things change takes a lot of pressure off- but if you don’t want to be with women, you just literally do not have to be with women. For any reason. Even if you are “secretly” attracted to them, if you don’t want to be with them anyway, you simply do not have to be.

Trans people experience doubt. We experience it all the time. We experience it pretty much endlessly! Maybe there are trans folks who never, ever doubt their genders, and I’m very happy for them; but that’s the exception, not the rule, in my experience. This study talks about the steps toward trans self-acceptance, and finds each step is an ongoing process, and often a back-and-forth. It was very comforting for me to recognize the patterns & know I’m not alone.

The focus on AFAB detransitioners is driven by transandrophobia. Because saving the “poor little girls” is a compelling motivator in a misogynistic society. Most detransitioners are actually folks who were AMAB, and found the societal pressure and backlash was too overwhelming, or made things too unsafe, for them to carry on with their transitions. Most detransitioners, period, are people who had to stop because of safety issues, or lack of access to their transition needs.

It’s very normal to go through periods of high doubt, and periods of high self-assuredness. You may just have to ride this out; surround yourself with as much support and love as you can, remind yourself that those fears aren’t really based in reality, and be kind to yourself during this difficult time. Try to make choices that prioritize your mental and emotional health.

You will get through this period of doubt, and come back to finding love and joy in your identity again! It might just take a little time & patience.

(Also no worries over the sending confusion; Tumblr’s a lil broken sometimes, and it’s genuinely not even remotely an issue.)

[cat-sapphics]

Hey!

I follow the" aroace lesbian" tag and your recent posts have come up in my feed so I just wanted to say that being arospec, acespec (demiromatic graysexual, both labels in the aromantic and asexual spectrums) & lesbian is completely OKAY and you should not let anyone tell you the contrary. Especially uneducated people so 😚🤍

Many aroaces use the term aroace to encompass being in both aromantic and asexual spectrums; this means you experience little to no romantic/sexual attraction and that's more than valid. You can be both arospec and aspec! 🔥 Or arospec and asexual. Aromantic and acespec 🥺🤝

The way YOU experience romantic and sexual attraction is just different to the average allo person, & that doesn't make it any less valid. Attraction is an abstract concept and we shouldn't be putting ourselves into boxes but letting feelings be that, feelings.

Your experiences are necessary and important to our diverse & big aro/ace communities as an aroace lesbian! An aspec person is that who experiences little to no romantic attraction. That's it. THAT'S OKAY 🥰

And being an aspec lesbian is more than valid too, it's not a contradictory term because the little and fluctuating romantic & sexual attraction you DO experience, is ONLY towards women/nb so; I don't see why lesbian isn't a term you can't use. A lesbian is a women/nb female aligned person who experiences romantic, sexual and/or emotional attraction towards women/nb female aligned people. Check, check & check ✅

All in all, ace lesbians, aro lesbians and aroace lesbians are ALL part of the lesbian community & our unique experiences with romance and sex are necessary and valid for it 💓

Sorry if this got long, hope I made my point clear. Aroace lesbians have always been lesbians so don't let any exclusionists steal your peace 🧡🤍💖

thank you!! thank ya thank ya thank ya!! i really appreciate it <3

i will say, i think some of the anons i got did make some valid points (obviously not everywhere you look but they at least gave me something to think about in general) but it really took me by surprise how condescending and disapproving they all were. super uneducated too, i said i experience attraction differently or at least less frequently than average allo people and like ?? that doesn't mean i'm secretly a self-hating lesbophobe ?? you don't get to determine that for me if i'm genuinely happy even though i participate in lesbian discourse and am passionate about keeping the definition specific and closed ?? lol i didn't redefine lesbian or take away its initial meaning so it really had me peeved

i think most of their comments reflect on how they don't believe in aromanticism and asexuality being a spectrum, which i guess i invited by my own doing since i have some conservative and exclusionary views on the lgbt community and that affects my following/audience, but my response to that is that i use these labels because they bring me personal comfort. when i say i'm demiromantic i don't mean that alloromantics have zero standards when it comes to a potential partner or are completely mesmerized by the idea of hook-ups, just that the connection they need to start crushing comes within a decent time period with a personal connection, but not a super strong and deep and loving one that makes it exceptionally hard to fall in love despite however much we may desire to. the label doesn't exist to imply something bad about """normal""" people, it exists to name an experience many people have but to an intense degree. so, yes, it's a pointless social construct, it probably means nothing to you and that's fine, but it still means something to me. i'm not crying oppression or marginalization, and i'm not claiming that i'm lgbt on the basis of being demiromantic/greyasexual, but through being a nonbinary lesbian. that's the difference between mspec lesbians and aspec lesbians, is one is actively harmful to multiple groups and actually Does spawn from a place of internalized lesbophobia and/or biphobia, and the other is just "mmk this is just for me and affects nothing at all, it doesn't drag you into anything at all, i still qualify for lesbian the way you (should!) see it as technically even if you do believe it's redundant, so just... leave me alone" cause it reflects more on them than me when they make it their business by unfairly assuming things about me

same applies to me being greyasexual. still trying to figure out if it means that i experience sexual/physical attraction less frequently, less intensely, or both, but does that matter?? genuinely?? this is also redundant but i didn’t wanna leave it out of the paragraph about me being demiro fk;ljslkgbdvhbs. the aro disapproval part isn’t acceptable at all but i can at least see it since romance is so normalized and is a core part of, y’know, lgb relationships; the greyace disapproval however....... i don’t wanna label it as acephobia because i don’t really believe in aphobia being a thing, but it still kinda rubs me wrong to claim that sexual/physical attraction is a requirement ykyk... NOTHING WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX OF COURSE (i myself kinda wanna try someday if that works out) i just think frowning upon someone who doesn’t UNLESS they try to claim they’re lgbt on that basis is.................. not really cool. i really hope people who read this understand what i’m trying to say and don’t label me as an ace inclus who thinks aphobia and oppression are real, i was just trying to make a point about my personal experiences oops lmao

and then it became "aroace means NO ATTRACTION AT ALL" okay... so i'm angled aroace, that's a sub-term since aroace is literally an umbrella term, actually (unlike lesbian, shit's complicated ykyk). "YOU'RE NOT AROACE THEN"....... they don't even like the idea of oriented aroace now either, so like, what then, are aroace people just never allowed to feel love or positive feelings from other people ever? jesus christ. i'm not even getting into this, i consider aro/ace identities to be secondary to describe one's attraction so this debate should not be as important as, say, discourse centering the L, G, B, or T. it's just dumb all around tbh

hope i addressed all the arguments against it, but i can't really care at this point if i missed something :/ i'll probably get a mean anon about it so don't worry!! /s jslgjgjkshkj;lhfp

speaking of, i've had to delete so many anons and even turn off the option to ask anonymously because of this discourse. it's so pointless in my opinion, so i've just stopped giving them my time unless i think it's worth answering - but even then, i try to keep it fairly short. i genuinely was not expecting my take on (cishet) ace discourse to turn into myself failing to be seen as a "real lesbian" despite literally meeting its definitive qualifications and then it just kept building up ?? stan behavior tbh, especially since plenty of them obviously come from the same users

i apologize for the rant. i just never really felt like i'd be listened to if i tried to explain my identity, so i gave up and just tried to ignore my way out of it. so i really genuinely appreciate your ask, especially since i can identify you. it really feels like i actually have someone on my side now, so even if you ever disagree i'd know you wouldn't harass me about it. it really means a lot, i really needed this from you and i don't wanna dump more shit but i feel that you deserve to know. so thank you again <3

[lesbianfreyja]

Did you ever identified as bi? If so, how did you get to the conclusion that you were a lesbian? i've been questioning for a while and I'm not sure what I am. I also have a hard time differenciating between I have a crush/I want to be like her/I want to be friends with her. help a confused person pls

i’m not sure i’m the best person to help you due to my personal story but i’ll tell you and then offer some advice that may 100% conflict with your situation

i wouldn’t say that i “identified” as bi so much as i was bi for nearly 2 decades of my life. granted i didn’t know i liked women until pretty late on and there were instances of comp het as a kid but there were genuine times when i liked men and in fact i was in love with one when i was 19 although the circumstances surrounding him are extremely murky and complicated and difficult to explain so i’m skipping past it, but it’s not rlly relevant

sexuality is fluid which is TRUE but you only really ever hear it when men are trying to “turn” lesbians. and i don’t often say this online because i know it would get misconstrued and i get why, but it’s true anyway: i used to be attracted to men, but i’m not anymore. i used to be bi, but i’m not anymore

anyway i also recently came to the conclusion that i have an unhealthy relationship with sex, so thats where this story is going. in college a lot of the times i slept with someone it was less because sex was fun and more that being a partygirl and a slut was fun, which is still true. so anyway, there came a time around age 19/20 when i started to question if i still liked men. to help decide this, the most obvious solution (to me) was to sleep with men and women and compare the two. so, tinder.

anyway it took me nearly a year of experimenting to come to the conclusion, and i remember the moment exceptionally clearly when i looked up and thought “i’m a lesbian” and the experiment was over. also it was the middle of the night and i wasn’t going back to college until three days later, so i kicked this couple out of my room and stewed in this realization for several days. my family was working, and i wasn’t, so i spent those three days chanting “i’m a lesbian” to myself in the mirror trying to get it to stop feeling so horrible in my mouth. i knew other lesbians, and that was totally cool for them, but i didn’t realize how much internalized lesbophobia i still had until those 3 days, and the following three weeks after when just thinking about it gave me panic attacks. this felt dumb since i already knew i liked women, so i really wasn’t prepared for how scary not liking men was. i was also going thru some trauma the summer before and this brought back some dissociative episodes that hadn’t happened since i’d started therapy that fall! so that was fun

so i’m DEFINITELY not endorsing any of this for you, ‘cause like i said, this isn’t a super healthy relationship with sex. it was fine for me but it’s probably not fine for a lot of people. so what i’m going to say to you is something that didn’t really click for a long time, but makes sense now: if the question’s come up, it’s probably true. straight kids don’t sit around questioning their sexuality, and neither do cis kids with their gender. they should but they just don’t wonder about it. they just don’t. also, this post rang very true for me.

now, i know that bi people also often are subjected to so much bi erasure that they forget it themselves, and find themselves oscillating bt feeling straight & gay depending on the day and who they’re looking at, etc. so that could be what’s happening! or, you could be experiencing the fact that being a lesbian is so much fucking scarier than you ever thought it would be, because you were fine with it until it was applied to you.

i’ve actually had this conversation with a couple of friends and ended up helping them realize that they were in fact lesbians experiencing this very thing! i happened to only have gay guy friends and wasn’t out to my parents and my siblings lived far away, so i had no one to talk to about this. so that’s part of why i like being there for other people going through the same things! so feel free to DM me and we can talk if you want, sorry this is so rambly but i can help you more if i know more about you/your experiences. and theres nothing wrong with being a lesbian, and you’re allowed if you want to! i know this is a scary time, so i’m sending love too.😊🏳️‍🌈 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[radfembee]

riley j dennis - are genital preferences transphobic? transcript:

trigger warnings: cissexism, genitals(A Lot), conversion therapy, rape, religion, 

Recently, on the internet, there´s been a lot of discussion around genital preferences and transphobia. In this video, I´m going to use the word ¨cissexism¨ instead of transphobia, but they´re really similar words. At its most basic, cissexism means prejudice or discrimination against transgender people.

So, what´s been happening is that some people are making the argument that it´s not cissexist at all to only be attracted to people with one kind of genitals. For example, these people might argue that being attracted to only women with vaginas in no way negatively effects trans people. On the other hand, I would argue that it´s more complicated than that. We all have our implicit biases built into our preferences, and gender isn´t as simple as the genitals you have. But, after I say that, I usually get a lot of blatantly cissexist responses. So I thought I´d address all of those responses at once.

Number one: ¨You´re being homophobic!¨ In this argument, I often get accused of homophobia, lesbophobia or lesbian erasure by lesbians who believe that I´m trying to change their sexual orientation or identity. They say that my language sounds a lot like a dude who tried to turn them straight, or like conversion therapy. Those responses are rooted in cissexism.

This is because I´m not telling lesbians that they can´t be lesbians. If you´re a woman who only likes women, go ahead, identify as a lesbian! But some women have penises. And if the fact that some lesbians might be attracted to those women offends you, it´s because you don´t think trans women are real women. That´s because these accusations of homophobia can sound like I´m trying to convince lesbians to like men, but I´m not. I´m trying to show that preferences for women with vaginas over women with penises might be partially informed by the influence of cissexist society.

You do not have to like men. You do not have to date men, or have sex with men. And if you think that´s what I´m arguing, you´re simultaneously strawmanning my argument, and implying that trans women are men.

Number two: ¨You´re upholding rape culture!¨ This is probably the worst response I´ve heard, and probably the most cissexist one. That´s because trans women have a long history of being accused of being rapists by cis women.  It´s the logic behind bathroom bills that prevent trans women from using the right bathroom. It´s why some cis women are terrified of the idea of sharing a locker room with a trans woman. This is a very common tactic used by anti-trans folks to discredit trans women as just ¨men trying to invade women´s spaces so they can rape them.¨ Even if this is not your intention when bringing this up, this is what you are implying and it is where this argument comes from.

Suggesting that trans women are rapists for wanting to be fully recognized as women is extremely harmful. And I should note that I´m not saying you have to do anything without consent. I´m a big fan of affirmative consent and you should never feel pressured to have sex with somebody. This isn´t about an individual. This is not saying: ¨You have to have sex with a trans woman, or you´re cissexist.¨ It´s saying that you should examine the societal influences on your preferences. There´s a massive difference between honing in on individual scenario and considering wider societal issues and attitudes.

Number three: “I’m allowed to have a preference!” Technically, you’re right. You’re allowed to have your preferences and you don’t have to change anything. But there’s more to it than that. Ignoring the deeper issues by stopping at a surface level analysis doesn’t do this issue any justice. Like, you’re allowed to have a lot of things, you’re allowed to have prejudice towards trans people, but that doesn’t mean you should.

So if you look a little deeper into this issue, there’s the possibility of your genital preferences being at least somewhat partially informed by growing up in a cissexist society. Also, the fact that a preference is different from saying you would never do something. Like, having a preference for tall girls is fine. But refusing to date anyone under 5′7 is ridiculous. Obviously, that’s not a perfect analogy, because short girls as a group don’t face the societal marginalization that trans women do. But, I’m interested in having a conversation about labels, implicit labels, and trans-inclusive language. 

Simply saying “it’s my preference! End of discussion!” is a good way of sidelining all of those issues and instead, centering the feelings of cis people in a discussion about trans people.

Number four: “I have a trans friend who says this is okay!” People love their tokens. I’ve done an entire video on moral licencing and why this is a terrible defense, but, in summary, you’ll always be able to find trans people to back up your cissexist views. You’ll always be able to find gay people who spout anti-gay rhetoric and you’ll even find people of color who openly advocate racist policies. That doesn’t make you right.

Having a trans friend doesn’t mean you’re suddenly an expert on trans issues. People often internalize negative ideas about their own identities and regurgitate them with passion. I’ve met gay men that told me that their homosexuality was a sin, and their punishment was to be celibate their entire lives, and even still, they’d probably go to Hell. Obviously, that would be anti-gay for any straight person to say. And it’s also not okay for gay people to advocate that. In the same way, if a trans person is saying cissexist garbage, it’s still cissexist garbage.

There are cis people who are on my side as well, so if you think it’s okay to point to your token trans friend, then I can just point to my token cis friend.

Number five: “I’m triggered by penises by past sexual trauma.” [author’s note: i fucking swear to god if they attempt to shut this down i will flip shit.] That’s completely understandable. I’ve never said that someone should have to have sex with someone with a penis if they don’t want to. If intimacy with someone who has a penis is triggering for you, I would never suggest that you have to do it. Take your time to heal and work through your trauma at your own pace. Just be aware that the majority of people making the “I could never date someone with a penis” argument are not doing so because of trauma or triggers. 

So that is all of the typical responses that I could think of. The first two responses in particular come from TERF/radfem[me, a trans radfem] and gender-critical ideologies, which are all proudly anti-trans. Even if you don’t consider yourself a part of those movements, you’re siding with them when you use their arguments. Their entire platform is cissexist, and their arguments reflect that. Even if you say you believe trans women are women, it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if you’re completely siding with folks who don’t believe trans women are women. 

And the last thing I want to say is that if you’d rather not have sex with a woman who has a penis, maybe just don’t make such a huge deal of it. Trans women are often afraid of not being found attractive or desirable after coming out. And you’re not helping.

If you really want to be an ally to trans people, you can just not talk about it. And by that, I’m not trying to censor you, okay, so don’t pretend that this is censorship. You have the freedom to say whatever you want, I’m just asking you to consider if it’s necessary to say those things when they reflect harmful or violent rhetoric. Because if you have an opinion that you know is only going to make people feel bad about themselves, why constantly share it with the world?

It’s fine to not find people attractive, but it’s mean to constantly yell about how unattractive you find those people, especially when those people are oppressed. For another imperfect analogy, it’d be like if you weren’t attracted to girls with short hair. That would be fine, but you probably wouldn’t write articles and make videos defending why it’s okay for you to not like girls with short hair. You could do that, but sometimes it’s best to just be polite. 

And that is everything I have to say on that topic, this video is a part of my feminism with Riley that I’m doing in collaboration with Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. 

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.