#and i'm clearly just. not. the kind of non-femme that people are interested in

[ranger-kellyn]

it's like i keep telling myself i'm going to go to the single's event tomorrow at the lesbian bar but also................://////////

[brittlebutch]

Sorry if this is random or unwelcome - and if it is you're absolutely welcome not to answer - but I was wondering what being a lesbian actually means? From my current understanding, so long as you're not a man and not attracted to men you could identify as a lesbian. So, you could be a woman who's attracted to women and nonbinary people and be a lesbian, or a nonbinary person who's attracted to women? I have a SpIn in queer id's so I Crave Information lol. Please corrects me if I'm wrong! 💛

first off, i’m not exactly Great at explaining things so if someone wants to bounce off or correct my answer absolutely feel free lmao

so i would argue that at its base being a lesbian is being a woman who loves women. but you’re still right that non-binary identities can also factor in for a lot of people, because a lot of lesbians have a complex relationship with gender, whether they’re butch or femme or nb or whatever

for me Personally, my gender just kind of IS that i’m a lesbian. i’m not Quite a woman, but my relationship with my gender and my sexuality are kind of linked together. my attraction to women is my tie to my gender and vice versa. i’m a dyke and that’s that all around

when it comes to Attraction i wouldn’t really say that im comfortable saying that i’m attracted to ‘nb people’ as a whole OR that i’m only attracted to ‘nb women’ or something similar to that. gender can be a really complex spectrum, and there would be a lot of NB people who would fall out of my realm of attraction. it doesn’t really have anything to do with presentation either, it’s a very nebulous concept so trying to explain it clearly is hard for me lol, but basically i’d probably only be into people who had a similar tie to gender/lesbianism/sapphic-ness(?) that i do if that makes sense

gut reactions also don’t factor into this gender distinction much btw. i’ve been attracted to people before and had it die the moment i found out they were actually trans guys. i’ve been uninterested in people before and then ‘doubled back’ so to speak once i realized they were trans women. NB genders can be a lot broader and more complex than just that, but there would probably be plenty of NB genders i wouldn’t be that interested in Because im a lesbian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ words are weird to use dude!! but i think that if i was attracted to the full spectrum of NB people i’d use “bisexual” instead of lesbian, because at the Very least there are plenty of NB people who identify as Gay or MLM for the same reason i ID as a lesbian, and i wouldn’t be interested in forming a relationship with them for the same reason they probably might not be interested in forming a relationship with Me (my use of ‘male gendered’ terms and they/he pronouns aside since gendered language isn’t like. Real)

(adding onto the bisexual comment above just bc i see a lot of ‘discourse’ about it; being a Bi Lesbian doesn’t work flat out. even if ONLY for the fact that the term originated in transphobic spaces to make a distinction between lesbians who would date trans women (as in, see and understand them as women because that’s what they are) and lesbians who wouldn’t (transphobes). it’s just like a new flavor of the Gold Star lesbian concept, it’s not good. if you want to like. Debate that whole label you’ve gotta go somewhere else lol i don’t reserve the brain cells for things like that (spoken generally not just at the anon who asked this initial question lol))

hopefully that made sense! and if it didn’t then hopefully someone will reply to this post and do a better job than i did lmao

[ghostmartyr]

Hi Immi. I'm new to the fandom--joined around the drop of ch107. Since then there's been a big buzz about historia, regarding her sexuality, her character regressing and her relationship with ymir. i'd seen snk s2 and honestly never occurred to me to ship yumikuri because i hate ships but being on tumblr, well, it's everywhere. I see people get hate on shipping her with males but i'm not sure where i stand. Is she explicitly lesbian? If not then why is it so bad? Is the tumblr fandom just toxic?

Hi.

Uh.

Hell, dude, you pretty much summarized all the reasons I stopped checking the tags. I’m not exactly in the fandom anymore. I do my stuff, but I am actively avoiding mostly everyone, and that’s just because of the immediate aftermath of the chapter. So uh, welcome, I guess, I’m not here.

I answered–well. No, I covered a bit of what I’m going to go over here in my chapter post, aka the unfun section of it. Making this a bit of a rehash, but most things I type are anyway.

The most obvious thing is that people should not be getting hate. That is a general statement, disconnected from anything that’s going on. It is applicable in every fandom, in every situation. Even in the cases where someone is doing something that poses a very real danger, the solution is not sending hate. Sending hate is exactly what it sounds like, and people should behave themselves better.

Where you end up standing on any of this does not make the behavior magically okay.

And again, I basically left the fandom. I have no idea what’s going on, and frankly, I do not want to, so none of this is based on anything that’s happened in the past three weeks.

My perspective on fiction is that it is entirely selfish. People want what they want from it. While I don’t like most of what other people like, the fact that they’re capable of enjoying things should be celebrated. Go them.

That doesn’t mean I think stories are beyond reproach, or what happens in fiction can’t be offensive or damaging.

Fandom is not the same as canon. A personal pet project is very different from something being consumed by millions of people. Fandom currently has a very black and white style of thinking, and so it neglects that difference.

For an easy and relevant example, Kurt and Rachel from Glee getting it on in a fanfic is not equal to it happening in the show. One is someone’s random fantasy, the other, unless it’s handled with the kind of respect Glee has never dealt in, is going to be very inflammatory.

(See: Blaine and Rachel (for different–-but still relevant!-–reasons))

A lot of people do not agree that the difference between fanon and canon is relevant to some of the things people end up enjoying. The reason being that stories never feel that different to the individual experiencing them. Who creates it, or how wide its reach is, is not automatically something that matters to the emotional experience. It will hurt in roughly the same way, so often the argument that one is excusable and the other isn’t is done before it starts.

I’m meandering a little because I do not really know how to handle this delicately. So far this is all just foundational. stuff.

I guess I’ll go with blunt.

yumikuri is a canon romantic bond. Ymir is implied to be a lesbian because one character says she looks like one, Historia is a complete blank slate outside of that relationship because Ymir is her sole love interest.

The status of Historia’s sexuality is that she is romantically interested in Ymir, a girl. That is the entire sum of what the manga’s covered.

107 heavily indicates that Historia is coerced into having sex.

That should never have opened up a discussion into what her sexuality is. Someone being forced into sexual intercourse is indicative of nothing except that they are being forced into it. That is the exact opposite of desire.

Yet it opened the door to people reminding everyone that it is absolutely okay for a character to be bisexual.

That is a true statement.

(Editing in emphasis, because it really is.)

I do not know how to adequately describe why the context makes that statement so tone deaf and infuriating.

The manga has been running for almost ten years. In that time, there has been no indication of Historia having interest in anyone outside of Ymir, a girl. That could cover a lot of different sexualities, and there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting any of them.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t incredibly insulting ways of going about introducing them.

Historia’s first major appearance after her girlfriend is killed off-screen (if you believe that, which all but three people reading this and the person writing this do) is all about forcing her to fuck a guy to make babies.

Even in some hypothetical where her pregnancy is the result of a happy relationship, it would be insulting. As far as we know, it isn’t, so we are dealing with the full brunt of how disrespectful that summation is.

There is this common thing that happens in stories, where you have the gay relationship, one dies, the other lives on to go have a happy life with someone of the opposite sex. The subtext is that this weird one-off sexual thing may have happened, but don’t worry, they’re still normal.

I don’t know how to say that convincingly, because it’s a subtext that I’ve picked up on throughout hundreds of different stories. I don’t know how to cram that history into one post.

Girls liking girls is seen as an aberration, even in stories about liking girls. The relationship will be an exception. The more femme character won’t really like girls, just this one. The concept of a girl liking another girl as a normal facet of her sexuality, which exists outside this relationship, is commonly disregarded, or given to the non-POV partner.

This should be a problem that it’s easy to agree on. Lesbians like girls as a rule. Bisexuals like girls as a rule. Not exclusively, but Likes Girls is still very much a part of the identity (unless we get into discussions of bi covering multiple genders but not necessarily binary ones).

Then there’s fandom.

I can’t count the number of times I have seen the argument that Historia only sees Ymir as a friend. I have been invested in her character and that relationship for five years. Barring the last month, which I don’t want to know about, probably at least once a week, someone would make the case that okay, maybe Ymir likes Historia, but Historia doesn’t like her back.

Many, many times before I left the tags last month, people were saying that Historia’s pregnancy isn’t an LGBT issue, because Historia’s interest in Ymir was never canon.

I get twitchy when people are staunch supporters of her being bisexual. Because as much as I want to trust people, and as much as I know that every marginalized identity is desperate for scraps, the conversation about Historia has always felt like, “it’s important to remember you can’t prove she doesn’t like men.”

When it’s not full on, “it’s important to remember her liking a girl is in your imagination.”

Because she’s the pretty one in the girl on girl couple.

I want her to be gay or ace. Nothing disproves that, but I feel like an idiot for wanting that, because the classically pretty one isn’t going to be a lesbian, and years of consuming anime and manga should have taught me that. Beyond the first sentence, none of that perspective is particularly healthy.

Queer fandom can be really complicated to navigate, because some of the things people want to see–-which are fundamental to their identities, and that’s why they want to see them–-run exactly counter to what other people want to see.

There’s a post from Yuri on Ice fandom that I think encapsulates this. I don’t know the background, or what has been shouted back and forth since I saw it, but here’s the gist. Someone suggests that one of the figure skating gays could be ace. Dozens of people go, “bad post op,” and it’s treated humorously.

Asexual representation sucks. An episode of House, noteworthy for using the word and having someone quote the statistic occurrence of asexuality, ends with one half of an asexual couple having a hormone imbalance, and the other lying about her interest in sex so she could date him.

Yeah.

Gay guys also have a hard time with their sexuality being policed. Holding hands is okay (sometimes), but kissing? Sex? The dirty homosexuals are depraved for enjoying such things. Gay women can have degrading sex because it’s hot.

People want their identities respected.

That is not an unreasonable thing.

What tends to happen on Tumblr is that people forget that they aren’t the only ones being treated like crap. There are layers of pain and anger they bring to every fight, and over and over again, people who should know what that pain is like, and help each other through it, sharpen theirs until they can use it to chop off someone’s head.

107 is insulting in a lot of ways. The aftermath was worse for me. From what little I saw, many people were very eager to say that the part where a queer woman was dealing with a coercive pregnancy shouldn’t be judged for the queer part. Because there are people issues, like war and tragedy, and then social justice issues, which aren’t about people. They don’t really matter in a war story with internment camps and genocide.

I’m being glib, but… that’s what it felt like. That’s what a lot of people I liked shrugged and agreed with.

I want Historia to be a lesbian (or ace), but for right now, we do know she’s queer. That is a part of her character, and it is one that people have been talking over for years. Having post after post reminding everyone that her being queer does not matter to the story? That her being queer is not a lens worthy of being looked through when it’s clearly not about that?

I don’t agree with… basically any of the fandom behavior I’ve seen touching this. I think people should behave themselves better, and treat each other more kindly, and pain is no excuse for bleeding all over everyone.

But where that pain comes from has been repeatedly dismissed, and where it comes from is not insignificant, no matter what route you want canon to go.

…And as far as Historia’s character goes, this is a regression, and the writing should be ashamed of itself. It violates the themes of her arc with such direct intent that it’s painfully easy to believe there’s a twist to it, but for now it’s just infuriating, because the girl who fights fate has been made its tool, and Ymir, aka her love interest, is very relevant to the whole arc where we covered this. 107 is bad and should feel bad, and I am extremely not happy that I think that is exactly the feeling I am intended to have, because being emotionally manipulated is much more annoying when it works.

Hopefully that gives your questions an answer.

[historic-old-guard-lover]

No, no, go off. You have very valid points. And I wouldn't take it personally if you unfollowed/blocked (though I love being mutuals with you! so exciting when you followed my blog). I think I tagged the original post discourse, but I could use something like "roberta discourse" to help you blacklist any posts that might be upsetting in the future?

Fandom should not be a bad experience. It sucks that you've had that and yeah, it's way too common. I'm sorry for the part that I played in it for you. I think that fandom lets people bring their societal baggage and just project it without a sense of self-awareness that they would have if they were discussing actual human beings they know....

I have intentionally avoided watching the movie because of the plot points that you mentioned. If I were an actor and offered that role as it wound up being screened, I probably wouldn't want it. But there are fewer roles for openly trans or visibly non-conforming actors, so exposure is important. That role might have helped launch a new trans actress which would be awesome. It's unfortunate that this isn't the case; that's not Luca's fault. More importantly, a trans actor(ess) can sometimes steer the creative team to make it a more respectful or realistic representation (like Billions and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina where non-binary actors were able to give the writers feedback). I want trans people depicting trans people on screen so that they can have a hand in telling trans stories. If they're just going to get puppeteered by a cis director who has no interest in their experiences? No thanks. I should articulate this more clearly.

Also, I actually like the Murder on the Orient Express and Roberta AU art! I didn't know/must have forgot that you played such a role in it. That's not at all what I was responding to. I get frustrated when someone writes a mission fic where Nicky acts as a honeypot and pretends to be a woman because in my mind that's literally reinforcing the "man in a dress" trope. Like you took a trans character that Luca portrayed and you said "oh, a man in a dress tricking other people into thinking he's a woman! sweet fic idea" and that feels really shitty. That's what I was thinking about when I wrote my post and that alone.

Performing drag is not trying to pass. They are related because they both invoke the language of gender, but they are entirely different reasons. Drag is comedic or commentary, mocking social expectations of gender. Dressing to pass as your gender identity is NOT an invitation to dialogue about gender. In the kind of fic I mentioned, the two get conflated and it's so frustrating. (I could talk all day about gender and performativity, though, and no one wants that)

In short: Roberta AUs? I too need them. Give her happiness, you cowards. Nicky does drag? Sweet. Nicky is trans femme? Lit. (Second only to Nicky is transmasc, but I'll take anything. ANYTHING trans fannon.) Nicky just likes wearing dresses? Hell yeah! (That would probably be more normal than most people think in terms of how he was socialized with respect to gender in the middle ages...)

Nicky is dressed as a trans woman that Luca portrayed for the *sole purpose* of "tricking" someone into thinking he's a woman? Gross. Please think twice.

I said again and again filter button exist. Go a head and filter if you so inclined to see. Things you can’t enjoy someone else can. And it’s not such a big issue. 🙄