#and lesbians frequently have to deal with misogyny from gay men

[agenderakali]

"I love the matching blue and pink gay and lesbian flags because it is like friendship bracelets 🥺🥺" my primary experiences with gay men include the cis ones calling me hairy and ugly and making frequent allusions to how they thought I "ate pussy" and how gross they thought that was. And trans gay men getting pissy if I talk about women too much around them (especially trans women)

[thegeminisage]

wait but i care about your thoughts on sam and gender, i wanna hear all about it

@prettygayrose said: I feel terrible for asking multiple things...but I NEED TO KNOW....PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GET INTO YOUR FEELINGS ON SAM'S GENDER I WILL BE SO GRATEFUL!!

HI sorry im answering this so late. its been a whole ass week huh

i know sam as a trans lesbian is super popular & i think it’s rad but i also dig sam as a trans man and here are my thots about that, with the obvious disclaimer that i’m not really a professor i just play one on tv:

obvs sam as trans either way is like...since birth there’s something ~wrong~ about him you know except the only thing thats wrong is that everyone thinks hes a girl and hes not

i also like aspec sam and i feel like i read somewhere that trans people are more likely to be aspec though i can’t find the source so that may or may not be true. (EDIT okay i found this study which gives the percentage of trans people IDing as aspec at 4%, which is 4 times higher than the infamous figure of 1% that floats around about ace people in the general population, but it should also be noted that trans people are more likely to be any kind of queer - gay bi etc - overall. anyway aspec transman sam winchester is my point)

i think john was always kind of disappointed that dean wasn’t mary and it would be a neat foil if he was equally disappointed that sam wasn’t himself. the irony there being in fandom and in canon to some extent dean favors mary and sam favors john. so dean is a boy which is not mary’s gender and john is equally disappointed that sam “is a girl” which is not john’s gender except sam’s not a girl

john always belittling sam and never listening to him and making him feel like he can’t be trusted is actually now just misogyny bc he thinks sam is a woman. and dean’s the favorite by virtue of being “a real man” and dean’s not even that manly. it would be INFURIATING

the earlier seasons and for sure their childhoods have this thing about sam being small and weak and usually in need of protecting and also frequently underestimated which are all things that, in fiction, we associate with little sisters, which is what the world thinks sam is to dean

my biggest preference for trans guy sam is how well sam grows into manhood in the late seasons. late season sam is reserved and quiet about his pain, and he takes on protective and leadership roles, slips into this head-of-the-family sort of position (when dean kicks mary out of the bunker in s12, sam is the one she looks to after - like he gets the final say in whether or not that stands). and i’m not saying these things can’t be true of someone of any gender, but those mannerisms are all things we traditionally associate with men, especially in fiction, and sam embodies them SO WELL

and again, this is a stark contrast to dean heart-on-my-sleeve winchester, who to some degree had to be emotionally abused into his protective role of sam, and has always struggled with the more “traditional” aspects of manhood to the point where masculinity for him is a performance he has to get a good grade on - vs with sam, it’s just part of Who He Is

and struggles w/ masculinity being something they can sort of relate to each other with and bond over

like we watch sam become a man in supernatural so it would be cool to mirror it with him almost LITERALLY becoming a man

think about sam “becoming” something sinister in seasons 2-4 and he grapples with maybe just becoming who he’s meant to be. think about him liking to hang out with ruby and get away from dean because ruby doesn’t misgender and wants him the way a woman wants a man

we all said “cas bringing trans man dean back the way he wants to be” but cas bringing trans man sam back the way he wants to be 🥺

as sam becomes more outwardly masculine-presenting he realizes the “boy version” of himself looks a lot like john and then he has to deal with THAT

john seeing dean in mary being foiled by mary seeing john in sam when she comes back and the baby she thought was her daughter is now her son and a man too

anyway! trans man sam.

[spn masterpost]

[beevean]

Do twitter and tumblr seem to forget that constantly belittling straight people and brushing them off with things like “uh oh the heteros are upsetero” or “I’m heterophobic cishets die” does nothing for them but push away potential allies or people who wish to become better allies?? There’s a huge difference between cis straight people and actual homophobes but I guess that would mean acknowledging that 90% of the worlds population aren’t “evil cishetties” and this is coming from a bi woman

Don’t tell me about it...

It’s childish and petty, plain and simple. When your peak sense of humor is “lol straighties” (or cissies, or whities, or what have you) you have to acknowledge your life is pretty boring :V

But that’s not the point. The point is that constantly bleating “i hate straight people/straight people are inherently homophobic/abusive/lol i’m so happy i’m gay and i don’t have to deal with straight nonsense” is damaging to all sorts of people:

to young straight cis people who frequently use the internet and get bombarded with the message that they should be ashamed of themselves for something they have no control over (and maybe try to force themselves to identify as LGBT+ to become part of the cool crowd) - there’s no such thing as “lol get off the internet” anymore, that’s how ignorant people dismiss cyberbullying and it won’t take long until this shit seriously affects real life

in particular, it mocks straight women for being attracted to men, allowing all sorts of misogyny if you put “straight” in front of “women”, and it mocks straight men for existing (not that everyone here remembers that straight men are human, but anyway)

to young gay people, lesbians in particular, who get bombarded with the message that there’s no such thing as an asshole/abusive gay person, because that won’t backfire!

in particular there is this tendency to say that the way lesbians are attracted to women is different from the way straight men are, because straight men treat women as sex objects while lesbians treat them as people. Which would be your standard misandry, if there wasn’t the implication that being sexually attracted to a person is bad, and it’s harmful, and lesbians are better because they’re purer and don’t think about sex when looking at a woman. Sure, go tell a young lesbian in the middle of puberty who is starting to struggle with her identity that being attracted to a woman’s boobs is an insult to said woman and it harms her. I’m sure her conservative ultra-religious old parents will agree with you.

to bi/pan people who feel rejected from both sides, who get called bihets if they get in a relationship with a person of the different sex, who get called straight-passing as an insult - and at worst, if they’re a woman abused by a man, get blamed for it because, well, what did you expect getting with a man? too bad for you for not picking a woman, idiot :V (as if women can’t be abusive of course, it’s amazing how all sorts of bigotries intertwine)

to straight trans people who get mindlessly lumped with cishets and called oppressors and all the bad names reserved for cishets, which sends the message “yeah you may be oppressed, but you’re not oppressed enough, you know? therefore yeah we don’t care as much about you”

to the entire LGBT+ community because in America young people are getting less tolerant of the community, and while I’m sure there are many factors leading to this worrying trend, the fact that the most vocal members constantly push allies away because “eww you’re a stupid cishet what could you possibly understand?” certainly doesn’t help. No, it’s not fair to become seriously homophobic because of a couple of asshole kids on Twitter, but you can’t really blame potential allies for going like “okay, screw you guys, if you think I’m inherently oppressive why should I put the effort to better myself? You’ll never be happy anyway”

Spouting anti-straight nonsense doesn’t help anyone. It certainly doesn’t help the gay people in the world actually being kicked out of their home, assaulted or killed. You’re just children who found a new playground and realized, hey, now it’s my turn to be a bully!

[itsclydebitches]

Do you prefer slash pairings compared to femslash? Because I hear people say that women who enjoy gay male ships are dirty and fetishes mlm. I never hear that for men who like lesbian ships so it’s that misogyny?

I don’t prefer one over the other simply because that’s not the important part of the relationship to me---the characters are. There are a lot of reasons why slash pairings tend to become more popular than femslash and yes, sometimes misogyny is a part of it. Not always on the fan’s end of things, but simply because creators often tend to create more stories about men, give men more screen time and attention, write epic bonds between men and insist that it’s just bros being bros. And though there’s absolutely a need for more acknowledgement that male-male platonic affection is natural and healthy (often the characters in these relationships only admit they love each other as friends, brothers, whatever when it’s a life and death sort of deal, thus teaching the men watching that the only time you can break from the masculine ideal is when a BFF is dying. Or it’s an otherwise rare moment of sentiment), fans are likewise right to point out the history of queer baiting and respond to that with, “Fine. I’ll write the romantic relationship myself then.” The fandoms I frequent with canons dominated by women, like RWBY and She-Ra, have a lot of femslash because women are the characters we’re encouraged to identify with and there is likewise a wealth of other women to ship them with. Fandoms where we’re primarily encouraged to identify with the men (BNHA in the form of Izuku, Bakuo, Todoroki) and fandoms with few women protagonists (Good Omens---we’ve got Anathema, Madame Tracy, and Pepper, none of whom are close in age) makes it difficult for people to become invested in femslash ships. And sadly, those canons tend to dominate. 

There are, quite simply, so many reasons why someone gets invested in a ship and yes, some of that includes sexuality. “I prefer slash because I think it’s hot.” Though I believe firmly that’s only one part of the equation. It’s far more complicated than that and one of the other, primary ingredients is simply what the canon provides. Not all canons are equally suited to transformative fandom and not all fans are interested in engaging with writing beyond the tropes set up by the likes of Kirk/Spock and other prominent slash ships from the early zine and Internet age. Not all fans are creating purely for personal joy either, so: 

If the story includes enough women for variety

If they’re fleshed out enough for investment

If the canon becomes popular enough to maintain a fandom

If it’s the type of story that encourages fic-ing/transformative fanart

If the fan is open to creating for a ship that might get them maybe three reviews vs. writing for the mega popular slash ship in that way bigger fandom that’ll land them with thousands of kudos 

Then you start getting more femslash. But due to how our mainstream media is still constructed, fandom trends sixty years in the making, and yes, some misogyny, it’s definitely more rare. Not as rare as it was a few years ago---we’re improving---but enough. 

There are people out there who treat both real queer men and slash ships as a kind of fetish, but they’re individuals. In the same way that we can point to pretty much anything and find someone who is engaging with it badly, you can do the same here. But the act of shipping has never been solely about that. There’s a wealth of research on shipping as feminism, discovery, coming of age, self-expression, trauma recovery, etc. Potentially finding the characters hot is just one part of it all. That being said, for anyone who is in it primarily for the smut and the turn on? There’s nothing wrong with that. We have a whole history of policing women’s sexuality and fandom is just another target in a line of endless claims that women shouldn’t enjoy sexual expression for whatever bs reason (combined with “Women shouldn’t enjoy things, period.” Anything that’s prominently women and gender queer dominated inevitably comes under fire.) There’s a vast difference between the shipping most people engage in and treating an entire group of people as a fetish. If someone claims another person is engaging in fetishism, particularly in regards to race or sexuality? It’s worth hearing why they think that is. But someone claims that all women who ship are automatically dirty? Yeah, that’s misogyny. 

[jusadode-blog]

Absolutely post your loneliness essay (if you haven't already and I just missed it) I'd love to read it!

Anon, sorry it took me like a day and a half to respond, but here’s the essay! It’s about three or four pages long single-spaced in 12pt font, so it’s probably closer to five pages in total.

It’s not a perfect paper, but like I had this major revelation in therapy while discussing gay loneliness and issues in the LGBT+ community as a whole versus strictly gay issues. I kind of bounce around a lot and repeat myself, but I think majority of the points get across.

Thanks for dropping in Anon, I hope you enjoy!

CW’S: Aids mention, E.D. mention, and a LOT of discussion of hyper sexuality.

Okay,so we always use the joke-term “useless lesbian” because it’sstereotyped that lesbians haven’t been socialized to recognizeflirting due to internalized lesbophobia and similar stuff, and yetlesbians are far more likely to be able to maintain longer, and ormore romantic relationships than gay men especially during youngeryears (20’s) due to the fact gay culture is more aligned withhyper sexuality thanks to the lack of romantic socialization andgeneral hyper-masculizing culture of gay men. If in a city, Lesbianscan find older lesbians in their community and sort of have aninspiration to look to, whereas gay men almost never have an elder tolook towards (thanks to AIDs) and if they are often at odds sinceelder gay men and young gay men often end up battling because thecultural differences. Elder gay men know the value of community aftersurviving the epidemic, whereas younger gay men often simply have“friend groups”, and one night stands, as younger gays havealmost no idea what a future, wedding, marriage, or even theirelderly life could be due to simply never seeing their selves in sucha position. Younger gays often also tend to pick more hypersexualizedplaces for their social needs and community, which furthers issuesespecially as they age out of their twenties and still have notdeveloped romantic socialization. This leads to the issue where mostgays end up focusing so heavily on being sexually attractive, thatthey end up trying to find forms of masculinity in it linked towardsheterosexual masculinity.

This is why you’ll see shit on grindr like “no fats, noflamers” and shit because gay male culture is so focused on tryingto pass as having some form of hetero-passing form of masculinity(generally the sexual aspects, but also many other things) that we’reforcing ourselves to dehumanize our partners (both real andphotographic) into their most basic sexual elements. This is why gayerotica (not porn, but generally sexual photos, pinups, or gif sets)often slices up a photo of a man to just be torso and thighs,whereas lesbian erotica (not made for straight people that is) oftenfocuses on kissing and caressing. It’s the “male eye” but gay,which has the side effect of causing high levels of body dysmorphiaand E.D’s. in gay men, as well as causes major prejudice,isolation, and sometimes blatantly develops into full-on internalizedhomophobia and even blatant homophobia at times. I shit you not I’veknown at least three gay men who were against gay marriage.  Theytried to claim that they didn’t need it and it was just ‘theiropinion’, and I’m sitting here like Dylan (fake name), look, Iget you just wanna blow strangers in the bathroom cause that’s yourkink, but when you just state that as a gay person you don’t wantgay marriage, the conservatives that would bluntly kill you thefirst chance they get will use you as a tool to attack the gays whowant to be married.

And sure, the lesbian community isn’t squeaky clean itself, butthe focus of lesbian loneliness is entirely different from gayloneliness. Lesbians are lonely because they fear reaching out topartners at all, often trying to carefully maneuver between womensspaces as a non-threatening person due to the heavy stereotype of the“predatory lesbian”, whereas gay men are lonely because we’reconstantly grasping at any individual who’ll have us for a night,fulfilling only momentary needs and ultimately hypersexualizingourselves for quick consumption. Gay men try to empower their selvesthrough their sexuality and their sexualism, but ultimately thisleads to them to being alone and separated from the rest of thecommunity who focus on more romantic or identity-based aspects oftheir sexuality (As well as gay empowerment through sexualism is aslippery slope to misogyny, transphobia, and frequently racist). Butthis shit ain’t even just white-gay culture, it’s a thing a shitton of gay men go through regardless of ethnicity [however, there areprobably major differences between white-gay hypersexualization andgay-poc hypersexualization, but I’m frankly not educated enough toreally speak on that]. This has larger issues than just within thegay community then, because it affects other sexual and genderidentities by making popular LGBT+ environments hypersexual, whichhas been especially notable for causing issues with LGBT+ youth whocannot begin to join the community due to such until they’re 21.Since gay men are the most visible to the straight community, thehypersexualization that gay males empower their selves with become astereotype for all the LGBT+ community, followed up by within the gaycommunity once someone is not sexual-enough they are often outcastedor questioned on their queerness.

The thing is though, it’s not wrong to be sexual, nor is itwrong to be empowered by your sexualism, but it leaves many menshallow to their partners, and feeling alone which is the problemwhich becomes a cycle. You’re lonely, you swipe, you fuck, youleave, and you’re lonely again so you swipe again. Luckily most gaymen develop social skills to make friends despite this, and caneventually learn to have proper healthy relationships and a healthyrelationship with sexualism, but in the age of social media andtechnology where already most friendships are diluted it’s going tobecome far more challenging for gay men to function as sociallycompetent individuals. We’re often suffering from a hellish mix oftoxic masculinity and the battle for gay pride, and both of thesethings are at constant odds with each other due to gay masculinityhaving entirely different behaviors associated with it than heteromasculinity. You can be a hetero masculine individual without beingtoxic( look at Terry Crews) whereas you can still be a gay masculineindividual while being incredibly toxic (Shane Dawson is the onlyperson I can think of right now with a lot of toxic gay masculinitytraits, but he’s bisexual so his experience isn’t entirely thesame, but he’s still a good point of reference.). There’s countless of gay men who aren’t toxic, but it seems like the only ones who make it on TV or as Youtube stars are.

And this leaves us both at constant odds with ourselves, and ourcommunity. Gay men develop depression, sex addiction, drugdependence, E.D’s, body dysmorphia, and tons of other horrible shitbecause we’re constantly trying to objectify ourselves while stillgrasping onto the very same masculinity which almost got us to killourselves in our childhoods. We want to be proud of who we are, andmost of the time we can be, but we also want to be recognized asmen™, and we have trouble accepting that those two things justcan’t work together. Most gay men end up able to deal with itenough to find a long-term partner, to get married, and othertraditional senses of a happy and healthy romantic relationship, butwe have it so much more delayed than lesbians due to our lack ofromantic socialization. Men in general, regardless of sexuality, haveterrible romantic socialization heavily linked to toxic masculinityand hypersexualism, but gay men end up affecting the whole queercommunity with this, despite often adopting GNC behaviors in one wayor another. Gay men experience gender and gender roles entirelydifferent than hetero men, but often still try to find means toaccommodate it. Lesbians who experience this weird dissonance oftencan speak out about their issues with gender related directly tobeing a lesbian, as womanhood is often so heavily bent on traditionalhetero women romantic developments, but for some gay men even whenwe’re in full drag and using a different set of pronouns we’reoften still battling for masculinity. Most drag queens use drag as amethod to break out from gender for a short bit and to just expresssome aspect of their self they enjoy, they often are truly empoweredby this and can find communities and friends though it, and that’sthe sort of weird difference between GNC lesbians and GNC gays. GNClesbians can always be GNC, whereas GNC men are expected to wipe offtheir face eventually (both metaphorically and literally).

It’s not hopeless though, as larger communities are built andgay men learn at younger ages they can find different forms ofmasculinity in healthier methods, as well as they don’t need tosexualize their self to be gay and proud. Movies such as Love Simonwill help future generations know some aspects of at leastdreaming of romance, which will allow them to speak up and allowtheir community to humor such dreams. This will allow them to developromantic languages earlier on, which will then help them findhappier, healthier relationships, and ultimately normalize queerromances in more visible methods. I live for the day that I see gaymen holding hands and kissing each other softly, rather than oneslapping the other on the ass and giving a wink, as even though thatis a pretty happy thought the romance there is not one most gay menwill be able to facilitate throughout their life. The constant needfor sexualism in gay romances is isolating to non hyper-sexual gays, andfor those trying to imagine a romantic future. Young gay childrenneed to see older gays in calm, tender moments, such as cuddling,caressing, and doing silly daily things such as cooking or eatingwithout the constant need of sexualism. I have never in my life seentwo gay men hold each others hands casually, and that really messesme up when I try to imagine my future.  It’s a sort of weirdsituation where it seems like most gay men are living a “die young”life style since they can’t envision a future and want to have asmuch fun as possible, but then then they get to the “future” it’ssomething similar to being lost, and it’s almost as if everyphysical action I’ve seen between a gay couple has to have sexualundertones, and that’s not healthy for young gays to see that asthe only means of a “romantic” future. You can’t build arelationship off sex alone, and that’s the thing that’s tearingapart a lot of the gay community as we’re just so alone and sodesperate but we just don’t have the ability to develop furtherrelationships. Some of us will be fine without that, sexualempowerment through sexualism is still a valid thing for many people,but it’s not the answer for all. We need gay romance, not gay porn.[I won’t even begin to start on bury your gays troupes]

Now for the record, this is not meant to completely explain orapply to more complex situations such as homoromantic asexuals orhomosexual aromantics, or trans/nonbinary individuals, as those comewith a lot more situations which arise. As a trans-gay man, myexperience with gay loneliness is even more complicated as I am evenfurther isolated from the community and have a higher-risk ofdeveloping toxic ideas of masculinity. This post does not even beginto touch on the issues of bisexuals, pansexuals, or aroaces, as theyhave different cultures than gay or lesbian cultures despiteoverlapping heavily on many parts. There are also no considerations for job-oriented dreams, or experience-related dreams (I.E. traveling the world, moving, etc.) There is no consideration for polyamorous individuals as that get’s WAY to complicated on all sides. This is also all my personalobservation and understanding from what I’ve seen in both real andonline communities (both LGBT+ in it’s entirety and gay), and whatI’ve heard from other guys in similar circumstances. My experienceis still different than this, but I can definitively feel gayloneliness as a separate aspect from trans loneliness or trans-mascgay loneliness. I can’t even imagine myself with a happy future ifI were a cis gay male, removing all my other issues such as trauma. Fortunately, I am able to recognize a lot of my dependence on sexualism but it’s so hard to imagine positive situations separated from sex. I’ve managed to foster some dreams thankfully, and I’m unlearning hyper sexualism, but for many other gay guys they can’t even do that. If you can’t imagine a perfect date without imagining sex attached to it, there’s something a bit concerning there.

Also a major thing: This is not meant to shame individuals for enjoying casual sex. Casual sex is fun and dandy, this is meant to raise awareness that the gay community is extremely focused on casual sex over romantic developments. The media, the culture, everything we’ve built seems to be with extreme emphasis on sex, which leaves young gays isolated from the community, and distorts our ability to function romantically in the future as adults.

[viviae]

@alenkorra dude every romance that ISNT garrus has this issue. Miranda mains in the fanbase deal with a shit ton of misogyny thrown at her character. Jack fans practically don't exist and men frequently dismiss her for "looking like a d*ke". Shakarian's claw down Tali fan's throats for "stealing their man". Ashley gets significantly more hate from the fanbase. Kaidan isn't popular because blanketly people who play femshep go mainly for Garrus and its impossible to deny. The only romance that doesn't get steam rolled is Thanes because he has about half the content of every single romance and isn't seen as a threat.

people hate Liara because of "how much the game forces her onto you" what I'm saying is that if you don't play a bisexual femshep every romance comes off the same way. It's unfair that Liara gets all the hate when its a reoccurring issue with the writing as a whole but when I say that femshep is rail roaded into bisexual I get told to shut up and make my peace with it. But people don't want to have that conversation because they don't even recognize it and hand wave it off and blame it like its Liara's fault or Shiara fans who personally make them suffer.

And if you've never been in an femslash community for a video game that is not explicitly sold on being sapphic romances you are in tough luck. We don't get shit. Biowares representation in Mass Effect is shit for both gay men and women but when women talk about blatantly being fetishized we get the "shut up at least you have something". Like yay. I get to sit around for a joke bit in the Citadel DLC where Samantha Traynor has a pointlessly long joke about lesbian sex so straight dudes can jerk off? Femshep is also blatantly fan service and treated as second rate by the actual game.

Also tumblr is being a glitchy trash heap but if you look at the numbers on ao3 Shepard/Kaidan has 5600~ fanfics and any variation of Liara/Shepard won't even pass 2000. I know quite a few popular Kaidan artists for both of his gendered romances who have a big following... Shiara has like what? One? And her stuff doesn't get nearly the same reblogs outside of Shiaras.

TLDR: What I'm saying is its unfair for Kaidan stans to treat Liara and her fans as enemies because we have a smaller fanbase and the issue they have with her is a constant writing issue most of them don't even recognize

there are like five Liara fans in the actual mass effect fanbase but for every one fanart we get there are fifteen hate posts

[lesbian-ed]

So I’ve been talking to this girl and for the most part everything is great but she constantly calls herself gay and a lesbian while she’s actually bisexual and frequently hooks up with guys, it makes me really uncomfortable cause I’ve been told all my life that lesbians don’t exist and I’ll find the right man one day but when I confront her about it she just tells me it’s an umbrella term and it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t want to stop talking to her but what should I do?

Yikes. Lesbian is certainly not an “umbrella term”. It certainly does not “mean nothing”. I think all you can do since you do want to stay in contact with her is to explain what the value of that word really is. 

Explain that the word “lesbian” has a meaning, and that meaning very often goes completely unnoticed and unmentioned, but it has a lot of worth. Tell her that it matters that only homosexual women call themselves “lesbians”, so that other young women or even older women who are confused about their sexuality or questioning their sexuality know what to call themselves when they realize they are exclusively same-sex attracted women.

Give her an example. Like, the word “dog”. All “dogs” are "a highly variable domestic mammal (Canis familiaris) closely related to the gray wolf". The word “dog” has a meaning. We only call certain animal dogs. Let’s say all of a sudden, one mother starts calling all animals dogs. Then her child, who never knew what a dog was before that, sees her calling all animals “dog”. That child learns that animals are called “dogs”. And that child goes off to call what everyone else calls a cat, a horse or an elephant, a “dog”. 

That child won’t be able to communicate with other people, because to this child, the word “dog” means anything that’s an animal. If that child grew up to be a vet, it would be extremely confusing for them to talk to people, because every time they said “dog”, the child wouldn’t know what specific animal they’re talking about.

This is a silly comparison, but yeah. Words have meaning, and that meaning holds value. Lesbians are a community, we are a group of people, we have exclusive experiences, very different than the experiences of women who are attracted to males.

No lesbian can be with men, and therefore we are viewed as less than, and we struggle with a specific kind of homophobia that’s also laced with misogyny, aka lesbophobia.

Lesbians are not just “anyone”, we do exist, and we are held to certain standards and suffer certain injustices that only lesbians go through. When women who date men call themselves lesbians they dilute what our experiences mean, and they take the attention away from the lesbophobia that is still very much present in our society. 

So many girls come to us every day confused about what their sexuality is, confused about what it means to be a lesbian, confused because now people who date men and people who are men call themselves lesbians.

Lesbians are and will always be females who are exclusively same-sex attracted. 

Our experiences have value, we are not invisible, and every time a disingenuous bisexual co-opts our language and our culture, we lose a little bit more of who we are, and the small platforms we have to speak up for ourselves.

Humans created language in order to practically and objectively communicate. We cannot ignore that now, for the sake of “fun” and “lolz”. I’ve literally been told by a bisexual woman that she calls herself “gay” because “saying ‘I’m so bi’ is not as fun”. These people have no understanding of how homosexuality affects lesbians, and what we go through, and the self doubt we constantly deal with.

Being a lesbian, being homosexual, it is not “fun”. It is what it is. Lesbianism and homosexuality are not clubs. Our history and the words used to describe ourselves and our culture are things we have fought for a really long time to have acknowledged as not deviant.

It is not fair that anyone can come around and steal our language and our ability to communicate about our struggles.

Your “friend” is being very homophobic, and it isn’t fair to you or to any lesbian. Please talk to her, and if she continues to dismiss your pleas, honestly, she’s no friend of yours.

Take care,

Mod A

[bethevenyc]

Meet the transgender activist who called Caitlyn Jenner a 'fraud,' had 'healing' interview with Rose McGowan

Ashlee Marie Preston (Photo: Ashlee Marie Preston/Quinn Lemmers for Yahoo Lifestyle)

To mark the International Day of the Woman on March 8 and Women’s History Month, Yahoo Lifestyle is exploring notions of feminism and the women’s movement through a diverse series of profiles — from transgender activist Ashlee Marie Preston to conservative campus leader Karen Agness Lips — that aim to reach across many aisles. 

You may know transgender feminist activist Ashlee Marie Preston as the one who publicly called out Caitlyn Jenner in a video that went viral in 2017.

“You’re a f***ing fraud,” Preston told her, as Jenner — a frequent target of anger within the LGBT community because of her GOP sympathies — moved away from Preston, who had approached the celeb in the audience following a Trans Chorus of L.A. event.

In hindsight, that moment feels like “an unfortunate experience,” says the activist — who has since made a name for herself by having served as editor in chief of the feminist publication Wear Your Voice; by snagging Rose McGowan for an hour-long “healing” interview on her Revry podcast, Shook, following her well publicized run-in with an angry transgender audience member in NYC; and for announcing her run for office in California (though she soon dropped out of the race).

Preston has mixed feelings over that viral moment with Jenner, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle, because of how she felt a bit like an appointed “attack dog” by some — particularly as a black woman. “It was very similar to the way that America celebrated black women in Alabama when they showed up and blocked Roy Moore,” she explains. “People will often weaponize black rage when it’s convenient for them.”

The interaction also wound up overshadowing the “loving, healing, proactive, supportive unifying contributions” Preston says she had made as an activist over the past dozen years, and did not show her “depth.”

To that point, she says, “People were blown away with the Rose McGowan interview, because they thought I was going to come in and rip her to shreds and show off. And what they found is that we’re not perfect, and we can’t ask people to hear us and see us if we can’t see other people.”

With the Jenner video, though, “There were people who felt that it was a publicity stunt or that it was divisive — ‘Oh [Jenner is] a trans woman, we should embrace her, stop this infighting.’ But it’s not infighting if you were never in. The thing people failed to recognize is [she is] someone who is benefiting and profiting off of the pain of others,” she says. “There’s a quote by Zora Neale Hurston: ‘All kinfolk ain’t kinfolk,’ meaning just because people are African-American does not mean they are working toward the betterment of the African-American community. And so my own version of that is: Everybody LGBTQ ain’t always for you.”

The run-in did serve to highlight the complexities of identity politics within the women’s movement, she says, as well as kick off a conversation that needed to happen — regarding how members of oppressed communities, as they finally achieve some power, will often too easily shut the door in the faces of those who still need lifting up.

The best way to combat misogyny is to not allow it to control our narrative…⚡️ . . . . . . . . #unity #rosemcgowan #healing #growth #resist #kisses #solidarity #womenshistorymonth #women #feminism #feminist #trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #queer #gay #lesbian #bi #losangeles #pic #picoftheday #daily #instagood #instadaily #rosemcgowan #truth #metoo #timesup #hollywood

A post shared by Ashlee Marie Preston (@ashleemariepreston) on Mar 6, 2018 at 10:49am PST

  “When [Jenner] came up, all of a sudden, now not all, but a great deal of white trans women, were at the top of the food chain, and they weren’t being respectful … and basically sided with Caitlyn. They were even saying borderline racist things,” she says, “and what we found was the same dynamic shift that happened when gay rights became a thing, and gay white men forgot about the lesbians that fought for them during the AIDS epidemic.”

Of those who came out against Preston after the Jenner video went viral, she says, “Ironically, they were hoping to benefit from Caitlyn Jenner, and were OK with the crumbs that fall from the table. But what is the generation behind us going to eat?”

A similar logic could be applied to conservative women who believe that feminism can and should be expanded beyond the realm of its original progressive roots. It’s an argument Preston isn’t buying.

“Feminism is about improving the quality of life for all women. And if you’re not actively dismantling racism, not actively dismantling discrimination based on class and economic position, you are part of the problem, and you’re benefiting from the oppression of other women,” she says. “Therefore, as a conservative woman who is supporting those who work against those interests, you cannot be a feminist.”

She adds, “I think it’s one of those things where, if you’re not careful, you actually promulgate the very things we’re working against.”

That goes for some progressive women within the feminist movement too.

“As women, we’re not a monolithic people. So I think what it’s really about is giving people space to express their identities and their experiences, and when we look at it with that understanding, it really creates more unity,” she says. “Maybe it was a lot easier to define feminism in the ’60s and ’70s, because black women still didn’t have voices. … And I think what often happens is we forget that there are identities that carry more privilege within the women’s movement — and what happens is sometimes the experiences of women of color and trans women tend to be put to the back. There’s a lot of myopia.”

With more radical feminists, Preston says, and women who cannot bear the idea of transgender women in a female “safe space,” they feel “that trans women pollute it,” and someone born with a certain [male] privilege can’t possibly know oppression.

“We push back against that and say, not only do we know what that’s like, but we also have to deal with transphobia on top of it, we also have to deal with racism on top of it,” she says. “We’re not saying that cisgender women don’t have struggles that they’re born into — we’re just saying we also have struggles that we’re born into, and this isn’t a choice and this isn’t a gimmick and it’s not a way to insert the patriarchy into feminist spaces. It’s a way for us to actually come together and really demonstrate what it means to be inclusive of the experiences of all women.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Tamika Mallory of the Women’s March is a fan of Louis Farrakhan, and people are outraged

Trump-loving women protest the Women’s March: ‘A feminist is someone who is kind of hateful’

Faces of Power to the Polls, the Las Vegas Women’s March: ‘Our voices are finally being heard’

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