#and not their Mean Butch Tiktok Lesbian

[honey-dont]

cannot believe i’m having to defend greaseball of all characters

[lavenderprose]

Man the feminism sure does just leave some people's bodies when they see women dating men who they consider ugly or old or undesirable. 'Why would she date him' she thinks he's hot next question. 'He must be giving her something' yeah it's called love shut up. 'What is he doing to her to make her stay with him' yeah you're right it's probably something really awful like eating her pussy like it's his job. Be so for fucking real. Grown ass women do not need protection from randos on the Internet because their relationship/marriage/lifestyle doesn't make sense to you.

[butch-with-a-deep-voice]

Dear tumblr,

How do I post clips of my voice without video?

Sincerely,

A dyke who has now had 5 different femmes ask for proof of the deep voice

[fairuzfan]

That tiktok of that cis guy being like "I thought wlw mean winners love winning so I put that in my ig bio and I had a bunch of butch lesbians hitting me up" kills me every time even thinking about it kills me

[darlingofdots]

I do not actually use tiktok but I do scroll through instagram reels (which are just reposted tiktoks) way too much for my own health, and I also occasionally use reddit, and I can't help but think that these platforms and the emphasis on building your "brand" or finding your niche are pushing people to attach way too much meaning to labels. "Can I like flowers as a butch" "you shouldn't wear yellow as a deep autumn" "what my sensory-seeking child ate today" "when you Find Your Style and realise your teenage outfits were hideous" STOP. People don't work like that.

There's two angles to this, I think: It's always really obvious when somebody found an audience by posting about a specific thing and now they're trying to retain that audience by talking about it as much as possible, so they end up relating every aspect of their lives to it even when it makes no sense if only so they can use the right hashtags; whereas on the other end of this interaction, people who mostly receive this kind of content get the impression that there are rigid and hard rules that dictate who gets to identify a certain way or engage in an activity or what a health condition looks like. Have you ever noticed how many shortform videos but also internet comments begin with a version of "As someone who..." as if it's some kind of certificate or qualification? There is such an emphasis on labelling and clearly defining your experience! And don't get me wrong, labels and diagnoses and community identification can be really useful, and there are conversations in which being upfront about your positionality is helpful and productive. But so many posts on the lesbian subreddit the app made me join when I made my account are along the lines of "can I still be a lesbian if x?" and "do femmes think y is attractive?" as if any of these things are monolithic, strictly defined fundamental conditions of the human soul! Even medical conditions don't work this way because every body is different! Open yourself up to the complexity of experience!

[thatgarden]

This lesbian visibility week, I'd like to take a step back and bring to light one of the issues the lesbian community has. Specifically, those with gender binaries.

And yes, I do mean multiple. We all know and hate the man/woman binary, but in its wake many different gender binaries have risen out of the queer community.

The gender binary I'd like to talk about is nonman/man.

(I'd like to preface this by saying if you like this definition for yourself, that's fine! I'm talking about a certain kind of lesbian that pushes this definition onto everyone around them.)

I was there on TikTok when this definition rose to popularity, and even then I was uncomfortable with it. This obsession with men, or lack-there-of, went a bit too far when they tried to make it the central definition of lesbianism.

However, as I'd soon learn, the lesbian community is only as obsessed with men as they are because TERFs infiltrated us back in the 80s/90s. Cishet TERFs came in, saying that lesbianism was the only moral orientation for a woman to have, and worked to exclude anyone they deemed too "manly" out of lesbianism. This included all transgender and non-binary people, people of color (because they were "fighting for men's rights"), bisexuals, and butches. This was known as lesbian seperatism.

The lesbian community is still healing from lesbian seperatism, and there's still people who participate in what I call "modern lesbian seperatism". Excluding butch lesbians who feel a connection to manhood (lesboys/butchboys), excluding lesbians whose orientation is as multiple and complex as their gender (bisexual lesbians), it can be a dangerous thing just trying to live online as a gender-complex lesbian.

So, as a request this week of lesbian visibility, I'd appreciate it if you'd consider multigender people more in your lesbianism. There are women who are men who are women. There are butches who are men. There are lesbians who're bisexual, and yes that's often an expression of gender-complexity. Take the time to talk to us, hear what we have to say; you'll probably learn more about your history. :)

[loserrofthecentury]

One thing that was not a joy to witness this pride month was seeing butches and studs being shit on but people writing paragraphs upon paragraphs for bi women's cishet boyfriend and how they're actually super important and lesbians are mean for not wanting cishet men to being at pride (when they’re talking about LESBIAN spaces),especially when it comes from femmes (specifically femme4femmes). Like i'm sorry, if you are a femme and you're not interested in creating a community with butches and spend talking shit about them on tiktok slideshows, you're not a femme. You just like dressing feminine and make it everyone's problem.

[lesb0]

I'm always trying to stay on the cutting edge of every permutation of our constantly evolving visual culture but the elusiveness of every new form makes it difficult for me, even as one of the youngest possible millennials. in fashion, my freshman students are all wearing 2000s or "y2k" fashion: baggy grungy or baby phat hiphop, with an elevated touch of modesty, good color theory, and a stark awareness of bodily proportion. in memes, legendary 00s icon, lisa frank. its embarrassing to follow influencers with over 10 mil, now, as if it breaks the parasocial connection.

someone asked yesterday if tiktok is now the premier vehicle of visual culture. I open tiktok. on one side, a zoomed in interview with the mother of a shooting victim. but the other side is a compilation of slime videos, a woman cutting soap, life hacks, and chinese "smart" product placements. you can hear and see both. this bizarre genre, I can only recognize as content. on social media, content is technically anything you can doomscroll, the action of spending over 2 hours on a social media feed, a for you page, a timeline, a dashboard to tumblr addicts.

I'm watching cable TV with a girl I'm seeing. the ads are remarkably only geared towards boomers and older gen x. but, so is the 'content', bad action movies made for cable and reruns of 80s/90s TV shows, but the exact same show marathoned in hours long successions.

to be an effective art historian, I have to take things from this ever-shifting visual culture and translate it into the equally fickle and amorphous art world... so what does 'content' look like for museum shows? my first 100+ object loan show was in part by a colleague, a younger curator at BAMPFA. a massive exhibition of all female nonbinary artists, from the 60s PoMo feminists to the self obsessed identity displayers of today. I absolutely LOVED it. I had no problem enthusiastically flitting from object to object, frontwards and in reverse twice, to spend special time with all my favorites. a fave professor stopped me. I hadn't even recognized him in the excitement. he looked bewildered, but laughed about how giddy I was. he didn't write any criticism on the show. my boss at the time, our museum director, told me she thought it was "such a big mess". my favorite lesbian professor clutched onto her wife with an anxious look. my lesbian artist friend had panic attack and put his headphones on in a dark corner. on the other hand, the younger undergrad girls from berkeley looked elated and delighted, flitting around and oohing and aahing at my same pace. I learned one of them was an engineering student named erin who needed a feminist pickup from the disouragement in her male dominated field.

so how has the 'content' show, or the art world reception to them, changed in the past 4 years? well for one, it seems like major flagship institutions are dropping the mononym altogether. as the french impressionists take over the east coast, none of shows feature one painter as a sole focus, but curators use juxtapositions to keep people interested. in MoMAs, monoynym shows are reserved for major retrospectives or figuratively and literally, monolith artists like simone leigh. the older art historians are hesitant to adapt to these changes. one of my favorite shows this summer, over 300 very different collection pieces packed onto the floor and across the hall, wasn't enjoyed by any of the critics I know. My dates all hated it. except one, a hot ADHD butch who had a tiktok doomscrolling addiction.

what does this mean for the future of how shows are displayed.... how do museums let go of the traditional princely standard: 3.5 inch hangings with a 25 degree downwards tilt? is it better or worse to compromise museums into messy 17th century curiosity cabinets?

[caitlynsbiggestfan]

what is with people on tiktok and them getting mad as hell when pronouns, gender, and sex of lesbians are discussed; genuinely. Like, I saw someone make a cute hc for Vi that since she knows it might be a little easy to mistake her for a dude. So she doesn’t really care if someone calls her by he/him cause she knows that’s what appearances gives off…the way the comments were so mean. Or when we start talking about transmasc Vi hcs. They get so offended for no reason like butches can’t be transmasc and lesbian

[ilovewomenfr]

just a pissed off rant about straight women calling themselves pillow princesses🥰

i saw like three tiktoks of straight girls calling themselves pillow princesses today and oh my god it boils my blood. i open the comments and there’s always such a huge fight going on; the sapphics are like hey this is actually a lesbian term you genuinely cannot be a pillow princess if you’re with a man and then the straight girls are like it’s seriously not that deep its just a term. oh my fucking god i hate it so much.

BABE YOU CANT BE A FUCKING PILLOW PRINCESS WHEN YOUR PARTNER IS ALSO RECEIVING STIMULATION AT THE SAME TIME! it drives me absolutely insane that they can’t let us have anything. like why tf are you wearing a goddamn carabiner because you think its trendy and get mad when a girl thinks youre a lesbian! all these girls dressing masc bc its trendy… dress how you want but dont start making fun of butches and mascs when the trend is over. LET LESBIANS HAVE THINGS!#mycultureisnotyourcostume type shit.

im actually gonna get violent this stuff pisses me off so much UGH. AND they use it because they think it just means you dont do any work and just lie there lazily… massive eye roll. why do straight people minimize the fucking history behind queer terms, you hate us but you copy everything we do? and i know for a fact half these girls hate lesbians in general.

sort of unrelated; lesbians having a preference for dating other lesbians BECAUSE of their shared experience of the isolation of being a lesbian in a heteronormative society is in no way biphobic. i think in my experience being a femme it is so isolating growing up and having alot of friends having their femininity revolving around men. like i wouldnt change my sexuality for the world but goddamn its so frustrating when it seems like almost every aspect of queerness gets stolen by straight people.

one more thing that pisses me off (also unrelated) is when straight girls call their friends girlfriends… no. dont call your friends your girlfriends when im paranoid of being hate crimed every time i hold my girlfriend’s hand in public.

and yes i did format this because the whole clump was hard on my eyes

[mr-weirdo-mcgee]

(Hopefully I worded it right or something, also the other one, you can comment, or not. And the second one, you don't have to be cis, I was just saying it as in calling your lesbian partner boyfriend but they aren't exactly a boy, the butchs.)

[olderthannetfic]

I was that AAVE anon and thank you for responding. I was just really confused about these being for ONLY black people because I don't use these AAVEs personally at all, especially in real life because my native language is not English.

And I was also pretty sceptic about that these words are exclusive for black people, because I once stumbled upon a post here that showed a tiktok explaining that you can't use the word stud because that's only for black butch lesbians. Also that one post's tone too was pretty insufferable. Basically it was like "See? This word is for black butch lesbians only!!! Don't use it or you're a racist pig!" While others pointed out that it was also used for horses for a longer time. The original post didn't help me learn anything, it just showed me that the poster is insufferable and that I need to be more sceptical about everithing posted anywhere no matter who posts it.

Next time I'll search better if I stumble upon some words from English slang or something. Sorry for wasting your time! 🙈

--

*giggling*

Yes, anon, I figured you weren't a native speaker. For the record, 'AAVEs' isn't how we use that. AAVE is the name of the dialect: African American Vernacular English. As a term, it works how any name of a language or dialect does. You can say things like "I don't speak AAVE" or "This is grammatical in AAVE". If you want to describe vocabulary, I'd say something like "This word comes from AAVE".

I know what you mean. There's a plague of social media posts about how some word or other is only for black people. (Not surprising given the even bigger plague of appropriation from AAVE.) Half of them are completely accurate and half of them are absolute nonsense, and there's no way to tell which is which from the posts themselves. The only way to distinguish is by already knowing enough that you don't need the damn post in the first place.

[contradictory-label-culture-is]

Contradictory label culture is: seeing someone say they're pro-lesboy but anti male lesbian and anti mspec lesbian. So can we fudge the rules or not? What about lesboys who consider themselves male? This person was also ok with bi women using butch and femme - which they're right for - even though other exclusionists usually are against anyone who's not a lesbian using those terms for themselves.

This person is more contradictory than the contradictory label lesbians.

YES! I always see these types of people, it weirds me out. Also I don't know any lesboy who isn't pro Mspec lesbian, I mean there could be but I haven't seen any.

It's like the tiktok version of "explaining" Lesboy, "lesboys aren't actually the invalid boy lesbians! It's a masculine blah blah blah blah, and maybe multigender but anyway blah-" like you're not helping lesboys here.

(I also saw an anti Mspec lesbian thing, I just looked at it for a second and someone in the reblogs was complaining that their friend was a bi lesbian cause "it made them comfy" (yes they said comfy) and like ...duh? They feel comfortable with both communities. Sorry people being comfortable with their identity is weird to you?)

Also someone saying "heh, yeah I'm anti good faith labels" (insert that proud TikTok emoji, they didn't say it like this obviously I'm being mocking) and like...that's a CRAZY thing to say, imagine saying you're anti good faith...yeah makes sense.

[nerdyvocals]

9 People to Know Better (except I'm not tagging 9 people)

I don't normally do tag games, but I got tagged in this twice (by @jealous-kippen and @remmixx, my beloveds <3) so here I am! (also as I'm writing this out I am realizing that while both posts were titled the same way, it looks like they had different question prompts??? So I'm just gonna combine the two)

Favorite Color: Purple! Any shade will have my heart but I am partial to more red-toned purples. (PV, if that means anything to anyone who sees this other than me, you know who you are)

Currently Reading: Three things! In terms of actual books, I've been slowly making my way through the Riordanverse since my university did The Lightning Thief in my second year (first school in my state to do it once the rights were released!) since I somehow never got into Percy Jackson as a kid, and I'm currently on Son of Neptune. I'm also one like my third or fourth re-read of Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, since that's the play I'm designing the costumes for for my senior project. And in terms of fanfic, I woke up to a notification about this yesterday and Actually Screeched.

Last Song: Dial Drunk by Noah Kahan (ft. Post Malone), which was a bit of an accident. I use siri to request music while I'm driving and I asked for Dial Drunk and was singing along until I got jumpscared by the slight difference before Post Malone's verse. Although if you look at my spotify, the ROTPL album has been on repeat for weeks.

Currently Watching (Series): I've been hyperfixated on ROTPL and have watched it over a dozen times at this point, which is probably not healthy, so I put on NCIS last night for background noise while I ate dinner and accidentally watched like six episodes.

Currently Watching (Movie): Saw the Barbie movie the night before the actual opening with my coworkers (We don't cross picket lines people! I was not asked nor invited by any company, and I paid full price for my ticket. There's a one-screen theatre in the town where I'm doing summer stock, this relic from the 50's, and they were able to get access to the film a day early and did a special first come first serve premiere.) and we all sobbed the entire way through.

Current Obsession: Rise of the Pink Ladies. Full stop. I'd seen clips of it when it first aired in April but I was iffy on it in spite of how good it looked. Like most, I'm a little tired of reboots and remakes, and while I did clock Cynthia as being queer within two seconds, (I believe my exact words were "That's either a very butch lesbian or the eggiest egg to ever egg.") I was Convinced it was a queerbait situation. Plus I was nearing finals and didn't have time to get into a new show. But then Crushing Me was trending on tiktok and I realized this was not queerbait, so I put it on to have something playing while I packed for summer stock and it's been the only thing I can think about since mid May. It got me writing fanfic again for the first time in years, if that tells you anything. Speaking of,

Currently Working On: A follow-up to my previous fic, Steady, Steady! I wanted to have it up this week, but it is a behemoth. I'm a little over halfway through my plot outline and I'm at 10,441 words. Fun fact, this will be my longest single-chapter fic so far. Not just in the fandom, not just on AO3, but ever (so far!)

No-Pressure Tagging: @merely-a-player, @penguin-writes-books, @el-fandom-birb, @marley-barnes112, @isweartheyregayyourhonor, and @look-at-those-niceass-rocks (since I've already dragged you back to tumblr kicking and screaming)

[rribb0n]

controversial thing but the hatred of lesboys i see on tiktok is really annoying because they are just spreading misinformation. many lesboys don't identify as men, tiktok got mad at invisible people and changed the meaning when in reality nobody except ragebait people identify as lesbian men, and now the very same people are calling completely innocent people who use the term invalid. gender non conformity is literally represented in the lesbian flag, this whole thing is so invalidating to butches. "b-but why does it have boy in the name?? they should call themselves *masc* not boy!!" do you give the same energy when you see a non binary person go by both girlfriend or boyfriend, use he/him pronouns, or use masculine terms? does a woman calling themselves a tom*boy* automatically make them a boy? stop trying to shove non binary people into a box and place rules on them, it ruins the entire point of being genderqueer. gender is a very abstract thing that people experience differently and you can't just perfectly define it for everyone with written rules.

[magicalwitchbread]

I promised Caitlyn slander.

So yeah, I don't like Caitvi...

I won't speak on whether it's good representation or not cause I am not part of the community, and I don't feel like this is my place to speak.

But I dislike it still...

So Vi and Cait come from completely different backgrounds. Obviously, that's not a problem even if Cait's people have historically oppressed and mistreated Vi's. Love can still blossom, but when the ship is endgame, just feelings are not enough.

Vi gave up her identity as a Zaunite to be with Cait. She lives in Piltover, she became an enforcer briefly for fucks sake. And she gave Piltover many chances to redeem themselves. She was willing to try and fix a broken system along with Cait.

But Cait, let's say wasn't ready. She has been in Zaun twice in her life. Once because she wanted information that Vi would get for her and the second one to kill Jinx, Vi's literal blood related sister. She has also said to Vi something along the lines of "I thought you were one of the good ones.". She still sees Zaun as the underworld and lesser than and attempts to erase or at least completely ignore that part of Vi. Let's not forget that she has also referred to Zaunites as "animals". And no, grief is not an excuse. It's an explanation but not an excuse. Be united in your grief (this doesn't really mean anything i just wanted to quote Kdot.). With that logic Vi should have been a crash out and probably a worse one than Jinx...

Having said that, their dynamic should be the complete opposite of what it is. It should be Cait at Vi's feet, not the other way around. Yeah, Vi's sister killed Caitlyn's mum. And Cait's mum deprived Vi's entire people of breathable air... not that this is a trauma competition, but Cait should feel a shred of guilt that causes her to be more lenient with Vi, or at the very least the guilt makes her accept Vi's identity as a whole.

Unrelated, but still Caitvi

I'm a sucker for shorter butch lesbian and taller fem girlfriend. But in Caitvi, it hurts me every time cause I saw someone on Tiktok say that their height difference exists cause Vi was denied nutrients growing up and her body did not develop properly. So she might have been taller if she hadn't grown up in the conditions that she did.

Also, this is not criticism of the ship. It's just an amazing detail by the animators.