#because like it or not if you police the way other queer people identify because its not sanitized or comfy enough

[little-klng]

Contradicting identities absolutely bangs btw. Sexual, romantic, and gender identities all bang in every combination even when they're contradicting. I think it's supremely cool when someone has a sexual and romantic identity that are opposites and a gender that doesn't match and then different pronouns on top of that. Shout out to conflicting queers and queers using their own slurs as identities

[genderqueerdykes]

I get why a lot of trans guys & transmascs become alienated or disenfranchised from the various trans and queer communities. A lot of trans men & mascs end up completely leaving queer spaces because they feel invisible, pushed out, unseen, unheard, or like they're taking up someone else's space. We are often invisible, even in our own communities, and it makes a lot of transmasculine people try to distance themselves from their own queerness.

It's okay if you feel this way. It's okay if you've become a jaded, tired, bitter, or angry trans man or masc. We walk a difficult path, many people refuse to even acknowledge that we exist to begin with, others will violently fight and oppose us, and police our identities. Many will tell us how we feel and identify and force us to comply with threats of violence and being cut off from housing and resources.

Transmasculine people experience an extremely high rate of homelessness. We are often completely stranded. It's okay to be pissed off when you continuously struggle to be seen, heard, and supported. It's okay to not want to explain what a trans man is for the hundred thousdanth time. It's okay to be a little fucking angry that nobody knows that you even exist.

[genderkoolaid]

Hello! Non binary here. I'm trying to genuinely understand how saying bi lesbians are a thing are not harmful to the trans, lesbian and bi community. I saw some of the bi lesbians history and this label seems to be something they used to say to identify that they felt mostly attraction to women but could eventually like a man / people that liked men in the past but now go as lesbians. On the first example, Isn't it just bisexuality with a preference to women? and in the second, lesbians with comphet. I understand the need to use those labels in the past, but now it seems harmful to use bi lesbian because lesbians are not attracted men and bisexuals are not lesbians. I have also seen that the use of bi lesbian was a reactionary push to the TERF movement of excluding men from queer spaces as in a way to "purify" women

While someone in either of the groups you described might identify as a bi lesbian, that is certainly not the extent of bi lesbianism.

I think the problem emerges for many people because they are viewing the definitions of queer terms as objective descriptions we discovered. From this perspective, people used to use lesbian in a more expansive sense essentially because they didn't know any better. But I dislike that; our foreparents were not identifying how they did because they didn't know better, their constructions of gender and sexuality are just as valid. And it's important to understand why those definitions formed instead of going “well it's different now so stop it.”

I'm not sure if you are saying you've heard TERFs came up with the term bi lesbian. I wouldn't be surprised, since it's a fairly common rumor. But it's very wrong. To give a very general history, “bi lesbian” came about to describe people who identified with lesbianism– in the sense that they identified with being queer, having some personal relationship with womanhood and loved or desired women– who also were multisexual in some way. “Lesbian” emphasized your love/desire for women as an important part of your identity, and “bisexual” gave nuance to that, creating visibility for bi people within the community. The outrage against bi lesbians came from the same source as the hatred for trans lesbians (of all kinds): radical feminist beliefs in political lesbianism, the insistence that being a lesbian is a political choice to end all personal relationships with men & manhood.

The idea that “lesbians, universally, aren't attracted to men” largely comes out of this shift. You cannot separate the idea that “bi lesbians” don't/shouldn't exist and the legacy of transphobic radical feminism which encourage black-and-white thinking and hostility towards Bad Queers who dared to love or desire men, be men, dress like men, or fuck like men (anything from BDSM to using a strap-on). This divide is artificial and we do not need to just accept it. Bi lesbians are not the source of harm, the ideology that insists on their exclusion is. On top of this, in many physical queer communities bi lesbians & other people with complicated identities are very easily accepted; the idea that it's somehow impossible for these identities to be safely normalized is just queer conservatism.

There are many reasons someone might enjoy the bi lesbian label: personally, I'm multigender and using a single sexuality label doesn't accurately express my sexuality. A lot of times I see people who counter reasons for bi lesbian identity by saying “but that's just being a lesbian/bisexual!” which is another product of this black-and-white thinking. The idea that someone else with a similar experience using a different label than you– or someone with a different experience using the same label– is somehow a threat to your identity is very reminiscent of the way radical feminism relies on patriarchal ideas that everyone in a gender group must self-police that group to ensure homogeneity. Someone with a totally “normal” bisexual experience may still identify as a bi lesbian, or use both bisexual and lesbian in varying contexts, because they feel it accurately expresses their personal sexuality & relationship to queer communities.

There's famously an Alison Bechdel strip about a character being a bi lesbian, but I think my favorite piece of bi lesbian art is this poem by Dajenya. It's a very defiant and wholehearted response to anti-bi-lesbian sentiment and how it harms people within the community far more than bi lesbian identity does. this site is a collection of primary resources on bi lesbianism, including a few interviews from bi lesbians which might be helpful for you.

[drdemonprince]

DEVON PRICE thank u for being literally the only other person I’ve ever seen who believes Trisha Paytas’s right to identify as a non transitioning femme gay trans man. I’m always on about this to my friends & tbh I think they’re tired of hearing about it lmao

I put this in my tags responding to ur tags on the brokeback post but fr she came out as a femme trans man who likes men and was like “I’m still going to use she/her tho” and everyone Lost Their Shit and bullied her on the internet essentially until she stopped publically identifying that way. And she chose to come out as non-binary and use she/they bc then she wouldn’t face so much backlash. And like it’s literally all just about what she “passes” as or what her gender presentation indicates to others as opposed to how she feels about herself and defines her own gender. Which tbh? I feel like most of the people that harassed her over that were queer and trans people saying she must be confused or was like delegitimizing trana identity??? But fr the people upset about it were just policing and scrutinizing her because they felt like that identity label didn’t match with her gender presentation. It’s fucked up, I wish we lived in a world where Trisha could have been a trans guy and the trans community would have just been like “oh awesome :) good for u, I hope u feel like you know yourself better at the end of the day”

Literally!!!! I thought it was so fucked up that people didn't just let her identify how she did simply because she didn't want to change her presentation. Supposedly leftist people have decided that because she has been problematic it's okay to demonize her for being "annoying" or seeming "crazy." they invalidate everything she says and does in the most ableist transphobic fatphobic fucking ways and it honestly hurts every gnc trans person or genderfluid person when they act that way. I HATE when members of our community promote that gender conforming respectability politics shit. it has done a lot to make being trans harder and worse for me too.

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

Hot take but I think what we saw in chapter 13 was necessary.

I don't think a lot of people realize how important it is for Araki to portray what he did, even if it extremely difficult to take in. Let me explain.

Araki has discussed about topics like racial and class disparity through both Steel Ball Run and Jojolion, but JOJOLands is different because the discussions are now very direct. We had Chapter 1 open up with police brutality and Chapter 13 open with intense bullying; both acts were committed by people of higher social standing/power and seemingly White (or white passing) and both are harming a dark-skinned queer individual. Not only that, remember that Hawai'i is an island stolen and colonized by the US and many indigenous individuals who were supposed to live and maintain kapu are being forced to endure housing problems, loss of culture, etc. due to gentrification and exploitation of its lands. 2020 was when we saw global protest towards the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor due to police brutality, which has spread as far as Japan in terms of demonstrations and rallies. Araki has made it clear that he tries to take real world experience into his writing, and this is no different. He is also no stranger to portraying law enforcement throughout his parts without glorifying or downplaying their behavior.

As a mutual of mine (who themselves identify as a black GNC individual based in US) has put it, those who identify or even appear as Black while identifying as trans-femme or women are subjected to some of the worse kinds of oppression possible in America. Queer women of Color are one of the most susceptible to sexual violence-- especially when they are young, and the darkness of their skin really plays into it. This is transmisogynoir; it is a hard pill to swallow and acknowledge, even if it feels excessive, and its a multilayer of oppression that connects a person's racial identity, gender, and sexuality as targets of discrimination. It's the fact that one is POC, a woman, AND queer that makes one a target--- not just one or the other. You can’t turn a blind eye to this because it happen constantly throughout America's history and American society even today, but you can't simply water it down or downplay it. In fact, many victims of transmisogynoir have no choice but to downplay their experiences because of their Black identities or because they appear too dark to be taken seriously; when they, especially if they are Black, try to hold people in power accountable, these individuals are suddenly labeled aggressive, indignant, etc. and they are further discriminated for attempting to speak up. Dragona downplaying the bullying isn't them just trying to avoid further conflict but a reflection of how many who were in similar situations like Dragona are forced to simply forgive and forget the trauma they have to endure. To downplay it ourselves is reinforcing the narrative that individuals like Dragona in real life should remain silent and endure their harassment rather than rightfully protect themselves and others from it.

Another thing to add is that the way Japan portrays and treats the LGBTQ community, particularly the trans community. In Japan, the process to legally change your gender is complicated and requires a lot of steps that include, but not limited to, being diagnosed with gender identity disorder, proving you have no kids/guardianships, and sterilization. This causes a lot of individuals to be forced to quickly transition as a means of getting their gender recognized, which takes away the time to let them explore at their own pace, and this is due to how the process can lead to hindering career and life opportunities that wouldn't be hindered had they already transitioned or stayed closeted. Many Japanese trans individuals unable to go through the process quickly either remain closeted or move away from Japan to transition at their own pace. So, as a result, the trans community and its struggles is not as noticed compared to outside of Japan. Another thing to add is that the trans community in Japanese media is often portrayed as comedic relief or a gag. Oftentimes, the trans character or character who diverts from gender conformity (i.e cross-dressing, acting more flamboyant) is the butt of the jokes. Some thing to note is that, when Dragona was first introduced, a lot of people thought that Araki put Dragona in simply for comedic purposes. I had people joke about how Dragona is just there because they believed Araki is trolling. Not only that, the racial issues that Japan has often results in jokes towards non-Japanese individuals in media, especially if they are of darker skin color.

So, Araki putting Dragona in these difficult situations is also meant to subvert expectations that his Japanese, and possibly Western, audience may be expecting. The expectation was to laugh and toss Dragona aside as a single-dimensional character, but Araki instead forced us to face the trauma through Dragona's experience head-on. We are made aware of Dragona's situation, how real and difficult the struggle is, and we end up emphasizing with it rather than laughing at it. Through this, we get a glimpse into real life experiences of trans POCs without it being downplayed and have it show how Dragona is a fleshed-out character with importance to the series. As some have put it, this chapter proved that Dragona isn't just a side character but arguably a complex individual on the same level of importance as Jodio. I don't think it would have been easy to have the same impact if another approach was taken.

While talking to others who identify as trans and/or GNC about their thoughts on the chapter, I was told by many of them that, while Dragona's experience hits close to home and was hard to digest, they appreciate seeing it being expressed and hope it will help other people understand their struggles. One noted how the introduction of Smooth Operators with the backstory as empowering, seeing the Stand as a symbol of surviving the trauma that comes with trans discrimination. I do find this a bit telling with how many people online who are against Araki's portrayal barely mention what trans/GNC people have said about it.

My main concern, as well as what I see people have rightfully critiqued, is the excessive trauma reinforcing the fetishization and violent voyeurism towards trans individuals; it also reinforces the problematic narrative that dysmorphia can only happen as a result of trauma and the trans experience can only be full of pain. There's also the issue that Dragona's experience also happened while they were under age and their harassment is similar to that of Lucy. It's a common trope in Western media to put marginalized people into these situations while upping the ante simply for clicks and pleasure, and even worse when the character portrayed is a minor. As I reiterate, it is a very uncomfortable chapter to read and I don't find it enjoyable at the slightest. Just because I understand why it is necessary doesn't mean I condone the approach done. I also understand Araki as a Japanese man can only relate and portray a queer American's experience to an extent. But, at the same time, the exposure was necessary because it gives us the awareness and a voice to trans people that is lacking within media even today. We need to be aware and acknowledge what our BIPOC trans community goes through as a means of being better humans--- and especially our younger community members. We need to make our society safer for them so they can thrive and have the respect they deserve. Oftentimes, that starts with how they are portrayed and how their experiences are portrayed. While it is still a journey and not every representation will be perfect, we can't simply toss it aside and bash those who try to show something realistic just because it is uncomfortable.

I only hope that Araki wrote Dragona and these scenes as a result of doing extensive research and reaching out to actual POC queer individuals, particularly transfemmes/women, to understand their experiences and have their blessings to use their words to shape Dragona. I feel like that would show that Araki was serious about discussing these issues through his characters rather than simply using Dragona's traumatic experience it for entertainment. I have higher expectations for Araki now, knowing that it may not be the last time he shows a character experience harassment and possibly have Dragona be harassed again, so I will keep my eyes open for this.

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

If nothing else, Dragon Age 2 is a story being told by Varric Tethras (pulp novelist, businessman, and self professed liar), while being interrogated by the Chantry secret police, while also trying to exonerate himself and the best friend he loves...

It could be true, some of it could be true, none of it could be true. Likely it is only half of the picture and the story and its players are Varric's Cassandra friendly version. There's room for so many interpretations of DA2 that I wonder how anyone comes to a single truth about the story and its characters at all?

Anyway, I've been thinking about a post that said taking a side strictly for or against Anders misses the point and I agree. However, I think because DA2 is too structuralist in its approach to the characters, players clung more to a humanistic reading of them. Ideally a story balances both but it didn't in DA2 and so the characters feel puppeted by a thesis that could be alienating at times. I mean, Anders isn't 'right' but he is more right then the story and the general response to his character allows him to be and so anyone with a grasp on the metaphors the DA mages represent, from religious and political persecution of queerness to authoritarian imprisonment, are going to see any attempt to justify the continued abuse of them as awful. They'll also cling harder to the character who represents resistance to *gestures at all that narrative mess*. Same with Fenris. Who is the bluntest fictional embodying of slavery ever. Right to the heart, really. Of course people cling to Fenris. Especially in an American story. (And then they pitted them against each other...)

As for characterization, though, they're assholes. I love them. I get them. I'd like them even if they were worse (and the criticism does tend to exaggerate how bad they are). They are in pain and have a lot of room for growth but they are assholes. Yet they're also flawless to me and that there's my point. The story didn't utilise them as it should, didn't think about them as much beyond being a blunt tool for the plot and so the players who felt the metaphors, who identified with their pain, plucked them away, filled them in, and shielded them from a narrative and public they felt misused or misunderstood them and by extension the people and issues they represent.

We're always saying here that representation is important but this is the reason why. This is the power it has and the pain it can cause when fumbled. This is why there was such a strongly divisive response to Anders— you had one side gleefully feeling justified killing him and all he represents and the other side feeling horror at how all he represents was handled and wanting to save him. This is why there's still Anders vs. Fenris drama years later despite them being mirrors, the story reduced them to being a mouthpiece for and against mages when the plot itself is about the rights of mages. It's a bit impossible to talk about the narrative of DA2 without talking about Anders and Fenris.

So I get it but on the other hand DA2 is a story being told under duress by an unreliable narrator. All the characters could be the way they are because Varric needs them to be in order to satisfy the magic fearing religious government. I think that could be a really interesting conversation to have too.

[olderthannetfic]

Honestly, the internet and fandom at large has made the words “fetishizing” and “romanticizing” pretty meaningless to me. I’m an aspec nb person who really enjoys a certain mlm ship and it’s hard for me to even like it anymore because in the back of my mind I’m always thinking “but what if I’m just fetishizing this.” I’m constantly checking my groinal reactions to fanfic. I’m pretty sex repulsed so obviously I don’t read sex scenes but I do love romance fic, so even then I’m constantly thinking about my personal reactions to it. Therefore the word fetishizing in regards to mlm fic seems like an attack on me and I know it shouldn’t be that to me because it’s a real issue surrounding queer people but it’s hard for me to take it seriously anymore. It sucks.

--

To be fair, you really shouldn't be taking it seriously when it comes to what you ship or what fiction you like.

Actual fetishizing is annoying dudes thinking "lesbian" means "lady from porn who wants to do a m/f/f three way" or people acting like real live trans women are some sort of weird sex fantasy nonsense.

The dumb fandom misuse is just people being uncomfortable that others aren't sex repulsed and have libidos. "Oh no, you had pantsfeelings, and now you've gotten sin cooties on this media I like!"

Or sometimes, it's just a way of policing all the AFABs and getting mad when we identify with male characters.

Realistically, when people spread this bullshit about fans shipping m/m, it is an attack on you and not at all a real issue.

[ugly-anarchist]

I've seen a couple posts about "cisallohets" at pride events and like... There's so many reasons why not wanting them there is wrong.

"Cisallohet" doesn't mean "not queer". Intersex people are included in queer spaces (when they want to be). Same for gender non-conforming people and drag queens/kings. Not every drag queen/king is gay or trans!

This excludes non-queer family members that want to support their family. Are you really gonna tell me you want a non-queer parent of a queer kid to drop their 13 year old off at the entrance and then just leave them there? What about the other way around? Are queer parents supposed to leave their children behind to celebrate themselves without them?

I have volunteered at pride events before and quite a few of the volunteers (who were essential to the continued function of the event) weren't queer.

It makes it a lot harder for questioning and closeted people to find communities. Are you really going to deny entrance to someone because they're not sure if they're queer and they're coming to the event specifically because they want to find people to relate to?

It opens the door to identity policing. If we don't allow "non-queer" people into pride events then we need to have a very clear and distinct definition of what queer is and not everyone agrees on that. We also need to know exactly who identifies as what and not everyone is as clear cut as everyone else. Some people don't use labels other than "queer" and pressuring them to pick something more specific for our comfort isn't right. Also, many people aren't visibly queer. Queerness isn't always open and who you may see as a "cisallohet invader" could be any form of queer. If you bar people from events for "not being queer enough" some actually queer people are gonna get caught in the crossfire.

I think people say these kinds of things without actually thinking about what it would involve. And I think that people say this because they're thinking about one specific kind of situation and are misinterpreting the cause.

Queerphobia shouldn't be allowed at pride. Queerphobes shouldn't be allowed at pride. Disrespectful, disruptive, and predatory people shouldn't be allowed at pride.

Unfortunately, however, some queer people fit those categories. Some queer people are deeply transphobic, biphobic, and aphobic. Some queer people are disrespectful, disruptive, and predatory. These people shouldn't be allowed at pride the same way non-queer homophobes shouldn't be. Barring "cisallohets" would hurt a lot of people and wouldn't solve a single issue.

[decolonize-the-everything]

calling lesbians who aren't okay with "trans men lesbians" radfems is weird as hell when "trans men are just confused lesbians" IS a widespread radfem stance. if you support them whatever but it's disingenuous to act like lesbians who don't want to date trans men are radfems for that

I think policing relationships and gender and such in the queer community is genuinely one of the worst things that's happened to us in the last 20 years.

I think if you're attracted to someone or not then ok? That's it. Period.

Who cares how they identify or the words they use?

"lesbophobia"

Give me a fucking break. Show me the trans man killing lesbians. Trying to get lesbian relationships to be criminalized? To have them removed from the queer community?

You can't. Because it's not trans men doing that. It's TERFs.

"they're invading our spaces!"

Oh like a hypothetical evil cis man would invade a bathroom by pretending to be a woman?

I said radfem-lite lite for a reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We made up a bunch of rules for how the Other person you're attracted to identifies and then moralized it and made DNIs and started calling queer people"-phobic" based on Your own ideas of gender/relationships (good job creating a more inclusive shitty binary with rules btw) and acting like everyone who doesn't agree with Your rules and ideas is some queerphobic enemy is fucking wild.

The whole point of queerness is simply that we aren't allo cishets. That we're different. And it's something we ALL experience so we're supposed to be understanding. That sometimes people WONT have the same concept of gender as you, the same rules and that's okay. We are a community because understand each other on that. We agree and have that solidarity because we ALL experience this from people who believe that binary can NOT allow for trans people or queer relationships.

I will literally Never ever agree with anyone who disagrees any of this. They're no ally of mine or the queer community. You are wildly accepting of your siblings or you have some queerphobia to work on.

Believe whatever the hell you want but to say Specific queer people are "invading" your space is also just fucking ahistorical. For a long time lesbian was the only word even used if you presented as a woman and liked people who presented as women. Did you know that? Who cares if you were a man or woman or trans or a gender?

If you feel like how someone ELSE identifies undermines your own identity then welcome to the Same Exact reason that homophobic and transphobic straights are homophobic and transphobic!!

We make them question gender and relationships in ways that make them uncomfortable. That make them question their own relationship to gender itself. And nobody is supposed to do that. You're supposed to follow the rules. Girls aren't supposed to kiss girls. And nobody is supposed to want to transition.

And so just like we tell them, I will tell you: if there is no harm being done, then there's no foul. Mind your own business instead of worrying about someone else's.

Some lesbians having the same struggle to accept this as allo cishets do, does not mean that they are being attacked and persecuted by trans man lesbians anymore than cishet women are being persecuted by fake trans people.

Can we please be over this now?

We get enough shit from straight people trying to regulate gender, we truly do not need reinvent the same fucking dynamic in our own community.

[cowboyjen68]

hi Jen! I've just stumbled across your blog and read some of your posts and you seem like a really cool person, so I hope that you can help me.

I'm fairly young, and I've been pretty comfortable in my butch identity (still very much a baby butch, but I've felt this way for a long time) but I'm worried about my sexuality. See, I've been questioning it for a very long time (I've gone so far as to say I'm Abrosexual with how much it shifts) and I've just decided on not labeling my sexuality besides queer/gay. I was wondering if it was okay to still call myself a butch and not identify as a lesbian? Obviously the answer is different for everyone, but I trust your judgement, Jen.

Thank you for being awesome!! 🖖

You are correct and I think it will depend on who you ask and their experiences, age, regions of the world they live in and their connection /definition of butch, which can vary.

In my lifetime and experiences, butch has been used by lesbians to differentiate how they are perceived as masculine or "different" as opposed to straight women or bi sexual women. It is not to say that I have not seen others use butch, it is just not a word I would apply to someone who is not a lesbian.

My connection with the word butch is solely based on the reality that I am a lesbian and that is and will remain stable and unchangeable. I strongly believe based on my life and the other lesbians I have met and befriended, our sexual orientation does not change BUT our understanding of it does as we learn more about the world and gather more information on how our sexuality fits into the world that tells us being a lesbian is not acceptable or even down right bad.

If I was sitting with you having coffee and chatting i would say if you feel an attachment to butch because you feel a connection to butch lesbians, it is not just the butch part that is resonating with you.

I would also say don't rush, it is okay to be wrong and to be confused about your sexuality and no "butch police" are going to take away your leather wrist band stamped "butch" or tell you you can't use it. Most people don't really give it a thought. However, if you use butch around lesbians be prepared to be assumed lesbian because that is what it will imply to most.

I googled "abrosexual" and it sounds like a word that encompasses the common theme many young lesbians share, being unsure and worried and confused about their sexual orientation. A condition most often brought on by poor media representation, socially produced false information and misunderstanding of the lesbian experience. Basically, most young people who are not straight, and some who are, go thought a time or several times of questioning who they are attracted to.

You are right on track to figuring things out.

[sexygaywizard]

I've been seeing a lot of posts going around lately about how lesbianism needs to be more heavily policed, if you feel in any way discriminated against by other lesbians it's because you're not actually a real lesbian, you're lesbophobic, etc etc, and I really am fucking tired of it I have to be honest. You are not lesbophobic for being a complicated human being. I thought we were fucking aware by now that heavily policing lesbian identities was never cute, we had it with the fucking gold star lesbian bullshit, with the fucking political lesbian bullshit, etc etc. If you are so woke to the idea that society pressures women to be sexually attracted to men, why are you not woke to the idea that that can affect someone's psyche and how they perceive their own sexuality? Sexuality is complicated, gender is complicated, and idk why y'all are incapable of believing that can make identifying as any strict label complicated?? Acting like people haven't had it out for non-binary lesbians, for trans lesbians, for lesbians who used to id as bi and vice versa, for literally everyone who doesn't fit the cis gold star lesbian attracted to other cis gold star lesbian mold, and every time I see one of these posts I have to always check the notes for terfs because you are literally spouting off the same shit as them word for goddamn word. I was in an abusive relationship with a man for 3.5 years and identified as bisexual, and then after I got out of that relationship, I lost interest in men/realized I never had any (??? SHIT IS COMPLICATED), I haven't been with a man in 5 years but I still feel like I need to be paranoid about labeling myself as a lesbian and I can't talk about my past because sometimes I'm not sure if I still feel attraction to men and it's just suppressed because of trauma, or if I only think that I'm feeling attraction to men because of heteronormativity, etc and it's scary to even mention right now bc y'all are literally incapable of acknowledging that sexuality is complicated sometimes?? Like legit! If you are woke to heteronormativity how can you not understand that makes shit complicated. I know 40 year old lesbians who had threesomes with a man and it doesn't matter to them because they know who they are and what they are about. Also, other queer people using labels that make themselves feel comfortable is not somehow discrimination against you. Other queer people are not your fucking enemies and you need to stop treating them like your enemies, because it is not cute. You are not protecting lesbianism, you are just making people with complex and nuanced experiences feel unsafe. Get some fucking solidarity. I am tired. I am tired.

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

I hope its okay to ask this bc I don’t really know a lot about butch and femme stuff, but what would you say encapsulates your butch experience? Is there anything in particular that makes you feel really connected to the term, like experiencing euphoria?

[comes back 2 years later like no time passed] Well! Now that you mention it—

Mmmmm, it's hard to explain, but I think for me being butch feels like a mix of masculinity in a queer way + femininity not being it for me personally + like.... euphoria with being able to do certain things, like being able to carry things, or feeling proud of myself when I can treat my spouse to [me buying them] something, or feeling really excited when I see other butches in public and wanting them to notice me.

I wish more people talked about butch and femme as genders in and of themselves, and that anyone can be butch or femme, and that many queer people used to call themselves butch/femme and it wasn't and isn't a lesbian-only thing.

I guess that's really what it boils down to for me— I'm technically transmasculine and more or less genderqueer (I identify with that but it's not like, my main thing), and I know I'm not a trans man and that trying to be/do that doesn't bring me contentment/peace/euphoria etc (put differently, me trying to be a trans man also feels like I'm trying too hard, in a different way that's almost as uncomfortable than trying to seem/be cis is)... but butch is always the 'thing' I come back to, the chivalrous and thoughtful and caring kinds of masculinity I want to align myself with, the (metaphorical) place that it would hurt the most to be cast out of or taken from. No matter what else is going on, it feels like a resting spot.

Edit: forgot to add, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg was the first place I knew the word, and it's pretty realistic to mine and a lot of other [mainly white, mainly transmisogyny exempt] butches' experiences of gender, for the most part. I'd recommend it if you're interested, but TWs for sexual assault, police brutality, homophobia, etc

I know gender is like, a very personal thing to a lot of people, and it's very hard to explain because it's so nebulous... does that answer your questions? It's really sweet of you to ask! I always appreciate a well-meant question when someone (including me) doesn't know much about something, and I'm happy to talk more about it! <3

I hope you get to have a nice dessert soon!!

[rollercoasterwords]

I don’t have anyone else to ask, so here I am. What do you think about the term “boy lesbian” ? I just saw a TikTok where a person said they were a boy lesbian not a woman lesbian? I got the same vibe from that as when a lot of people on TikTok tried to say identifying as lesbian was excluding an it should be called non men loving non men?

well my short answer is that i think boy lesbians are cool + sexy + i wish they would all come over 2 my house so we could kiss w tongue <3 however i am sensing from ur message that this is perhaps a concept that u are a bit wary or skeptical about (? might be reading tone incorrectly but that is the vibe i'm getting lol) so i will put a longer answer under the cut:

so i feel like what you're asking when you say "what do you think about this" is essentially "do you think people should be able to call themselves 'boy lesbians'" which. is a source of online discourse that i typically try to avoid because i think discourse about who's "allowed" to identify a certain way in the queer community is basically pointless and does more harm than good. like, at the end of the day, there's really no use in policing who's "allowed" to call themselves what, because people can literally identify themselves however they want and you can't control that, because identity is an inherently personal and subjective experience. and so anytime people do start trying to strictly police identity + draw clear boundaries around who's "allowed" to use which labels, usually the result is just alienating and ostracizing other queer people who we should be in community with, as we share overlapping political struggles.

but. looking specifically at the term "boy lesbian" (and terms like it). i know a lot of people immediately get up in arms going "the whole point of lesbian is that there's NO BOYS!!!!!" but. personally i do not think that's true. every label currently used by the queer community is historically and contextually specific; most labels like 'gay' 'lesbian' and 'trans' are umbrella terms that include broad and varied communities of people who do not all share exactly the same identities or experiences. and the label 'lesbian' as an umbrella term has not always been used + conceptualized historically the way it's used today; it has also not always been 'exclusively women who aren't attracted to men' or whatever other definition people try to claim. many lesbians, especially gender nonconforming lesbians, have complex + nuanced + fraught relationships to gender + womanhood, and there has specifically always been a lot of overlap in (using today's terms) transmasculine and lesbian communities. leslie feinberg's stone butch blues comes immediately to mind as one example of lesbian experience that does not align simply or perfectly with womanhood and is much more nebulously transmasculine. at the end of the day, it's impossible to draw strict definitional boundaries around umbrella terms like "lesbian," because to do so will always inevitably fail to account for certain people who do identify with the term--and what right does anyone have to tell someone else that their personal experience of identity isn't "allowed?"

like - defining lesbianism as either centered around womanhood or positioned against manhood both inevitably devolve into gender essentialism. if you say "lesbians are women who love women," that requires you to provide a strict definition of "woman," something that is essentially impossible without resorting to gender essentialism. if you say "lesbians are nonmen who love nonmen," then you run into the same problem with defining "men." this is because both "men" and "women" are also historically + contextually specific umbrella terms used to define social categories of people, and not some sort of pre-existing inherent natural identities.

so then you might be saying--but wait a second, if all these labels are so fluid and nonspecific and personally defined, then what's the use of labeling anything!!! aren't you just saying that none of it means anything?!

no, not at all! what i'm saying here is that trying to draw strict boundaries around labels that have to do with gender + sexuality is at best pointless and at worst harmful, because gender and sexuality are inherently personal experiences and you can't police someone's own sense of self, nor should you try to. but there are three areas where labels are useful and do matter:

1 - personal value

labels are useful for individuals trying to understand themselves and how they relate to the world. people can find comfort or joy or simple understanding by labeling themselves in relation to the world around them; this sense of labeling is deeply personal and up to each individual in terms of how/to what extent they want to partake in it

2 - community

umbrella terms like "woman" "lesbian" "man" "trans" etc are all useful in socially specific contexts for identifying shared experiences + building community. if i say to someone "i'm a lesbian," and they say "oh i'm a lesbian too," i'm not going to assume that we have the exact same experiences of gender + sexuality that fit some made-up set of rules, but i am going to recognize that this person has certain experiences which overlap with my own, and we can build a community around those experiences. this is the way that basically any label works in a social context--if i say "i'm american" and someone else says "oh me too," i wouldn't just assume that we've had the exact same "american" experiences, because america is a vast country with a huge diversity of people + lifestyles + environments etc etc, y'know? social labels like these are useful for identifying broad overlap in experiences, but because they encompass such broad groups of people it's silly to try and make strict rules about who's "allowed" in the group--especially if your goal is to build community

3 - identifying + naming political struggles + oppression

this follows along the same lines as point 2 -- basically, most queer labels function as umbrella terms meant to bring together people of varied experiences + backgrounds who share common sites of oppression + common political struggles. like, historically, this has been the center of queer community-building--the fact that we are all being oppressed by the same people in overlapping ways. when i tell you "i'm a lesbian," that sentence does not tell you all that much about my own, individual, personal experience of gender. but it does tell you a lot about how i am politically positioned in the world and the kinds of political struggles i might face, and that's what makes that label so socially meaningful. like, the purpose of these labels is not to give everybody insight to the nuances of personal identity; it's to build community + identify our shared struggles with each other.

and i think one reason this discourse gets so heated in online spaces is that people get really angry about the idea of, like, "well what if someone calls themself a lesbian to infiltrate lesbian spaces!!!" which. i mean a lot of that fearmongering is rooted in transphobia quite honestly, but. at the end of the day, if someone is identifying themself as a lesbian, i'm going to assume that they have a good personal reason for doing so, and what matters to me will be knowing that we share a political struggle. i trust that if i encounter someone who's just trolling and "pretending" to be a lesbian or whatever i'll be able to recognize it and just....choose not to interact with that person. but honestly i don't even really think that actually happens--like i said, i think a lot of the fear that drives people to try and create strict definitional boundaries around the term "lesbian" is rooted in transphobia.

and i think something else driving a lot of this online discourse surrounding queer labels is like....this emphasis on identity labels as primarily a personal identifier rather than identity labels as primarily a community-building tool. like, there seems to be an emphasis particularly in online spaces + amongst certain groups of queer people to really want to micromanage identity + create specific rules + definition for each label so that, like, you're getting as much personal information as possible about someone who tells you that label, because you know they're following these detailed rules. but like. a) you truly are not entitled to personal information about anyone's individual experience of gender and/or sexuality and b) that's not the point of these labels!!!!! like i promise you it is so much more important to just accept that these are umbrella terms with nebulous boundaries so that you can take a step back and evaluate the social context in which they're being used in order to then build community. it is okay if there aren't strict rules and definitions! what matters more is being able to look at a specific contexts + the way a broad term can be applied differently in those specific contexts.

anyway. last thing i will say to this whole point is that i personally am someone who identifies to a certain extent with terms like boy lesbian or boydyke, in that my own sense of gender is much more centered around dyke than it is womanhood and i don't necessarily experience lesbianism as something centered around women/womanhood. my lesbianism feels more closely tied to gendernonconformity, genderqueerness, and overlaps a lot with experiences i've heard transmasculine people speak about. but lesbianism is still central to my identity, as i am politically positioned in society as a lesbian and it is the best umbrella term to give people a sense of my identity at a glance, and thus generally the best term for me to position myself within queer spaces + to seek out community. so i understand on a personal level why people might identify as a 'boy lesbian,' and hopefully from this personal anecdote you can understand why someone might too! if u have any questions or anything feel free to shoot me another message; i'm trying to cover a lot of ground in this response so i didn't fully expand on like. every single point bc that would have taken forever lol

[genderkoolaid]

I just, I don’t know. I don’t know how to make sure people only see me as a straight cis binary man who’s attraction to women is heterosexual when people are so quick to look for an excuse to call trans men lesbians and associate them with femininity, I don’t want to police other people’s labels because you fall into a cesspool of “acceptable” and “non acceptable”, but at the same time I don’t want to be able to be associated with lesbianism or it’s connotations in any way. I want to be able to say I’m a man and have that convey that I do not want people that consider themselves lesbians or heterosexual men to be attracted to me. I don’t want gender to be fake, at least not for me, and I don’t want the mixing of labels because for me it feels like it is creating the opportunity to be misgendered and forced into being seen as some sort of “half man” or “not really a man”. I want to be a man, just a guy, and I feel like there’s an increasing opportunity with these labels to misinterpret that, and yeah, I’m scared. I want people to be able to do what they want, as long as I will unequivocally be seen as a man.

The thing is... you are, unequivocally, a man. But in transphobic society, there is no guarantee you will unequivocally seen as a man, and certainly not by everyone.

There is nothing we can do that will make our transness acceptable for transphobic society. No matter how hard you try to be the perfect man, or how much you try to distance yourself from anything that could possibly associate you with womanhood, transphobes will not suddenly respect who you are. If there's anything to be learned from transmeds, its that trying to make people shrink their identities to something cis people can understand does nothing to fix transphobia but does everything to perpetuate it and hurt other trans people.

Cis people do not need weird trans people to make opportunities for them to misgender you. They will do that themselves. This is what we mean when we say other queer people are not the enemy; you are, even if unconsciously, blaming other queer people for the bigoted actions of cishet people. You are drawing a line from "being misgendered" to "other trans men calling themselves lesbians". You are trying to find a way to appeal to transphobic society to respect you so that you can avoid the pain of transphobia, but that will not happen. You cannot respectability politics your way out of being disrespected by transphobes. It fucking sucks and there's no way around it until we create a society free from queerphobia. That's why we have to stick together, that's why transunity is vital.

Again, this is very similar to bi lesbians being blamed for giving straight men an excuse to hit on lesbians; they don't need an excuse. I would like you to ask yourself: why do I jump to blaming other queer people for the actions of cishets? Why do I assume that, if they changed how they acted, it would mean my life got easier? Why do I feel that trans people have a responsibility to act and identify themselves a certain way to shape how cis people treat us, as if its our duty to make them stop being transphobic instead of theirs?

[my-precious-hellscape]

fuck yeah your tags got posted because you said a shit take. own up and learn. bi lesbians are valid. its just another label in the vast sea of labels. people are trying to kill us and are killing us. why bother with such useless and pointless policing?

you aint a terf or whatever people are calling you, but you start siding with the exclusionists when you spit that shit. why separate the community even further? did you ever actually ask a bi lesbian (or any mspec lesbian or gay for that matter) why they chose to identify that way, or did you just see someone else shilling the fact theyre problematic and that warped your perception and you decided to follow their line of thinking?

Since this is one of the dozen or so messages I've gotten (and thank fuck it's not more, people really just wait for an opportunity to harass a transwoman, huh?) I'll respond to it. Thank you for saying I'm not a terf, it really means a lot. I did own up to the tags I left, I even posted them myself! To be fair, no, I never ask a bi lesbian why they identify the way they do but then again, neither did you, right? Or any of the messages I've received. No one bothered to ask me why I stand where I do. What I did see though is lesbians that are pissed off they're just not allowed to have a space of their own. Lesbianism excludes men, you cannot be attracted to men and be a lesbian. There are, as I said in my tags, a fair number of terms that could be used instead that don't carry the same weight. I honestly fucking hate that all queer discourse boils down to throwing insults at each other, like I wasn't even that secure in my position on this side of the argument! Now though I feel pretty fucking entrenched.

Once again thank you for the kind words and I do hope this gives a somewhat accurate depiction of my side.

[ot3]

While I see where you're coming from, isn't it a bit dangerous to police queer folks' language to appease possible assaulters? Also, "lesbian" used to simply be a term referring to "women who love other women" until it started being policed by biphobic radical feminists in the 70s-80s. Bisexual women don't have their own words and history separate from homosexual women, and excluding them from the history contained in the words lesbian, dyke, and such feels a bit cruel.

(Feel free to compleyely ignore this, I don't mean to be a bother but this is just a bit important to me)

I'm not going to stop anyone from calling themselves a bi lesbian or anything like that. I don't care if bi women call themselves dykes. At the end of the day I am pretty much wholly unconcerned with what words people use for themselves and it's never gonna be something that causes me to treat someone poorly or disregard their opinion. But that said I don't think it's policing anyone's language to ask them to at the very least think about the larger societal implications of any language shifts they're pushing for.

My personal stance here is that it would be very harmful to no longer have any commonly recognized terminology that women can use to identify themselves as romantically and sexually uninterested in men. A lot of people feel drawn to the lesbian identity specifically because of this exclusion of men. There's already so much pushing from outside the lgbt community to make lesbians sexually available to men. Can you at least understand why I think it might be dangerous for intra-lgbt identity politics to shift the current perception of lesbianism to include hetero attraction? Can you see why the loss of the only word women have to actively exclude men from their romantic and sexual lives would be a setback for feminism?

this comes back to what I was saying last night about political identity vs personal identity. I'm much more concerned with labels in terms of how they allow us to navigate larger society and less interested in what makes any individual person feel right. If you feel good about the words you use for yourself, cool. I'm genuinely happy for you. Once again, a disagreement on terminology is never gonna be my reason for dismissing someone. But the language we use for ourselves does not exist in a vacuum and I at least want people to consider the political implications of the way they choose to use their words.