#dyke in a way that is distinct from lesbian

[demento-mori]

baby im collecting genders like pokemon

[qbdatabase]

Hello!! I was looking for non-fiction books of butches and femmes that mention bisexual butches and femmes too! I guess that's a very specific thing and difficult thing to ask for but I was hoping if you knew some? In the end, I'll take any and all butch femme non-fiction books you know of please! 👉👈💖

Most of what I have for non-fiction butch/femme culture is centered around lesbians, with bisexuals being a chapter or discussion within a larger book, mainly because women-loving-women historically drew less of a distinction between lesbians and bisexuals (as that would have shoved out a lot of closeted/married women in a time when many women could not afford to not be married). But here's everything I have about butches and femmes, and I'll note if bisexuality is also discussed!

History of Butch/Femme Culture

Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go by Michelle Gibson - #1 recommendation, even if it is 20 years old

100 Crushes by Elisha Lim - contributions from butches and genderqueer folks

Challenging Lesbian Norms: Intersex, Transgender, Intersectional, and Queer Perspectives by Angela Pattatucci Aragón - more history of lesbian culture that looks beyond cisgender lesbians, discusses trans, intersex, gnc, butch, and bisexuality

The Life & Times of Butch Dykes: Portraits of Artists, Leaders, and Dreamers Who Changed the World by Eloisa Aquino - can't confirm if it includes any butch bisexuals, but it's from 2019, not twenty years ago!

Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion by Eleanor Medhurts - #2 recommendation for butch/femme culture, although I can't confirm if it includes bisexuals; published this year

Memoirs by Butch Authors

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough - butch lesbian

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. - butch queer Muslim

Burning Butch by R/B Mertz - Catholic butch trans / nonbinary

Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan E. Coyote - butch nonbinary

Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag by A. K. Summers - butch lesbian

Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman - butch lesbian who later transitioned as a transgender man

Memoirs / Poetry / Self-Help by Femme Authors

Rust Belt Femme by Raechel Jolie - queer femme

Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley - queer femme

You Grow, Gurl!: Plant Kween's Lush Guide to Growing your Garden by Christopher Griffin - queer femme nonbinary

HoodWitch: Poems / A Map of My Want by Faylita Hicks - queer femme nonbinary

[vaspider]

Intro Post, updated March 1, 2023

I post all asks under the name they were submitted under, and I post them when I feel like answering them. I will never honor a request to answer an ask privately or anonymously. Anon is never turned on. These are hard self-care boundaries. Please block the tag "harassment tag" if you don't want to be subjected to some of the horrible shit I get sent sometimes.

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I will not debate my identity or its history with anyone. I am a transmasculine non-binary butch lesbian, a cripple, a dyke, and lots of other things, too. You don't get a vote in that, and if any of those words are words you can't stand to have someone use around you in reference to himself, go ahead and block me. I won't censor my identity for your comfort; I took a long time becoming proud of who I am.

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Do the work to root out TERF/2nd-wave "man bad woman good" philosophies from your head. Do the work to root out the gendered behavior you were taught. I am not here to raise other people's children.

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I’ve been Out for over 30 years. I don't tolerate lectures from strangers, especially people half my age, about history I lived through.

I'm transmasc and if you believe transmisandry/transandrophobia aren't "real things," or that transmascs aren't "really oppressed," please just leave me alone. Oppression Olympics are bad, actually.

My immediate family consists of my partners, my adult daughter, and our dogs.

No one in my immediate family is cis or het. I have been called Spider for 20+ years, & now a lot of people call me Mama Spider. Mom is a role, it need not be gendered.

This is a lot shorter than it used to be. I don't really feel like posting paragraphs explaining stuff anymore.

My icon has lore, apparently.

I post all asks and anon is never turned on.

[butchabouttown]

how can you be a lesbian who’s attracted to/fucks all genders? genuine question no hate just doesn’t align with my understanding

hi!! thanks for asking I LOVE this subject and am so happy to talk about it!! This reply might get kind of long so I apologize in advance hehe <3

I assume you're sending this in response to the ask I got the other day asking about if bisexual women can say dyke, to which I said that I am bisexual & also a dyke (woman is debatable). That's the first place I want to start—that bisexuality does not necessarily equal attraction to all genders. It can! And I have no problem with someone who is attracted to all variations of all genders identifying with the lesbian label if that's what makes sense for them. But for me, I am attracted to women, and men, and people who fall outside of that binary—but I am not necessarily attracted to gendered expressions.

Personally, someone's gender identity really doesn't impact whether or not I might be attracted to them. I am specifically attracted to people who's gender expressions align with or reflect my own in some way—so as a butch, as someone who moves through the world as a lesbian, as someone who identified as trans masculine for several years, who has been on T and may go on T again—that is pretty expansive. For me, I am attracted to queer versions of masculinity—in all its shapes & variations. I don't think that experience precludes me from using the lesbian label! There is not one person that sees me move through the world that does not immediately clock me as a butch lesbian. I cannot change that (and nor do I want to). Does the fact that sometimes I fuck & fall in love with men mean that they're wrong? Or that I am for feeling comfortable with that label?

And that really isn't a new experience!! I am absolutely not alone in that kind of attraction model, and I am not the only person who gets clocked as a lesbian that is attracted to people who aren't women.

I can think of many significant figures & authors & activists in lesbian history who have really traversed what has been coined the "butch/FTM borderlands" by author C. Jacob Hale in 1998. Identity categories do not have hard borders—there's a liminal space that exists between them, and it's impossible to draw a distinct line between them. Hell—even the poet & lesbian icon Sappho wrote about both same-sex and different-sex relationships.

I think of communist, activist & author Leslie Feinberg & the exploration of being a leftist, working class butch in the 60's & 70s in Stone Butch Blues. That novel in particular, although fictionalized, is very much a reflection of their own life and details relationships with many different kinds of people while being very much rooted in lesbian culture.

I think of Jen Manion's article in Transgender Studies Quarterly titled "Transbutch," (article begins on page 213 of the linked pfd) where they write the following:

‘‘Transbutch’’ signifies a gendered embodiment that is both butch and trans, not tied to any singular definition of butch or trans but rather falling somewhere in between. Transbutch marks a liminal space that embraces both the historical legacies of the category of butch and the more expansive possibilities created by the transgender rights movement for recognition, community, and empowerment."

(italics my own) In other words, transbutch is about that sticky place between two identities. Someone can have ties to both of these identities at once—particularly since they have been so historically tied in terms of community.

And the argument being made by Manion I think really connects to the discussion here - being a lesbian is about more than who you sleep with. It's a political identity, it is a gender in of itself, it's about your community and how you connect to it.

Many of the lesbian icons that the community holds dear trouble the "woman loving woman" definition of the identity. And besides—it's not like lesbian is a finite resource. We have infinite space to welcome all kinds of people, anyone who wants to be in community together. There are so many ways to move through the world and so many ways to come to this identity.

Anyway! I don't know how to end this! I hope it was helpful <3

[identitty-dickruption]

lesbians* don’t have sole domain over “my sexuality impacts my gender on account of gender roles being tied to sexual roles”. btw. for one, that is just how being cishet is ‘supposed�� to work (it’s just that cishetness is the socially enforced status quo) and for two, any combination of genders and sexualities could feasibly have that kind of influence over the other

like. I get why people separate sexuality and gender from each other and I get why they act like they’re these two distinct boxes that never touch. but. lmao. they are layered on top of each other and they feed off of each other because they are a part of the same systems. it just so happens that the ways they reinforce each other are more obvious/important/salient for some people than others

*in case this breaks containment I am saying this as a DYKE. I am a LESBIAN in a LESBIAN relationship and I have a LESBIAN gender

[ileaveclawmarks]

love your blog! can you talk about leather/leather dyke culture?

THANK YOU! and yes … i can always talk about it.

in post-stonewall lesbian communities throughout the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, leather coincided heavily with BDSM. in a lot of publications with lesbian entries on leather lifestyle, such as the majority of pat califia’s work if you want a place to start, you notice a lot of commentary that becomes very political. a lot of lesbian activists were also, necessarily, feminists; the women writing on their experience in both leather and lesbian-feminist communities often express regret and anger that, in engaging with these types of sexual cultures, they were rejected by feminist groups and spaces.

BDSM was hugely controversial to many lesbian-feminists, a lot of whom were escaping closeted immersion in heterosexuality, and they identified sexual violence as an inherently oppressive, degrading patriarchal tool. to leatherdykes and other lesbians who practiced some form of BDSM, this rigid perspective was outcasting and alienating.

leather is therefore both sexy and political … studying publications from SAMOIS and On Our Backs, as well as the various works and photography by lesbian artists like pat califia, honey lee cottrell, morgan gwenwald, catherine opie, etc. demonstrates their belief that leather is not only erotic, but also a symbol of reclamation, subversion, and refusal to conform - its not just for men, or gay men. and sex between two women doesn’t have to be a watered-down, puritanical sapphic rainbow daydream - it can be rough, carnal, perverse. leather was a symbol of their sexual agency as dykes, a way to signal autonomy, confidence, and dispel ideas of passivity that women’s sexuality had suffered from for so long - and, as they believed, continued to be perpetuated by the new wave of anti-pornography feminists. when viewed in this way, the leatherdyke lifestyle was entirely compatible with feminism.

besides that leather is erotic, in my opinion, because it serves a dual purpose of both flesh and armour. real leather was once the skin of another living animal, and feeling it against your own skin, the way it moves and catches light, creates this primal, raw sensuality … it evokes the sensation of a lovers body pressed against yours. the “second skin” also acts as an impenetrable barrier, an armour-like shell inside which you are protected, it can deflect the world’s judgements and within it you can endure anything and persist, just as tanning of hide prevents decay and makes it tougher, almost unbreakable. i think for this reason it makes for the perfect accessory to any stone dyke. nothing will make you feel more resistant, indestructible, and sexy as walking through the city or on public transit (places of high public scrutiny) wearing your leather armour, and it tells the hidden lesbians around you that you command a distinct and powerful type of erotic, dyke sexuality.

im working on putting together a good list of books, periodicals, and other sources for anyone who wants to go a bit deeper … thanks again for the ask 🤍

[kallie-den]

A Commanding Weakness Ch. 9

Alara takes Kuznetzov down to the holodeck to face her feminization fantasies once and for all

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The holodeck couldn’t recreate smells, but all the same, Semya thought that she could taste stale tobacco in the air as she and Alara walked down the narrow, hardlight alleyway, between buildings that were made of nothing more than photons and data. Semya wrinkled her nose at the phantom stench, but in truth it was a pleasant distraction from other aspects of her situation.

It didn’t last. The holodeck was extremely capable of creating local temperature adjustments, and the biting cold of the simulated night air on Semya’s bare legs was a constant, unpleasant, forcefully arousing reminder of what she was wearing.

“Are you ready?” Alara asked her.

Semya flashed her a jealous look. Unlike her, Alara Hisarlik was wrapped up in a long, fine, warm coat. Why did Semya have to be so uncomfortable? What sense did it make for her to be dressed in such a humiliating way, while her therapist was comfortable and dignified? What kind of therapy was this, anyway?

Semya thought about voicing that question, but she couldn’t seem to muster the focus. Instead, she just found herself saying:

“Yes, Alara.”

“Good.” There it was again; that wide, unwholesome grin that had Semya convinced the counselor was bad news. “We’re here.”

She gestured to the building they had just arrived outside: a grubby little hole of a dyke bar, charmingly named ‘The Scissors’.

Semya knew it well. It was a perfect, holographic recreation of the real deal, a bar that Semya had gone cruising at often enough during her stints of shore leave on Earth. She’d actually built the simulation herself, although she’d never quite plucked up the shameless daring to go through with any of the deep, dark fantasies that had motivated it.

But now, thanks to Alara, that was about to change. And Semya was about to experience The Scissors in a very, very different way.

Just thinking about that made Semya whimper. She could already feel herself dripping down her leg.

“Don’t be nervous,” Alara cooed. “This is simply the culmination of your therapy, Semya. The final push. It’s what you need to finally break through your own walls and barriers.”

Semya nodded in instinctive submission. The final push. After this, she’d be cured. Cured of the messed-up, embarrassing fetish that had kept her holed up in her cabin touching herself all day long ever since their last session.

Then she could alert the captain and the rest of the crew. She could save the Inyx. She’d have Alara Hisarlik in the brig. She just needed to be cured.

Semya frowned for a moment as she tried to remember why, exactly, what they were doing was so important to her therapy. Her head started to hurt. The memories wouldn’t form. How had she ended up here? Why was she doing this?

She couldn’t remember. When she tried, she just found herself picturing Alara’s pocket watch.

Alara was doing something to her. Definitely. Something sinister. Semya was sure of it, and it terrified her.

But before she could come to terms with that, she needed to be cured.

“I understand,” she whimpered softly.

“Then,” Alara said, licking her lips and reaching out to open the door to the lesbian bar, “let’s get started.”

Before Semya could brace herself, Alara rested a hand on her back and pushed Semya through the door.

It was loud inside the bar, but as soon as the door closed behind the two of them, a distinctive hush washed through the space as conversations fell silent and heads turned, punctuated only by the scraping of barstools as every single patron craned to look at Semya Kuznetzov.

Semya’s cheeks turned bright red. She knew those looks. She knew what she was to them.

Fresh meat.

The Scissors might have been a filthy dive bar, but there was a kind of etiquette to the place that was as rigid as any military discipline. The way the bar worked was that dominant, butch women hung out and drank, and if any submissive, feminine girls wanted some action, all they had to do was walk through the door and pick who got to buy her a drink.

In the past, Semya had always been one of the butches. Not anymore. And now she was learning how all those femmes had always felt, staring down all these hungry, cocky, lustful stares.

Someone wolf-whistled. A moan slipped out of Semya’s lips.

It was little wonder that everybody was staring. Semya was dressed in the outfit Alara had picked out for the occasion - and it was beyond even her wildest fantasies. A metallic, gold minidress, cut tight to her figure, but ruched so that each of its folds caught the light and attracted attention to Semya’s physique. She felt she didn’t have the figure for a dress like that, but from the looks she was getting, the bar’s patrons disagreed.

In one hand, Semya was clutching a tiny purse Alara had given her to hold her badge. Alara had given her a necklace, too: a woven little gold chain that hung down as if pointing the way to her exposed cleavage. And then there was her makeup: under Alara’s stern instruction, Semya had been practicing, and in a few weeks she’d become skilled enough to give herself a perfect complexion, full, vibrant lips, striking eyeliner, and deep, sultry eyeshadow. But Alara had insisted on a heavy hand. The colors were a little too lurid; the pronounced blush and bright lipstick looked slutty instead of simply pretty, and the way she’d used bright pink instead of a deeper red ensured the resulting look was girlish rather than womanly.

All in all, with her mid-length hair, she looked just like a freshly-turned femme looking to get fucked like a princess for the first time.

And it was desperately, humiliatingly hot to know that, in a way, that was exactly what she was.

The crowning humiliation was the tall, dainty, heels Alara had forced her to wear. Semya stumbled like a newborn faun as Alara pushed her a few paces deeper into the bar.

“Go on,” Alara jeered. The rich pleasure in her voice was unmistakable. “Time to take your medicine, lieutenant.”

Semya let out a plaintive little whine. She had never been so turned on. The outfit was bad enough, but now, feeling dozens of pairs of eyes roving over her body, Semya was completely robbed of the ability to form words. Her head was full of steam. She couldn’t think.

“Does…” she whimpered eventually. “D-does it really… have to be… t-them?”

She gestured at the bar’s patrons. They were all dressed for the part, but each and every one of the patrons’ faces was familiar to Semya - because they were holograms of the Inyx’s crew.

“Oh yes,” Alara insisted, giggling. “Private therapy is merely the beginning. To complete your counseling, you need to be properly socialized into your new, feminine social role.

Hearing that didn’t make thinking any easier.

“B-but,” Semya tried to say, “I t-thought… b-but you said…”

She was supposed to go back to normal after this, wasn’t she? She’d be free of her fetish. She’d be able to go back to being butch. Wasn’t that the whole idea?

Semya wasn’t sure anymore. She just couldn’t think. Why couldn’t she think?

“You have to feel seen,” Alara assured her. “By people familiar to you.”

Semya felt seen. She’d never imagined that people would see so much of her. It was as mortifying as it was hot.

For years, she’d had fantasies just like this.

“Go on.” Alara nudged her forwards. “Give them a show.”

Hesitantly but obediently, Semya started walking along the length of the bar.

“They’re… just holograms,” Semya muttered to herself under her breath. A reminder. Alara had promised. The counselor had created this scenario for her. Nobody else here was an actual person. But they seemed so real. “Just… just holograms.”

It didn’t help. Every one of those amused smirks and lustful stares was written into Semya’s body. They were like burning hot coals on her skin. She could feel her legs turning to jelly beneath her - but all the same, she found herself trying her best to obey Alara’s command. As Semya walked, clumsily putting one heel in front of the other, fighting to maintain balance, she tried to make her hips sway appealingly with each step in that hypnotically alluring way femmes always seemed to manage.

For just a moment, she managed it - but then, a harsh spike of shameful arousal made Semya stumble wildly.

Until someone caught her.

Semya gasped at the sensation of a rough hand clamping tight around her bare forearm and hauling her back to her feet.

“Careful there, princess,” said someone, voice full of a familiar swagger. “Let’s at least get a drink or two in you before you go spreading your legs like that.”

Laughter rippled through the room. Semya had to bury her face in her hands to hide her brush. She wasn’t used to this - to being dressed this way, to being desired, to feeling pursued, any of it. In that moment, what left her tongue-tied the most was just how fragile she felt as this woman - a short-haired butch who worked in engineering, Semya thought - grabbed her and pulled her around.

Fragility. That was new. And it put butterflies in Semya’s stomach.

“C’mon now,” the engineer teased. “Don’t I even get a ‘thank you’?”

“Thank you,” rose instantly to Semya’s lips in a flustered, mortified squeak.

A fresh round of laughter rendered her speechless again. Semya was startled by just how high and feminine her voice came out.

“You’re welcome,” the engineer replied, grinning. “Has anyone ever told you that your voice is just as pretty as your face?”

Semya saw white for a moment.

Pretty?

That was the last thing Semya ever expected to be called. The last thing she wanted to be called.

And yet she couldn’t keep a dumb, shy smile from coming to her face.

“Y’know,” someone else piped up, “I don’t think she has.”

More laughter.

“I’m always happy to take a pretty girl’s first time,” the engineer winked. “Why don’t you let me buy you a drink, princess?”

“P-p-princess?” Semya squeaked. She was used to using lines like that, not having them used on it. It was wrong. It was mortifying. And yet, her body was reacting to it all with supreme eagerness. Each word, each laugh, was a fresh rush of heat across her skin.

She was too flustered to form a reply, but that didn’t seem to matter to the engineer who was currently hitting on her. She was still holding Semya by the arm and used it to guide her over towards where she’d been sitting at the bar. Semya followed meekly. Struggle was beyond her. She was a leaf in the wind.

A small crowd of women, all eager for a piece of the new girl, quickly formed around her.

“So,” the engineer asked, “what do you like to drink?”

Semya was grateful for such a simple question. “I’ll h-have a beer,” she replied automatically.

The chorus of laughter that prompted was louder than ever.

“Aren’t you cute?” the engineer laughed derisively. She held up her hand to get the bartender’s attention. “White wine spritzer for the lady!”

The lady. The humiliation was unbearable. Semya squirmed from the treasonous pleasure that gave her.

Why? Why was this getting to her so much? Semya had always liked feeling strong. Hard. Tough. Feeling strong was comfortable. It suited her. That’s what she’d always thought. In a way, that simple feeling had guided her entire aesthetic. Her identity. Feeling weak? Fragile? Delicate? That was wrong. It made her stomach flutter. It made her feel the way a zero-G-to-atmosphere spacedive made her feel.

And now she was trapped with that feeling of falling. Every look, every whispered comment, every sleazy flirt made it grip her anew. And as the minutes wore on, it was being transformed into a kind of panicked euphoria that robbed all the thoughts from Semya’s head and sent giddy endorphins pounding through her body.

She wished she hated it. But she didn’t. It felt amazing. It was just the way it always was in her fantasies, only the reality of it made it a hundred times more intense.

No. Not reality, she reminded herself. Holograms. These were just holograms.

“So,” the engineer said easily, “what do you call yourself, princess?”

“Don’t let her keep you all to herself,” someone interrupted, sidling up to Semya on the other side and saving her from even deeper embarrassment. She recognized them too. One of Carter’s people. A security officer. “And don’t let her talk your ear off all night either. I know you’re not here for talk.”

“I…” Semya tried to protest, “I’m…”

She stopped when she realized how unconvincing any protest would sound, given her clothes.

“You should try talking for once,” the engineer said to the security officer. “Some girls like it when they know your name before you try getting your hand in their panties.”

“Not sure I agree,” the security officer shot back, a huge, shit-eating grin on her face. “My way hasn’t failed me so far. Anyway, by the time I’m done with them, they don’t even remember their own names.”

She flashed Semya a look. Normally, the lieutenant would have rolled her eyes at a crass boast like that. Now, it just made her squirm all the more.

Then, a third bar dyke joined the fray. “Why don’t we leave these two to bicker?” she suggested to Semya. Semya only vaguely recognized this one - a mess worker, perhaps. “And go somewhere a little more private.”

“Hey now,” the engineer interjected. She leaned across and slipped an arm around Semya’s shoulder, keeping her pulled close. “No poaching! I saw her first.”

The exchange left Semya burning up with flustered heat. It wasn’t just the way the engineer pulled her close so effortlessly, making her feel small and feeble. There was another element, too: the heady intoxication of being desired.

All these women were fighting over Semya. Competing for her, like she was a pretty bauble to be won. That was new to Semya. She’d been appreciated for her looks before, certainly - but never quite like this. It redoubled her euphoria, making her feel light, proud, giddy from the attention. It made the way she was being objectified and swept off her feet feel almost flattering. Like it was a victory, instead of a humiliation.

No, Semya tried to remind herself. This was-

Wrong?

Or was it right? She couldn’t tell. Suddenly, she remembered that Alara was still here, lurking in a far corner, watching. Smiling.

Therapy. This was Semya’s therapy. She had to go through with it. Right?

Suddenly, the sheer wrongness of that struck Semya. She became abruptly aware of the fact that she was on a precipice, teetering, about to lose a vital part of herself. She needed to fight that. She needed to remember who she was. She needed to-

“Hey now,” the security officer piped up. “Who says she’s yours to cop a feel of?”

Semya was about to try and say something - to insist everyone back off - when another arm snaked possessively around her waist. Again, she saw white as the security officer squeezed her.

“I’m sure the princess herself has something to say about it,” the engineer retorted. “She owes me for the drink, remember?”

There it was again. Princess. It made Semya’s stomach do loops. “N-n…” she tried to say. “Nnnno-“

“Oh, I don’t know,” inserted the mess worker. “The pretty little thing seems real tongue-tied. Here, I think you two are crowding the lady.”

Far from helping, the mess worker reached forward, trying to squeeze up next to Semya. In the process, one of her hands came to rest on Semya’s hip, fingertips already teasing at the hem of Semya’s unreasonably short dress. The lieutenant whimpered.

She couldn’t stand up for herself. Why couldn’t she stand up for herself?

“Of course not,” the engineer scoffed. “She’s enjoying my company. She’s my kind of girl. Aren’t you?”

Semya wanted to deny it. All that came out was a moan. She could feel the body heat of these three tall, strong, confident women as they surrounded her. She could smell their scents. She was drowning in it. She felt so light. Like any of them could effortlessly throw her over their shoulders and carry her away.

“I think it’s my company she’s enjoying, actually,” the security officer put in. “Aren’t you, beautiful?”

Semya had to look down meekly as her cheeks scorched with heat.

“See?” the security officer boasted.

“What are you, a high schooler?” the mess worker sneered. “That’s not how you tell if a girl is having a good time. This is.”

In a single deft, well-practiced move, she surged forward and slipped her hand up the skirt of Semya’s minidress. A loud moan erupted from Semya’s lips as she felt the mess worker’s fingertips stroking against her.

She wasn’t wearing anything under the dress.

“See?” the mess worker crowed, holding up two of her fingers for the others to inspect. As she stretched them apart, a long string of sticky wetness formed between them. “She’s loving it.”

Semya had never felt more embarrassed. She wanted the ground to swallow her. Being presented with such visceral proof of her body’s eagerness was humiliating. It made all the denials she wanted to scream seem ridiculous and dishonest, even to her. There was an extra level of humiliation to the fact that she was being treated this way by a mere mess worker - a woman who, normally, couldn’t look her in the eyes without saluting.

But things like that didn’t matter here.

At least it was just a hologram, Semya reminded herself.

That was the only thought she managed to hold on to as the bar around her erupted into mocking, raucous laughter.

“Wow,” the engineer whistled. “Maybe you were right. Maybe she really is the kind of girl who likes to be treated rough.”

As flustered as she was, Semya couldn’t let that pass without comment. She had to hold on - to her butchness, to her strength, to her dignity. To something.

“I’m…” she managed, in a pitiful squeak, “nnottt.”

As ever, her voice, high and girly, completely undermined her. The women lurking around her simply cooed condescendingly and drew even closer.

“Oh? You’re not?” the security officer teased. “Don’t worry, princess. We know how to treat a girl right. Don’t you worry.”

Semya could sense a subtle but sinister change in the atmosphere. The looks she was getting from these other women were growing more and more lustful. More and more predatory. They were no longer competing with each other - at least, not quite in the same way. Their competitiveness had been outstripped by a simple need to see the pretty, feminine Semya utterly ravaged for their collective pleasure.

This was no longer simply flirting. It was a feeding frenzy.

As much as anything else, she could taste it in the air. The pheromones, as all those bar dykes closed in. The smell, too; the musk, really. Sweat, smoke, booze, cologne. Semya was used to it, she’d thought, but not like this. Somehow, it was all the worse for that single, light, floral note; the perfume Alara had made her use before coming here. The dizzying mixture of it all was in her head, making it harder than ever to think. Making her painfully aware of her own weakness.

“So, princess,” the mess worker cooed. “Am I taking you back to my place? Or are you showing the whole bar a good time?”

After a sharp intake of breath at the proposal, Semya glanced gratefully at the woman. There it was. One last offer of dignity - at least, relatively speaking. She wasn’t sure what taking it would even mean, given that she was here for her therapy, but she had to try.

But as soon as she opened her mouth to reply - to beg, in the most humiliating way possible, to be taken home and fucked as a one-night-stand - the mess worker pushed two fingers inside her and expertly hooked them to stroke Semya’s g-spot.

All that came out of her mouth was a high, loud, unbearably needy moan.

The moment felt like it lasted forever. Once Semya’s moan died and she stopped seeing stars, all she could hear was mocking laughter.

“I guess our princess isn’t such a good girl after all,” the engineer commented, smirking. “Looks like we found our entertainment for the night!”

A cheer went up around the bar. Semya wanted to protest, but that word had robbed her of her voice.

Entertainment. That was her now. The center of attention. The star of the show. Semya had always hated it. Had always hated being flashy. Hated the way people looked at her when she wore makeup and dresses. Like she was nothing more than a feast for their eyes. A treat to be devoured.

Except now, it made her cunt drip all over the mess worker’s fingers.

“Hey, wait,” piped up the security officer, although she was clearly no ally. “Don’t keep her all to yourself. I want a piece.”

Semya squealed as she felt the woman’s hand snake down the back of her seat and cup her ass, squeezing and groping without mercy. The touch made her melt and squeal, and made her painfully aware of just how soft and yielding her body truly was.

It was like she was meant for this.

“Relax,” drawled the engineer. “There’s plenty of her to go around.”

“Yeah,” added the mess worker, “and she’s plenty eager for it.”

Using the hand between Semya’s thighs, the mess worker started to pry her legs open - not forcefully, but again, Semya found herself utterly powerless to resist or protest. As she spread her legs, the hem of her tiny dress began to ride up, exposing more and more of her skin to the air. To the eyes of the hungry predators gathered around her.

“Don’t look so scared,” the security officer cooed. “This is what you wanted, right? This is why you came in here. Don’t pretend. We know what you are, princess. You want this. You need this.”

More than ever, Semya wanted to deny it - but this time, the simple truth of what she was being told overwhelmed her.

The security officer - no, this hologram - was right. She had come here for this. She needed this. Alara had taught her that. What use was there in denying it?

So instead, she found herself nodding meekly.

“Good girl,” the security told her. Semya moaned again.

Everyone was looking at her now. Everyone. Not just the three who were immediately crowded around her. She was the center of attention for the entire bar. Even the bartender was watching. Her moans were the music. Her shifting, writhing body was the entertainment. Everyone was looking, and Semya knew all they saw was a needy, flashy femme who was all but begging to be fucked.

And… was she? Semya was starting to lose track. She needed this, but she didn’t want it. Was that right? But if she didn’t want it, why was her body responding with such vicious eagerness? Why did every touch, every crass comment, every vulgar gaze fill her with violent heat?

She… wanted this?

Why? Because of her fetish? But what was it Alara had been saying? That her fetish was her real desires, repressed, waiting to be released? If that was the case, then…

Semya gasped as, out of nowhere, someone leaned forward and claimed her lips with a messy, forceful kiss. She could taste smoke on their breath and cheap whiskey on their tongue. The sheer coarseness of it left her whimpering.

“Wow,” Semya heard someone say, “she really is eager.”

Semya realized she’d been kissing back just as needily.

As everyone laughed, Semya looked down and tried to hide her face, although some implanted instinct against ruining her makeup kept her from burying it in her hands. One moment, she wanted the ground to swallow her up and shield her. The next, that same sense of humiliation was transformed into a lightness of being; a desire to be swept up and aloft, higher, brighter, more visible than ever. Semya was giddy with the urge - before the shame returned, and crushed her anew.

As she grappled with those warring feelings, she could hear the nearby bar dykes arguing about her - specifically, about who was going to get the first ‘turn’. They were comparing dibs, debating about Semya’s potential preferences, and even, in a few cases, planting elbows on the bartop so they could arm-wrestle for her. Being the center of attention was mortifying, but being actively fought over was lighting an undeniable fire inside Semya.

This was her, now. A trophy. A prize to be claimed.

That was so new. She’d never felt desired quite like that - desired, certainly but in a different way. She was learning that the relationship between butch and femme was far from symmetrical - and that, until now, she’d been blissfully unaware of just dizzying the euphoria that stemmed from being desired and chased could be.

It was hot. It was so fucking hot.

After a few moments, the pecking order was decided and the ‘winner’ presented herself; unsurprisingly, it was the engineer who had first caught Semya when she’d tripped. Once, Semya would have squared up against a woman like her with a grin on her face for the opportunity to take a pretty girl home. Now, as the engineer ogled her, Semya felt nothing but meek, flustered submission.

“Hey, princess,” the engineer said. Her voice was soft, but the cocky shark’s grin on her face made a lie of it. “Don’t worry. I’ll make you feel good.”

The promise made Semya shiver. For the first time, she truly looked at the other woman. She was tall, and wearing a ribbed tank top that left her burly arms on display. She had a thick-set, husky build, but when she moved and flexed, the musculature underneath was clearly visible, attesting to long hours spent lifting and carrying machinery in the bowels of the Inyx. She had sailors’ tattoos on her biceps, marking ships and campaigns served on, and her hair was short and slicked over to one side.

Words came unbidden into Semya’s mind. Words she’d normally reserve for herself, not think about other women. Cool. Handsome. Strong.

Hot.

A nervous, dumb smile came to Semya’s face.

And her eyes went wide as the engineer dropped to her knees and buried herself between Semya’s thighs.

The very first touch of her tongue had Semya moaning. She twitched and writhed as the pleasure hit, although all her efforts did nothing more than encourage the engineer as she started eating Semya out. It overwhelmed her instantly and defied all reason. Semya had always been a giver, not a receiver, but within moments this woman’s skillful tongue unraveled that part of her.

Always a top, always a giver - but not anymore. She couldn’t forget this. Her body couldn’t forget this.

At that moment, far too late, as the first rush of her new addiction hit, Semya suddenly became conscious of the fact that this was wrong. Completely wrong. This wasn’t a cure for her fetish. It was the opposite. It was fuel for the flames. And she was at risk of losing something she could truly never get back.

She needed to fight this. She needed to resist. She needed to-

“O-oh myy gggoddd!” The scream forced its way from Semya’s lips as the engineer’s tongue found its way even deeper inside her. The entire bar laughed at her plight, and the mixture of humiliation and pleasure robbed her of her train of thought.

She needed to… what?

She couldn’t think.

The engineer was making a hopeless puppet of her. She had such power over Semya; whenever she wanted, she could make her moan loud, or gasp breathlessly, or twitch this way or that, all with a single flick of her tongue. She proved it, over and over again. She delighted in it, making a mockery of the feeble resistance Semya tried to put up when she attempted to hold back her moans.

Little by little, she was teasing out and eroding Semya’s resistance. Chewing it up and spitting it out. Every time Semya stifled a moan or bit down on her own thrashing, the engineer noticed and made sure that her next display of ravenous pleasure was all the more humiliating for it. She tongue-fucked her skillfully, slow one moment, fast the next, attacking her clit, or stroking her lips, or pushing her tongue deep inside her until Semya’s back arched and her screams filled the whole bar.

Every time Semya tried fighting back, even a little, she slipped deeper into pleasure-drunk euphoria and she became more and more painfully aware of her own weakness. Her own lightness. Compared to the engineer - to how strong and forceful she was - Semya felt like she was made of nothing.

And all the while, her moans grew louder and louder.

“Settle down, princess,” jeered one of the women who had accosted Semya earlier - the security officer, she thought, although her vision was far too blurred to tell. “You’re getting exactly what you came here for.”

“N-n-noooo,” Semya forced out, even as the bar echoed with mocking laughter. “I’m not… I’m nnnottt… I’m… this… isn’tttt…”

She couldn’t quite get the words out. The engineer’s tongue was turning her thoughts into slurry. Even if Semya could speak without moaning, what would she say? What was there to protest?

It wasn’t like she could pretend not to be enjoying this. The wetness dripping onto the floor of the bar made a lie of that.

“I’m…” she moaned. “I’mmmm”

What?

Masc? Butch? A top?

She wasn’t sure any of those things were true anymore.

Her identity itself was being washed away by the simple fact that nothing had ever felt better than this.

“OK, princess,” said the engineer from between her thighs, drool and stickiness dripping from her lips. “How about we let everyone else take their turn?”

Before Semya could reply, the engineer rose smoothly to her feet and spun her around with her powerful arms, so that she was facing out into the bar. Her deep blush and shameful wetness were on display, and even without someone holding them apart, Semya couldn’t seem to find the strength to close her legs.

She was a spectacle. And everyone was looking. Everyone. A dozen pairs of eyes, each of them full of lust.

And it was all for her. All for Semya.

In the face of that, her soiled pride simply melted away. The simple euphoria of being beautiful and desired and prized cleansed away everything else. Amidst Semya’s frenzied lust, it seemed like clarity.

She wanted this. She needed this.

Because, deep down, it was who she really was.

And with that settled, she found herself nodding and grinning stupidly.

“Y-yes,” she said, in a dumb, high-pitched, girly voice. “Y-yes, please.”

That was all anyone needed to hear. In an instant, everyone else was on top of her, a dozen or more hands exploring every part of her body with the kind of ravenous, destructive lust normally reserved for picking the petals from flowers.

Everyone wanted a piece of Semya. They wanted to soil her. They wanted to ruin her dress, to smear her lipstick, to leave her eyeliner running down her face. They lived for it. They loved it.

And so did she.

It was a new feeling to Semya. The feeling of being a pretty vase, cracking apart. It was such a thrill. All along, Semya had suspected how good it would feel. That was why had become such a singular, fetishistic focus of hers. But to experience it was something else. It put the lie to all her excuses about it being ‘just’ a fetish.

This wasn’t ‘just’ anything. And Semya could see, now, clearly, that Alara had been right all along. She couldn’t be cured. Not of this. It was too intense. Now she was drowning in the feeling, and all she wanted was more.

She wanted to live this. Every day. Every moment.

She wanted to make sure there was no going back.

So, as the mess worker from earlier dove between her legs and started eating her out, Semya made sure her moans were higher and girlier than ever before. As another, a woman Semya hadn’t exchanged a single word with, yanked the top of her dress down to make her tits spill out, Semya made sure the faux-protest she let out was breathy, weak, and very distinctly feminine.

It felt so good, being violated like that. The fragility, most of all. Fragility and femininity were inextricably fused in Semya’s mind. For the longest time, she’d been laboring under the delusion that it meant femininity was wrong for her. Now, Alara had helped her to understand how breathtakingly pleasurable fragility could be.

And you never felt more fragile than when you were breaking.

“Y-yes!” Semya moaned. No more ‘no’s. No more denials. She was beyond that. “P-please! Moreeeee!”

She was free. Free to embrace her fantasies. Free to sink into the bliss, safe and secure in the knowledge that besides Alara, nobody was watching. These were all holograms. They weren’t really members of the crew.  Nothing more than hardened light. With that fixed firmly in her mind, Semya was free to embrace her darkest fantasies. To breathe deep, and let the overpowering scent of sweat and lust carry her away.

At first, there was only one woman who wasn’t participating in the feeding frenzy. Alara Hisarlik, the ship’s counselor, was still standing off to one side, watching without a word. But anyone who saw her would have been able to tell that her bystanding was anything innocent. There was an unhealthy, lurid glow in her eyes; a fascination that was entirely at odds with her duty as a therapist and a healer. Her enjoyment was evident, but it was just as obvious that this wasn’t enough to sate her appetite. Not even close.

Semya Kuznetzov was simply her first subject. And this was simply the beginning of her new career.

Out of nowhere, another woman appeared next to her. The holodeck’s emitters carefully manipulated the photons passing through the air to form a holographic image that was the perfect duplicate of Wasp, the hacker, right down to the neon green highlights in her hair. After a brief moment, the image came to life, a wicked grin spreading across her face as she trained her eyes on the counselor.

“Nice work, ‘lara,” Wasp drawled. “I knew you had it in you.”

Alara didn’t so much as glance at her. She didn’t want to miss a thing. She wanted to etch every moment of Semya’s fall into her memory.

“I suppose I did,” Alara mused in reply. “All along. I really did.”

For her, as much as for Semya, this was a rebirth. It emanated from her; every mote of dignity and strength that Semya had lost, Alara seemed to have gained.

“I just got one question,” Wasp said, as she sauntered around, phasing through tables and stools as she did. No hardlight today, apparently. With her punk look, she seemed oddly at home in the dark confines of the dyke bar. “Why do it so slow? All the sessions, the old-school hypnosis schtick… why? If you wanted her like this, all you had to do was slip her one of my new little toys.”

Alara smiled a thin smile. “You don’t understand,” she replied. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you? It’s about the journey, not the destination. It’s the personal touches. The little push-and-pull of watching her come apart.” The counselor shivered. “I wouldn’t skip it for the world.”

Wasp stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, but then just shrugged. “If you say so. Not like I’m in any place to judge. As long as you’re still in with me, you can be any kind of pervert you want.”

Alara laughed. “Thank you. And besides, you’ve used the time well, I think.”

Wasp tittered like a giddy child. “Oh, absolutely. I’ve got almost all of them now. Doc, down in medbay, is quite the little worker drone. The whole crew has pretty much got their ‘vaccination’. We’re ready for the endgame.”

“I see.” Alara seemed more interested in her own plans than Wasp’s. After a moment, she nodded towards the bar dykes were fucking Semya. “Speaking of: thank you for their cooperation. I think it’s the perfect little touch.”

“No problem.” Wasp grinned. “I’m no stranger to theatricality.”

Both of them watched the developing orgy. A couple of the women had lifted Semya up onto the bartop, and people were taking turns crawling up between her legs and eating her out. They seemed to be competing to see who could make her thrash the most. At the other end, another group was using her mouth just as forcefully, making her suck on fingers, strap-ons, beer bottles. Whatever they wanted.

Semya was eager for all of it.

She was the center of attention. The focal point of all this debauchery. In a strange, perverse way, she really did look like some kind of princess, in the ruins of her delicate jewelry and golden dress, now hopelessly torn and crumpled from all the groping. Everyone else at the bar was gathered around to pay her a twisted tribute, and her skin was covered with proof of their adorations: cum, drool, kiss marks, love bites, and more.

And Semya loved it. She was in heaven. She had completely given herself over to fantasy.

Now it was time for Alara to bring her back down to reality.

“Time to rip off the band-aid,” she murmured, stepping forward.

“Knock yourself out, shrink,” Wasp said, dissolving back into nothingness as she offered a mock salute to her conspirator.

A vicious smirk on her face, Alara held her head high as she walked to the center of the space.

“Computer,” she said, in a loud, clear voice. “End simulation.”

The ship’s computer responded instantly, and with a shimmer, the world around them dissolved. The bar, the stools, the drinks, even the street outside - all of it phased out of existence as the light dissipated. Semya was still held up in the air, a few feet from the ground, but only by a nondescript, gray, hardlight box generated by the holodeck’s safety subroutines. That was all that remained of the holodeck scenario that had been running. Everything else had shut down. Nothing else was left.

But all the bar dykes were.

“Do you see, Semya?” Alara said to her patient. “I’m afraid I can’t simply allow you to lapse into futile escapism. What kind of cure would that be?”

It took Semya a long moment to rouse herself from the blissful overwhelmed, aroused stupor she’d lapsed into. But when she started to process what was happening to her, her eyes went wide and started trembling.

“Wha…” she panted in disbelief. “What… you’re… they’re…”

Real.

Not holograms. Real people. All of the women who’d been toying with Semya were simply members of the crew, dressed up and playing their assigned parts. It had to be true - it was the only way to explain why they were still here - but even so, Semya couldn’t quite bring herself to accept it.

But eventually, the truth forced her to her knees. As much as Semya wanted to pretend this was simply a cruel trick, now that she was thinking about it, there was something no amount of holodeck deception could explain: the smell. The scent of sweat, musk and sex Semya had been drinking deeply of all evening.

Holodecks couldn’t recreate smells. She should have known.

“That’s right,” Alara confirmed, as she saw the penny drop. “You’ve been doing all this in front of members of the crew. In front of people under your command. And rest assured: they won’t forget it.”

Unpleasant laughter echoed around the now-empty space. Wasp had used her tools of mental manipulation to make them play along, but they were far from mindless drones. They had been enjoying it every bit as much as Semya.

A chance to defile a stern, stuck-up XO? Who wouldn’t?

Semya looked between them like a frightened, trapped doe. There was no escape. All of them had seen her at her lowest. At her most humiliated. They knew her innermost secret. Her fetish had been laid bare. They would never look at her the same way again - and nor would anyone else, once word spread.

Semya’s reputation was shattered. Her dignity was a thing of the past. Her very identity, a facade barely held up by increasingly thin excuses, was now collapsing.

After a few long, unpleasant seconds, Semya made peace with it the only way she could.

By embracing it.

Her eyes fogged over again and, with a vacant, girlish giggle, she beckoned to a familiar face: the mess worker who had first touched her.

“Heyyyy,” Semya slurred. Her voice was breathy. Needy. “Why did you stop?”

In that moment, her pride broke. Her identity broke. Her mind broke. Whatever had been left of the stern, quiet, understated, strong XO of the Inyx was currently dribbling out of her mouth and drooling from between her thighs. In the face of impossible humiliation, Semya had collapsed in on herself and decided that this was all she wanted to do and all she wanted to be.

The women surrounding her exchanged looks. They all knew prey going limp when they saw it. Still, they looked to Alara for permission. She returned a quick nod. With that, the orgy resumed.

They kept at Semya for hours, eating her out, slapping her around, leaving her makeup a ruin - and all the while, she did nothing more than giggle and moan and squeal girlishly in submissive acceptance. Alara didn’t stay for that, though. She had already seen the moment she’d been working towards. She’d won. And for what felt like the first time in her life, she knew satisfaction.

The next day, when Semya Kuznetzov reported for duty wearing a dress, it was nothing more than confirmation.

—

I would like to express my gratitude for the generosity of all those who  support me on Patreon, and to give a special thanks to the following  patrons in particular for their exceptional support:

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[devilofthepit]

also i feel like transmasculinity and lesbianism go hand in hand for me. the role of “girl” or “woman” is so closely tied to being an object for men. my failed relationship with a man made me feel incredibly dysphoric despite the fact that he was supportive of my gender. being a Dyke means i am no longer a (willing) object of men’s desire. much of the transmasculine experience as it’s described online has to do with being a gay man, but i never felt like one. i’m not a man and can’t love men the way men do. i’m not a woman, but i love women the way lesbians do.

a lot of people associate lesbianism with femininity because of a simpler understanding of lesbianism as two women who love each other. but being a lesbian doesn’t mean i can’t relate to masculinity or men, it just means i don’t want to be with men. and as a transmasc, i relate (or desire to relate) to men, in a way distinct from the way women relate and are expected to relate. i don’t know how to end this i’m just writing a bunch of my thoughts but being a lesbian separates me from“normal” womanhood . being transmasculine means my feelings for women don’t come from me as a woman. but i still love women in a lesbian way. i always agonize over whether i’m really not attracted to men or just feel dysphoric about dating them but it doesn’t really matter. boydyke feels like not just a combination of identities but a whole identity to me i hope this makes sense

[wonder-womans-ex]

yeah I'm gonna tell people to die for spouting corrective rape ideologies. you would make a GREAT conversion therapist. you can say mspec gays and lesbians exist and I can think you're an idiot, but you're going one step further and literally telling gay men and lesbians that they SHOULD be having sex with the opposite binary gender. your ass is angry at the fact that people who are not at all attracted to or interested in the OBG and never will be exist

first of all, nice to meet you. I'm AJ and I'm not sexually attracted to men at all. no need to explain not wanting to fuck an entire gender. I'm practically a professional.

^some helpful resources.

sometimes, the words people use to express a sentiment don't translate 1:1 to what they mean. there are also words that can mean different things depending on the context they're used in!

example: a friend of mine says they want chicken nuggets. I say "You should get chicken nuggets."

in this context, the would 'should' is used as an encouragement to a desire already expressed, not as a directive to someone unwilling or unwanting.

when I say "lesbians and gay men should have sex with each other" I mean "lesbians and gay men who want to have sex with each other should, and that desire does not at all invalidate either's sexuality." I do not mean "women who only want to have sex with women and men who only want to have sex with men should have sex with each other, thus killing two birds with one stone and making them both straight."

no one should have sex with someone they don't want to have sex with. people should have sex with someone they do want to have sex with, provided that person also wants to have sex with them and is able to consent to it! a dyke and a faggot can fuck, and that doesn't make either of them any less gay.

p.s.: I get that you love gold-star homosexuals, but yelling at other queers on the internet from behind an anonymous screen isn't the best way to defend them.

p.p.s.: if you want me dead so much, come here and kill me yourself 😏

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

“The majority of my experiences as a trans activist and spoken word artist have taken place in what is increasingly becoming known as the "queer/trans" community. It is a subgroup within the greater LGBTQ community that is composed mostly of folks in their twenties and thirties who are more likely to refer to themselves as "dykes," "queer," and/or "trans" than "lesbian" or "gay." While diverse in a number of ways, this subpopulation tends to predominantly inhabit urban and academic settings, and is skewed toward those who are white and/or from middle-class backgrounds. In many ways, the queer/trans community is best described as a sort of marriage of the transgender movement's call to "shatter the gender binary" and the lesbian community's pro-sex, pro-kink backlash to 1980s-era Andrea Dworkinism. Its politics are generally anti-assimilationist, particularly with regard to gender and sexual expression. This apparent limitlessness and lack of boundaries lead many to believe that "queer/trans" represents the vanguard of today's gender and sexual revolution. However, over the last four years in which I've been a part of this community, I’ve become increasingly troubled by a trend that, while not applicable to all queer/trans folks, seems to be becoming a dominant belief in this community, one that threatens to restrict its gender and sexual diversity. I call this trend subversivism.

Subversivism is the practice of extolling certain gender and sexual expressions and identities simply because they are unconventional or nonconforming. In the parlance of subversivism, these atypical genders and sexualities are "good" because they "trans-gress" or "subvert" oppressive binary gender norms. The justification for the practice of subversivism has evolved out of a particular reading (although some would call it a misreading) of the work of various influential queer theorists over the last decade and a half.

To briefly summarize this popularized account: All forms of sexism arise from the binary gender system. Since this binary gender system is everywhere in our thoughts, language, traditions, behaviors, etc. the only way we can overturn it is to actively undermine the system from within. Thus, in order to challenge sexism, people must "perform" their genders in ways that bend, break, and blur all of the imaginary distinctions that exist between male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, and so on, presumably leading to a systemwide binary meltdown.

Another way that one can be "transgressively gendered" is by identifying as genderqueer or genderfluid--i.e., refusing to identity fully as either woman or man. The notion that certain gender identities and expressions are inherently "subversive" or "transgressive" can be seen throughout the queer/trans community, where drag and gender-bending are routinely celebrated, where binary-confounding identities such as "boy-identified-dyke" and "pansexual trannyfag" have become rather commonplace. On the surface, subversivism gives the appearance of accommodating a seemingly infinite array of genders and sexualities, but this is not quite the case. Subversivism does have very specific boundaries; it has an "other." By glorifying identities and expressions that appear to subvert or blur gender binaries, subversivism automatically creates a reciprocal category of people whose gender and sexual identities and expressions are by default inherently conservative, even "hegemonic," because they are seen as reinforcing or naturalizing the binary gender system. Not surprisingly, this often-unspoken category of bad, conservative genders is predominantly made up of feminine women and masculine men who are attracted to the "opposite" sex.

One routinely sees this "dark side" of subversivism rear its head in the queer/trans community, where it is not uncommon to hear individuals critique or call into question other queers or trans folks because their gender presentation, behaviors, or sexual preferences are not deemed "subversive" enough. Indeed, if one fails to sufficiently distinguish oneself from heterosexual feminine women and masculine men, one runs the risk of being accused of "reinforcing the gender binary," an indictment that is tantamount to being called a sexist. One of the most common targets of such critiques are transsexuals, and particularly those who are heterosexual and sender-normative post-transition. Indeed, because such transsexuals (in the eyes of others) transition from a seemingly "transgressive" queer identity to a "conservative" straight one, subversivists may even claim that they have transitioned in order to purposefully “assimilate" themselves into straight culture.

…in our culture, the meanings of "bold," "rebellious," and "dangerous" -- adjectives that often come to mind when considering subversiveness are practically built into our understanding of masculinity. In contrast, femininity conjures up antonyms like "timid," "conventional," and "safe," which seem entirely incompatible with subversion. Therefore, despite the fact that the mainstream public tends to be more concerned and disturbed by MTF spectrum trans people than their FTM spectrum counterparts, subversivism creates the impression that trans masculinities are inherently "subversive" and "transgressive," while their trans feminine counterparts are "lame" and "conservative" in comparison. Subversivism's privileging of trans masculinities over trans femininities helps to explain why cissexual queer women and FTM spectrum folks tend to dominate the queer/trans community: Their exceptional gender expressions and identities are routinely empowered and encouraged in such settings. In contrast, there is generally a dearth of MTF spectrum folks who regularly inhabit queer/trans spaces.”

——The Future of Queer/Trans Activism, chapter 20 from Whipping Girl by Julia Serano (bolded emphasis mine)

[figureinthedistance]

If a man knows a woman is a lesbian he should know sexual attention is unwanted + automatically a boundary violation. Sexual attention meant broadly here might just be some flirting. If a man doesnt know a womans sexuality or knows a woman to be into men then sexual attention may be wanted + is not automatically a boundary violation. I think this is fair to say. There is no nuance in our lack of interest, it cannot be misunderstood. Therefore lesbians can and should have different expectations for men + how men treat us. + this doesnt mean that when boundaries are violated by men, it is worse for lesbians than other women. But it disregards + invalidates the whole concept of lesbianism, which is a specific issue. And by the way, one every feminist should care about a lot.

For other reasons too. But it is bizarre and kind of frustrating to me when a response to "it sucks when people act like there is any context in which lesbians are sexually available to men" from other women is "well why are you dykes special im not always sexually available to men either." No of course not but sometimes you might be. And its not insane or fucked up for a guy to explore that possibility. But literally if a guy ever tries to pursue a woman he knows is a lesbian its unjustifiable.

This is so niche i know this but it has also been going on for a long time and a small number of people saying smth over years can feel the same as a bunch of ppl saying smth all at once.

And the other part of it is, sometimes things are distinguished not because theyre worse but because theyre specific. Like to go to the extreme example, corrective rape is not worse than other kinds of rape. Obviously. But we still talk about it as a distinct thing bc it is borne of a distinct kind of hatred + a need for a distinct kind of control (kind of). Similarly, when a man pursues a woman he knows or should know to be uninterested, this is always bad. When a man pursues a woman he knows or should know to be uninterested by virtue of her being a lesbian, this is bad in a specific way that points to a specific kind of homophobic misogyny, and it makes sense for lesbians to want to talk about it.

To be less subtle people who get mad at lesbians for taking issue with the specific way men violate our boundaries just strike me as people who also hate lesbians. But im defensive when it comes to that stuff ik

[cruelsister-moved2]

Most of the appeals to LGBT history on this website are so shallow at best and actively bigoted at worst lmao I saw someone once point to letters sent in to Olivia Records in the 70’s as proof that “male lesbians” were valid meanwhile the letters in question were literally from people who wanted to ban trans lesbians from participating at the record label like. Congrats you are literally agreeing with transmisogynists to prop up your argument

EXACTLYYYY holy shit 😭😭 its just bizarre and honestly so reactionary like it is inherently not a progressive viewpoint to be like "we need to continue to do things exactly the same as the past" HELLO?!?! it does upset me bc the natural extension of that is like, well the existence of gay trans people wasn't accepted (to the extent it is today) by almost anyone in the community and people like lou sullivan suffered horribly from that +literally spent their entire lives fighting for it to be recognised (both medically & in the community),

and the same way with bisexuality which I've spoken abt before but all the arguments that appeal to the fact there used to not be a distinction between lesbians&bi women, actually lots of bi women were privately aware that the term didn't fit them and struggled with it, but ur main option at that point was to move between 'lesbian' and 'straight' communities depending on ur current or desired parter (and often be painfully exiled from the other as a result - not to say there weren't individuals who were aware of this but that's how the community was organised and THAT'S where the whole 'sexuality is fluid' thing comes from - the understanding that u could change between being straight and gay at different points of ur life as a way to explain bisexuality).

so it's just turning around and spitting on the bi women of the 80s-90s who worked so hard to make bisexuality a recognisable identity to free them from that choice 😭 especially when people build this narrative that these asshole lesbians "kicked out" bi women or something like it's so vile to take the activism of bi women (and their lesbian allies!!) and use it as a way to frame lesbians as the villains. plus if u can't share community with people and treat them with respect without forcing them to share your identity that makes you an asshole like it's the worst part of this argument. this is at the core of a lot of these discussions and it's very like um if u can't respect lesbians without reclaiming dyke for urself then u literally have no business w that word wtf

[limeade-l3sbian]

I was reading posts like this and started thinking, do you think queer is a slur? I understand people reclaiming it but I ALSO understand people who don't want to be called that, and I think shaming either is not the way to go

But I don't think ppl who don't like being called queer are trying to "assimilate to straightness." The general argument I see made is that the word literally means "strange", which was intentionally used to distinct gay people as "other".

Tbh, it's interesting you that you asked this bc I had been thinking about it myself recently and pretty much agree with you. I don't think people who use the word are doing it with intentional malice against those who consider it a present day slur. But at the same time, if someone tells you they don't consider it a form of reclamation (especially older gays who lived through the times in which it most certainly was a slur), then you're an asshole to imply that they're just being sensitive.

I think for a slur to take on a new stage of reclamation, there really has to be a community understanding with only a small handful of people who might not prefer it. Like lesbians when it comes to dyke. A whole slur that, to me, has really been used as a source of pride for younger and older lesbians. However, I've seen a great deal of older gay men who do NOT like the f-word and only consider it source of pain.

I personally don't use it on behalf of the gay women who came before me and I honestly would prefer to just be called a gay woman or lesbian by the general population. Overall, like I said, I agree with you. But I think those who use it have very little respect for those who find it offensive and write them off as just being sensitive or "assimilating to straightness". There's a history there, and much as I love to remove the power of harmful words from people, I think there needs to be more respect for people who are still hurt by said history, whether they lived through it personally or perhaps know someone who did.

[notmuchtoconceal]

bro, i know i just said never, but also --

i have way too many opinions about thomas harris's novels and i honestly feel like bryan fuller is one few nerd alive big enough to get into the nitty-gritty of this man's heroic grappling with his projected mental illness and latent bestial nature in a manner which is cathartic and revelatory, but also -- the man fucked himself over by staying too engaged and doting too hard on his audience of mostly tumblr users.

his de-masculinization of Margot Verger may be the only time i have felt compelled to deliver a hot-take. for those of you not in the know, the literary Margot Verger is a bodybuilding butch lesbian who was rendered infertile through steroid usage and is now reliant on his (I'd meant to write her, but this may be revealing) abusive and disabled child predator brother for semen, so that she may sire an heir with their family's DNA and so claim their father's meatpacking inheritance through him.

he had expressed concerns about portraying a --

I'm not sure, I believe he felt that Margot Verger was a transman and didn't wish to portray his transmasculinity as a product of abuse, but to me that is an over-literal reading of the text. I believe the passage in the Hannibal novel he may be thinking of //

(I had, before my sole viewing of the Hannibal TV series, re-read the original trilogy, as well as watched Silence of the Lambs twice, before and after the source novel, as well as both adaptations of Red Dragon and Ridley Scott's film of Hannibal. I was hyper-attuned to the origin of every one of his remixes, and every time I watched an interview where he stated he was remixing, I could see exactly what he was doing. I was quite impressed -- just by the first episode -- by how he was so cleanly able to take various choice selections from a wide-array of contexts in the books and chain them together into an entirely new argument/persuasion. It's sharp, yet dense. I feel the show has an exhausting quality, for it is not only visually lush, but dedicates a great amount of time to both revealing and obscuring through speech.)

\\ I believe the passage in the Hannibal novel he had in mind, when floating the idea that Margot was a transman because of abuse, was suggested by an obvious homophobe. The section is narrated by -- I forget his name. The main FBI douchebag. He's a token chauvinist, a fairly route middle-manager bully, and knight of the patriarchy. He's the same man who, in the film adaption, Hannibal slices his scalp open and feeds him his own brain. In this same section, standing around in the billionaire pedophile's palatial bedroom, feeling like he's made it, he also floats the suggestion that Clarice and her roommate were bull-dykes, and that Hannibal himself is a faggot due his fondness for "tea party food" because being gay also means being wealthy and European and better than you in all arts (this line was also used in Ridley Scott's film, as a direct verbal taunt to Julianne Moore's Clarice in the FBI basement.) You can see, his thoughts are intended to portray a carousel of moronic straight-boy stereotypes. This is a simple man. It may be easy to read him at face value, if one is sensitive to these slights. Straight nerds, you know -- in some ways it's much easier for them to detach from homophobia, not actually being gay.

I believe Margot Verger's identity is complicated. Physically, she is undeniably a woman. She has faced repeated attacks, psychological, physical and sexual, and so is always on edge ~ Rather, if Margot is more a transman than a butch lesbian, I see no reason to assume his transmasculinity was the product of abuse, or rather -- I don't see the compromise to his or her masculinity as being in any way distinct from how other people have their masculinity compromised. Truly, I think the scenes with Margot and Barney in the novel are beautiful. She always tries to come off as tough, like she isn't intimidated by him, big burly black orderly (it's okay to admit that sometimes a black man is sexier than a white man and it's not suspect to say it ~ you have no hesitancy whatsoever about finding white men sexy without giving any though to racial supremacy. let black beauty ride u. he is majestic) who could hold his own against the witty all-knowing psycho-demon who eats men alive. She's assertive, chiding, all bravado, eager to flex. Though also -- she's never befriended a man who was this tolerant, this compassionate, this genuinely understanding. She doesn't know how to take it. She likes men, or at least the idea of men, but you know -- she's had so many bad experiences with men. Things most people would never even want to talk about. All the indications she's giving Barney are that she wants to be a bro and work out -- by this point in the story, her brother is keeping him close, not only for he is a competent medical professional and he is bedridden, but also because of his fetishistic preoccupation with all things Hannibal Lecter. Barney was one of the few men alive who Truly Knew Him. Margot and Barney see each other a lot in the private gym they share. One day Barney gives Margot a firm, robust athletic smack on the ass in the showers. She crumbles. It's all too much. She may have either a masculine mind or a mind which appropriates the masculine (do recall that Clarice herself, in emulating her lawman father, is on something of an mirrored journey to Buffalo Bill -- he wants to become physiologically female, she wants to become psychologically male, and the true question of appropriation and predation remains disputable), but she has a female body traumatically wired into subservience to monsters who can't love her. How could she possibly be with this man who ... charming, lovely and burly as he is ... simply makes her want to die? Simply can't stop making her remember? Margot is herself not depicted as a beautiful woman. Her masculinity is a source of pride, strength, but also a constant reminder of her pain. Chasing her masculinity -- altering her body through hormones -- quite literally has left her infertile, and now dependent on the abuser she tried to overcome by embracing roids. Regardless of her Gender Identity, Her Masculinity Is Real, Arguably Toxic, and Yet She Remains An Abused Woman. There's a level of finesse here which is difficult to parse, for it is difficult to endure, it is such a raw and painful portrait of a product of human exploitation, in a novel which is already lined to the wall which faceless disfigured child rapists feeding people alive to giant pigs. Margot in the book goes so far as to forcefully ejaculate her brother with a cattle prod, collecting her sample, then deep-throating him with his own pet electrical eel which eats through his throat as it electrifies him alive. Perhaps, if Margot's transmasculinity is the product of abuse, it's simply because we need to tap into unconventional or otherwise unsuspecting parts of ourselves when placed in novel or desperate situations, and "queerness" is, in a literal sense, the discovery and adoption of divergent survival strategies. Perhaps we simply needn't be ashamed of ourselves or where we've come from, and to demand recognition from ego-blocks which would appropriate us for revenue and prestige is to become complicit with them if we lose sight of what's really important, that is our freedom to be and to love.

I'm thinking of a comment made a film reviewer named Diamanda Hagan, speaking on John Waters's film, Desperate Living. That one had a character, Mole, an AFAB person in a relationship with a woman, and she (as she was referred) impulsively got a cock to dick his lady, but she was immediately grossed-out and they castrated herself. She had said the gag had begun life as an offensive lesbian stereotype, now it's an offensive trans stereotype, and it had managed to remain offensive because you really couldn't tell what the film thought Mole was. John Waters -- he is, of course, sympathetic to people's interior essentialized states, but he's also hip and savvy. He knows people are adaptable, need to market themselves, and identity is largely contextual. I'd gotten the impression that, although a woman, she wanted to treat her girlfriend like a woman, and so give her the man treatment. Her woman then had the opposite reaction, feeling her lady was compromising herself for her sake. I think her woman enjoys her masculinity, but also enjoys that she's a woman. I think plenty of women like women who like themselves, and people generally who are comfortable being themselves. I think it's easier for women to compartmentalize and "become" men, as men are already single-minded and task-focused, so being a man is much like turning a part of yourself off. If she has an essentialized "masculine" quality it may simply be because she's the dominant partner in her relationship.

Now, as for the supposed hot-take -- I don't think bryan fuller has anything against lesbians, though he may feel a low-level visceral repulsion when confronted by a woman who seems too masculine, in much the same way a heterosexual man would seem threatened or put ill-at-ease by a man who appears too feminine. It might confuse him. He may be more horny for butch lesbians than he'd care to admit, or may be more susceptible to heterosexual assumptions that he'd like to admit. He might like Margot more if she fit into a more clear and defined idea of what it was to be a woman. Truthfully, I find the ambiguity of Margot's transsexualism one of her most compelling aspects, for I feel he is both, though also damaged, and she would remain both, regardless of his damage. Damage simply occurs to us, and we have to find some way to reckon with it. He's also a sharp-dresser who works in show business. All adaptations pretty up their people for the screen, even if they make them uglier by making them more conventional. The world simply wasn't ready yet for the real Margot Verger, with all her messy complications. It may not be for some time. I would always love my sister. Even if she were a steroid-abusing lesbian who's too frightened to be a man with me. You don't know how hard it is. You're so brave, to keep it all together.

[unapologeticallytheworst]

What's the difference between a bi lesbian someone who is bi or is a lesbian? Aren't they mutually exclusive terms? (Genuine ignorance but willing to learn.)

(Just in case my tone comes across badly, I am just happily sharing. If any good can come out of me being back on Tumblr it will be sharing my experiences of sex and gender so that maybe somebody understands themselves better.)

I want to start with the fact that I am not myself someone who uses the label. I usually identify as bi or pan. So I can explain coming from my perspective as someone who has talked to bi lesbians and even identified with their explanations, but I am not one. I love dudes too much.

Like any label it's super personal to the individual but from what I have heard over the years, some women use it because they functionally are a lesbian. Their relationship and presentation are such that society thinks of them that way. That may even be how they label themselves in less queer spaces. They face that discrimination and participate in those spaces.

For some others I've talked to, it's more about where they lie on the kinsey scale. Their relative attraction to women compared to men, making them feel the need for the distinction. Sometimes this is even more of a bisexual - homoromantic situation, where sex with dudes is fun but one loves women.

Since I believe this was in response to a support post, I just wanna say label policing is not good for anybody. This isn't aimed at you, nonie, just everyone, be kind and willing to listen. We're really not all that different and we're not free until we're all free.

(also vaguely related rant about being bisexual under the cut)

Being bi is really fucking weird. Nobody believes you no matter who you date. Unless you're poly and are dating multiple people of different genders at the same time, then you're just a slut. Like seriously I'm pretty sure the new Green Day song Bobby Sox exists solely to remind everyone they're bi as fuck. Because that happens when your romantic partner is the opposite gender. And then you feel like an asshole at pride because nobody is going to discriminate against you and your boyfriend in public. Everyone is going to treat you like you're straight and any gay stuff they remember was just “experimenting” or youth. But when dating the same gender there's a whole different set of problems. Society at large is now going to treat you as gay or lesbian and any attempts to say bi will be chalked up to internalized homophobia or an attempt to avoid backlash. And like you get that, because the hate you get calls you dykes or faggots, you don't get hate for you, because you don't even exist. This is to say nothing of the exclusionary pockets within your own community telling you you're confused. Or acting like you are icky and wrong and don't belong in queer spaces.

[moskitausu]

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal Al-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

First Impressions: Reads like a fanfiction from 2013 where the author was trying to stand out and seem mysterious and intelligent. The tone is distant and tongue in cheek. These first few “strands” are practically unintelligible in their attempt to be edgy and interesting. So far, it’s pretty clear which chapters were written by a man. The two authors have very distinct writing styles, and I don’t think I’m very fond of Gladstone’s.

- 

My initial impression stands for this one for the most part. It just wasn’t really my cup of tea, which infuriates me, because it could have been exactly my cup of tea. There are so many elements which should have been enjoyable to me - lesbian romance! Science fiction! Time travel! Sworn enemies falling in love! And yet - the execution was fumbling. The lesbian romance aspect falters because Gladstone is so obviously a dude. No dyke would ever write in seriousness “her implants glowed.” Like... ok. Regardless, since I’ve been informed I must treat every author who writes a gay love story as Schrodinger’s queer - the fumbling masculine mediocrity of Gladstone’s writing aside, the love story, and the plot as a whole, reads quite flat to me for the first two thirds of the book. I think this is because the romance is mostly epistolary and less observational. Which - fine! Okay! People have long distance relationships, or whatever. We are never really told why the characters like each other. Their cleverness - okay. We are just expected to assume love between them. The book reads like a fanfiction, but if I was reading a fanfiction of media I had never seen/read/interacted with. The author assumes you will know things because they are already part of canon. It is not their chore to explain them to you. The characters have no nuances, no quirks, it is not their chore to introduce them to you.  They are sworn enemies falling in love. Why? Because they were written that way! Lazy as fuck. The science fiction was compelling - in the chapters the authors bothered to flesh out their world. The time travel trope was leaned on heavily without any explanation of the organizations the two characters work for - their goals, their differences - they are at war. Why? This question being raised could be treated as a statement, but no statement is ever really made.  The time travel itself is blusteringly uncritical, western, imperialist. Why would a time traveler be concerned with the supremacy of western thought - ‘in a land that would someday be called x’ or whatever. I’ll go back and find the direct quote that stopped me in my tracks. Anyway. Despite being literal immortal agents with the ability to travel and influence time, the books are dotted with love notes to western imperialism. Are they Brits? Nauseating.

I did end up enjoying the arc of the book that includes their romance blossoming and Red fighting back against their agencies attempts to entrap them and use them as pawns to eliminate the other. However, I did also predict that Red would be The Seeker, and that the book itself should be a sort of time loop.  Idk I think I just don’t like the tone the book was written in, the plot and characters are flippant, the love story is assumed, the characters and their agencies operate uncritically across time and space and biology and technology - the concepts are cool but the writing is not my favorite.