#i don't actually have any problem with het; i just don't think they're lesbians or should be called lesbians

[marshmallowloves]

Self ship struggle #5379/????

Male F/O that I, a woman, self-ship with: *is ambiguous in his sexuality, never explicitly written to be romantically interested in anyone, but does explicitly care for his male friend(s)*

Creators/Official page for his source: *posts art where his male friend is hugging him and saying "I love you"*

The replies: "YOUR HONOR THEY ARE GAY!!! THERE IS NO STRAIGHT EXPLANATION FOR THIS!!! ALL THE COMMENTERS SAYING OTHERWISE ARE JUST NASTY M/M HATING FUCKBOYS!!!"

Me: *cannot even breathe in the direction of the post because if I do I will inevitably be labeled as disgustingly homophobic*

[anghraine]

#YEAH#or men. the other thing is that ppl will say ‘this is sooo lesbian. to me’ about m/m couples or even m/f ones all the time like#no. no. queer? sure yes. lesbian/yuri? nah (via @stripedroseandsketchpads)

EXACTLY.

My original version of this post was longer and I kept cutting it down to be less specifically annoyed about fandom trying to make the general fandom fixation on men somehow = caring about lesbians. I have an intense aversion to the More Lesbian Than Thou gatekeeping from some parts of the community, so I haven't said much about it for a long time, but I'm really uncomfortable with the use of lesbians as a cover for stanning fan favorite male characters who are pretty unambiguously presented as cishet and m/m or m/f ships involving them.

I don't remotely mind people being into characters or scenes that are manifestly Not Lesbian; I myself have plenty of fandom-beloved male faves, het ships, etc, I have AUs where they are lesbians, I have fun headcanoning them as something other than conventionally cishet, I get the appeal. But it's like—usually this use of "lesbian" does not seem to literally be "I headcanon that [character X] is actually a closeted lesbian trans woman" or something like that, but—just another way of calling a male character babygirl or cunty or soft and therefore not masculine or whatever.

I've seen it used for m/m before, but I'm increasingly seeing het romantic scenes described as "lesbian," or lesbians used to justify only caring about canonical male characters, and I didn't even realize how much it bothered me until I started reading a post that seemed like it might go there and then it was actually about seeing a character as lesbian. And it was such a breath of fresh air that I was like ... huh, that absence is pretty glaring, actually, isn't it.

Can't lie, there's something deeply refreshing about seeing a post that goes on about how a character or scene is sooo lesbian, and realizing the OP is genuinely talking about how they see the character as attracted to a woman or women, or how shippy they find the f/f dynamic in a scene, and not ... like, vibes or aesthetics.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA if I break up with my partner because I think I'm lesbian?

(🪿🫧 To recognize this) this is long, I'm sorry

I (23they/she) have been with my partner C (24they/he) for a little over a year. Some background, I grew up strict Mormon and am still struggling with the internalized homophobia from the teachings of the church. I currently identify as biromantic asexual because I have a hard time with sexual experiences. I have only ever been with people assigned male at birth, all previously cis/het men until my current partner. C identies as Bisexual and has stated previously that they don't mind never being physically intimate sexually.

Recently ive been thinking about afab or feminine adjacent people, no one specific just like day dreaming about a girls and it made me feel a way I never have before, including with previous partners. This is leading me to suspect the only reason I have a hard time with being intimate with previous partners is they were all amab or at the very least just very masculine including C.

This is where I could potentially be the asshole. C has some previous experiences with previous potential partners saying they didn't want to continue citing they're actually lesbian. This has left him super jaded. Especially after they later found out one of them ended up in a cis/het relationship the next month.

He and I have had a rocky last few months due to his housing situation and sometimes lack thereof, job hoping, and not being medicated for bipolar, and me being off my anxiety meds due to new prescription.

He has stable housing and a job now, and I have stabled for the most part myself. I did in the midst of all this bring up the possibility of just being friends due to previous issues and I tried to bring up me struggling with my sexuality. He promised to fix his issues and kind of ignored the issue about my sexuality because he didn't know how to respond to it. He kind of just explained it away.

The problem is, a lot of his friends are my friends too, we work at the same place, and he relies on me a lot for transportation and sometimes monetary help. We don't live together because I'm living with my parents until I go to school. I'm worried about losing our friends or making working together bad.

To be clear I do care about them a lot, he's one of my closest loved ones but I'm not sure it's in the way he wants it to be, and I don't like hurting them, I hate the idea of him not being in my life. He and I are both autistic as well so its kinda hard to really understand what this whole thing means or how to handle it

Any advice is also welcome

What are these acronyms?

[agaricgarlic]

Trans people are not holding back the LGBT+ community

LGB or LGB ✂️ T (sometimes LG) individuals are convinced that Trans individuals are the reason cishets aren't welcoming queer people with open arms, so I'm just going to go over a few points.

1) "Trans people shouldn't even be apart of the LGB community. Its not a sexuality."

Trans people and gay people have always been grouped together because cishets have a track record of grouping non conforming people together into groups. Not to mention the rights you appreciate and are claiming Trans people are ripping away from you are LARGELY due to the role Trans and GNC played in fighting for LGBT+ rights. People use any excuse to support their hate. When gay marriage was first being legalized hets were claiming that it would lead to animal and child marriage. That's what they equated gay marriage to, something vile and abusive. Obviously it didn't but people will use the excuse of "weird trans people" as an excuse to be bigoted towards other parts of the LGBT+.

2) "Trans people are holding us back. Just be normal."

Trans people are lacking in rights because of homophobia (and literal feminine/masculine black/white thinking amongst other things ofc). A quick look into Transvestigator territory will explain what I mean. Something these people will constantly claim is that "every celebrity is trans and is thereby being used to make everyone gay." The reason why this is a problem is because being gay = bad.

For a straight man to be attracted to Megan Fox (a victim of Transvestigators) that man would suddenly be gay. When these people realize that sexuality is not just genitals (because we aren't just floating privates) they tend to get uncomfortable with the possibility of their orientation getting called into question. Cishet men that are violent towards trans women are a great example of this. Their fear? That they'd be called or would actually be considered gay for being with or attracted to a trans woman, sometimes tragically ending in violence so that this Cishet man is no longer under the "weak" and "emasculating" term 'gay.'

3) "They just don't want it pushed down their throats!"

Oh, like how having a lesbian in toy story was pushing it down their throats and indoctrinating their children to be gay? Like how having a gay couple in a commercial is pushing it down their throats? Like how PRIDE is pushing it down their throats? To these homophobes not being closeted is "pushing it down their throats."

The same arguments that these people are using have been or constantly are being used against them. The term "I don't care what you do in your bedroom" is Hets telling queer people that showing a gay couple showing affection outside of their bedroom is inappropriate and sexual, not just a form of endearment. Basically, being gay is a kink. In fact, since these people view being gay as a kink and not just a same gendered couple doing practically everything a straight couple does (spoiler alert they're almost identical) they find the term 'gay child" to be grooming and inappropriate. Same as "trans child" is grooming and inappropriate because they view being trans or talking about trans issues as a way to yap about genitals all day long.

4) "No one should be forced to be attracted to trans people!"

You're right, and no one (except a few chronically online individuals) believe that anyone should be forced to be something they're not. Whether that's forcing someone to be cis, straight, or attracted to a trans person.

Trans people are hyper aware of what they look like and a lot of trans people are uncomfortable being in binary spaces Pre-HRT or even Mid HRT/transitioning because they know they may not visually match the target demographic and may cause confusion. Trans people constantly put their own comfort aside for cis people. Not many "non passing" trans people are rushing onto gay dating apps to force gay ppl to be attracted to them. However plenty of trans people have gay partners that love and are attracted to them or interested in hooking up with them even if you aren't.

Also trans people arent unloveable and unwelcome in binary spaces. In fact it will always make more sense for a trans person to be placed in the spaces their gender aligns with to avoid confusion. A gay trans man that goes to a "straight blind dating party" and places himself in women's section would cause confusion and discomfort for his Cishet straight guy partner sitting across from him. The truth is that a person that's attracted to a man will be much more likely to be attracted to a trans man. A straight man probably won't be into someone that isn't feminine, has a bunch of secondary male characteristics, has a lot of facial hair, and reads as male regardless of what assumed genitals the trans man has(if that trans man even WANTS to use those parts sexually). And no not every trans person is a gay persons type but plenty of gay men are attracted to trans men and plenty of lesbians are attracted to women. And attraction isn't the standard to be RESPECTED.

Okay I'm all done.

I only did minimum proof reading and this is kinda a rant post so it's not perfect but I think I got my point across. Also the LGB(LG) community it a small but loud minority. You're more likely to be accepted by a gay person than a Cishet person if you're trans and vice versa. The LGBT community is the ones that will have your back in the end and fight for your rights.

[hp-confessions]

"If the character is canonically straight, let them be straight. Don’t put them with the same gender. If the character is canonically gay or lesbian, then don’t put them with the opposite gender.

This is not to say you can’t imagine them with someone of a gender they don’t prefer or think they could’ve been cute or a “what if”, but maybe don’t actually ship them together romantically."

The way this immediately made me actually shudder and go ew out loud

we have like what? one canon gay character? like two MLM characters? One Ace?

the problem with lines of thinking like this is that for a lot of people stupid people but people who would throw a fit none the less

"Canonically straight" just means any character not outright said to be something else

or if they are a little more generous then any character shown in any kind of het relationship at any point in time

which in HP would be just about all of the major player characters

I don't think a single character ever even says that they're straight because like why would they

So this isn't really a series where that argument makes any sense imo

Like i as a lesbian don't even like that argument for series where it does make sense for them

(aka ones that have actual varied lgbt rep)

because it just makes shipping boring and stifling when its meant to be fun, creative and freeing

Like if you can go Vampire!Ginny i don't understand the issue with like Lesbian!Ginny

it always just feels performative to be mad about to me

Like someone saw a ship they didn't like and went "what can I say about this that will make the people liking it look like iky gross bad people"

Anyway every character ever is Bi unless they look right at the camera and say otherwise or if It would be funnier in a concept for them not to be

sexuality for real people is fluid deciding it just has to be as canon says for characters is lame

~

[eolewyn1010]

Charité, season 4 - Queerly Subverted

Turns out I can't shut up; what a surprise. So I've put my final thoughts into separate posts, in the hope that they're more readable if they aren't a half novel just smashing your dash.

Something I always liked about Charité is that, from the beginning, they had queer characters. Season 1's Therese got kicked around by the plot, but she was an important character whose story we followed alongside Ida's, and while she fell prey to Bury Your Gays, she ultimately remained the only love interest Ida kept in dear memory. I don't need to get started on season 2's Otto and Martin because that would have me gushing about their lovestory until next week. Season 3 had... well, Simone Weiser. Who was, in and of herself, a wonderful character; don't get me wrong. She just really wasn't given the space her story would've needed to unfold. I hoped that this season would do better.

...Somehow, I wound up feeling cheated.

A friend of mine said if there were no trans characters this season, they would riot. I think we can afford some rioting, because despite the setting promoting an all-inclusive, super-tolerant future, there was not a single trans person to be found. The gynecology had zero male patients, no one casually mentioned HRT, no one was addressed with gender-neutral pronouns. I really didn't want there to be a big plot around someone being *le gasp* trans, but someone around just casually existing would have been nice. But nada.

When Simone Weiser showed up last season and then just disappeared again at the end of the episode with no further discussion, it felt like they just wanted to scratch the "queer" point off their to-do list. I think when they came to this season, they had something comparable going on; they checked - "we already had lesbians, gay men, an intersex person; shit, we only have the troublesome trans people left! We can't handle this!" And someone in the scripting room raised their hand: "Hear me out: Poly marriage." You goddamn genius. This is how I feel cheated: They used poly relationships to actually write around queerness.

For one, we have the Baldwin spouses - Piet Baldwin, Evelyn Baldwin, and Rupert Baldwin. Piet Baldwin is patient 0 for Maral's plot, and I don't remember seeing him ever, at any point in the season, in an interaction with his spouses that would indicate they are in a romantic relationship. He's in a quarantine tube most of the time, but also, the spouses talk a hell of a lot more to the doctors than they do to each other. Both Piet's wife and his husband are visibly quite a bit older than him. If you'd told me they were his parents, I would've instantly believed it. Now, I'm not opposed to age gap romances, but my problem is: He might as well have been their son - it wouldn't have changed the script of their arguments or their behavior among each other one bit. We never saw them together as a polycule; the part that would have made for queer appearances was conveniently isolated from the others so they could play out what looked like a pretty standard troubled het marriage. Now, I know that a man and a woman being married doesn't equal straight; the fact that they're all married to each other is a pretty good indicator that both of the men in this relationship are in fact bisexual. It's just, we never see them even holding hands or share a gaze or anything. They are queer, but they are not allowed to look like it.

Which is, funnily enough, the opposite to Lou Melnik (aka Discount Daniel Sträßer), who is allowed to look like he's heading out to CSD, but only ever has serious chemistry with Marlene. He, Marlene Hirt, and Ferhat Williamson end the season holding hands - that is, Marlene in the middle holding hands with either of the guys. There's no indication that Lou and Ferhat are dating; in fact, when they're on-screen together, they are just remarkably awkward. Which, I don't wanna shit-talk Timur Işık because I have only ever seen him in this role and can't say if he's a very lukewarm actor of if the script fucked him over, but Ferhat's chemistry with Marlene is also pretty much non-existent. Marlene and Lou have such lively discussions, sparkling eyes and smiles, and then there's Ferhat. Eh. The other polycule, who only end up as one in the last few minutes of the last episode and as such conveniently don't have to be shown going on dates together or kissing or whatever, consists factually of two pairings m/f. Again, it feels like a cop-out. And there's - Lou and Marlene were two of the few characters I actually liked; I am sold both on them and their relationship. I am, however, not sold on their polycule.

And then there's Maral Safadi and Julia Kowalczyk. The main couple, two women whose relationship is a major arc of the season. And... they look so awkward when they kiss, so stiff when they cuddle. I don't know what's wrong; they are for the most part decent actresses, and I believe them the characters are a couple when they argue (which they do a lot). I do not believe them their affections in the slightest. Is that part of Maral's workaholic deal? But then she's so oblivious of her marriage being in crisis until Julia literally yells it at her. So, what gives? It's nice to have a lesbian couple in the center of the narrative, but I get completely thrown off every time they try to sell me on the romance part. Nevermind that their resolution isn't one. Maral never says, "I'm sorry for my behavior; I have realized it was not good; I will work on this". She says, "I need you". And with that, everything is just fine again. They never work out their issues. The plot point of their son going to war is never resolved at all; that goes nowhere. Julia never accepts his decision; Maral never sits down with him to talk about it again. Whatevs.

In the end, I'm sitting here wondering: If you do it so half-heartedly, why do it at all? Either the script writers or the actors obviously didn't feel like doing queer characters.

[sky-ivylight]

This.

IMO, the main problem with shipping culture as it relates to aspec (and specifically arospec) people is that romantic and/or sexual love is hailed as the highest echelon of consciousness, of human experience, and not only is it the best it's the only option. the way it works now (through no one's immediate fault other than amatonormativity, or i guess allonormativity. comp-allo?) is that any character who doesn't have a partner or partners is either irrelevant to the fandom, or presumed to be lonely. Rather than their singleness being something they could want or be satisfied with, it's framed as a sad, upsetting thing that has to be changed. A character flaw. The option for someone to be single and happy is never presented in fandom spaces outside of one-note villains, or characters everyone universally hates.

amatonormativity, comp-allo, and aphobia are so prevalent in our culture (online and irl) that the aspec community literally cannot claim a character in the same way a lot of other communities (especially the queer community) can. The queer community at large can find solidarity in other people having the same orientation headcanon for a given character, it doesn't matter as much if someone HCs them as cishet, bisexual, lesbian, or gay; It's a mostly equal playing field, because the basis for the game is... well, shipping. Which is inherently a problem for aspec (and especially arospec) communities.

Arospec people don't want romance, but literally every other community online, and in real life, does. Because aphobia and especially arophobia are everywhere, to most fandoms even suggesting a character is arospec or aspec is, metaphorically, akin to taking away their toys and saying they're not allowed to have fun. That's not what people are doing, obviously, but a lot of allo (and even some aspec) people just don't get that an aro headcanon is a good thing, actually.

Most people in the aspec communities can't find the level of solidarity most other queer people can outside of their own section of the internet, and even then it's mostly relegated to explaining that yes, we exist, and no, aphobia is not okay, and yes, we're alive and people too, etc. and that leaves very little room for fandom, especially since the online community is so small, and when you dare mention something like an aplatonic headcanon, people will immediately hop into the replies with fresh, hot, steaming aphobia.

half the reason fandom is the way it is today is because a lot of queer people (gay people, bi people, lesbians, trans people, etc.) couldn't find the representation they wanted, so they found each other and made representation for themselves out of media they already loved. But aspec people just haven't been given that same opportunity, because the environment we entered into was so hostile to us for so long, that we legitimately could not get our footing in the founding years of fandom culture.

i scroll through the arospec / aspec / acespec / aplspec / etc. tags a lot, and 99.9% of the posts in there [non-scientific number] are exclusively about aphobia (internal or external), they're about how we wish people would listen to us, they're about how absolutely crushing it is to exist as an aspec person, how we feel excluded from fandom or real-life spaces, our experiences with aphobia, etc., etc., etc.... it's so disheartening to see so much of our existence relegated to defending our existence, to self-hatred because we were raised in a culture that thinks we're broken or monstrous. it just sucks that we don't have the same level of influence as other parts of the queer community.

speaking personally, a large part of the reason I avoid most fandoms is entirely because of shipping culture. I'm not invested in it, or at least not as much as I used to be (comp-allo and comp-het joined forces for that one) but there is no other space for me. There is no arospec fandom space, at least not one prominent enough to be noticeable. Most aspec headcanons are from aspec people, and almost all of them are one-off posts that get completely ignored. The most traction I ever saw for an arospec post was from a couple polls about aro characters, and those were small.

fandom likes shipping, and aspec (and again especially arospec) people... don't fit that.

(also, to be clear, i'm not blaming other queer folk for this; counteracting hate with aggressively being yourself is how we got here and that's a good thing and fine, but also please remember we exist too. the real enemy here is our deeply homophobic society and also capitalism by making very specific queer people ""marketable"" and...... y'know...... amatonormativity...... like, our problems reach beyond fandom, it's systemic and that's why it's in fandom in the first place, but I'm tired and brainfogged, and this is already long enough, so I don't feel like dissecting that right now.)

Anoying autonormativity stuff is when there's this ONE CHARACTER in a story that is not in a relationship. ONE COMPLETELY HAPPY AND SATIFIED CHARACTER in a story. and then people automatically start wanting relationships for them. Like NO leave them alone ):<<<.

also people can ship whatever characters they want as long as it not illegal or harmful. I just want more characters like this without, and it can be frustrating when the few characters whom i can actually relate to aren't safe from relationships. Doesn't mean it's wrong to headcannon characters who aren't in relationships, though. This would be solved if these types of love were not seen as the most important things, and there was more representation for diverse ideas and aspects of different relationships.

If other aspec people want to talk about thier personal gripes about media here please do. I talked mainly about romance, but this is much broader than that.

[sneezemonster15]

https://sasukechannel.tumblr.com/post/690353753034997760

I suppose the person who made the post and the people commenting are more honest and don't actually think ino and sakura are lesbians, but eh. They say they're doing God's work or coping with Kishi's 'terrible writing' and just want to see wlw solidarity. I'm not sure if they're gay themselves but they mentioned that the person speaking out against inosaku had to be straight

I don't care if people headcanon them as gay. I don't care if people headcanon anything. As long as they don't try to prove it is canon and fight with those who think they aren't that way in canon. That's just dumb. And my major problem with inosaku is the problem of narrative. Lots of people make Sakura into a lesbian because they want to make Sakura more palatable as a female character who otherwise chases Sasuke like an animal in heat. And then they try and call it the truth. If you want a better gay representation in media, ship someone who is actually gay. Like...why Sakura of all people who is so very definitely and clearly the queen of het? And it's not like being heterosexual is bad in itself. My problem is with her characterisation as a shallow woman. She is everything I don't wanna see in any female character that serves as an icon in kid's shows. Kids are impressionable. I don't want anyone to think she is a good representation of a woman or a person or a friend or a lover. She isn't any of it. Same with Hinata. Changing her characteristics to fit one's fantasies and then calling it canon is delusional, which is something i have often seen in Naruto fandom.

I don't like it when fans excuse Sakura's third grade behaviour by making her gay. And it is an insult to Ino's character because that girl did care for Sakura, and Sakura rejected it for a boy who never showed any interest in her. Sakura wasn't even kind to Ino, she is jealous and resentful of her. What lesbian dynamics?

Just choose better characters for your gay representation. All I am saying. I mean c'mon, don't you think we need more gay/lesbian representation in media? Then why choose the worst characters, and superbly het on top of everything, and borderline homophobic lol, to represent it?

[rantingcrocodile]

I'm fairly new to radblr but the whole bihet vs febfem thing seems to stem from people not taking bisexuality seriously as an orientation. It boils down to that strict ssa vs osa attraction and delegitimizes bisexuality as a whole orientation. I guess in a way it makes it more digestable for monosexuals, if that makes sense? Like I think they see it as a 'gay' bisexual vs a 'het' bisexual, and it doesn't make them account for the fact that bisexual is its own thing.

Monosexuals not understanding what "being bisexual" actually means is one of the biggest issues when it comes to bisexuality that filters into practically everything.

I really believe that the problem comes down to them seeing "bisexuality" and interpreting "attracted to both women and men" as "both straight and gay," which causes so many problems by making us completely invisible and refusing to see us as anything other than wrong.

To them, bisexuality isn't an actual sexuality, it's a qualifier for the "real" sexualities. To be bisexual is to be a machine that is straight if with an opposite sex partner, or (conditionally) gay if with a same sex partner. Without a partner, the bisexual is defaulted to straight. In that sense, the only traits that bisexuals are left with are negative stereotypes, the hypersexuality, the lying, the cheating, the lacking of human emotions, the manipulation, etc. Bisexuality to them is a personality defect, closer to a personality disorder than an actual sexuality. As far as monosexuals are concerned, we're just broken in some way. Evil.

I constantly say the most obvious and reasonable things, and I point out regularly that biphobes can't read, but the fact is that they can read, they just think that bisexuals are manipulative liars because we're bisexual.

I say, "Bisexuals are oppressed by straight people" and they lie and accuse me of meaning, "Bisexuals are oppressed by lesbians" because they've convinced themselves that I don't mean what I say, that I'm deliberately being manipulative for nothing but attention-seeking - and all because I'm a bisexual talking about bisexual issues, no more, no less. In any other context, discussing any other issue, I would be applauded, but because I'm a bisexual, I can't be trusted and there therefore has to be hidden meanings and messages underneath the simple sentences that I say.

We show monosexuals studies into bisexuality and how biphobic oppression affects us, and where they accept studies about everything else, the studies into bisexuals are automatically wrong and lies because the underlying belief is that the bisexuals involved in those studies are liars. That anyone who cares about bisexuals are either bisexuals or liars (those words synonyms to the biphobes at this point). That it's all just some con because we're natural, untrustworthy and manipulative attention-seekers.

That's why they genuinely have no idea what bisexuality even is, but refuse to believe us when we try and explain it to them. We can't be trusted, so only they can define it for us.

And because that biphobia is so ingrained into society, most bisexuals let monosexuals get away with that, and then internalise those beliefs for themselves, hating the rest of us, because they're not evil and manipulative and self-obsessed, but they believe the rest of us are.

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

Can't comment with a sideblog, so I'll drop them here:

Yasmine and Moon were secretly messing around behind the scenes in S1 and had a "friends with benefits" type thing going on

They both caught feelings, but Moon wanted to publicly be girlfriends while Yasmine was terrified of ruining her rep (hence why Moon was the one who felt comfortable enough in her sexuality to openly date Piper later)

Yasmine and Piper are both lesbians, but Piper is very openly out while Yasmine is very very deep in the closet.

Aisha is also a lesbian, but is much more "whatever, no big deal" about it. She's never really found it to be worth mentioning. She's also possibly acearospec and generally not super interested in dating. She was into both Sam and Tory because her type tends to be "hot karate menaces."

Piper was Moon's first healthy romantic relationship.

Moon is genderfluid, but only ever came out to Piper (why Piper made a big deal of Johnny being genderfluid-inclusive!). She'd maybe come out to Sam, Yasmine, and Demetri later but it's not a sure thing. I don't think she'd feel comfortable telling Eli, even post redemption arc.

Tory and Robby are bi4bi. They're both vaguely aware they're bisexual, but it's not something they've every really had the time or drive to explore.

If Tory hadn't already been crushing on Robby, she really might have gone for it when Piper shot her shot.

Demetri has been in love with Eli since they were kids. He full on knows this, he just believes he has no chance and also is slightly terrified Eli will abandon him if he knows Demetri's gay.

Terry Silver basically has the same thing with John Kreese. He's loved him forever but frantically frantically hides it.

Every adult on the show (save Terry, who I think is just flat out gay) is ragingly bisexual.

I don't ship it personally, but Terry was/is definitely into Daniel as well. It IS very funny to me that he gets rid of one gay crush at the end of S4 because he's a "distraction" and then spends all of S5 obsessing over a different gay crush. Like nice going you ponytail loser, you failed to solve the problem at all!

Eli is also in love with Demetri (and probably has been since like middle school) but has MUCH less self awareness about it than Demetri.

Both Eli and Demetri are repressing their feelings to kingdom come. I'd say S5 is the earliest they could've figured it out, but here we still are ;____;

Demetri, Eli, Moon, and Yasmine are the quintessential example of a "queers finding and vibing with each other before they realize they're all queer" friend group. Unfortunately, Eli, Demetri, and Yas are all repressing their queerness incredibly hard, and Moon is the only one of the four actually comfortable in her identity and sexuality.

Demetri and Yasmine started out being in utter denial they were each other's beards. However, after about a month of attempted dating and still not being able to straighten themselves out (heh heh), they talk about it and end up coming out to each other. They decide to continue presenting as a het couple to keep up appearances, mainly because neither thinks they can afford any potential damage to their rep that being openly gay might deal. Yasmine's rep is in shambles after the wedgie, so she really can't afford it. Demetri's rep is improving, but he's still not popular enough not to potentially suffer ridicule if he were to get outed.

Yasmine has homophobic parents, which also contributes to her staying in the closet. Part of the reason she flew all the way back for prom was because her dad was giving her a hard time about how little she'd dated in high school, and she wanted to prove a point.

Yasmine also has an older sister named Rosalie who is an influencer of some kind. Yasmine and Rosalie are pretty close, but there's a bit of underlying resentment from Yas's side because Rosalie has always been The Favorite. I think this motivates a lot of her S1 bullying--she's desperate for some kind of attention from her classmates, even if it's negative. She doesn't want to live in her cooler, more beautiful sister's shadow.

Moon never lost any popularity to begin with and also has a very easygoing and accepting hippie family, which is part of why she was never worried about being openly bisexual.

Yasmine and Demetri are extremely close platonically. When Eli finally gets upgraded to the role of Demetri's boyfriend, Yasmine and Miguel are basically tied for Demetri's platonic best friend. The rest of the dojo kids find this really funny because of how different Yas and Miguel are.

Kenny and Anthony are both bisexual.

Anthony has a planet-sized crush on Kenny and absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Kenny is probably also into Anthony but processes it like 10x more unhealthily.

Demetri and Eli claim they "don't want kids" but have a bad habit of adopting the younger dojo members as their sons. They're now the proud gay dads of Bert, Nate, and Anthony. Kenny is probably next tbh.

Kyler has been bullying Demetri and Eli since elementary school. Demetri used to try and stand up to Kyler and other bullies to defend Eli, but he always just got his ass beat and his stuff trashed. The teachers were pretty useless in helping. By the time high school rolls around, Demetri has fully given up.

Demetri and Eli probably both had a crush on Miguel at some point (specifically when he beat Kyler's ass in the cafeteria). I feel like if you went to West Valley High it would be difficult not to get a crush on Miguel tbh.

Eli's first mohawk color was blue in part because Demetri's favorite color is blue (it's the color he most consistently wears!) and he was trying to help Demetri be more comfortable with him "flipping the script." It actually somewhat worked for a while, although Demetri was still weirded out and kind of concerned about the apparent personality change.

He also 100% dyed his mohawk to match Demetri's hoodie in S5.

Demetri and Eli are both Jewish. Demetri's family is ethnically Jewish but non-practicing for the most part. They participate in the occasional holiday celebration but aren't super committed. Eli's family is practicing and goes to synagogue more regularly.

They both had a bar mitzvah. Their first kiss was after the latter of the bar mitzvahs with the logic "well we're both men now, and grown-ups do things like kissing, so I guess we'd better do that! And it's not like any girls will ever want to kiss us anyways, psh."

Demetri has a single mom who's on the overprotective side, but also does not mince words. She and Demetri's dad were like the older generation equivalent of Demetri and Yasmine, except if they didn't realize they were both gay until well into adulthood. Demetri's dad left when he was little, and now Demetri's mom is openly lesbian and frequently brings new women home.

Daniel, Amanda, Carmen, and Johnny (possibly Chozen and Ali as well) all want to be in a polycule, but none quite have the courage to admit this. Maybe give it 10 years and they'll finally come to terms with it XD

I have some slightly more explicit ones as well, but I'm holding off on that for now in case OP isn't comfortable with it ^^;

[thedreadvampy]

Like idk what you want from me here. If you want to engage me in a specific question about ace/aro identities, as I've said several times and nobody has ever actually done, then ask me the specific question. Don't fuck around with vague gestures at Points of Discourse and then get cross with me because I haven't answered the Exact Question you Didn't Ask But Expected Me To Intuit.

Preface: If you don't want to answer any of these because you are allo/allo and don't have a say because its not your place, say that. In fact, I'm asking these because you seem to do have opinions on things you shouldn't based off things you have said in the past.

I also want to state that I agree fully with your points about Martin- minus the blatant aphobia. Not just acephobia, arophobia as well.

1. Do you think qprs are problematic? I believe you once made a post saying roughly that qprs are just normal friendships, or something like that, that has since been deleted. What is your current opinion?

2. Are het aros lgbt?

3. Are het aces lgbt?

4. Cis aro/aces lgbt?

5. Cishet aro/aces?

6. Do the spectrums and micro identities exist? You've implied in the past they don't, in the post about how they were supposedly created from sex positivity

7. Can aros be in or desire romantic relationships?

8. Can aces have or desire sex?

9. Does the split attraction model exist and does it benefit people?

10. Can teenagers identify as aro/ace or do you think they're too young?

11. Can you be, say, an aroace lesbian, or an aroace gay, aroace bi, etc. Idk how to phrase this one but like can you be aroace and still id with another orientation?

I could send another anon detailing the aphobia in the post, because I at least am certainly not upset about Martin being sexual, rather it was the very blatant aphobia. It could have stemmed from ignorance, and if that's the case I don't mind explaining it.

Ok this is a lot of questions, some with quite involved answers, so I'm gonna answer them chunk by chunk so it's a bit more manageable, and then I might come back to some of the surrounding message. This isn't gonna be an immediate bang bang bang, but I'll try and work through them over the next couple of days.

Question 1

1. No, I don't think qprs are problematic. I don't necessarily understand them but I don't need to understand them to understand and respect that they're a thing that's important to a lot of people. I don't know what post you're referring to, but I'm surprised that you say it was deleted, because I very rarely delete posts except, occasionally, reblogs where people have flagged up misinformation or dogwhistles or which I reblogged by accident. tbh I'm the messiest online presence I'm way too lazy to delete past posts or block people even when I probably should bc I don't like to feel like I'm ~hiding evidence~. So I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably totally right, but I'm surprised.

I'm thinking about what posts I've made that you could be thinking of, and obviously I don't remember everything I say on here bc I say A Lot and I actively post to get things out of my head so 🤷‍♀️ but I do remember making a post a while ago where I said that it was a normal expectation of friendship to have some friends close enough that you'll live with them, raise kids with them, etc, and I'm wondering if that was the post you're thinking of? I did have qprs in mind while writing that to a degree, but only because I think 'you wouldn't do this with your friends' is a very common argument people put forward about qprs and I think it's a weak argument, because many people have different definitions of friendship, and the only argument I think is needed for any sort of I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing is...I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing. Like you can't offer a universal materialist definition of the differences between romantic, queerplatonic, sexual and platonic relationships, because the boundaries are very personal and it's really an emotional and experiential difference. so if that is the post you're thinking of, I wasn't criticising The Concept Of QPRs as much as saying that I thought trying to put hard lines around What Friends Do Vs What QPPs Do was a) counterproductive when arguing with someone who thinks QPR is Just Normal Friendships bc. if they do those things with their friends then saying NO THIS IS A QPR THING just reinforces their existing belief that you're talking about the same thing as they mean by friendships and b) to me seems to set a painful expectation to young people that you can only get these kinds of close friendships occasionally and in the form of a QPR and it will be stigmatised and misunderstood (and depending on how people talk about it, is only accessible to aspec people and allo people should only expect it to come through romantic/sexual relationships), when in fact most people of most ages I know have friends with whom they can share things like housing, deep feelings, futures, finances, who they miss if they don't see for a few days, who are mutually supportive and vital to their wellbeing. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the existence of QPRs though - like I personally don't know what the difference is between a QPR and a close friendship, but I also don't know what the difference is between a romantic relationship and a close friendship but I know there is one and I know it's not a question of What You Do but a question of How You Feel And Interact, and that's pretty hard to define in unambiguous terms.

Like generally I don't Not Think QPRs exist, and I think it's a dick move to try and tell people they're wrong about how they experience and define their relationships because???? how are you meant to know that better than the person whose relationship it is??? but I do think the way people talk about QPRs (both from the perspective of defending them and from the perspective of attacking them) is pretty rife with problems and I don't think it's invalidating the reality of QPRs to talk about where the arguments and language around them potentially falls down or has unexpected consequences.

On the other hand, I don't know if that actually is the post you're referring to - the reason I'm calling back to that is that that and a few resultant asks are the only time I remember talking about QPRs on here in the last year or so. So like, several of these questions reference past posts, which is very fair, but I do need it to be clear that, since I don't really tag anything and I don't have a great memory, I can only really speak to What I Think Now In This Context, not to what I posted in the past and what I was thinking when I posted it. Like, this isn't too deny responsibility - I reckon I'm responsible for what I post even if I don't still agree with it, which is why I don't tend to delete my own posts on purpose - but just to deny capacity, I guess? I don't really KNOW what I've posted so if you talk about it in vague terms (and I do understand that if it's been deleted there's not a lot you can do but that) I may not necessarily be responding to the part of it that's worried you, so if I'm not speaking to something specific I've said or done, it's not because I Don't Want To, I just don't necessarily know to.

I'm waffling about this because looking through your messages there's a lot of "you said X" and like. given that the intended message of the post that's kicked this off was very different to the message people have taken from it, it feels important to me to know whether if I looked at the posts you're referencing I'd be like "ah yeah I did believe that but now I believe X" or if it's more a situation of "oh right I can see how you took X from that but my thinking was more Y".

(also sometimes when people say "you made a post" they mean "you reblogged a post" and I am a compulsive discourse scroller so sometimes I reblog a random post to bookmark my place on someone's discourse blog or I accidentally longpress the reblog button while scrolling - I try to delete reblogs that I don't agree with but sometimes I miss some, all of which to say if there's a post on my blog that doesn't seem to reflect what I say in my original posts then it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a crypto-whatever so much as I'm very lazy and messy with my blog. Doesn't mean I shouldn't be held accountable for reblogs but it's useful to know if we're talking original content or reblogs bc I'm unlikely to fully accidentally make a post. but I quite often accidentally reblog stuff. I doubt this is the case with this sitch just bc of your phrasing but I want to cover my bases)

anyway tl;dr: no I don't believe that QPRs themselves are inherently problematic, nor do I think I have at any point believed that, but I do think that a lot of the language and ideas used to talk about them are based in miscommunication or absolutist ideas about relationships and can have damaging knock on effects.

[garetthawke]

okay this might get long and controversial, but I think all us sapphics need to have a discussion about feminism, comp het, and how that ties in to how we percieve our attraction.

because I think right now, all those things are causing a problem with lesbians and with the bi community and how it functions.

also, just as a preemptive disclaimer so i don't get accused for something i don't mean or have my words misconstrued: bisexuality is not a phase, is not a stepping stone for being gay, and bisexuals with preferences exist and are very valid. HOWEVER. with that out of the way...

we live in a society where women are impacted with huge amounts of comp het. i know, that term was coined by a TERF, but the effects of that idea are very real: sapphic people are often socially pressured into attraction or the perception of attraction to men (note, i mean MEN, not trans women, TERFS fuck off,) that we don't really feel or want. we are pressured into performing and "wanting" the heterosexual norm beyond our actual, internal desires.

the reality of this on lesbians is that, in cases just like mine, we identify as bisexual before we deal with the comp het enough to realize that we are lesbian. (and no, bisexuality was not a stepping stone or phase, because we were never really bi in the first place.)

the general reaction to comp het in women as a whole, according to my experience at least, is feminism; fighting back against this centralization of attraction to men by saying "it's okay and valid to centralize women instead."

this is a lot easier for lesbians. for bi women, this concept gets revved up by lesbians who can disregard attraction to men entirely, because we don't experience it. and it's also a but easier for bi women with preferences. and i think this reaction to the common comp het experience sapphics have has centralized attraction to women on a cultural level in response. which makes sense, but...

but when you've got the unfortunate combo of a) lesbians who do not know they are lesbian, and are fighting comp het, and thus identify as bi, and b) a bisexual culture that reinforces that to love and adore women to the max, while holding disdain for your feelings about men, or having "lesser" feeling about men, is the norm for bisexuality....you're going to have a lot of lesbians thinking they're bisexuals for a long time, if not forever. it creates an environment where lesbians never actually have to deal with their comp het, and can ride the wave of "i like men but i don't have to care about that part," instead of honestly being able to assess how they don't like men. case in point, me.

on top of that, you get what i personally witnessed so damn much when i was present in the bi community: a fuck ton of bisexuals who feel ashamed for half their attraction, who don't feel accepted, and who feel like they're being sidelined and silenced because they don't fit the feminist, sapphic narrative of the bisexual experience: prioritizing women. this includes bisexual men, for whom this narrative and behavior reinforces their own comp het, by the way.

so what am I saying? well, to start with, i don't think any amount of feminism or bi women with preferences has actually created a majority in the bi community that prefers women. i think this is the narrative we have centralized. and it's not invalid to feel that way! but i don't think it's healthy or fair to centralize this narrative.

i think we need to stop saying and spreading things like this:

as a "bisexual culture" thing, and start opening discussions that gives room for women to self examine themselves and whether their attraction to men is genuine, whether their preference for women is actually just a preference and not something more exclusive, instead of acting like it's normal that bi women as a whole all like women so much differently than they like men, and acting like it's a feminist thing to assume and reinforce because it's an opposite reaction to women's comp het, despite it having the opposite effect on bi men's comp het.

this is a tame example. I've seen some that are like "bi culture is loving women and hating that you're attracted to men."

does that sound healthy to you? that message that it's normal that all bisexuals prioritize women and hate attraction to men? that's damaging to bi men, that's shame and pressure on bisexuals with no preferences, and it creates an environment where lesbians who identify as bi never have to question themselves or their comp het.

and no, I'm not saying "don't talk about your experiences if you're bi with preferences." I'm saying we need to stop acting like that is the norm and that all bisexuals should be like that.

what i think we need to encourage is that literally everyone on the planet is going to deal with some level of comp het due to society, and that how you assess your attractions and identity should not only take comp het into account, but your reactions to it.

because I thought I liked men for so long due to comp het, and i reacted to my perceptions of comp het by going "i may be attracted to men, but i don't have to prioritize men or like them," and that allowed me to remain in the dark about who i was and never address the root issue. i thought "I'm bisexual" not only due to comp het, but because the bi culture i was exposed to told me that my lesbian experience was the bisexual norm.

it's not a bad thing to sit down and self assess. you are not a traitor to your identity to question yourself. EVERYONE should take the time to sit down and examine how these things come to play in their identities and perceptions of self. and if you come to the same conclusion you did before, cool!

TL;DR: many lesbians identify as bi first, many bi women feel pressured into prioritizing women, and although bi people with preferences exist and are valid, we need to encourage self examination and how feminism and comp het affects how we identify and how we percieve our feelings, especially if we find ourselves leaning far to one side of attraction with them; and we need to stop playing into the narrative that a smaller percentage of bisexuals are the majority, or encouraging unhealthy relationships with bisexuality, because it stops everyone from questioning.

[sqbr]

Haa, I find it frustrating from the other direction: I'm trans and afab but do not and have never identified as a lesbian, and so people using 'lesbian' as a synonym for 'queer' makes me feel dysphoric and gross. Like me being a somewhat masculine person who isn't a conventional straight man means I am effectively a woman, and the only way a non-man can be 'properly queer' is to be a lesbian. Especially since I have seen people who legit seem to think afab queer people do divide into 'lesbian adjacent and thus valid', 'lying straight women' and 'even worse than cishet men because it's a choice'.

...and then I started rambling, and ranting at Fandom At Large, so let's put this under a cut, which will hopefully work.

So yeah, I have no problem with actual lesbians or people who like imagining their faves as actual lesbians etc. Those are cool and valid things to be and do, part of the huge variety of equally good and valid ways of being. And it's worth noting that many Actual Lesbians do not ship f/f much or at all, and make no pretenses otherwise (but some do ship f/f as an expression of their sexuality, and that's also cool).

Hell a lot of the people doing this stuff aren't lesbians they just seem to... idk, have put lesbianism (or, relatedly, yuri/femslash) on some weird pedestal as Pure Perfect Aspirational Queerness We Should Celebrate At All Times. But since the things they want to focus on (at least some of the time) involve men/non-women, instead of unpacking that and celebrating what they're actually into as a valid form of a DIFFERENT KIND of queerness/gender conformity/a thing they just like even though it's not queer etc, all of which are FINE, they just slap on a 'lesbian' label, which does a disservice to lesbians and non-lesbians alike.

I mean... sometimes these kinds of things do amuse me, like putting a "this too is yuri" caption on inanimate objects. But yuri is a fictional genre rather than a real life sexuality, and even then it does feel weird when people only talk about 'yuri' that doesn't involve actual girls.

Some of this is an attempt to articulate complicated gender feelings. But as a trans person who is not a lesbian: 'lesbian' should definitely not be used as a synonym of 'queer', 'trans', or 'gender non-conforming'! Those are overlapping but very distinct things!!

I do think some of this is a result of some femslashers acting like femslash is the Only Progressive Form Of Shipping. Instead of pushing back on that, people who ship things other than femslash (including some people who mostly ship femslash but have a few slash/het ships etc) just went "if good=femslash=lesbian, then everything I like is femslash about lesbians". And then the people who have zero interest in actual femslash started treating it as like.. a purely theoretical form of goodness rather than something that actually literally exists.

Which is pretty much lose-lose for everyone: people who like actual femslash have even more trouble finding it than before, and people who don't feel like their actual shipping preferences are unacceptable and must be obscured.

Now some people would say "then the non-femslashers should just learn to ship femslash" but imo, while it can do people good to thoughtfully consider their unexamined assumptions about gender etc, the reasons people in this part of fandom mostly aren't into femslash are complex, and while homophobia and internalised sexism are part of it that's far from the whole picture (for a start, not all of us are women ;P). People trying to force themselves to like femslash will at best be annoyingly unpleasant and at worse be an active repression of their sexuality/gender expression. And either way, any femslash they produce will be joyless and bad, which is also lose-lose for everyone.

IMO the only solution is for everyone to just stop acting like shipping and faves etc are always a direct expression of people's politics, gender, or sexuality. Then we could all celebrate what we actually like, whatever that is (and for most people in this end of fandom, that's mostly not lesbians or femslash, and never will be). But I don't see that happening any time soon.

Plus. You know. Bi and non-binary people exist. "Not purely about men or straight people" does not necessarily mean 'lesbian' or even femslash/yuri. If you think being a femslasher is hard, try being someone who prefers non-binary ships :P

But also, for all that it is worth poking broader fandom trends etc, you can enthuse over Actual Straight Dudes etc without either losing your progressive/queer cred or pretending they're something they're not. And people into Actual Lesbians can enthuse about them too, and we can all be enthusiastic together, hooray.

Can't lie, there's something deeply refreshing about seeing a post that goes on about how a character or scene is sooo lesbian, and realizing the OP is genuinely talking about how they see the character as attracted to a woman or women, or how shippy they find the f/f dynamic in a scene, and not ... like, vibes or aesthetics.

[rantingcrocodile]

you really just said gay people oppress bi people in LGB 😭😭😭 DAHLING

Are you hearing yourself?

Bi people keep on trying to claim us as bisexual and cannot fathom that we arent attracted to the opposite sex like they are. We never try to erase your history. We don't care about your history, but if a historical figure has ONLY expressed feelings for the same sex/interacted sexually or romantically with only the same sex, it's safe to assume they're fucking gay.

We're proud of our history and don't have any intention to ruin yours.

We do let bi people in LGB spaces, and while those lgb spaces revolve around having ssa since that's the mutual thing with all three letters, it's fine to talk about osa if the space includes bi people.

We're upset with bi women coming in lesbian spaces and talking about how hot men are. I don't think it happens a lot with gay men and bi men, since I haven't seen any of them talk about it, but it does happen a lot with women. Open your eyes. We're fine with you expressing OSA in LGB spaces, but you always do it in LG spaces. And no I'm not talking about talking about abuse in a het relationship or any story that includes a het relationship, but drooling over the opposite sex, making the rest of the room really uncomfortable.

Are you blind to the community's current situation? TRAs dislike gay people for not liking them in the way bi people do, because they think being bi (even on their own terms) is more inclusive than being gay. Bi people keep saying "everyone is a little bi" and get uncomfortable and upset around gay people expressing no attraction to the opposite sex as if they don't know what homosexual fucking means.

We aren't trying to control you or oppress you because we don't care about your experiences and sexuality since we can't relate to it.

Most of the community is taken over by TRAs and bi people. It shouldn't be hard to see. I guess that's what being terminally online does to you.

Why is it that I go out of my way to bold and underline the fact that there's no oppression from the LG towards bisexuals and that it's actually intracommunity bigotry that's wrong, you biphobes still deliberately misread it as, "Croc says that the LG are oppressors!"

That's a guilty conscience talking, which is your problem, not mine.

"We never try to erase your history!" the biphobe says, ignoring the anger and hatred that is sent towards bisexuals when we accurately point out that the words and language has changed, and that in the past, both lesbians and bisexual women were called "lesbians," and the vitriol and sneering that we get, constantly told that we don't even have any history in the first place, and bisexuals called "lesbians" or "gay men" when they weren't, etc.

Whenever anyone discusses LGB spaces, there's fury if bisexuals discuss an opposite-sex partner or their opposite-sex attraction and we're attacked as "turning those spaces straight."

You talk about how bisexual women are ruining your lesbian spaces, but... you're letting bisexuals into a space for lesbians, which turns it automatically into an LB space, then complaining that the bisexual women are talking about their bisexuality? Really?

TRAs aren't out there hating the LG "because they're not bi," they hate the LG because the LG refuses to validate them while staying LG. They hate bisexuals too. They attack you with coercive rape rhetoric, and they attack us believing that we're not allowed to have consent at all and that our sexuality is automatically "transphobic."

Why is it that I can agree that there are homophobic bisexuals who don't understand monosexuality and that they're bad people, but you can't accept that there are biphobic LG people who don't understand bisexuality and that they're bad people too? Why is it always a competition with you?

(Hint: it's because you see yourself as more important, more deserving and prefer the status quo that is bisexual silence.)

Most of the community is taken over by TRAs that harm all of us.

The community isn't "taken over by bisexuals." If it was, then bisexuals would always be front and centre of any discussions of the LGB community. We would have campaigns that were simply for us and positivity about us. The term "biphobia" would be something understood by most people. The LG would constantly stand up against biphobia and talk about how much solidarity they give to bisexuals. Bisexuals would only be focusing on our own issues and no one would care if we never supported the LG.

Oh, wait, that's how that currently is for primarily the G when it comes to the LGB, and then some lesbians at the back, and nothing for bisexuals.

Do you really want to talk about who's "terminally online" here?

[rantingcrocodile]

I see what you mean, but why do we assume these are lesbian only words in the first place? do we not have shared history, have gay men never used butch and femme? we should have our own bisexual community of course, but I feel like this is just denying any common ground between us and gays/lesbians and erasing parts of our history for internet discourse.

I was actually talking to someone about those exact points earlier, and the thing is, you're completely right. There's so much shared history between us, but the mix of the rise of the so-called "Oppression Olympics" and trans ideology has put yet another wall between us, and we're the casualties, because anything and everything that we've done to support the gay rights movement and our shared history is erased because lesbians are desperately trying to protect themselves and their own histories from being erased. We're collateral.

Realistically, when people are offline, it doesn't matter what language is used when the person using it is clearly using it with the best of intentions.

In an ideal world, it would be easy to share the common ground, say that it's shared history, everyone would understand that we've had a lot of solidarity, that homophobia and biphobia exist and are just as harmful as each other and skip along the Pride flag rainbow, fighting our individual oppressions together. The problem is that this isn't an ideal world, and while this is internet discourse, the people arguing with it are very real people whose views are exactly the same online as they are offline. Especially with quarantines, more people have spent more time online than ever, which means that more of these attitudes are being internalised more than ever.

This is just my personal opinion of course, but I think that the priority shouldn't be drowning in angst over who uses what terms, but to avoid the situation entirely and focus on building a meaningful bisexual community and modern bisexual culture. Too much is dependent on the rest of the LGB because we've been fighting the same same-sex-attracted fight as far as rights to relationships are concerned, and that's framed the whole debate as "het vs gay relationships" which has eroded bisexuality as a discrete sexuality.

Unfortunately, the depressing thing is that we don't even have enough of a community to have a bisexual come out and say that and have other bisexuals come and meaningfully join their voices so we can have a balanced conversation. Instead, what'll happen (as it always does) is a bisexual says something that counters the current biphobic dogma in this space, a bunch of biphobic lesbians dogpile it, other women thoughtlessly agree because they think they're just supporting lesbians, and the only other bisexuals that get involved are the ones with internalised biphobia trying to virtue-signal that they're the good ones, while the very, very few bisexuals with something meaningful to add end up being scared to say anything, or are drowned out by more biphobia.

I mean, what do we do in that scenario? All I can be is realistic.