#lesbophobia tw

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My cousin had a nightmare that he was standing on a tall building looking over an apocalyptic destroyed cityscape and a gruff narrator guy said, “Ever since the lesbians were eradicated 50 years ago...” and then he woke up.

[aropride]

not a normal thing to say!

[broodingnightgoddess]

That's a lot of words to say that you hate that lesbians aren't attracted to you

[newspecies]

"the vast majority of legal persecution against early queers was focused on men" ARE YOU INSANE

[hibiscus02]

I just read Legoland and I decided to compile some helpful tidbits about Penny's character, for all your fanfic writer needs!

If you want to write RTC fanfic using her canon personality and backstory, this is the place for you. I apologize if someone has done something similar!

•Let's start with her basic introduction in the play;

"PENNY is a young woman wearing French braids and a private school uniform; she has a bright smile." "PENNY: Hello. My name is Penny Lamb, and I am an aspiring animal conservationist." "PENNY speaks at an incredible speed, being an immensely nervous and self-conscious teenager. She literally trips over her words -- a volcano of passion and eloquence."

Now I'll give you some backstory and character info without getting into Legoland's plot. This is so people who don't have an interest in the story itself can still grasp the basics of Penny's character.

Both Penny and her little brother (Ezra) were homeschooled. They grew up on the Elysium Community Farm, just outside of Uranium City.

When Penny turned 13, she was already getting "itchy" to see the outside world (kids were not allowed to leave Elysium until they turned 16). She thought she knew what to expect after reading 'Anne of Green Gables'.

The Lambs snuck out to a Walmart and found out it was very different from what they thought it would be. They tried to strike up conversations with people but everyone seemed weirded out by them (they snuck out several times to try and "strike up friendly chats")

Eventually the manager called the police who drove them home. That's when "all that trouble happened"

Penny's parents got 15 years in prison for cultivation and trafficking of narcotics. Her and Erza were sent to Saint Cassian Catholic School (which as I'm sure you all know is the same school that the choir members attend, obviously, since Uranium City isn't big enough to have more than one school). It is stated to be a boarding school in this so that's some extra lore for us I guess.

"PENNY: The instant I see the boys staring at me like gaping fish with their heads cut off… and the girls looking at me with those Queen of England smiles… Oh, little Penny wasn’t in Kansas anymore… Uh-uh… I was sent to the charred black bowels of everlasting Hell!"

Despite her homeschooling education Penny is actually very smart, but the values taught to her don't really go over well with a catholic school system. She also likes to use 'big words'.

Penny gets sent to the school psychiatrist, and allegedly diagnosed as Bipolar and manic depressive (to me it seemed implied that the psychiatrist was a crook, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Do with this information what you will).

She does go through a depressive episode though, or what sure looks like one; "PENNY: Like, sleeping in my room all day… tearing my hair and throwing up, kind of suicidal and depressed and everything… So, one day a bunch of girls were setting fire to my school bag -- second time that week -- and I wasn’t even crying anymore… because, you get to a point… when you’re waaaay beyond crying."

Penny can play the ukulele and she also composes songs (or, she writes at least one during the play, but y'know)

She seems to be very against cussing, just as much as Ocean is, and reprimands Ezra whenever he cusses throughout the play.

Penny is a pescetarian.

She goes on this insane cross-country trip with her brother to the US, and whenever they get to a new state she always recites how many endangered species they have there. I just thought this was cute, and very Jane-like.

So yeah, without getting too much into it, Penny throws hot coffee on this guy and uhhh, bites him? Apparently? The assault charges get dropped and she gets extradited back to Canada, but the story was leaked to the media and she was famous for a little bit.

The way Penny and Ezra got money to travel to the US in the first place was by selling his ADHD prescription meds, so she goes to trial for drug dealing, and gets probation (they don't specify how long she's on probation for in the play).

At the very end of the script, Penny states she'd like to say something about true love. I wanted to include part of what she said because it's quite lovely (and oh y'all can make so much fanfic with this); "In a world where we are ultimately alone, and die in our own arms, love is the closest you come to another person… because it is the closest you come to being another person. So be very careful what you love."

*this quote is apparently also in some versions of rtc, I assume as an easter egg of sorts.

Sorry this is so long. I love Penny Lamb a lot and I also think she's insane <3

[borderline-purrsonality]

“hey guys i know you’ve been oppressed for your attraction to the same gender like i know i know that was a whole thing and a lot of you are exclusively attracted to the same gender and have met oppression for it but like… have you considered youre kinda… exclusionary for it?? like what do you mean youre only attracted to the same gender? well everyones a little bit so you might be attracted to the opposite gender too!! also i think the fact that the label you use with a whole history behind it is too exclusionary. like what do you mean its only for people exclusively attracted to the same gender?? what about people attracted to the opposite gender?? we have many labels about being attracted to multiple genders but like… ehhhh i dunno tbh theyre not queer enough yknow?? like who would just call themselves bisexual? it only exists because the big mean evil lesbians used their evil magic to send us to the moon for 1000 years. lesbians should just be attracted to men tbh. its just a phase”

[compassionatereminders]

PLEASE share some of the bad advice from the early 2000s magazine I would love to also hate read

Once a girl was like "I think I might be a lesbian" and the answer was "don't doom yourself to a life of lesbianism already, most girls just kiss other girls in order to get attention, and you could get that attention in less problematic ways". I was literally fuming when I read it

[samble-movedd]

my biggest fear for madoka magica is they'll introduce another man who'll be semi relevant and people will ship him with kyosuke and that ship will be so popular that it'll overtake all the yuri ships because fandoms are so yaoibrained (probs won't happen tho i hope they NEVER introduce another man)

it really does irk me that even when sapphic couples are canon, they get shafted bc Men, even if they're background characters / placeholders. everything Has to be about men. like. mlm rep is good, yes, but there are so many examples of wlw couples who get ignored by the fandom bc of the guys, or even have them being lesbians ignored to ship them w guys. ive even seen, like, people who'll say shit like this (from a post by @homunyas):

like. both of these are nightmare scenarios for me. turbo sucks. half of the pmmm fandom is already weird and gross over them being kids or weird about homura, if there's a Main Guy i can only imagine that the tag will be filled w him, and i don't doubt people might also be like "homura (who has only ever shown interest in a girl, specifically madoka) should be with [dude]". and i am not a fan of such a concept.

[sapphic-boy]

You’re a grown adult. You’re not a lesbian. Log off the fucking internet you’re fucking embarrassing

....are u saying grown adults cant be lesbians

[curetapwater]

Flashback to when I was in 8th grade after recently realizing I was a lesbian, googling "how to get a lesbian girlfriend" and being met with results instructing straight dudes on how to convince lesbians to go out with them. And then I felt ill.

[butchladymaria]

spotting lesbophobia in fan spaces 101: a nonexhaustive list by an exhausted lesbian

this is a quick post i’m making in hopes of helping allies who might not know what to look out for when it comes to lesbophobia in fan spaces. others are welcome to add on — this is a subject way too broad and complex to cover in one post.

1. demonizing lesbians & lesbian characters

stating that lesbian headcanons are being forced on everyone else solely because they exist or are popular.

arguing that lesbian characters/headcanons existing somehow precludes all others (i.e. “oh so you’re saying just because a character is X, they HAVE to be a lesbian and no one else can be X!?!?”)

using “mean lesbian” stereotypes to demonize lesbians when they exist in fan spaces and/or discuss lesbophobia

playing the victim when people discuss lesbophobia

2. stating that there’s a “wrong” way to have lesbian headcanons

claiming that lesbian characters/headcanons don’t “make sense”

claiming that a lesbian character COULD still want to sleep with men, therefore the canon/headcanon is bad or wrong

gold star lesbophobic rhetoric (i.e. well they dated/had a crush on/looked at a man one (1) time so you CAN’T say they could be a lesbian!!!, or claiming that comphet doesn’t exist)

saying that a character “can’t” be a lesbian in general — unless the character is canonically another flavor of LGBTQ+ which can be erasure in some cases — there’s no reason they can’t be. they’re not real.

3. equating lesbians to men or man-haters

claiming the only reason lesbian characters/headcanons exist is because of “man-hating”

equating butch-femme dynamics with heterosexual relationships

equating lesbian attraction to heterosexual men’s attraction

claiming lesbian characters/headcanons are predatory solely for existing

4. diminishing the presence of lesbophobia in fan spaces

saying lesbians are being irrational or toxic when they discuss lesbophobia

claiming “fandom isn’t activism” means that lesbophobia or other bigotry cannot exist or don’t matter in fan spaces

claiming that lesbians are at fault for the bigotry they face by taking up space in fandom (i.e. “maybe if the lesbians weren’t so mean/loud/annoying/rude people wouldn’t hate on them/their characters/their headcanons so much!!!”)

[samble-moved]

if you really MUST defend the idea of "bi lesbians" and "trans man lesbians" you can do it without "sarcastically" saying you think gnc women aren't really women and calling other lgbt people "police" for disagreeing w you...

idk how to tell you but saying certain groups of women "aren't real women" as a "joke" is uhm. not good.

[guardsbian]

I feel like the reason people don't like man-eater as much anymore is because you made her a lot more evil in a very grimy way, like if flight rising had no rules you would make her a full-on rapist and sex trafficker or worse. and the people who liked for being Fun Evil don't like that. like past Maneater was just rude to ballpit vomit, a child. current man-eater would kill her and use her blood a. its not a bad thing, but its a thing.

tell me exactly why you'd think my masculine lesbian OC would be a rapist! quickly!

(also I desperately hope you're not associated with ballpitvomit's owner because it's pretty fucking scummy to drag someone else's character into hate about all this shit you just made up about MY character right now. get a fucking life you piece of shit lesbophobe)

[elysianmadness]

...you do realize that mspec lesbians want lesbians like you to like men, right? literally friendly firing rn 💀

Please tell me what I've done to imply that I'm on the side of lesbian separatists who have never had an actual problem in their life so that I can never do it again.

As for the "they want you to like men" thing, that's funny because the only people who have ever implied that I have to like men are lesbophobic men, or lesbophobic exclusionists like you who think that because I support mspec lesbians, I must be mspec too. Which is very telling of the way you view bi sapphics in relation to lesbians.

Not once has an mspec lesbian supporter told me that I have to like men. I'm not going to deny that it happens because I've seen it happen to others, but they're quickly called out. Where are you guys when biphobes are forcing men on bi sapphics? Where are you guys when separatists are implying that transfem lesbians are men?

And it's not friendly fire because I'm not on your damn side in the first place. I'll never be on the side of lesbian separatists. I'll never be on the side of people who want to exterminate bi sapphics because they're "too close to men." l'll never be on the side of lesbians who think that they're the only letter in the acronym that matters. I'll never be on the side of separatists who are obsessed with the taxonomy of queer labels.

I'll never be on the side of lesbians who arbitrarily gatekeep the lesbian label from a harmless group of lesbians when I was on the receiving end of that as a genderqueer lesbian only a couple years ago. In fact, I'm still on the receiving end of that, just less often. I still have to fight for my place in the community and fight to be recognized.

And it really gets on my nerves that you all haven't learned anything from the last 250 times you've tried to gatekeep our label. Especially to those of you who have been on the receiving end of that gatekeeping before but still have the nerve to do it to others.

Transfem lesbians, transmasc lesbians, he/him lesbians, nonbinary lesbians, aspec lesbians, GNC lesbians, xenogender lesbians, intersex lesbians, and lesbians of color have all been targets of exclusionary harassment campaigns, and some of you all learned absolutely nothing, turned around, and did that to other lesbians. It's the same made up reasons for why X group actually hurts lesbians. It's the same weird notions of lesbian purity that TERFs keep pushing. And you all keep falling for it every single fucking time like the sheep that you are.

So no, fuck you, I am not on your side just because I'm a mono lesbian, and I will actively push back against your gatekeeping because I am tired of dealing with the queerphobic bullshit in a community that I and other lesbians should feel safe in.

[charcolor]

i hate having to check OPs of jewish-centered posts now to make sure they're not zionists. i would like to spread posts by and about jewish people without supporting anyone who uses judaism as a justification for genocide (it's disgusting that zionists have forced judaism to be synonymous with themselves)

same goes for checking OPs of lesbian/feminism centric posts to make sure they're not just using feminism and lesbianism as fuel for transmisogyny.

of course it's antisemitic to assume all jewish people are zionists, and lesbophobic to assume all lesbians are TERFs. but unfortunately that is how zionists and TERFs present themselves and i have to check their blogs to make sure they're not fascists.

i don't want to say zionists aren't really jewish or TERFs aren't really lesbians because i think that's just a way of denying our own responsibilities to make sure our communities are safe for Palestinians and trans women (respectively, but also together)

incidentally on twitter i've also noticed a lot of TERFs are also zionists. not ALL of them, some of them are actually anti-zionist, but it's definitely an interesting trend i've noticed

[borderline-purrsonality]

Are people really just afraid of the word butch now. Do we have to make up words like “lesboy” and “lesbiaboy” because people are convinced butch is a dirty word. Yknow you can just call yourself butch right.