#mspec labels

[fixing-bad-posts]

[Image description: A tumblr post, edited blackout-poetry style to read, “lesbian is an umbrella term! Lesbians like women. you can be a guy and a lesbian. you can use he/him pronouns and be a lesbian, be nice”]

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lesbian 👏🏻 is 👏🏻👏🏻 an 👏🏻 umbrella 👏🏻 term! 👏🏻

Submitted by @lordchiefinjustice

[mr-weirdo-mcgee]

[anarcho-catboyism]

[theoneandonlyseth]

Me when a person seems really cool and I wanna befriend them but they have harmless groups in their DNI (like endos, contradicting labels, harmless paraphilias etc)

[contradictory-label-culture-is]

[elysianmadness]

"Lesbian means exclusive attraction to women!"

"No, it means non-men exclusively attracted to non-men!"

"It actually means queer attraction to women!"

"Lesbian means women and nonbinary people being exclusively attracted to other women and nonbinary people!"

Lesbian is a multifaceted label that can describe many different experiences. There is no one perfect definition of lesbian that will encompass the entire diverse experiences that lesbians can have.

I'm personally a genderqueer woman who's exclusively attracted to other women, but the lesbian next to me might be a transmasc lesbian who loves all genders except for men. And the lesbian next to them might be a bigender lesbian who's both a girl and a boy, who's exclusively attracted to women. Our experiences can all be described by the term lesbian if that's how we wish to describe it, but we might define it differently based on our own experiences. And guess what?

None of our definitions are wrong, but none of our definitions will encompass every other lesbian's experiences. A word can have multiple definitions without any of the definitions being wrong. And those definitions can be very vague or very specific. Labels are made to fit us- we aren't made to fit labels.

People who may have a different experience with the lesbian label are not your enemies. People in lesbian spaces who aren't exactly like you are not your enemies. The problem comes when you try to force one singular definition on every single lesbian. THAT is harmful. Sending death threats to other lesbians because they don't have the same experience as you is harmful. Not another lesbian having a different experience from you.

[snuuyfanged]

okay y'know what. fuck this shit it is 2025. fucking get over the fact that 'weird' or 'contradictory' labels exist and focus on actual problems the queer community faces already or fucking explode i'm so serious

[errrr-vent-blog]

"wait but how can that work ?" instead of asking how their queer identity works, and how can it be valid, maybe ask them their experiences. ask how it feels to themself being a mspec mono, or lesboy, or turigirl, or whatever. instead of getting angry at queer identities which dont fit your standard, just perhaps let it go and ask them as a person what their identity means to them. stop policing identities and open up your mind a little.

[fixing-bad-posts]

bi people like pansexuals

Submitted by @puppyenergy

[clownshrooms]

happy pride to everyone who uses "contradictory" labels. mspec lesbians, mspec gays, lesbigays, gaybians, velaurians, lesboys, turigirls, boygirls and girlboys, oriented aro/aces, cistrans ppl, and everyone else i didn't mention <3

[yourfavusescontradictorylabels]

YOU use contradictory labels (has this been done yet?)

YOU use contradictory labels!

[tgirlmouse]

i don't feel nearly as ashamed or hesitant to talk about my queer tgirl attraction to men as my tguy brothers would feel talking about their attraction to women

obligatory "if you're a trans guy and your attraction to women is het, that's real and okay! your trans experience isn't a monolith and other trans people being different doesn't make you different or wrong"

like, think about it: hardly anyone bats an eye when a tgirl uses grindr or calls herself a faggot, but as soon as a man calls himself a lesbian, everyone gets on his ass. anything for an excuse to shit on lesbians, i guess. it makes me angry that nobody sees this hypocrisy or these ties back to the lesbian separatism that infected the community post-70s. it's not gone, it never went away

this isn't exactly profound news to anyone who gives a shit about lesbian history. just something i find interesting

[contradictory-label-culture-is]

"LOVE" how people who are anti contradictory labels insist on people with contradictory labels being SOO straight and cisgender! Like yes you're SO right! The fact I had to come out to my mom, several times and the fact if I had a girlfriend It'd still be seen as a sapphic relationship no matter how bigender I am. Like yeah no one in my real life thinks of me as queer at ALL! (Ahem they do) And everyone else who has contradictory labels? They're so straight, like no queer experiences at all guys!!!

[smilepilled]

the return of the "bi lesbian" label from ancient <lesbian history> is good. here's why:

many people feel happy with that label combo for their own experiences within lesbianism and bisexuality.

it inherently hands sapphic bisexuality the right to coexist with its own history

it pisses off terfs and THOSE rad'fem's

happy final days of this year's pride month. remember that bisexuality is and will always be a part of multiple queer subcommunities, and it does not exclusively mean "liking both" (unlike what many queer exclusionists think). be you

🧡💛🤍🩷❤️💜💙

[pupiipawzz]

i love you homoflexibles, i love you heteroflexibles, i love you mspec lesbians and gays, i love you lesboys and turigirls, i love you transcis people, i love you pansexuals, i love you gaybians, i love you aroallos, i love you afab transfems and amab transmascs, i love you if your identity is contradictory or confusing or mistaken for another identity

post

[moonlightsapphic]

Reasons why someone may identify as bi lesbian (a valid identity!):

a bi woman who experiences rare attraction to men but never enough to date one.

a bi woman who was attracted to a man only once in her life, so he is like an exception.

a woman who is bisexual but monoromantic towards women, or biromantic but monosexual towards women.

a bi woman who is only attracted to non-men and occasionally fem men.

a bi woman who doesn’t date men and doesn’t intend to ever do so.

a lesbian who formerly was bisexual and now her identity has shifted, and she wants her label to reflect both.

a late-in-life lesbian who is married to a man but is comfortable staying with her husband because of their unique love/companionship.

a poly lesbian whose partner’s partners (whom they may rendezvous with) may rarely include men.

a lesbian who does not identify as “monosexual” or “monoromatic” despite only being attracted to non-men, since she feels that she is attracted to multiple non-men genders.

a lesbian in a relationship with a trans man.

a “straight” trans man who formerly identified as a masc lesbian and remains in a relationship with a lesbian.

a bi transmasc who prefers to date other transmascs as well as women.

a transfem bi woman who strongly identifies with centering her life around womanhood and wlw love.

a genderfluid lesbian.

a bisexual woman using the pre-separatism meaning of “lesbian”, back when it was an umbrella term for all sapphics.

… and many more!

*I use “woman” and “she/her” in these examples but this may apply to any genderqueer sapphics as well!

Yes, many of these experiences can be described by using one of “bi” or “lesbian”, rather than both in combination. Lesbianism includes many non-men genders and trans women! Bisexuality includes all genders including trans folks! Lesbianism is considered monosexual identity, but also in some ways multisexual, and “bi lesbian” is often used by those who strongly identify with being mspec. Labels are for our comfort in identifying ourselves and our lived experiences, as well as to accurately communicate our identities to others. We shouldn’t police them! Queer people are deviant and complex by nature! Rigid rules are for the patriarchy, not us. Labeling conventions are fully arbitrary and we should prioritise what will maximise queer folks’ happiness.

Folks spend a lot of (misplaced) energy hating on the label “bi lesbian” and want to eradicate it by claiming it is TERF propaganda—however that’s not very nuanced. There are queer elders who use this term—should we really have the audacity to tell them how to live? Ironically it’s gender essentialist in and of itself to try to put people in a box. We should remember that bisexuals and lesbians originally were all just “lesbians” (ie in the same way we use “sapphic” as an umbrella term today), and it was TERF rhetoric in second-wave feminism that resulted in lesbian separatism. A simple label used by a tiny minority can’t cause all kinds of scary lesbophobia, biphobia, and transphobia (as it is, endosex allocishetero people can barely tell bisexuality from lesbianism anyway and don’t know a thing about trans people either ;n;)—If it is a possibility, that’s our job as a community to fight back misinformation. :)