#they're the only lesbians to ever exist actually

[poppyflavour]

YURI STICKS o<-<

happy pride month yuri stiks <33 pardon my rarepair i like them a lot aaaa;;;

i made these with poppy and fett in mind (too scared to tag). and also acid dreams by MAX :)

[discjude]

Yeah this is about right (as always my thoughts are in the tags so there's actually kei content there lmao)

[electromains]

I simply think that white straight male incels shouldn't be playing genshin/hsr anymore and should just die afterwards

[airbenderedacted]

deathstar shippers stop going out of ur way to tell me you hate dominator being a lesbian and that you’re homophobic asf challenge (impossible, apparently)

[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*

[here-there-were-dragons]

my mother is absolutely convinced of some nonsense conspiracy theory that (in her words) "originally humanity lived in peaceful all-woman societies of goddess worshippers who took care of eachother and lived in harmony, while males were roving loners that had no society and never cooperated. that changed when the men banded together and overthrew the peaceful woman-dominated societies, and enslaved us all." and, according to her, this is proof that a woman-dominated world would be innately more peaceful, and that men are innately violent and evil and should be either barred from holding any legal power or leadership roles or at least should be (again in her words) "gelded like bulls" to remove their testosterone before even being considered for such a thing.

she also evidently believes that the problem with all religions today is primarily that they aren't "goddess worshippers", because she seems to think goddess religions are inherently peaceful and pure too and seems to be especially obsessed with "Isis" in particular. the very very few times she's openly considered it unambiguously bad for some population or another to have been exterminated (she's got a bad case of devil's advocating genocide brain), she's gone out of her way to make up some crap about how said people were a peaceful society of goddess-worshippers, almost always of isis. delusions of isis-worship seem to be the only thing that ever causes her to consider any arab or middle-eastern culture, society, or ethnicity to be relatively uncomplicatedly undeserving of extermination, in fact, because every fucking time she doesn't immediately start devils-advocating it and making remarks about how "the rest of the world should box them in and let them blow eachother up" it's when she's whinging on about how whatever specific micro-ethnicity she's thinking about are or were traditional persecuted isis-worshippers.

the sole major exception to her weird fixation on isis worship justifying worthiness of life is the whole israel thing going on, in which she has consistently made very obvious that literally the only reason she's against the genocide of palestine is because it gives her an excuse to even more openly hate jewish people than she already did. and honestly i'm not sure even that's true because i think she's made some offhand remarks about palestinians having probably been peaceful isis worshipers before the jews infected them with christianity or something anyway.

so for the last, however fucking long it's been i've been constantly having to listen to her go off about how this behavior is in the jew's blood or whatever and that they literally invented all genocide because somehow the concept didn't exist before them and wouldn't have ever been invented by the rest of humanity without those jewish aliens dropping it in i fucking guess apparently and she furthermore goes on about how every single genocide and mass-oppression movement in history is directly inspired by them, ESPECIALLY the nazis, and THEN i have to listen to her rant about how, basically, wwii was something they entirely brought on themselves by "dominating the economy and treating everyone not them like shit" and the nazis were just "using their own tactics back at them". and then she goes on a rant about how the people the original jews exterminated back in the day (aka the first ever genocide, which they invented, because jews invented genocide and hate according to her) in the middle east region were peaceful matriarchal isis-worshipers.

and then she starts making comments about arabs being backwards and palestinians either being mysogynist muslims that should be boxed in to blow eachother up with everyone else or secret peaceful isis worshippers corrupted by men's cruel hand, sometimes in the same sentence, entirely dependent on which group she's more in the mood to hate at the time.

it's exhausting. beyond exhausting. her sole purpose in existence seems to be to have the singularly most exhausting set of politics physically possible to fit into one person.

just, sometimes i think, if there really is anything at all to the incredibly stupid and inexplicably popular idea that anyone or anything has a Purpose tm to exist for, i feel like my mother's purpose is to be walking proof to me of a Type Of Guy That Is Real, cause i sure as fuck would have trouble inventing this mess if it wasn't standing right in front of me spewing confusingly bipartisan hate. all of her thoughts and opinions are these long winding nonsense chains that feel like if that man carrying thing sketch about the friend with confusing politics was a person. on meth.

[tainbocuailnge]

this is a final fantasy fourteen dawntrail post. it speaks incredibly for the desperation of the people of alexandria in its decline that they both couldn't bear to remember the dead and couldn't bear the thought of the dead no longer being remembered, and thus created this contradictory system where the dead are only remembered by something other than those to whom that memory is meaningful. so crushed by collective trauma and grief that they directed every effort to eradicating awareness of mortality altogether and it's resulted in a paradise where everyone is incredibly blasé about dying because the dead live forever in the cloud until they run out of spare souls and are completely paralyzed with fear of their own mortality.

but even more than desperation it speaks of a naive sincerity that the scientists and officials behind the project just actually genuinely built and maintained this giant memory database to preserve the deceased at increasingly large cost, rather than just lie that they totally did that to a populace who won't remember those deceased anyway. they're not harvesting souls to power the war effort while using a recreation of the beloved princess as puppet figurehead, they completely sincerely recreate the dead from their memories and simulate them living happily ever after, started by a sincere desire to not lose their beloved princess. living memory is an eternal theme park that actively goes out of its way to facilitate letting people who remember each other fondly meet again. it's the manifestation of a childish wish for a world where there are no partings, only reunions. it's a theme park rather than an actual city with a dmv and shit like amaurot was precisely Because it's a childish dream. it's fundamentally an artificial experience, but one which sole motive is to bring joy and relief from everyday sadness.

and sphene is the first and most prominent victim of that naive sincerity. she's the mascot of this theme park, and because she's the mascot in charge of providing this artificial but kind experience she can't ever break character. the people of alexandria couldn't bear the thought of her being forgotten, so they created a memory of her that would last forever, but they also couldn't bear to actually remember sphene, so she's a mascot instead of a person. she loves her people, and they love her, but none of them can possibly understand the weight that love puts on her shoulders. the sphene we meet is fundamentally trapped by other people's deeply limited understanding of her.

it's so so so important to her character that she's a small dainty feminine woman that exists to take care of everyone emotionally and be loved by them for being so nice and sweet and loving, and when she tries to arrange some kind of secure future she ends up with an abusive husband who ignores her wants and needs for his own ambitions, and she is fundamentally unable to act outside this highly gendered framework. sphene reads like the commonplace tragedy of the straight woman to me to the point where making her in lesbians with wuk lamat is like. I can certainly understand wanting to grant sphene the sense of liberation and comfort that many lesbians themselves feel at the realisation that they don't have to marry men, so far be it from me to say anyone is wrong to do so. but it's kinda ignoring part of what her deal is for the sake of that comfort I think.

not that lesbians have never ended up in abusive marriages with men but sphene very explicitly does not have other options, part of the tragedy is that you fundamentally cannot actually grant her that liberation and comfort. cahciua explicitly says there's no way to know what the real living sphene would have done because this sphene is a recreated memory of the beloved princess whose job is to sustain living memory. their darling sphene who will always listen to all their troubles and is always nice to them and will always take care of them. she's literally trapped by the role society assigned her, and that role is essentially to be their tradwife mother. the living sphene may have been into women, but the people who recorded her to create the sphene we meet never even considered the option.

do you guys know that tweet thread where OP describes going to a funeral for a woman they didn't know who'd died young of a heart attack, and the husband spent most of the eulogy talking about himself instead of his recently deceased wife, and by the end of the ceremony OP had learned nothing at all about what this woman was like beyond being a wife and mother? everyone fondly remembers the princess and queen of alexandria, but nobody remembers sphene. and just like all OP could still do for this woman was go to her casket and acknowledge that she too had been a full person in her own right before the stress of swallowing everything about herself killed her, all wuk lamat can really still do for sphene is think of her as the full person she must have been.

we're not told anything about what sphene was like as a leader, what her policies were, how she actually did her work, her vision for the future of her country before she died and was reconstructed. they only tell us everyone loved her so dearly because she was so kind to them. we're shown her dying moments and it's her using her airship to shield a civilian, so we can assume her love for her people was indeed true. but none of sphene's history that we're shown and nothing of how otis (who knew the living sphene) talks about her tells us anything about what she was like outside her role as beloved princess. her memories from after her "revival" are dissonant and corrupted and possibly not even real, and her policy of preserving living memory no matter what is a wish implanted in her by the people who reconstructed her. we don't even get to see what she looked like when alive. the only sphene the people know is the theme park mascot of living memory.

cahciua was exactly as erenville knew her and was true enough to herself to be able to turn against the system, so we're not given reason to believe any of the endless were tampered with. but sphene was already dead by the time they even tried to figure out how to preserve her memory, her actual soul and memories definitely long gone by the time the technology worked. we're explicitly told that nobody in everkeep really cared who or what sphene was as long as she adequately fulfilled this role of loving them all so much. she can't even tell you her favourite food, none of the people who labored so intensely and sincerely to bring her back bothered to write down even her most basic personal preferences when they reconstructed her. she has to deflect the question with "when I think of the people who make the food I can't pick just one" because the only preference she's allowed is loving all her people equally. she's completely thrown off that wuk lamat would even ask.

and it's precisely because she is remembered only as this kind loving woman who gave everything for her people that she is weak and powerless to actually do whatever it takes to keep them safe. she does not have the freedom to assert herself, let alone to be cruel or violent or take extreme actions. society does not give her that freedom, because she is a small dainty woman and (therefore) the only role allowed to her is to be their tradwife mother. so while her desire to protect her people is as real and true as it can be part of her plan to lobotomise herself in order to become someone capable of violence and cruelty also reads to me as that specific female frustration of wanting to destroy the sweet babygirl image of yourself by doing something extreme. like britney spears shaving her head. but in sphene's case destroying the babygirl image amounts to destroying herself completely, because the babygirl image of her is all that comprises her. and so when all is said and done the only fragment of sphene that is restored and lingers just a bit longer after that image is destroyed is the sphene that wuk lamat sincerely wanted to get to know.

[befemininenow]

My coming out as a trans lesbian. (A message to my followers.)

Yes, everyone. I am "gay", or should I say, I'm a lesbian.

This may come as a shock to some of you since I would talk about "hot men" and even make captions about attracting hunks and whatnot. If you notice an absurd amount of those kind of captions surfacing this past week until now, that's because I was dealing with comphet, short for compulsive heterosexuality. In reality, I do not like men nor am I attracted to masculinity.

Why until now? One, it’s because I wanted to wait for the right time to come out and it was coincidentally on Lesbian Visibility Day. Two, it’s something I've been questioning ever since I found out I was trans. This didn’t happen in a day or two. It’s been years and I would have thought I was just pansexual. However, I was not sure whether I genuinely liked boys or if I just liked their validation. It turns out it's only the latter and I was questioning whether I was really gay or just gynosexual. I admit that getting positive reception from them turned me on and I could see the kindness and affection they displayed towards other women (something that really made me euphoric). But the moment you would place me next them for more, say, intimacy (I'm trying to keep it PG), I felt that spark turn off. Don't even get me started when they're bare or worse, send me D-picks (it's so nasty).

Now, I've never did any of that IRL. But, I've tried to interact with them through social sites. Not just in Tumblr, but in other sites like Grindr. If you ever think of creating a Grindr to meet, don't bother. It's hot garbage! All of them were chasers and not a single one was attractive. Only one "guy" seemed to be "cute"; it was a femboy, who was commencing their transition into a woman. Those were the only men I thought I was attracted to, but the reality is: I was only attracted to their femininity, but not their body or intimacy. Femboys are still men and I'm not attracted to men.

That got me questioning: Am I really only liking people for their femininity or do I genuinely only like girls? To make a long story short, I've never felt so much better than imagining myself being the lovely girl... of another girl! I always loved women as a guy, but now that I'm about to transition, being into women as a girl feels so right for me! No more comphet for me!

I know this is not the norm on these kind of blogs as the majority tend to be attracted to masculinity. However, I do want to say that even trans lesbians exist on the feminization scene. That leads me to tell all of you for the next update: You won't be seeing anymore new straight trans girl captions after the first few days of the next month. That's why you saw those kind of captions bombard my blog these past few days. It's just my way of saying "Let me just get it done with". I'm actually glad you enjoyed them, but I just don't feel any connection to those kind of captions anymore. I'll try to upload them when I can since I've been busier than usual.

Anyways, I'm happy you read this very long post. Even if you're not a lesbian, I hope this note at least gives you an insight on not keeping your true feelings locked any longer. Everyone deserves to be themselves. You should too.

Sincerely, Nikki.

[yellowocaballero]

i very much enjoy the extremely scientific analysis of the naruto verse in which there are three genders, aka naruto, sasuke, and Woman.

AM I WRONG? AM I WRONG? pulls down projection screen and plays powerpoint

Obviously let's give room for nuance. A ton of Naruto characters don't fall into these gender norms. This does predominantly apply to the rampant proliferation of the three-person dynamics that were assigned by the government and dictate your entire life. And, like, society. It does not end. Gender isn't a biological factor in Naruto, it's a social dynamic constructed entirely by your homoerotic tension with other men. And there are so many.

Madara (S), Hashirama (N), Mito (W). Izuna (N) and Tobirama (S) - tragically, Izuna died before women could be invented. Sarutobi (N), Danzo (S, horrifically) - see above about women not being invented yet. Jiraiya (N), Orochimaru (S), Tsunade (W). Yahiko (N), Nagato (S), Konan (W). Obito (N), Kakashi (S), Rin (W). Shisui (N), Itachi (S), that little deeply unimportant girlfriend (W). Um, fucking, Naruto (N), Sasuke (S), Sakura (W). Even - even, fuckin, Rock Lee (N), Neiji (S), Tenten (W).

And what do they all have in common????

(OT3. They're all OT3s. Is what I'm saying).

There is some room for alternative gender expressions here, like being butch or femme. Naruto gender expressions: teacher, otouto, woman who you can't even tell is woman gendered because she has no backstory but you just have to kinda assume that she has a polycule-based backstory where she was Woman Gender. I feel almost as if 2/3rds of the Rookie 9 are liberated from this. InoShikaCho just doesn't fit (their chaotic cousin energy is just too strong and Ino's too much of a lesbian). Hinata's too busy being defined entirely by a different throuple's N to have codependent dynamics with her own N and S (and I'm hesitant to even say that, since I actually don't know if Kiba and Shino have a codependent rivalry - do they?).

I get, like, the reason for all of this. Curse of Hatred. Cycles. N and S Genders being sourced from demigods or something. Narrative parallelism. Sympathy points. It's not the bad guy's fault he's evil, his N and W gendered counterparts died :(. But an extremely strange side-effect of this is that all of the male characters are, like, Just Naruto or Just Sasuke. But the vast majority of the female characters are - like, completely defined by the men in their lives - but also they are more likely to be a unique person. Mito, Sakura, and Rin have actually nothing in common. Writing so sexist it creates more interesting characters?!?!

Unironically, this is why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the ship of all time, nothing will ever top it, you will NEVER do it like Sasunaru, etc. Every important relationship in the series is meant to evoke Sasunaru. (Notably, none of the explicitly romantic ones. But we're beyond such paltry understandings of the most iconic pairing of all time as fundamentally based in romance. We're operating on a higher level than that). This unbroken chain of toxic yaoi has culminated at the end point of Sasunaru, and it exists to parallel Sasunaru and define their relationship by the dysfunction of generations of tragedy. That's why Naruto has to consciously break the cycle and free them from the generational hate - it was the only way to save Sasuke. This is also why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the point of Naruto, and that the entirety of Naruto is about Sasunaru. Come back to me when your work has invented new genders in the all-encompassing pursuit of toxic yaoi.

This also means that the only truly gender non-conforming individuals in Naruto are its mightiest heterosexuals: Minato (W) and Kushina (N). Truly insane. The N/S/W configuration is the societal norm, it's bonkers to make a major good-aligned male character a wifeguy. By Naruto standards Minato and Kushina are the only queer couple.

[lesbianrobin]

what's so fascinating about eddie to me is that like almost every problem in his life is a direct result of his own decisions but they're all decisions that don't even seem like decisions to him. like he has this mindset where there are certain things he Must Do or Should Do and then he never really stops to be like but do i Actually have to do this. Why am i actually doing this. who does this benefit and How. and that's a mindset which is like a perfect storm for compulsory heterosexuality. like eddie is a lesbian magnet and he's not a remotely bigoted guy but he struggles So Much with challenging his own entrenched beliefs about like love and masculinity When Applied To Him.

and i think what's hardest for eddie is like. if he accepts that he's gay then he has to reevaluate all of these past choices he made and accept that he basically never once did what He wanted to do and he made most of the big decisions in his life out of a sense of obligation. like the Only thing he ever did for himself was moving out to LA to be a firefighter and even then he sorta went to LA specifically because of shannon. and how the hell do you accept that yknow how do you look yourself in the mirror and say yeah i spent the first thirty years of my life and an entire marriage and my son's entire life just going through the motions of what i thought i was supposed to do and it didn't even WORK it just made literally everybody miserable. i am mourning an idealized marriage that not only never existed but never even Could have existed. did i waste and ruin the painfully short life of a woman i loved? have i been hurting my son by pretending to be something i'm not for his entire life?

like eddie's already king of hating and blaming himself for everything but in a way that's far easier to stomach i think than the can of worms he'll open when he realizes he's gay. and that's why he's continued to repress it for so long.

[olderthannetfic]

I have really mixed feelings about the small proportion of F/F fiction (original or fanfic), because yeah sure, people have their desires, they should write what they want, I get it. It all works out when I hear it from person to person. But somehow the logic only ever applies in one direction? "There are more male protagonists because men only care about male characters! Women also mostly care about male characters, because that's the majority of characters they get!" And then somehow we also yet kvetch when men write female characters (because it's incorrectly or something, nevermind if women are writing male characters correctly). Why don't we expect gay men to feel compelled only by femslash for the same reasons (but gender swapped) as the lesbian slashers/fujoshi? All of those very rational justifications are applied selectively, "for me for not for thee," and it all only leads to "idk I just don't wanna write femslash", for Reasons. Do we get to call them microaggressions yet?

--

No, you don't get to call other people's fantasy life a microaggression.

That is indeed "for me but not for thee" in the sense that you get to want what you want but other people aren't supposed to follow their id.

Do you also police gay men who spend too much time on drag and obsessing over female divas? That's an actual real world behavior that's somewhat equivalent. It frequently goes unchallenged, at least by progressives, because men are allowed to do whatever they want with chick stuff, while women are "stealing" if they dare to stray into dude stuff.

(God, I've seen so much more policing of drag kings being ~problematic~ for acting out stereotypical gender than policing of drag queens for the same. It's nuts!)

Fujoshi are often queer, but it's absurd to think we're mostly lesbians. We tend to be bi or asexual women with gender stuff going on, though there is a mix of everybody, including lesbians. There are also a lot of AFAB non-women who get lumped in with us. On the rare occasions I find a man willing to admit to being a similar demographic, he usually does like gender play in his hobbies and entertainment. It's just that men face even more pressure than women do to fit into tidy categories. Bi women get told we're whores. Bi men are told they don't exist.

Yes, I know plenty of lesbians who write more m/m than f/f, but in the big picture of all of AO3 or all of fanfic or all of media, they aren't the demographic driving these numbers. They're vastly outnumbered by the bi women, the asexual women, and the straight and gnc women.

The men we should be looking at as an equivalent aren't cis gay men but bicurious soy boys and the like.

Do most of us fujoshi object to equivalent men doing an equivalent thing? I've seen it sometimes, and I agree it's hypocritical. I'd like us to afford men the same ability to play and take on identities in their art. I remember enjoying Ranma fandom back in the day and reading quite a lot of f/f that was probably by men. It had some of that same sense of distance and fantasy that I so enjoy in m/m aimed at fujoshi. (I do consume some by-cis-gay, for-cis-gay content, both m/m and f/f, but it's often too literal and too bound up in specific named identities for my taste.)

On average, the people I see complaining most about men producing f/f material are the same people who think that because I have a clit, I should center my life around women exclusively. In other words, people spouting radfem ideology, perhaps on purpose or perhaps without realizing.

I do agree that some of the ways of expressing a lack of desire to write femslash can get pretty douchey. I want us to move away from some of the less accurate ones like "There are no compelling female characters" because of this.

But the reason for all these jerkass explanations is that women and people perceived as women who like m/m are constantly asked to explain ourselves. These aren't usually microaggressions: they're openly hostile. People get defensive and try to answer with important-sounding reasons about identity and pain because society at large won't accept "I like this" as the true explanation.

Pleasure is never enough of a reason for a woman to do something.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

it hurts me. the parallel of Charlie at the start of ep 1, so excited about showing her plans for the hotel to heaven she doesn't see how VERY NOT excited about it Vaggie is (cough angel kicked out by heaven for not doing enough murder cough cough), even while getting literally up in Vaggie's face.....

and then Vaggie, when Charlie comes drooping home after that all crashed and burned spectacularly- now it's VAGGIE so excited to show CHARLIE the new and improved hotel commercial she got everyone to make while Charlie was away... now it's Vaggie, up close and basically physically pressing her excitement into her girlfriend, not seeing how utterly crushed Charlie is right then

like, clearly Vaggie expected the heaven meeting to not live up to Charlie's hopes for it. Clearly she REALLY wanted to have something GOOD AND HOPEFUL for Charlie to come home to afterwards

-which would have worked too, if the Extermination schedule update hadn't interrupted the commercial airing

look at how habby Charlie was finding out about the commercial

awww

"heaven isn't homophobic" well then what do you call them interrupting this lesbian's hard won cheer-up-the-girlfriend effort huh? what was that then. not only cruel but also an insult to us queers everywhere. one of the only real sins we ever see in the show, tbh

but gods, they give each other so much CONFIDENCE, chaggie and the mutual "I can do this for her" / "She thinks I can do this and I will" synergy...

and it keeps fucking their relationship up. GODS

how they mirror and act like they're trying to literally meld into each other, while both being So Bad at actually SAYING when and why they're upset about something Serious-

when they're also clearly wanting to share SO MUCH of what they feel specifically with the woman they love!!!!

and how that sometimes blinds them both, over and over again, to the moments when (ironically) their other half needed them to be a little less sure, for a second, that things are or would be okay. Share less of their own conviction, that they got from the other one in the first place

When instead of needing answers to the obvious problem, they both needed to be asked hey IS something wrong? is there ANOTHER problem here actually??

they both put so much of themselves into each other, they both rely on the other one for their sense of self-worth and the strength they need to be The One Who Get Things Done and The One Who Always Has A Plan

that's so DELICIOUSLY fucked up. the flip side to love,

(Vaggie freaking out feeling her existence is pointless while thinking she's failed Charlie, and Charlie losing so much hope just at the thought Vaggie might not really love or believe in her)

when someone else is walking around with your heart beating in their chest because you yourself put it there

heck, their resolution in s1 ISN'T even them hashing things out or communicating better! they don't NEED that- (yet) they JUST need each other! (soooooo fucked up I LOVE it) the thing that brings them back together is Vaggie fully letting go of her angel past to focus on her life with Charlie and tapping back into her whole self for first time since meeting Charlie, it's Charlie the singer and giver of heartfelt motivational speeches having her mind blown by words meaning less than actions as her partner who lied to her is also off right that moment doing everything she can to protect what they've built

the big moment is NOT them actually TALKING about what happened or why it happened. it doesn't matter!!! (to them) Their hurt came from being scared of losing each other, they meet up at the hotel gates and just seeing the other one there is Enough!

they happily return to status quo minus some secrets and plus some more confidence in what they have.... which means the rest of this stuff, the root cause of it all, the unaddressed subtext that they NEED to be fucked up together in an active, intentional, KNOWING way but are so good at inspiring and supporting each other that it just, doesn’t, happen..... that's all still there.

(i see you, Charlie sitting alone with your story of hell book and being shocked at your long time girlfriend coming up to your shared room, being around to see you sad, you putting on a smile and trying to wave it off bc yeah she's right you AREN'T alone anymore. technically)

(i see you, Vaggie asking to be left alone on a rooftop so you can deal with a devastating blow to your whole sense of self as 100% unintentionally dealt by your loving girlfriend who WANTS to be there for you through this but who YOU can't face until you're ready to shoulder the blame and apologize to her)

(i see you both trying so hard to help each other and not letting yourselves be helped)

(because no clearly you don't need it, clearly this is all already so much better that what you used to have and you're doing so much better, and what if you're still not good enough for it actually-)

chaggie is so happily, catastrophically entertwined and i hope they spend the next thousand years suffering through it together

[aceing-on-the-cake]

Compulsory Heterosexuality Info Dump

So because a friend of mine didn't know what comp het was and their internet history is monitored by their parents so they can't just use google, I'm doing a very quick research dive and giving you guys the results in case there are others out there who are in the same situation. I'll also be tagging blogs bigger than me because again, there might be fellow queers out their who are in the same boat as my friend and I want them to have access to this information.

So what is compulsory heterosexuality (or comp het)?

Comp het is in essence the societal belief and enforcement of being straight.

What does this mean?

In basic form it means that the only options presented to everyone, from the moment of birth, is that of a cis, amatonormative, heterosexual lifestyle.

You are given two gender options, these gender options determine the two roles you're allowed to fulfill, husband and wife, and you are told that these two roles are what will make you happy and are what you are supposed to strive for.

Meaning society, if you are born AFAB, tells you you're going to one day get married, it's going to be a boy, and this is what will make you happy. Almost everything in life is then seen through this lens. How attractive your are, how you are supposed to talk, how you're supposed to behave, etc is all considered through the lens of if a man will be attracted to you.

On the flip side, if you are born AMAB society tells you there are roles you have to fulfill as well. You are told you will one day want a wife, that you have to be able to have a job to provide for her, that you have to behave in a certain emotional way to be strong for her, that if the things you like are too feminine well then you're gay or a girl which is a problem because at the end of the day you're supposed to want the girl-fiance-wife.

This literally just sounds like the patriarchy.

Yes, it does, because it's caused by it. Nowadays people commonly know about compulsory heterosexuality from the Lesbian Masterdoc, but the term actually originated by Adrienne Rich in 1980.

Adrienne Rich in her article Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence put forward three ideas, 1) that heterosexuality and lesbianism were institutions themselves/possible political ideologies, 2) that heterosexuality as a system if not constantly maintained and upheld would eventually crumble and 3) that heterosexuality as a system could be opted out of and actively fought against whether or not you were actually attracted to women/non-women.

This is very different from the way we currently think of and define those terms, I am aware of that, but her point does still stand to some degrees that comp het, cisnormativity and amatonormativity all crumble when we stop rigidly enforcing the structures that uphold them, i.e., the patriarchy, misogyny, classism, and racism.

Ok but like what does that actually look like?

It can look like a lot of things, for a lot of different people. In the Lesbian Masterdoc you see comp het presented from a straightforward lesbian lens (of a 19 year old figuring out and defining their own sexuality guys, I'm not gonna sit here and critique it and rip it to death, go do that somewhere else).

This is therefore presented through things like women/non-women who were raised/socialized as women possibly having crushes on men, but they're always unattainable in some way (celebrities, fictional, someone real but they wouldn't actually ever be able to truly be in a relationship with, etc). It might also show up for lesbians as liking the idea of a man but being uncomfortable when one actually wants to move forward in the process. Or even sometimes it might show up as sexual fantasies with men but they're faceless, they're more an idea, or you're actually viewing another woman sleeping with him.

This presentation of comp het has made a lot of bi/pan/mspec people uncomfortable because they feel they too have experiencing comp het and when reading the Lesbian Masterdoc it's presented as if experiencing this is a straight shot towards being a lesbian.

And they're right that comp het isn't experienced by just lesbians. For mspecs who present feminine/as women this could be in the feeling that they have to dress a certain way to be presentable, but presentable is based on appealing to men. This can mean something as simple as women are expected to wear makeup, always, regardless of if they're looking to seek men's attention or not, because that's the base standard.

For mspecs who present masculine this can look like the inability to express themselves in an overly emotional manner because that doesn't make them "strong" and if they're not "strong" then they won't attract women, and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

For mspecs in general that can look like their queer looking relationships to be seen as a phase even if their mspec-ness is respected because of course they're eventually going to get married to a man/woman.

This can affect polyamorous cishet people in that they're seen as doing heterosexuality wrong because you're supposed to have the one partner and the 2.5 kids.

This can affect aspecs because they're told they'll never truly feel fulfilled if they don't have that boyfriend/girlfriend/partner to love them in a way that's so special nothing else could match up.

This affects all of us guys is my point.

How is this helpful to me?

Well for sapphics and lesbians (or sapphics/mspecs confused on if they are actually lesbians) this can be a helpful concept to consider because it can help you determine what relationships you truly want to pursue, which is the main point I feel is to be gained from the Lesbian Masterdoc. As she's put it "it's way more important to ask yourself if you can be truthfully happy with a man than if you’re attracted to them"

So if you're a sapphic who experiences attraction to men but you honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider the idea of comp het.

If you're Achillean the opposite of this can be true, if you've been attracted to women before but honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider whether comp het is working on you.

For mspecs this can be a helpful term to throw over the table back at your parents when they ask when you're going to get a "real relationship".

This can be a helpful term to consider when asking "am I forcing myself to wear mascara because I feel this is the only way I look presentable or do I actually like mascara."

Or it can be a helpful concept to look back on when undermining our internalized ideals of misogyny, towards ourselves and others.

This is a helpful term to put in our tool boxes to talk about the harm the systems of patriarchy, classism, and racism impose upon us.

Comp het can help us to understand why so many people look down on polyamory as a legitimate way of life.

It can be a helpful term for aspecs who are trying to figure out if they really want to date/have sex, or if they just believe these are the only things that will make you happy.

In general

Compulsory heterosexuality is just another term to describe a system we are all intimately familiar with. But by giving us the words to describe our experiences, it gives us the power to communicate those experiences more effectively, and to possibly understand why we're experiencing them.

This is just a bare basic knowledge post.

Honestly if you have the ability to, as in your internet history is not monitored in the way my friend's is, I encourage you to go on the deep dive through the sources listed below. Many of them are honestly only 30 pages long, that's a relatively short read, and understanding queer theory like this not only helps you to understand your own identity, but the ways in which you are connected to the rest of the fellow queer community.

Sources

Lesbian Masterdoc

Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Normativities Defined

Taglist

I'm tagging blogs bigger than me so that this has an easier time getting passed around as I mainly talk about aspec issues because I am aspec, but as stated above, I wanted to make sure that queer people who's internet histories are monitored and are only able to find information through tumblr safely could do so.

@our-queer-experience @our-sapphic-experience @our-lesbian-experience @our-aspec-experience @our-polyamorous-experience @our-pansexual-experience @our-unlabelled-experience @our-aroace-experience @our-mspec-experience @our-questioning-experience @our-bisexual-experience

[willalove75]

stop simping over women and pay attention to your husband. You clearly made your choice to be with a man and have his child rather than choose a woman. You bisexual women don’t get to exist in lesbian spaces when you lean towards men. Unless your husband lets to you step out on your marriage or lets you have delusional thoughts that any lesbian would want a woman knocked up by a man. You bisexual women who lean more towards men or are with men have no right to be in sapphic or lesbian spaces. And lady d is a lesbian so as if she would be with someone who let a man touch them let alone knock them up.

Oh, I'm sorry, did my husband tell you that I'm not giving him enough attention? Didn't think so.

Yes, I made a choice to be with him, because I fell in love with him. Because he's my best friend and my biggest supporter in everything I do (yes, he even supports my writing and fics and he tells me often how proud he is of me). I did not chose him because he's a man. Truthfully, his gender had absolutely nothing to do with why I married him. I just happened to fall in love with and marry a man, but that does NOT make me any less of a bisexual woman.

"You bisexual women..." and people question whether or not bi-erasure is a thing, meanwhile, this entire ask is such a great example of just that😒

"delusional thoughts that any lesbian would want a woman knocked up by a man." is truly offensive to not only every bi woman who has been with a man, but any woman who has. What about the lesbians that got pregnant by men?? Because this may come as a shock to you, but it does happen. It may not happen a lot or often, but it does. Does that mean that those women are "tainted" or "ruined" also??? No it fucking doesn't, you idiot.

It really makes me laugh when people try and use a fictional character to make a real life argument. You want to know why? BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT FUCKING REAL!!! So honestly, you have absolutely no idea if that's true or not because she's a fake fucking character from a video game. Are you also this upset at the fic writers who make her trans??? Or what about fic writers that make Alcina's partner trans??? Or are you just that much of biphobic person and this is the hill you're choosing to die on?? Either way, you're an actual bigot.

This post just SCREAMS biphobia and bi-erasure and it's fucking gross. You are so very obviously projecting your own issues and insecurities in this and honestly I would be embarrassed if I were you. Because not a single thing you said is true AT ALL or holds any merit.

Bisexual women who lean towards men or who are with men ABSOLUTELY do belong in those spaces. Just because a bisexual woman is married/with a man or leans towards men does not discredit or change their sexuality. No bi person automatically becomes straight if they date/marry the opposite gender or become gay/lesbian if they date/marry the same gender. It's called BIsexual. More than one gender. You do not get to invalidate every bi person with this shitty (and inherently wrong) opinion.

I know you wrote this trying to get a rise out of me, and congratulations because you succeeded. But I also know that people like you leave messages like this because they feel so broken and hurt and shitty that they want others to feel like that too. Unfortunately for you, I grew up in the era that birthed anonymous hate messages so you'll have to try harder next time. Not only that, but I am proud and confident in who I am and no pathetic anonymous (especially anonymous, you pussy) message is going to shake me.

I am a proud bisexual woman. I am proud to be married to my husband. I am proud that I will soon be the mother of a little boy who I will raise to be a much better person than you'll ever be. I am proud of what I've written and no, I will not stop.

[anxresi]

They're absolutely right...

...It's the writers that deserve the lion's share of the backlash, for poor, innocent, boring-as-hell Zoe is merely a tool of the oppressor, aka Mr Astruc. What's being oppressed, you may well ask? Well, interesting storylines, proper continuity, two-dimensional personalities... I could go on. Everything that makes a show compulsive and rewarding viewing that Miraculous Ladybug conspicuously and utterly lacks in every department due to his increasingly destructive machinations, basically.

This pink-streaked plot device masquerading as a serious character can (along with another equally pointless individual called 'Soquerline' who was so unmemorable I almost forgot she was ever a thing) exists for one reason and one reason only: to diminish Chloe's relevance and role in the show to the sum of precisely nothing. Well after S5, job done I guess guys. Well done. Well done indeed. (Although apparently not... they're bringing Miss Bourgeois back for more torture in the London 'special'. Guess Tommy Boy just can't keep away from his favorite punching bag, can he?)

The irony is though, having such a super-sweet but dull-as-ditchwater Mary Sue to replace a well-established and multi-layered person such as Chloe actually sends out a seriously awful message. Why? Because if I was a bad kid and saw S1-3 Chloe, I'd think 'what a fascinating redemption arc, I can inspired by that and do better.' But after seeing S4-5 Chloe and what an arguable downgrade as a replacement the incredibly tedious Zoe is, I'd be more like 'well, obviously there's no point in trying to be good, because you'll probably turn into a psychopath overnight with no explanation in the middle of your genuine efforts to improve. And if what the show is presenting to me as the ideal for a teenage girl to be is the waste-of-blank-space that Zoe clearly is... then a life of deliquency sounds more tempting with every passing minute! Now, where did I put my spray can?'

The most shameless aspect to this whole argument though, is by those trying to paint the hapless Zoe as some kind of lesbian icon. Pardon? She got a plot-mandated crush on Marinette in one episode and somehow that makes her insipid and needless presence an asset for the gay community? Somehow a few people have got it into their heads if you 'dare' to make someone non-straight in cartoons these days you deserve a big pat on the back for that 'risk' alone. WRONG. They should also be fleshed-out, complex, necessary characters whose sexuality isn't just define them or deflect from deserved criticism as to what the hell they are doing there if they turn up in the middle of proceedings with no prior explanation. See: The Owl House for how it's done.

And that's all Zoe being gay is... an irrelevant trait Mr Astruc can point to cynically and say ' you're a bigot for disliking her whatever your reasons are, so I'm not listening to you' instead of engaging with the actual argument which is SHE IS NOT AND WAS NEVER NEEDED IN THE SHOW. Everything you required to make Chloe the brilliant character she could've been was RIGHT THERE in the script but you CHOSE to rub it all out and scrawl some hastily scribbled doodle with no personality other than being 'very nice' in her place. A tragedy. The worst case of self-vandalism I've ever seen. No wonder Jeremy Zag wants to start from scratch with his rebooted movies. More power to him, IMHO.

Needless to say, nearly all the above in the quoted post about her father loving her (we haven't met him yet, it's DEFINITELY not Andre Bourgeois, his name ends in 'Lee' for a start) her supposed growth (the only 'growth' she's had is when she turned into that giant golden Chloe after being akumatized) her alleged pansexuality (all in the desperate mind of the OP) her 'abusive' family (I think you'll find Chloe had it FAR WORSE over the course of the show in that regard, so why not idolise her?) is complete bunkum. and to be frank I couldn't compose a much delusional post if I tried. Sometimes I wonder: what planet are some people on to reach such implausible conclusions? I don't understand it, I'll never understand it and quite frankly I feel quite sorry for the arbiters of such risibly deluded takes.

Last but not least though, we have...

Now this I ALSO agree with 1000%. And I know just the place to 'flush' her... ;)

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 2

Propaganda Under Cut

Annabeth Chase

I feel like fandom is kinda split on her with percabeth shippers loving her but any m/m shipper I've seen does not like her, really. She is my bae tho <3

Percabeth antis grind my gears so much because they never hate Percy, nono, even though he's arguably done more questionable stuff than Annabeth. Not everyone who hates her is doing so because of a mlm ship— the Perachel stans claim that Annabeth is a misogynist. However, basically everyone that isn't trying to ship her boyfriend with Rachel is trying to ship him with Jason, Nico, or her old friend Luke. They make her out to be this horrible abusive girlboss(derogatory) that she's simply... not. She doesn't insult Percy for having ADHD just because she's highly intelligent. She doesn't physically abuse him, and doesn't lay a finger on him outside of training. She's really devoted to him in a non-anti-feminist way. They just hate her for 'getting in the way' of Nico's convoluted attraction to Percy, or Jason's close friendship with him, or Luke's rivalry with him. But those relationships all flourish the way they were intended by the author: non-romantically. It's not Annabeth's fault for being intelligent or capable or jokingly snide or determined or any of those non-stereotypically-feminine qualities. She's just out here existing and people hate her for not being a man. Sorry for the rant.

She's canonically in a relationship with Percy Jackson for most of the books they're in, but he often gets paired in canon with other male characters, such as Nico di Angelo or Jason Grace. In fan fiction (especially yaoi focused ones) she's characterized as being a stuck up know it all, but she gets into plenty of shenanigans in canon and can be pretty goofy and sweet!

Sakura Haruno

Her husband is gay and her author doesn't know how to write women. So many people say she's the worst but she. DESERVES. BETTER!!! Save her from this franchise.

My baby girl my bestie my best friend. She committed the crime of um being written by kishimoto who both doesn’t know how to write women and somehow writes men in the gayest way possible specifically naruto and sasuke. Like the thing is naruto and sasuke ARE gay and also she gets so much hate for the crime of kishimoto writing her one dimensionally in love with sasuke. I know her personally she is a butch lesbian to me just trust me she’s in love with Ino and has a lesbian thing going on with Karin okay just trust me. My everything. She needs to divorce the loveless lavender marriage she’s in 

What is there to say, even? The OG Threat to my 90s anime brain, the only woman I've ever hated with such a passion she made me turn away from the color pink. I used to write fics with my friend where she got left behind on purpose so our OCs could join the Naruto and Sasuke team instead. I loathed this bitch until I was 16 and realized the author simply couldnt write women and decided it was time to make peace with Sakura. It is not her fault she's vaguely written and obsessive over Sasuke. She deserves better. Sasuke and Naruto still should be together and Sakura shouldnt be with Sasuke but I no longer believe this because I hate Sakura, it is because I love her. She deserves a spouse who will actually put in the time to treat her like the hero she is.