#unless they're actually being written or headcanoned as literal lesbians

[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.