#who was on this side of lesbian/sapphic social media last year

[woman-for-women]

Hello ! I was wondering if you had any YouTube creators you would recommend? I have really woken up and gotten into radical feminism recently and am finding it hard to find good trans critical videos that aren’t from right wing nuts 🙄 thank you for the help and your blog is amazing 💕

Hi, and thank you (sometimes I forget to say thank you when people tell me they love my blog).

Unfortunately, I do not really follow many YouTubers who are explicitly radical feminists/gender critical. My best suggestions is:

Sapphic Underground is a lesbian who reviews f/f media. She has a side podcast called Sapphic Talks that is explicity gender critical, but her main channel is fairly light-hearted.

Other than that, I don't have any recommendations. I'm of the same opinion that the YouTube radical feminist content is overrun with conservatives who believe there are two genders because God said so and also women should stay in the kitchen, left-wing YouTubers who read off tweets and Reddit posts to dunk on "TERFs", and self-styled political commentators like Shaun, Contrapoints, and Jesse Gender.

If you've just discovered radical feminism, it's a good chance to also center women and women's art, voices, and perspectives in your life. So apologies to soapbox for a minute and recommend some of my favorite female YouTubers (who are not radical feminists, I just like them and want to share them. I also got too lazy to link everyone, so sorry about that!):

Laura Kampf is a German lesbian who does all kinds of house renovation and building projects. Her 120-year old house restoration series is my reality television.

Nicole Rafiee for funny rants and more informal, chatty social commentary

Kasey Golden for wholesome and cute art.

Vewn for her unique and interesting animation style

cari can read because she summarizes Sarah J. Maas books in an entertaining way so I never have to pick one up (sorry to all my Sarah J. Maas enthusiasts, I still love you guys)

Kennie J. D. has a series called Bad Movies and a Beat where she makes fun of bad movies while doing her makeup. She's so funny and she just covered The Ultimatum: Queer Love

Natacha Oceane for fitness inspo.

withWendy does all kinds of cool sewing projects. I'd also recommend coorlipa and JENerationDIY.

Mina Le for fashion history and commentary

AmandaRachLee if you like bullet journaling

Kel Lauren does design! She takes popular brand logos and merchandise and redesigns them to make them look better.

Jenny Nicholson does fandom and media deep dives. She's a big theme park and Disney person. She has a great sense of dry humor and her 'The Last Bronycon: a Fandom Autopsy' is one of my favorite videos

Micarah Tewers for sewing videos, but also whatever the hell else she feels like, including a funeral for her pet rodent L'Trexa

ANJA for cool paintings and art

Sorry this list got so long, but I love to give a good shout out. If anyone has any good recommendations for anon, don't be shy! Reblog and drop some suggestions.

[kallmaker]

I Stand with The T - Public Thread

I Stand with The T - Public Thread preserved from the implosion of Bird Site. Trans people are part of this cis lesbian's queer family.

Why This Post

The post below captures a thread I released on eXTwitter on May 2, 2022.* It’s been roughly 18 months since and I wouldn’t change a word – except the misuse of “whose” in the second paragraph. My account there is dormant.

There are so many lies and intellectually dishonest “What Ifs” being told directly to us, by some of us, about our trans family. It’s their goal to make us feel as if someone else's rights come at the expense of ours. This is the antithesis of feminism and there is nothing radical about it. It's the same old same old same old.

As I've said for years, rights must be universal or they're not rights.

Sisters of the Pen who Shaped Me

My philosophy around these complicated issues comes from learning the words of Judy Grahn, Joan Nestle, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Dorothy Allison. And so many more. Their fortitude, brilliance, and ability to sit with complexity without being numbed or overwhelmed into inaction are beacons of unity and love in a fractured world.

I am also grateful to my younger kid, who says, "I had a wonderful girlhood and grew up to be a man." It's inspiring to see him pulling together threads of himself that weren't working well together and now increasingly are. His example speaks loudly to me, especially that when I ask what seems a simple question, his first response is, "Well, yes and no. A lot and only sometimes. I can't speak for everyone about that."

I can't speak for everyone about that. A reality that influencers on social media oft ignore when stirring up the coin of their realm: Anger and Fear.

I Miss the Sapphic Community of eXTwitter

Please follow me at any of these sites:

Facebook Threads Bluesky

  Over the past year, the sapphic community on the former Twitter became an oasis of normal in a vast morass of bigotry and "free speech" with the sole intent of bullying others into silence. The monkey-poo-barians were and are at the proverbial gates, which left me feeling anxious and unsafe though I was nearly always among friends.

Since the site has deleted accounts for mainstream journalists, non-partisan sources, and dissenting influencers who pointed out a business model now profiting off hate speech and violence, it's clear our presence there is merely tolerated, as if they simply haven't gotten to us yet. I'm not going back to living like that - it didn't feel good to be at or use the site anymore though I dearly care about the people there.

I posted my "Goodbye Twitter, it's not me, it's you" farewell in September of last year. I have copies of content posted there, and this is one thread that I simply didn't want to lose behind their paywall.

I Stand With the T Thread (unedited)

A thread about LESBIAN. It's long, sorry/not sorry. I #StandWithTheT, people.

I'm a 60+ cis woman whose been a lesbian for 90% of her life. It took me years to say lesbian without inwardly flinching. I fought to use the word and use it proudly. It's my power word.

It's because I have lived with my hard-won lesbian identity all these decades that I can't fathom NOT standing with trans and bi people now.

I didn't arrive at this understanding easily. It took work, help, and mistakes, all of which was worth it in every way.

In yesteryears, we had to make places to be safe. When you claim space, the world wants it back. So we put up walls for the safety of those on one side of them.

There is no wall that will keep out the future, especially a future you've helped bring about. And here we are.

To anyone trying to use LESBIAN as a brick in another wall: I have seen your kind before. You're descendants of the lesbians that told me how I *ought* to like sex or what I *ought* to read, and who I should shun and hate.

You're the same ilk as lesbians who coined phrases like "gold star" and waged forever tedious arguments about what a "real" lesbian is.

If you police other people's identities, you're saying it's okay for others to police you. I read that in the 80s, FFS.

I see you terrifying yourself with one-off examples of some dude who behaved badly to justify your malignant attacks on millions of people as well as your bad faith, intellectually dishonest hand wringing.

This peril you feel is not because a trans person wants to pee.

I get that it's easier to attack people - especially those who can't punch up - instead of ideas. It's easily monetized for one thing.

Fighting ideas means dealing with icky nuances and complexities, and I am right there with you wanting the world to go back to being SIMPLER.

Well, the world never was simpler.

Part of lesbian struggle and history has always been about ENDING gender limitations. Any way a woman can be is therefore the way women are, remember?

Marriage was withheld from same sex couples because of sex boxes on marriage license applications.

Jobs, education, credit, wages - all withheld from women because we were forced to mark F on forms, and that F was legally sanctioned way to police and enforce how we behaved.

The first person I heard argue that her sex did not belong on a job application was a butch lesbian.

Other feminists made this point too, but the emphasis on defying and breaking gender norms was all lesbian for me. I've been "refusing to state" whenever possible for decades.

The evolution of thinking around individual identity has grown exponentially with each subsequent generation. It confounds and blurs the ever-present rules about how any of us can be in the world. It is, in part, *OUR* doing. It. Was. The. Whole. Point.

I am completely aware of our struggles as lesbians, and I know how much heart, blood, sweat, tears, and loss went into creating a Lesbian Nation.

I honor that and was in the smallest way part of it. I am still L.A.B.I.A.: Lesbian Against Boys Invading Anything.

It takes nothing away from the extraordinary achievements of generations of activist lesbians to say our movement was not perfect.

We walled people out because of who they loved or because their journey to a queer life was different from ours. Also true: We changed the world with only our will and persistence because it wasn't like we had money. We fought for every scrap of space to breathe.

Other queer people need space to breathe.

Ask yourself who is making you feel as if it's YOUR air they are taking.

Spoiler: It's the same people it's always been. It's good for them if they pretend air is scarce and we fight over it.

This is an old lesson. Could all y'all hurry up with learning it?

Your attacks on the trans community in the name of lesbian solidarity and history betray both. Worse, they are attacks on yourself. The energy and anger you give to malice and lies about our trans family is coin in the pocket of the same people who WILL come for you next.

The same people who happily point you at the rest of us to make money and consolidate power are targeting trans people like they targeted "Adam & Steve" in the 00s, "Sluts" (women who refuse men) in the 90s, AIDS victims in the 80s, "Groomer" pedophiles in the 70s...

In the language of feminism, you are complicit in your own oppression. Your harm to yourself is harm to our entire community. It weakens all of us and makes it easier to send us back into closets to breathe the scarce air. Again, could y'all hurry up and learn this lesson?

For my trans and bi friends who are tl;dr, some lesbians use "lesbian" in an ugly way to be ugly to you. I know you can't afford to ignore them. You're not alone in having eyes on them.

It seems more true every day: we only have each other. You know you're a writer when, in spite of a boatload of compliments and reactions, all you can see is the misuse of "whose" in the very first tweet.

* Thread Info

URL: https://twitter.com/Kallmaker/status/1521311057544814592 You must be logged in to see it, otherwise the site will tell you the page doesn't even exist. Comments were generally positive though some not-feminists said some ugly things. If respectful discourse didn't work, I blocked them; you may see their comments if you view the thread.

[avasharpestan]

Supercorp Social Media AU: Betty in the Blue Prius

(Part 2) (Read on ao3)

(Reposting this on my new account because I may or may not be planning a part 2 👀)

Kara sucked in a breath as she saw that last comment. Lena Luthor.

Kara looked up from Alex’s phone, catching her sister’s eye across her small dorm room. Alex raised her eyebrows with an amused smirk, “Well? That was you on the way to my party last night, right? You were still singing that song when you arrived”

Kara shrugged in faux nonchalance as she looked back down at the screen, “that does sound like something I would do” she said as a pink flush rose in her cheeks as she clicks on Lena’s profile.

XXXX

Across campus in the NCU library, Sam Arias was chewing on the tip of her pen when her phone buzzed incessantly, her best friend’s caller ID smiling up at her once again.

Sam smiled with a soft sigh before finally putting Lena out of her misery.

She swiped at her screen and put the phone to her ear before saying, far too cheerfully, “hellooooo”

Lena, on the other end, was not in the same mood.

“Delete it.”

“Yes I’m great, how are you doing on this fine Sunday, Lena?” the brunette chewed her bottom lip to hold in a laugh.

“I’m serious Sam! Now the whole school is going to think I’m some useless, thirsty lesbian!” Lena huffed.

“Well, in my defence, that’s exactly what you-”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence or I swear to God I will end you”

Sam laughed and leaned back in her chair.

“Good luck with that, Luthor. You’ll never find me. I’ll always be one step ahead. I’m a ghost in the wind. Eat my dust as I escape your cruel, sapphic grasp-”

She was cut off once again but not by her friend’s words, but instead, her body dropping into the seat on the other side of her study table.

“-oh. Nevermind then” the pair hung up their call and Lena glared across the desk.

Sam leant forward, “look, it’s a harmless Facebook post, what have you got to lose?”

“My dignity?” Lena offered.

Sam shook her head, “Nope. Not good enough. You’ve been all mopey for like a year since the whole Andrea debacle. You deserve to move on!”

"I have moved on!” Lena exclaimed, a little too loudly for the library.

“Isolating yourself for months and throwing yourself into studying when it already took up your entire life does not count as moving on”

Lena was about to complain once again when Sam continued, “Who knows, maybe nothing will come of it? Maybe you’ll get a date with a hot blonde?”

“She was hot.” Lena agrees as her eyes start to glaze over, “great arms”

“Jeepers, how long were you looking at her for?”

Lena’s cheeks started to flush and she reached for her bag, ready to start this impromptu study session.

As she started emptying her books onto the desk, Sam’s phone vibrated once more.

Lena watched her friend’s face transform from furrowed and confused to sporting a devious smile alarmingly fast.

“What are you smirking at?”

Sam didn’t answer, she simply turned the phone screen to Lena and watched her rosy cheeks grow redder as she saw the messages:

[queersatanic]

Hey! I know you have probably mentioned this on your blog before but I've been scrolling through your TST tag for a while and haven't seen it. But what were you guys originally criticizing TST for that ended up in them claiming defamation? You don't have to answer but I'm really curious! Hail Satan :o)

If you saw the last post, their lawsuit actually includes as evidence of defamation excerpts of some of those very same news articles that were published years ago but now involved being critical of TST on what had previously been a local chapter page.

In addition, Medium articles were posted of people who had left and the social media of chapters that broke away in 2018, which apparently a lot of people hadn't been aware of before.

This Heresy Labs thread also goes into a lot more about the top leadership's history of associations with alt right figures and worse, like Tom Metzger, Mike Cernovich, and Stefan Molyneux.

It's been known for years that Doug Misicko / Doug Mesner / Lucien Greaves took part in a grotesquely bigoted 24-hour stream to announce the release of an edition of the proto-fascist book "Might Is Right" that Greaves had illustrated.

(Warning: audio is antisemitic.)

And apologists today say, "Well, that's a long time ago", or "that's all been dealt with already", or "but notice how Lucien wasn't the most racist person in the room."

They leave out that a decade later, Greaves set up TST with Shane Bugbee, the "not a drop of Jew blood" guy in that clip, and they both initially pushed to make "Might Is Right" be their foundational text before being talked out of it. Greaves has spent the last decade defending people like Milo Yiannopoulos, August Sol Invictus, and other bigots in the name of "free speech" even while shutting down speech internally, and minimizing the threat of Nazis while taking time to take potshots at antifascists. And membership has no power to hold leadership accountable because the structure is a hierarchical pyramid with no real recourse if those above you feel differently, no matter how many below feel differently. That was the issue with Greaves calling up Breitbart to overrule the SoCal chapter planning to protest Milo.

Additionally, they've called it "doxxing" to post links to the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office to show all of the other businesses that Cevin Soling (a self-described "secular Jew", so one of the good ones, per Greaves in that clip) owns under the name "Cevin Soling" and under the pseudonym "Malcolm Jarry". But, this has been known since at least 2014; the Church of Satan has documented it for years and not been sued; and it's tough to call the public information about a multi-millionaire real estate scion who owns multiple for-profit companies and has his own Wikipedia entry doxxing, innit?

It's actually kind of important to know who one of the two legal profiteers of TST—including the corporation that owns its headquarters—stands on stuff like desegregated public schools (homeschooling helps get away from schools overwhelmed by "heterogeneous populations") or people protesting against Israel (hint: not a fan).

In the scope of their whole lives and issues of concern going back decades, both Misicko and Soling's priorities for TST make a lot more sense.

That's probably more than you wanted to know, and some of the stuff we only found out after the fact because we had to.

The only good thing to come out of all this is that Punk Lesbian & Sapphic Memes' image is now part of the federal court record.

While in charge of social media for the Seattle/Washington State chapter and months of posting about how transphobia, white supremacy, and ableism were bad, or how TERFs were natural allies of Christian conservatives, suddenly we got the word that opposing those things was stuff that had nothing to do with Satanism.

So when we left with a couple of the social media pages and said, "Well, we are against fascism, white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and transphobia" and used our Satanic antifascism logo, they have now said both that it associated them with extremism ("ANTIFA") and that sharing news articles and other documents in the public record about their history was defamatory.

In their refiling, they are apparently trying to claim that our logo is derivative of them somehow, and are claiming that starting a Redbubble with satanic antifascism designs to try to pay for some of the legal costs was an intellectual property violation.

So from our side, it feels like Calvinball since every time we have to address something new, it costs us thousands of dollars, and they have much more money to draw on than we do.

[ruminantminds]

me, my dream, my desire, how it's killing me, like i laugh at it.

SIOBHAN BLAKE ( SHE / THEY ) is a NON-BINARY FORTY * year old TOWN MAYOR who has been living in Moorbrooke for THEIR ENTIRE LIFE. Right now, they are currently residing in ELMSETT GREEN. It has been said that they look suspiciously like ROSAMUND PIKE and if they had to choose a song to describe themselves, they would choose VOILA by BARBARA PRAVI.

                 * they were originally forty-one on the app but after working out the birth chart i have decided their forty-first birthday is the fourth of june ! just in case you want to plan birthday things for her <3

mun introduction ;

hi everyone ! i’m shannon, i’m a non-binary autistic lesbian, i’m twenty-one && i never fucking learned how to sleep ! 

BASICS —

NAME: siobhan adrienne louisa blake.

AGE: forty.

GENDER: non-binary.

BIRTH DATE: fourth of june, nineteen-eighty.

BIRTH PLACE: moorbrooke, maine, usa.

SEXUALITY: lesbian.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: married to alante patterson.

ZODIAC: gemini sun, aquarius moon, libra rising.

MBTI: enfp-a.

ENNEAGRAM: four, with a three wing.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: hufflepuff. 

THEME SONG: voila by barbara pravi.

FAVOURITE SONG: no plan by hozier.

OCCUPATION: mayor of moorbrooke ( 2020 - present. )

PAST CAREERS: english teacher at moorbrooke high school ( 2004 - 2020. )

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree in literature at yale university, the only period of time they’ve spent not living in moorbrooke. 

DREAM JOB: senator for maine.

PARENTS: ciara & severin blake ( deceased. )

SIBLINGS: none.

SPOUSE: alante patterson ( m. 2015 ; together since )

PETS: two cats, vita && virginia.

PREDOMINANT TRAITS: wholesome, compassionate, ambitious, unconventional, humanitarian, self-critical, discerning, sociable, curious.

BACKSTORY —

apart from a few years at yale, siobhan has never lived away from moorbrooke. it’s where she was born, it’s where they were raised, it’s the place where she feels most at home. it’s filled with the people who watched them evolve into the who they now confidently are. but growing up with parents with massive expectations was never easy. 

because while they moved from new york, severin blake’s old money attitude never left him behind. 

( tw: fertility struggles ) and with old money, conservativism often follows. this is no exception. siobhan spent most of their childhood trying to be the golden child their parents wanted, even when it felt wrong. hopeful that some other sibling would come to take some of the weight off their shoulders, it never came to fruition, and she was their only child. severin blake — french-american businessman’s — only legacy.

siobhan was always more compassionate than their parents. when new people came to the town, she would always try to offer them a leg-up, no matter who they were, why they had come, or how long they were planning to stay. they had no issue playing chameleon to make others comfortable: wasn’t that what she’d always done, regardless? 

this rang true when alante patterson came to town. a few years younger than her, split from her siblings in the foster system, it just made sense for siobhan to try to be the other girl’s constant. the beginning of a close relationship that still runs stronger than ever, thirty years later. 

alante was always refreshingly honest, and always made siobhan feel safe to be . . . themselves, even if they were pretending to everyone else.

siobhan’s chameleonic tendencies made them highly popular as a teenager, her parents’ pride and joy, but the latter half began to fail when siobhan began to understand — began being operative, as it was a process that took them many years — their curiosity about their sexuality and gender. this relationship, and her parents’ desire for them to hide this evolving part of themselves, was a behind-closed-doors battle which led to anxiety & depression. 

a vicious cycle, because the attitude to mental health on severin’s part was also quite . . . medieval, and ciara certainly never intervened to stop him. 

( the blakes had always been protestant, though siobhan was reluctant to take part in any acknowledgement of such. siobhan has considered themselves agnostic since the age of thirteen, though she supports her wife in her faith as much as she can. )

siobhan came out when she went to yale at the age of eighteen, and her experience had been mixed. college took her away from her friends, estranging them from their high school friends and temporarily moving away from alante. when they returned from college studies and took up a job as an english teacher at the local highschool, her best friend was . . . married. 

which made feelings that began to blossom particularly problematic. especially when over the years that followed, no matter how hard they tried to let it go, those feelings persisted. and — eventually — became an affair so passionate that alante left her husband for siobhan some thirteen years ago. 

their relationship with alante is what made them truly decide to — and make them able to — exist fully as themselves. who they wanted to be. so now, they’re not quite as chameleonic, but she’s endearing to the people who are truly interested in her and that’s all that matters, isn’t it? ( isn’t it? they’re still learning, though they pretend the self-doubt is entirely gone. )

this part of their town-iconic relationship is not public knowledge, and thankfully never came to siobhan’s parents’ knowledge before their deaths five and seven years ago.

siobhan and alante married as soon as possible in 2015, but siobhan always had a dream of washington politics, buried for many years because the political climate of their youth would never take them. now... it’s possible, but alante likes this life, this town, their two cats, and wants to have children. 

as a compromise, siobhan ran for mayor of moorbrooke this recent cycle, and won. but here’s the kicker: will it be enough for them?

CONNECTIONS —

family: while she has no siblings, she does have cousins on ciara’s side, so if you’re interested in that then feel free to let me know & we’ll explore it! i love a good family tree, especially in town rps where i imagine it a bit more interconnected like broadchurch !

family-esque: if your muse has been living in moorbrooke a while, it’s likely siobhan knows them quite or very well. you know those people you call your aunt/uncle out of respect because they’ve been friends with your family as long as you can remember? a bit like that! it’s also a habit because siobhan has been . . . distant from her own family since she was a teenager. they never outright disowned them for what they were calling their ‘ ideas ’ — i.e. being non-gender conforming & lesbian — but their disapproval was... clear enough. she doesn’t want anyone else to feel like they’re without support. 

therapist friend: the thing about siobhan is that they are the ceo of telling other people to look after their mental health while letting their own degrade. ( see: she can’t help taking on other people’s problems & wanting to solve them. )

high school it squad: yes, this is my not-so-subtle way of pleading for more older muses here. these people were siobhan’s friends when they were trying to be who everyone wanted them to be, not who she herself wanted to be ; they were the popular clique, and she adjusted herself as necessary to ‘ ringlead ’ them. i’m thinking they split up when they all went to college, and the rest of them have only just come back to town. the siobhan blake they’re going to meet is . . . very different than the one they once knew. someone who is now comfortable ( at last ) unapologetically in their own skin.

ex-student: if your muse was in high school in moorbrooke anywhere during their tenure it’s likely that siobhan could have taught them! she was the emotional support english teacher. sapphics, you know what i am talking about. 

ingenue: someone interested in politics who siobhan is sharing their passion with !

neighbours: anyone who lives in elmsett court, who wants to live next to moorbrooke’s favourite sapphic it couple? it comes with invitations to dinner and two adventuring cats called vita & virginia that they might have to retrieve from your house.

TAKEN CONNECTIONS

confidante: the only person, aside from alante, who knows the truth. that siobhan and alante’s relationship first ignited in a blazing, letter-ridden extramarital affair, eventually resulting in alante leaving her husband all those years ago. the person siobhan confides her worries in, sometimes. [ alec barlowe. ] 

OTHER TRIVIA

owns a motorbike.

they can still write in anne lister code from letters to alante.

of course, she is a democrat. we do not fuck with republicans here.

watches vita and virginia three times in your average week.

has an eclectic music taste, but frequents the record store because there’s nothing like vinyl. 

( yes, they have hozier on vinyl. )

will only drink white wine. don’t ask them why. they don’t know. 

would have zero wardrobe sense if it wasn’t for alante. money just doesn’t equal style.

the only social network she knows how to use is twitter. please, someone, teach them how to use instagram. bestie needs a social media guru because the people who run the rest of her platforms don’t get it, either.

allergic to banana. but eats it anyway for the mouth tingles.

has kept a diary religiously since the age of twelve.

[give-me-the-frender-baby]

On the Subject of Leela...

I’ve wanted to make this post for a while, but I’ve been a little nervous. I really don’t want to step on any toes or upset anyone here. And I’m not the most well spoken person in the world, at least not when it comes to social issues, so I’ve held out on writing this. But recent events have lead me to believe that this post is somewhat warranted.

So I headcanon Leela as a lesbian. I have for about 3 years at this point. And I haven’t been able to articulate exactly WHY that is until recently, but I’m going to attempt to explain my thoughts here so that I have a post handy for the rare occasion that someone takes issue with this interpretation of canon. I want to emphasize, I take absolutely NO issue with people who believe Leela is bisexual or pansexual or any other orientation. Everyone is allowed their own thoughts and feelings about a character they relate to, and at the end of the day, it’s just a TV show we all enjoy.

I will provide a bit of background for my thoughts here; Leela behaves in a way that is indicative of the fact that she might be experiencing compulsory heterosexuality. There are a million posts that detail what that is far better than I ever could, but in short: compulsory heterosexuality, or comp het for short, is a pattern of behavior in which a woman/feminine aligned person expresses performative interest in men. Lesbians are especially affected by this, as it is a coping mechanism to prevent confronting the fact that are exclusively attracted to women/feminine aligned nonbinary people, but other sapphics can also be affected to a lesser extent. The core of the issue is that their attention is focused on men because society tells them they should be, but it’s an issue that women/feminine aligned nonbinary people uniquely face, as women/feminine aligned nonbinary people are conditioned in Western society to cater to men and taught that feeling unfulfilled is simply a part of being in a relationship.

A lot of Leela’s behavior is similar to my own behavior when I was denying the fact that I’m gay as hell. Her relationships never seem to work out; the “right guy” just never seems to come along. She holds Fry to an impossible standard in a way very similar to how I treated a past potential male suitor. We’ll call him “K”.

K behaved in a way very similar to Fry, and thus I related him to Fry for a long time. He was pushy and almost a little whiny in his pursuits of me. And I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like him. We had been friends for years, he was attractive, he genuinely cared about me, and yet I was always unsatisfied. He should have been the perfect possible boyfriend, but he couldn’t be, for obvious reasons. I nearly accepted his (multiple) offers to date, but something always held me back. I was extremely indecisive, and I found myself liking the IDEA of K, of who he COULD be, more than actually liking him as a person. (It was very reminiscent of “Parasites Lost”, if that gives you any idea of the climate of the situation.) He should have been the perfect boyfriend. But he couldn’t be, because I’m gay.

When I rejected him one too many times, things started to get bad. I won’t go into the gory details, but through a series of uncomfortable events, I eventually figured out that K’s behavior constituted as abuse. So when my opinion of him soured, so did my opinion of the pairing that held an uncanny resemblance to the dynamic I shared with him.

The other side of it is that Leela does not exhibit ANY canonical attraction to women outside of blatant fanservice, like in “The Butterjunk Effect” or “Bender’s Game”. If I am wrong on this, I invite anyone who feels keen on enlightening me to provide significant evidence of her being canonically sapphic, to name ONE episode where she spoke about her love of women, where she dated a woman, where she even commented on a woman being attractive in a way that isn’t colored by explicitly platonic intentions or jealousy. There has also been, to my knowledge, no declaration by Groening, Cohen, or anyone else on the crew Leela is anything other than the “default” in media (i.e. straight). Thus, I do not see the harm in headcanoning a character with no LGBT+ attachments in canon as gay. It is no more harmful than headcanoning her any other way. If Leela was ACTUALLY canonically bisexual, or any other orientation, I would understand the people who speak out against other interpretations of canon. But since there is none, I do not see the value in “fighting over table scraps”, so to speak.

My last point is this: women/feminine aligned nonbinary people can discover that they’re lesbians at any age. Whether you’re 5 or 85, there’s always the opportunity to discover and contextualize new facets of yourself. Me personally? It took coming out as bi, realizing I’m gay and coming out as such, closeting myself as bi and dating men exclusively because of the backlash, to finally come to accept that I am, in fact, gay.

And that’s really all there is to it. I’m a lesbian who relates deeply to Leela and sees aspects of myself in her, such as comp het. I’m squicked by her canonical dynamic with Fry because of past abuse. There is no canon sexuality for her other than the “default”, and her past attraction to men, no matter how genuine it may seem, does not necessarily define her sexuality, as, again, women/woman aligned nonbinary people in their 80s who were married to men all their life can still realize they’re gay.

TDLR: A combination of past abuse souring how I view a part of the show and the incredibly complicated dynamics of lesbian identity have lead me to view Leela as a lesbian. I have no issue with people headcanoning her differently, but I am starting to get sick of being called biphobic or getting “corrected” when I assert my own interpretations if the show.

-Vee

[autspoon]

So I’ve been thinking about this topics quite a bit... In fact since I woke up I’ve been thinking about what to say in this post in pretty great detail. Can I just say it? Cutting down on LGBTQ+ content has thoroughly improved my mental health.

There’s just something, I think it’s largely due to it being social media... You know that whole thing with people not conceptualizing how incredibly hurtful and considerate they are because they can’t see a face.

But anyway... I feel like people just as strategically as possible misunderstand stuff you say, that they will make up things you said to have them seem right.. And the entire “”discourse”” relies entirely on this form of “”argumentation””.

People do more policing than they do support. It’s like you all think that straight people are more likely to say they’re not straight than straight, by how you all seem to at any corner call others straight... Like maybe actual straight people are the real straight people?

Then we have the fact people seem to think that everything has to fit tiny boxes... Limited by the socio-political context of one or teo nations, and limited to the concepts within one language. As if our labels grow on literaly trees or some shit and we discovered them that way.

People to think to have no distinction between “movement” and “community”. It’s like if you don’t fit neatly.. You got to fend for yourself, I guess? But also we have to fight for ourselves and be as small a movement as possible. People seem to think that’s a strong movement, apparently? Remove as many letters as possible, as long as it’s not the letters of the people attacking others, right?

I also just hate the fact that I feel I need to defend my belonging... Even if basically nobody disputes my presence, and in real life I am an actual volunteer for a queer organization and I’ve been active in the IRL community for years now. The IRL is nothing like tumblr by the way.

Also, this isn’t even just the so-called discourse, this applies to pride and positivity too... I feel I am in a minefield when I’m in “sapphic positivity” or “trans pride”. And the worst part is that most of the crap you see in most-popular is by the in-groups!

I see the most vile people and the most dog-whistly invalidating bullshit from our own communities. The most invalidating and excluding stuff. It’s like we’re some club and these people have just hired themselves as the bouncers for it. They apparently get to decide.

But anyway, not even going into a positivity or pride tag is nice... Because you look into people’s descriptions and they say cruel or shitty things. That kind of nulls out the point.

I just don’t see how people on this site have so skewed mindsets. I know it’s that just the wrong people got to be influencers and got away with using really manipulative and divisive tactics but.. That doesn’t make it right.

People seem to think that there is a concise movement and community, that has been fighting side-by-side that’s just literally Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans people... And that also this is a literal global thing? Some people treat it as an objective and unchanging fact.

They will just conveniently ignore the huge amount of non-inclusivity in the past, the fact a lot of the terms weren’t even used widely by people 4-7 decades ago, the fact that new terms have been made since and there are terms before them too.

Basically... This isn’t enjoyable, because people have no responsible way of talking about orientations or gender identities, they have no way of simply being positive, and the community seems to just be as vile as possible. I’ve never felt this from any other community.

I’ve started to feel unsafe posting about LGBTQ+ stuff online... And it’s not even bigoted straight cis people that scare me... It’s cliques of really vile people on this site who seek to mock and misunderstand others at any cost, and act like they’re just debating.

It’s like people are clueless to the fact that bullying is normalized in the LGBTQ+ community on tumblr. That’s really the best way to say it... Bullying has been normalized.

One last thing... The fact that I also can write just about anything, it basically welcomes someone making a shitty or absolutely vile comment on my post if it’s LGBTQ+ themed. Be it to say that oppression is a group’s fault, it doesn’t exist, or they just strategically misunderstand anything I have to say. This happens so often I get surprised if I don’t get a shitty comment or anon by the point of getting to 500 notes.