BI PRIDE

Loving women as a woman is inherently antithetical to (western) womanhood, where womanhood revolves around and is taught as inherently dependent on men. Straight womanhood is the performance of all aspects of your life to be palatable to men, and all your actions regarding womanhood (eg. relationship dynamics, gender roles, presentation (in terms of how you dress, how you talk, how you move), and your own perceived self-worth in relation to the “ideal desireable” womanhood that you should display) are taught as though it must be for the sake of men, and must be approved by men for you to be a “real woman”.

In this sense, loving women as a woman, breaks this taught connection that “good womanhood” = “mens approval”, and can complicate the relationship with womanhood because suddenly all these dynamics that have been taught as an inherent part of womanhood just aren’t there, especially in the case of lesbians and bi women who are fully divorced from men.

I don’t like putting too much stock in an inherent divide between the experiences of all lesbians and all bi women, because that’s not how it works. But, I do think that some bi women, especially bi women who spend a lot of time around straight men but also men in general, can have a different kind of conflict in relation to womanhood that lesbians may not experience, because of our desire for authentic reciprocation from men. However, our love for women still confounds the “ideal desirable” version of womanhood that men look for, so we’re left struggling between the thought that has been drilled into us forever that “a good woman = men approving” and our desire to love women (which is a struggle that lesbians also face, however some bi women may authentically want that reciprocated approval from men which just creates a different nuance on the issue).

The problem is that men (and nbs with no connection to womanhood) will never experience this particular issue because manhood and what it means (in a western context) to be a “good man” in society doesn’t revolve around the approval and sole dedication to women, in the sense that your worth as a human and a man isn’t stripped from you if a woman disapproves of you (No, in that case she’s a bitch, or a whore, or a slut, and the man isn’t at fault, as far as society is concerned), which is why it doesn’t work to take terms that were made in the context of a bi women’s relation to womanhood and declare that anyone regardless of gender can use them, even people who don’t have a connection to womanhood.

And it’s extremely hypocritical and horrible to me, to make a big deal out of “connecting the community” and “making terms for all bi people regardless of gender” yet not acknowledging and caring, that stag/tomcat/doe IS inherently exclusionary of bi women of color. They have been saying this. It’s not a rumored thing that’s been mentioned in passing. It’s an explicit thing that a lot of anti black racism and anti black propaganda revolve around comparing poc (especially woc) to animals. It’s not cute, it’s disrespectful to the women who built this community and it’s so incredibly flippant and imo inexcusable to say “well they don’t have to identify with them!” I thought the point was to make bi terms accessible to all bi people?