Do you have any recommendations for Lesbian romance fiction? (Since you mention being a connoiseur of lesbian romance fiction in your pinned post) It’s so hard to find good lesbian fiction 😭
OH MY LOVE YOU CAME TO THE RIGHT PLACE!!!!! lesbian romance is an extremely niche subgenre of fiction that never reaches mainstream success unless the romance is sidelined. lucky for you, i have recs AND resources to find a lot more quality lesbian fiction.
note: i read a little bit of everything when it comes to settings, time periods, genre, and tropes (aside from ages—i strongly prefer my main characters to be mid-20s or older), so hopefully one of these books match what you're looking for :))
this is gonna be long. apologies in advance...
-> my recent favs:
The Brutal Truth by Lee Winter
Australian crime reporter Maddie Grey is out of her depth in New York, miserable, and secretly drawn to her powerful, twice-married, media mogul boss, Elena Bartell, who eats failing newspapers for breakfast. As work takes them to Australia, Maddie is goaded into a brief, seemingly harmless bet with her enigmatic boss—where they have to tell the complete truth to each other. It backfires catastrophically.
All the Painted Stars by Emma Denny
When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna’s hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo’s hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily’s control, Jo must help her escape.
(note: there is one eye-rolling moment where the MCs are lectured about trans identities which i found ham-fisted, but it didn't lessen my experience too much.)
No Shelter But the Stars by Virginia Black
Kyran Loyal is the last heir to the lost throne of a forgotten planet, the figurehead of a nomadic people fleeing the galactic tyranny of a brutal regime. Davia Sifane is the unrecognized daughter of an imperial despot. When happenstance pits them against each other in battle, neither expects the they are the only two people to survive. Marooned on a barren moon, their only hope of survival is to rely on each other, but what they learn will either kill them or change the galaxy forever.
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.
Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?
-> currently reading:
The Nightingale and the Rose by Jolie Dvorak
Detective Rose Martin has spent years trying to bring down Sterling Montague, a corrupt British billionaire with plans of destroying democracy.
But her pursuit of justice throws her into a shadowy world of spies and assassins—a clandestine organisation called the Circle. Tasked with guarding the monarchy, the Circle operates outside the law, led by a mercurial and dangerous woman known only as the Nightingale.
When Rose realises it is the Nightingale who stalks her through London’s midnight streets, the click of her heels haunting Rose’s dreams, it ignites a passionate obsession neither can deny.
Crier's War by Nina Varela
After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, Designed to be the playthings of royals, took over the estates of their owners and bent the human race to their will.
Now, Ayla, a human servant rising the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging the death of her family… by killing the Sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier. Crier, who was Made to be beautiful, to be flawless. And to take over the work of her father.
Crier had been preparing to do just that—to inherit her father’s rule over the land. But that was before she was betrothed to Scyre Kinok, who seems to have a thousand secrets. That was before she discovered her father isn’t as benevolent as she thought. That was before she met Ayla.
The Fixer by Lee Winter
Nine years ago, aloof, icy Michelle Hastings chose career over love. She’s now living with that choice as she rules a secret corporation catering to the rich and powerful.
Enter Eden Lawless. The guileless activist finds it a bit weird being employed by a mystery organization to bring down a corrupt mayor. But, hey, she’s up for a challenge. Much harder is getting her beautiful new boss out of her head. The pull between them is electric.
-> some lesbian romance/romantasy books in my tbr list:
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Wrong Number, Right Woman by Jae
House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson
The Dead Withheld by L.D. Lewis
A Royal Romance by Jenny Frame
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
The Witch Who Chases the Sun by Dawn Chen
Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
-> other lesbian romance authors you might like:
Harper Bliss
Clare Lyndon
Anna Stone
Milena Mckay
Melissa Tereze
Ruby Roe
-> lesbian romance bookfinders:
you can filter by setting, time period, MC ages, tropes, themes, smut level, genre, ethnicity, etc. (and yes, they're perfect for keeping penis out of lesbian romance)
The Lesbian Review's Bookfinder
https://thelesbianreview.com/sapphic-book-finder/
I Heart Sapphfic's Bookfinder
https://iheartsapphfic.com/bookfinder/
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Sometimes I watch videos about rescuing abused and neglected animals. Big kind dudes with golden hearts lift malnourished horses in their arms and ford a dangerous river to take the elephant, who has lived for about 40 years in slavery, to a new safe home. In Africa, rangers engage in shootouts with poachers and lose their lives protecting rare animals.
They say that these men are heros, but at the same time, his wife was constantly pregnant, and now she has to feed and raise all those children alone. This man had more empathy for elephants than for his wife, who was stuck with him and gave birth to one child after another. Didn't she want to feel safe? Did she really want to have so many children, knowing that their breadwinner might die the next day?
Animals cannot speak and cannot tell about their pain and anguish. Women can speak, but when they talk, they're still refused to be listened to. Unlike animal rights, the rights of women and girls are always in question.
But when women say that they want safety and at least the absence of aggressors in their spaces, they are called names.
Unlike humans, animals can be rescued and pitied while remaining within the existing system. Elephants don't demand anything, don't challenge the right of men to be heros, and don't ask for a seat in parliament. They're just suffering. They're safe victims.
Women are inconvenient. They don't eat gratefully from a savior's hand, but want to change the rules of the game. Women question the very structure of the world in which a man can heroically save endangered wildlife while his wife is raising eight children and doing housework. Women might say, "Your help doesn't solve the root of our problem. Why do women find themselves in situations where they need protection in the first place?" They might reject the role of a victim completely and demand agency.
I’m not a lesbian, but there’s nothing more enraging and disrespectful than bisexual women claiming to be a lesbian.
It is okay to be bisexual. It is okay to be a female exclusive bisexual. It is okay to have a sizeable preference for dating women over men.
But none of these things make you a lesbian.
Even if you’ve had your radfem-aligned awakening and realised that men ain’t shit, so you’ll never date one again (after pro-actively dating them for years)… This does not make you a lesbian.
It’s just so slimy and gross for women to fake being a lesbian because that seems to be “the thing” to do these days, while proactively the same women will spew harmful lesbophobia (i.e. “trans lesbians are lesbians”) or centre men (don’t even get me started on heated rivalry).
Hold on a sec. According to the radical feminism theory, lesbianism is a political choice. A lesbian is a woman choosing and prioritizing other women, regardless of whether she's dating them or not. The definition of a lesbian relationship as an exclusively sexual/romantic act is based on the male gaze. The patriarchy teaches women that heterosexuality is 'the universal norm', which can't be changed, and that sexual orientation is given from birth. However, there're no studies proving that one's orientation is predetermined. And I'm afraid we won't see any final results of such studies bc the patriarchal heterosexual system is hierarchical (men dominate women and use them to procreate). If they admit that they fail to find and name the biological reason of homosexuality and simply announce that people can change s. orientation, the system will collapse. Admitting such a thing would be political.
All in all, in the patriarchy, loving and choosing other women is a sin, mental illness, seeking attention, etc. No need to define relationships between women by male standards and separate women from being with each other when we need to learn solidarity. Believing that a woman is doomed to be hetero or bi for the rest of her life is harmful for women and for our movement.
10 Of The Most Ridiculous Things Ever Said About Women In History
1. When Aristotle Said Women Are Defective Men
“The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.”
2. When St. Thomas Aquinas Said Women Are Sperm Accidents
“… A female is deficient and unintentionally caused. For the active power of the semen always seeks to produce a thing completely like itself, something male. So if a female is produced, this must be because the semen is weak or because the material [provided by the female parent] is unsuitable, or because of the action of some external factor such as the winds from the south which make the atmosphere humid.”
3. When Napoleon Said Women Are Just Slaves
“Nature intended women to be our slaves… they are our property; we are not theirs. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to a gardener…. Women are nothing more than machines for producing children.”
4. When Cato The Elder Argued That All Women Are Wild Animals
“Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep her on a tight rein…. Women want total freedom or rather – to call things by their names – total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters.”
5. When Pliny The Elder Warned That Menstrual Blood Is Poisonous
“On the approach of a woman in this state, must will become sour, seeds which are touched by her become sterile, grafts wither away, garden plants are parched up, and the fruit will fall from the tree beneath which she sits. Her very look, even, will dim the brightness of mirrors, blunt the edge of steel, and take away the polish from ivory. A swarm of bees, if looked upon by her, will die immediately.”
6. When Plutarch Did Not Approve Of Independent Lady-Emotions
“A wife should have no feelings of her own, but share her husband’s seriousness and sport, his anxiety and his laughter.”
7. When Friedrich Nietzsche Was Basically Just Friedrich Nietzsche
“Finally – woman! One-half of mankind is weak, typically sick, changeable, inconstant – woman needs a religion of weakness that glorifies being weak, loving, being humbled as divine.”
8. When Jean-Jacques Rousseau Said Ladies Only Need To Be Taught About Men
“The whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to council them, to console them, and to make life agreeable and sweet to them – these are the duties of women at all times, and should be taught them from their infancy.”
9. When Sigmund Freud Despaired Of Grown Ladies’ Sexuality
“The sexual life of adult women is a ‘dark continent’ for psychology.”
10. When James Joyce Was A Bit Of An Idiot
“Men are governed by lines of intellect – women: by curves of emotion.”
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Where does one find “feminist porn”? On porn websites that also host videos like “teen anal gangbang” and “busty Asian sluts” and “Ebony girl gets pounded”.
This is misogynist and racist propaganda and if you defend it you are misogynistic and racist.
A long time ago, I stumbled upon a couple of videos from the porn studios that film so-called progressive porn. One of the studios even published a team building video with their happy actresses. Everything looked consensual and safe, and the actresses could have free bottles of water and fruits and claimed to enjoy the filming process. But eventually their "progressive" porn got reuploaded by trashy sites under typical misogynistic headlines and with slurs in tags.
Porn industry is based on objectivation of women and selling their bodies. "Progressive" or "feminist" porn is still porn. It won't stop misogyny, dehumanization and trafficking of women and girls for men's benefit.
sex-selective abortions: exist due to systemic hatred of girls and women
men: let's monetize them
To grasp the numbers: the population of Shanghai (the most populated city in China, Asia and the world) was about 27 million people in 2022. Imagine that Shanghai citizens + about 3 million people were never born. 30 million – that's how many girls and women China lacks.
That's what I was thinking about. Femicide (both infanticide of girls and sex-selective abortions) isn't just a thing of the past. It happens nowadays, and we should talk more about it.
I'm glad that there're dozens of comments like this ✨
sex-selective abortions: exist due to systemic hatred of girls and women
men: let's monetize them
To grasp the numbers: the population of Shanghai (the most populated city in China, Asia and the world) was about 27 million people in 2022. Imagine that Shanghai citizens + about 3 million people were never born. 30 million – that's how many girls and women China lacks.
genuine question regarding the "women are female people" post. trying to understand the radfem mindset because I don't agree with y'all on most things, but I understand your need to find safety and acceptance within the patriarchy's oppression/danger. I am female but not a woman. I was never socialized as one either. I feel like biological socialization piece goes out the window in my case. Biologically yes, I am female, but socially no one, including myself, would ever view me as a woman or place me through the same social oppression that women face, nor will I experience or have experienced any of the good parts of womanhood. I feel no desire to, because despite sharing the same biology, we are not socially the same. I feel like, in this experience, theres a stark divide between the social category of "women" and biological category of "female." What is your take on this, I'm curious?
The crucial issue here is that you’re conflating women and femininity. You say there’s a difference between women and females, when you instead mean there’s a difference between feminine women and non-feminine women. You believe women are socially constructed, when you instead mean femininity is socially constructed.
The only way you could think that your non-conformance to femininity indicated that you were not a woman, is if you believed femininity was innate and inseparable from women. This is not only an unabashed display of bioessentialism, but a reinforcement of the same sex-based roles and sexist stereotypes that gender ideologues purport to be defying.
In case you don’t know, the concepts of femininity and masculinity were created solely to enforce female subjugation and male domination (elaboration here). Therefore, nothing is more misogynistic or in direct contradiction to the radical feminist goal of gender abolition than claiming women are defined by the very social construct created to subjugate them, rather than by their biological sex.
I’ll be honest, I feel increasingly irritated and hopeless every time I receive these messages of “I’m not a woman because I don’t conform to society’s sexist, outdated idea of what women are.” How can you not see how backwards it is to believe your conformity to a demographic’s harmful stereotypes is what determines whether you belong to that demographic? In what other circumstances is this ever the case?
This is a genuine question: why is it so hard for you to acknowledge that you’re a gender-non-conforming woman? Why must you go through all these mental cartwheels and act as though being a woman is contingent on how others view you, or how you socially conduct yourself, or what degree of oppression you face? What benefit do you see in defining women by the social construct of femininity (hierarchical, prescriptive, arbitrary) rather than defining them as female (non-hierarchical, descriptive, concrete)?
Much of my frustration stems from the knowledge that radical feminists and gender ideologues actually hold similar views on the concepts of women and men, until they diverge at one crucial, irreconcilable point:
Both radical feminists and gender ideologues acknowledge the existence of regressive stereotypes attributed to the sexes. But where radical feminists seek to remove the stereotypes from the sex, gender ideologues instead, quite stupidly, seek to remove the sex from the stereotypes.
In short, I still consider you a woman completely deserving of access to women’s spaces, because being a woman does not, and should not, have any other prerequisites other than being an adult, a human, and a female. There are not, and should not be, any behaviors, aesthetics, feelings, or non-biological characteristics that determine whether you’re a woman. There are no gendered brains; there are no gendered souls. Being a woman is an innate, neutral, and non-prescriptive reality, no different than having freckles or brown eyes or hooked noses.
"biologically I am female, but no one would ever socially view me as one"
Do you think that your clothes and haircut make you completely exempt from misogyny? This just tells me anon has had a very privileged life. You've never had a doctor dismiss your concerns because they've explained away all your symptoms with "it's just your period"? You've never had to justify any interests or hobbies you have because they're stereotypically for boys? You've never been told that any aspirations you have for your future, such as travel, a career, an education, or hobbies, will all change once you meet a man and have kids?
As for the socialization, do you think socialization is something only your parents instill to you? It's a culture wide thing, unless you've been living in Butt Fuck nowhere, with no access to any media including books, television, advertising, or toys, you've been exposed to female stereotypes. You've gone shopping and seen what's marketed to females vs males, you've seen how women are treated vs men. That's socialization too, it's not just your upbringing.
You are female, you are a woman anon. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it untrue, you have internalized misogyny that you need to work through.
Even her text based manner of speaking, that should be completely neutral seeing as it’s just words on a screen, shows the lifelong female socialization she experienced. Polite disagreement with someone you don’t understand. Lack of threats or violent language. This speaks to ingrained female communication patterns
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problematic of me perhaps but i am not interested in befriending female peers with husbands or boyfriends. that doesn't mean I am not nice to them in daily life, it doesn't mean I will not help when they need it, but I am just not interested in being close friends. Any amount of having to hear about jakey or nigel is too much for me. I don't want to watch you dance inside those familiar dynamics. I don't want to have to give you advice on dealing with his behavior you will nod along with but not follow. My exhaustion level for heterosexual men is 100%. If you have tied yourself to one, I will be keeping polite distance.
Most of my female friends ghosted me soon after starting a long-term relationship with guys. Some of them threw out of the window years of our friendship without any regrets. I have a feeling that many women keep polite distance with female peers in general, seeing them as a potential threat to their romantic relationship with a man. At the same time, I noticed that they often take their uninvited men with them when they hang out with other women. The initial atmosphere changes, and you can't speak frankly like before.
Last time when I tried to maintain a friendship with my friend after a while, her bf interrupted us by literal vacuuming. He couldn't stop butting in and wanted to make it clear that he decides who will speak and when. My friend didn't see any problem with his behaviour.
International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, 6 February
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a practice that involves altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons. FGM is recognized as a violation the fundamental rights of girls and women.
FGM is reported in 94 countries across all continents. While the practice is most common in Islamic populations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, FGM is also widespread in immigrant communities in Europe, North America and Australia, as well as in specific minority enclaves in South Asia and Russia.
Women and girls, aged 15-49, who have undergone some form of FGM
FGM is often associated only with Islam but also exists among Christians (Copts, Orthodox, Protestants) as well as Jews (Falashas in Ethiopia and their descendants in Israel) and Animists.
Men hurt girls and women not because of their religions.
Religions created and actively used by men against women and disguised as culture.
The article Care of women with female genital mutilation/cutting (TW: graphic content!) contains a lot of comprehensive information about FGM, including the part about consequences of the procedure. Those are detailed and chilling.
Men hurt girls and women not because they simply respect and follow their traditions
Men hurt girls and women because they want to control them, their lives, their bodies, and their choice from a very young age
In the patriarchal society, the perfect woman is a child
(video Somalia Overturns Law Banning Child Marriage Just 24 Hours After Male-Led Protests by Mody Speaks on YT)
Mothers have no other choice but to butcher their own daughters for men's approval
(a Somali saying, same video by Mody Speaks on YT)
In 2016 (just 10 years ago!), the World Health Organization published the WHO guidelines on the management of health complications from female genital mutilation.
It's not like people forget about it. The thing is that the modern society tries to erase the fact that women were forced to have more babies. They tell us about big families of the past as if it was some sort of a quirk or love for children. But women of older generations still remember this hell, because they've been there. We need a continuity that bridges the generations of women. My grandma told me a story about one of our female relatives who died soon after she had illigal abortion. She could be saved, but there was the law. The medics were forbidden to help her without the name of the lady who performed abortion. The latter had little children of her own, and despite that she would be sent to prison. The relative refused to tell them her name, so they let her bleed to death. The horror.
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