A Collection of Opinions

I’ve never met anyone who translates it the same way, so it’s kind of mildly hilarious to see how upset people can get when 2 is the “wrong” colour, but in this case we really are special snowflakes who are all correct in our own ways.

Anyway I’ll start

when the government chooses not to fund social programs which help people and instead decides to spend money on cops or security cameras or other ways to penalize and criminalize people, it’s very very intentional. these people aren’t stupid, they can do simple math and realize that they will never make the money back and will in fact lose much much more. but that’s because the goal is not to make money, it’s to create a quiet, obedient, fearful populace by introducing the threat of police violence as an every day part of life constantly looming over your head.

This world is not an ideal world.

In such a world, it would possibly be negligent to self-diagnose instead of getting an official diagnosis and official help.

This world is not that world.

In this world, we have to deal with ableism, healthcare costs, your health records being shared without your knowledge, crappy doctors and insurance and healthcare. We have to weigh “are there downsides to being labeled X” versus “how does being labeled X actually help my life”.

For many, being medically diagnosed is helpful, and gives you access to resources you don’t otherwise have.  These resources (meds, assistance, etc.) easily outweigh any ableism from society/your local community/your family.  This is fantastic!

For many others, being medically diagnosed is unhelpful. It doesn’t give you access to anything actually useful, or only to things that are not helpful enough to outweigh the ableism.

For people underage, who rely on parents, this calculation has many additional variables, including the fact that a minor cannot protect their health records from being seen by their guardian. For people without a steady job or health insurance, they also have additional variables, such as being denied for future health insurance for per-existing conditions.

Is there an answer?  Well, voting and writing politicians can help somewhat.  Educating people as you can helps, to try and reduce the ableism in the world. If you’re a manager who hires people, learning how to avoid biases when hiring is a huge step you can take, or encouraging other managers to do the same.  If someone is self-diagnosed with something where an official diagnosis could give them access to a lot of resources, you can encourage them to consider a few more things they might not have thought of yet.

Turns out, the reason I stopped having problems with my eyes was because I was religiously taking my medication. Whodathunk. Now I have to work to get back to the place I was before I decided I was “better” (I wasn’t!).

Also, you’re being incredibly insulting to those of us who do need medication to function. Just like my friend needs insulin, I need antidepressants. My body doesn’t produce enough chemicals of a certain sort, and I need to supplement them.  Someone who needs insulin also needs to take it for the rest of their lives.  So?

As for how to deal with wet hair, I don't know how long yours is, but I wrap mine in a towel and leave it for a while. It drastically shortens the need for airdrying/blowdrying, but you might mind the weight.

Here’s a recipe

the debate on who can use the terms “butch/femme” keeps coming up so i did a ton of research & i’d like to weigh in on the issue. i’ll post sources at the end

too many people credit anne lister (a historical lesbian) with coining femme in her journals but she was speaking french and “femme” has been a french word forever

going in chronological order of gay words in the english-speaking world, “lesbian” began as a synonym for tribade. “tribadism” = scissoring; both words meant women who slept with women & the sexual act itself. this was long before IDpolitics

so lesbian/tribade was something you did, not something you IDd as, bc they were labeled by their sexual activity since IDpol hadn’t come around yet. there was no concept of who was or wasn’t exclusively attracted to women. that’s why bi women are closer to lesbians than bi men

tribade dominated the 17th-mid 19th centuries until sapphic & lesbian took prominence. it wasn’t until 1892 that a neurologist used bisexual to describe sexuality. from then until the 1960s, bi was used only in academic contexts. it still wasn’t an identity yet

bi women have always been here but shared community with & organized under “lesbian” until (and even into) the 60s. before then, any text or study that said “lesbian” meant gay & bi women unless it (on the rare occasion) specifies otherwise, so context matters

butch/femme began in gay bars in the 40s-60s. women-only gay bars were frequented by lesbian & bi women. so for the first decades of butch/femme history, “lesbian” includes bi women bc there was no bi or “women-exclusive” yet & they were at the bars, participating in the culture

in the 70s, lesbian separatism begins with 12 white cis lesbians, the furies. They suggest that women engage “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege… as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will…

at some point have to betray their sisters, especially lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits.” demon TERF sheila jeffreys says “our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men.” this marks the split between bi & lesbian women

lesbian separatism others bi women who shared space, identity & oppression with lesbians centuries prior. it deems trans women as inextricable from male privilege they (don’t) have. it others lgbt woc who share oppression with men & therefore can’t exclude men from their politics

tldr it’s bad lol. with events like stonewall (1969) & increasing anti-gay violence in the 70s, anyone with proximity to heterosexuality in gay spaces was viewed as a threat & shunned. so bi groups begin to pop up, since they had no place in straight or gay communities anymore

in the 80s, 2nd-wave bi organizing was feminist bi orgs forming bc lesbians posited bisexuality as anti-feminist. by 1988, LGB officially separates lesbian & bi. now lesbians are invested in specific lesbian history & everything before the 60s says “lesbian.” see the problem here

texts with the word “lesbian” before the 60s are also referring to bi women but modern meanings of old words are applied to them, & consequently, bi women are denied a massive chunk of our history, including butch/femme culture

in the 60s, ball culture emerges in houses created as safe spaces for black & latinx queer youth. the genders are butch queen, femme queen, butch & women. here, butch & femme embody: the intersections of race, gender & sexuality; the freedom of it; and the resulting persecution

in the 70s, lesbian separatists say any form of masculinity harms women, materializing against butch & trans women. femmes are framed as wanting to reap benefits of heterosexuality while still toying with women (this is heavily wrapped in biphobic rhetoric too, if you can’t tell)

butch/femme is framed as heteronormative, anti-lesbian & anti-feminist. so androgyny is proposed as the lesbian ideal. now lesbian feminism is centered on white, middle class, androgynous lesbians at the expense of working class + nonwhite lesbians, bi women, and butches & femmes

butch/femme fall out of popular use, only kept alive by the same working class & nonwhite women who are ousted by white lesbians. butch/femme usage among queer youth of color includes lesbians & nonlesbians as it had since 60s ball culture & since 40s gay bars with gay & bi women

it’s interesting that people say butch/femme is for lesbians only when the beginning of lesbian as an exclusively-woman attracted identity & the downfall of butch/femme go hand-in-hand. it was queer youth of color who kept that culture alive, lesbian or not

white lesbian TERFs who demonized the culture embraced it again when genderfluidity became trendy in the late 80s. they claimed it as theirs, and stripped it of its history with bi women, trans women & queer youth of color that they wanted no association with

so that history was lost among many, and now well-meaning lesbians who definitely are not TERFs don’t even know butch/femme’s roots in race, trans/gnc identity, & class struggle, or its origins among gay & bi women as one group

tldr: TERFs suck, bi & lesbian women’s history is inextricable, and bi women were using butch/femme before the bi identity even existed. historically, “lesbian” encompassed a set of behaviors & became an identity later

Sources:

gay & bi women going to the same clubs: Source 1, Source 2

bisexual etymology: Source

lesbian separatism: Source

tribade: Source

butch/femme: Source

more on butch/femme; Source

origins of bi movements: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

lady with history & women’s studies + LGBT studies degrees: Source

ball culture: Source

hi here’s a trans lesbian (homojabi@tumblr) saying exactly what I just said from a trans perspective for the “everyone’s trying to steal from lesbians” crowd. I’m going back to sleep

https://confide–nemini.tumblr.com/post/149527067504/is-it-okay-for-bi-girls-to-refer-to-themselves-as

the word “genderqueer” didn’t exist before the 90s. the word “non-binary” didn’t exist before the 2000s. even the word “transgender” didn’t get popularized until the 90s; it was primarily “transsexual” until then. for a long time “gender non-conforming” was perhaps the best umbrella

which means there were always people in the “lesbian” community who weren’t binary women and who used butch and femme, and our history has long, shared roots too

just look at Leslie Feinberg and hir books “Stone Butch Blues” and “Transgender Liberation.” look at S. Bear Bergman and “Butch Is A Noun.” also look at Joan Nestle’s “The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader” and its argument that butch and femme can be gender identities in themselves (and its documentation of the 40s and 50s)

there have also long been “border wars” between butch women and trans men; halberstam and c. jacob hale have some very informative joint writing with opposing views that both acknowledge the historical contention

finally, and what i know least about, while butch and femme certainly originated in lesbian (before bi or nb were words) spaces, they have also historically been used by gay (again before bi was a word) men, though not to the same extent. that’s a whole argument about boundaries i don’t wanna get into but it has certainly happened

all of which is to say: yes, butch and femme emerged in a wlw context, but that context always already included bi women and nblw, was always complicated by trans men, and was also used by gay and bi men too. any historical argument about them being sapphic-only is actually ahistorical wishful thinking, so find another argument

1.

“Mental health outcomes differed by sex, dimension of sexual orientation, and sexual minority group. Whereas a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity was associated with higher odds of any mood or anxiety disorder for both men and women, women reporting only same-sex sexual partners in their lifetime had the lowest rates of most disorders. Higher odds of any lifetime mood or anxiety disorder were more consistent and pronounced among sexual minority men than among sexual minority women. Finally, bisexual behavior conferred the highest odds of any mood or anxiety disorder for both males and females.”

2.

“Compared with heterosexuals, sexual minorities (i.e., gays/lesbians, 2% of sample; bisexuals, 1%) were more likely to report activity limitation, tension or worry, smoking, drug use, asthma, lifetime sexual victimization, and HIV testing, but did not differ on 3-year Papanicolaou tests, lifetime mammography, diabetes, or heart disease. Compared with heterosexuals, bisexuals reported more barriers to health care, current sadness, past-year suicidal ideation, and cardiovascular disease risk. Gay men were less likely to be overweight or obese and to obtain prostate-specific antigen tests, and lesbians were more likely to be obese and to report multiple risks for cardiovascular disease. Binge drinking and lifetime physical intimate partner victimization were more common among bisexual women.”

3.

“The bisexual group was highest on measures of anxiety depression and negative affect, with the homosexual group falling between the other two groups. Both the bisexual and homosexual groups were high on suicidality. Bisexuals also had more current adverse life events, greater childhood adversity, less positive support from family, more negative support from friends and a higher frequency of financial problems. Homosexuals reported greater childhood adversity and less positive support from family.”

In addition, there are many resources available where you can read about the struggles bi people face. This website links to more pieces, both on how bisexuals are discriminated against and how you can become a better bi ally. This report includes statistics on how bisexuals are less likely to be out than gay men and lesbians, how they experience harassment and workplace discrimination, how they suffer from more violence, and again, how bisexuals have worse mental health and physical health.

“Emerging data reveal the extent to which bisexual people face bias from their families, communities (including the LGBT community), and society as a whole. A recent study of bias towards bisexual men and women revealed that 14% of Americans felt that bisexuality was not a legitimate sexual orientation. Research shows that both heterosexual people and gay and lesbian people express bias towards bisexual people. This bias manifests in many forms, from exclusion from social networks to assumptions that a bisexual person is confused about their sexuality or will cheat on their partner, to the discrimination discussed throughout this report in all areas of life including at work, at school, and when seeking health care.”

And in the end? It shouldn’t really matter which group “has it worse”. The struggles of one does not invalidate the struggles of another. Cutting down bisexuals doesn’t make straight people any less homophobic. Every group in the LGBT+ community faces different challenges, so we should be working together to combat them together. That’s why we’re a community.

Citations under the cut:

Then I realized you were talking about the *different* episode where a black man is interrogated to the absolute limit, sleep deprived, and pushed into a confession.

Oh but wait, there’s more.

Disability benefits aren’t taxed. Even being generous, the minimum full time person is actually going home with less than the person who gets full disability benefits. Yep. Even if a mere 20% is taken out in taxes per check, the full time worker is going home with 1560 per month.

But in the States, it’s much, much worse. SSI is only $770 a month, and you can’t save more than $2000 dollars or you have to pay them back for the month you had that much.  You also can’t get more than $80 in a month from other sources, including things like gifts or free food.  It’s a horrible system and badly needs an overhaul.  Right now I live on $9,240 a year.  I’d much prefer to be able to work and pay taxes on it.

what kind of keyboard is it? keyboards used to be a special interest of mine.

Razer Chroma Cynosa. It’s absolute hell on my wrists, but it was the lowest cost water resistant one I could find. Which, let me just take a moment here to be absolutely livid about the fact that ergo keyboards aren’t water resistant. Like, motherfuckers, I don’t know if you know this, but disabled people are the ones who are most likely to A) be in the kind of pain that warrants a nonstandard keyboard layout and B) have tremors or muscle weaknesses that warrant splash guarding.

…this is an actual thing that actually happened. The only people scaring trans women needlessly as those justifying the attack. Why is it that trans people (trans women especially) cannot discuss the reality of transphobia in society without somebody crawling out of the woodwork to tell them they’re “scaring [whomever] needlessly” or otherwise overreacting?

What the article doesn’t tell you is that the “trans woman” literally had a full face of hair and looked 100% like a whole ass man while in the bathroom harassing the woman.

He also posted on Reddit about the incident. His post history reveals he had been transitioning for just a few weeks before the attack.

I’ve never claimed it was another woman who attacked her - every version of the report I’d heard it was the boyfriend/husband of a woman who was apparently scared of someone washing their hands and then leaving the restroom who actually attacked the woman.

Re: Your other post

Feel free to respond with the picture you like so much - it doesn’t bother me, though I think that’s what you were going for?