The Hottest Of Messes

But there’s a flipside to that coin, which is that this is also where they can get young mspec (bisexual, pansexual, etc), asexual and trans kids (usually women and trans men) to swallow it. 

You walk up onto Grindr and start telling mostly-cis gay men they can’t use “butch” and “femme” in their descriptions anymore, you’re not gonna get very far. To put it mildly. The one who don’t give a shit about anything but their own comfort and perspective are just going to laugh at you, and for the most part the ones who do care (often a lot) are also well aware that these talking points are bullshit. 

You walk up to BUTCH Voices saying OMG ONLY LESBIANS CAN USE BUTCH and you’re probably gonna get a less friendly Talking-To than gets handed out sometimes on THIS site. 

Because when you tell a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old person with a community and a history with their sexual and gender identity “you can’t use this word you’ve been using for literal decades to describe yourself” the friendliest reaction you’re going to get is a good-faith attempt to explain, the least aggressive you’re going to get is laughter, and probably (given that just about all of us here in “hey we’re not straight and don’t conform to majority-expected gender expression and relationship composition”-land have also been spending those decades under anywhere from low-to-high-level-siege-and-attack for same) you’re going get someone telling you to Shut The Everloving Fuck Up, I Don’t Have To Take That Shit From You. 

But. 

Say those same things to the nervous, newly-self-aware person (at any age, but especially in their teens or twenties?) Who just found this general place (tumblr) where The Not-Straight People Are? who are probably in the process of figuring out what the hell they even feel and are Learning What Things Mean? 

When you tell THEM “you’re not allowed to use that word hdu!” they probably say “omg I’m sorry” and take the alternates you fling at them. Especially if you back it up with harassment (as a great many of these people do). Especially if you manage to generally cloak your bullshit in the language and patterns that social justice work uses ( “you’re appropriating! you’re talking over us! you should listen when we tell you about our words!”) to frame this as a privilege-disprivilege axis, rather than acts of active lateral violence from one group (monosexually attracted wlw) against another (mspec people). 

And I can’t help but notice many of these same people are actively pushing this gross lie that “every adult you speak to online is a pedophile you have to be afraid of.” How convenient that this rhetoric creates *more* isolated and lonely young people who live in terror of engaging with elders in the community who could give them access to real support and advice that isn’t about an ideological agenda.