#comphet discourse

some lesbians mistakenly think they’re attracted to men via comphet, y’all seem to grasp the validity of that concept well enough. bi women can falsely think they’re lesbians, also because of comphet, which y’all seem to take issue with for some reason. bi women experience homophobia in addition to biphobia, just like how lesbians experience lesbophobia specifically in addition to general homophobia. bi women get called dykes - in other words, if you want to use your own argument against us reclaiming it, bi women experience what you want to call lesbophobia (maybe rethink your argument if that makes you mad lol). bi women participated in dyke marches and lesbian feminism (and still do). bi women use butch/femme and sometimes even futch and nobody irl actually cares (we do see it as more than just an aesthetic, btw). bi women get called and are sometimes considered lesbians (not to endorse mspec lesbians, but we do actually have knowledgeable experience in that field). it’s not just bisexuals who are always feminine and lesbians who are or can be masculine. also, some lesbians prefer to call their attraction to certain nonbinary genders bisexual and that preference is perfectly okay.

there is so much more overlap between us than often gets recognized, whether because y’all are too caught up in the discourse to realize it or because you just don’t want to admit it so that your biphobic & bimisogynistic narrative can continue to make sense for you. obviously i would say it hurts us bi sapphics the most, but lesbians are really selling themselves short too just because some of them don’t want to be associated with us just by embracing their full history, culture, and dynamic.

hating men or being scared of or uncomfortable around men does not make you a lesbian. I have realized I’m bisexual because I think men are hot and fantasize about sexual things with them, even if those sexual things aren’t conventional.

bi women are not just greedy cock whores who never feel abused by men ever. we have standards lmao. i see so much of the ‘i like feminine men with long hair/androgynous men, am I a lesbian?’ like. No. You just like femboys. they are still men. Y’all are so homophobic and biphobic.

Or the ‘I feel uncomfortable with men being sexually attracted to me or men showing sexual interest in me/lose feelings once I realize he likes me’ like. Ok? That’s called being afraid of men because men are evil to women in this society and male attraction to women is very predatory. You just don’t like the idea of men objectifying you and that is ok.

ive been so confused about whether im a lesbian or febfem. with either one i wouldn't engage with men, but if im febfem, and wouldnt be romantic or intimate with a man ever, how do i know im attracted to them?

okay, listen. i'm gonna assume you're using "febfem" in good faith like i once did, but unless you actually are a radfem on my blog for some weird reason then please don't. i literally use the term "bi sapphics" instead to emphasize wlw attraction and i'm not sure how you missed such an obvious replacement for a problematic term if you're asking me somewhat-advanced questions like this. i'm not mad, just a little shocked you're talking positively about febfems in my inbox and i wanna address that first.

but to answer your question, at the end of the day the most general answer is you're the one who indicates that. if you think comphet is valid, you might wanna look into the lesbian masterdoc - you can probably just google it or search for it on twitter or tumblr. i have some beef with it personally and am very critical of it because it definitely contributes to bi erasure and was written without the consolation of bi women so it kinda tends to list very common bimisogynistic experiences as lesbian experiences, buuuuut i think it does actually provide some genuine and helpful relief in the longrun. i think comphet is conditionally real, all in separate lesbian contexts, wlw contexts, and women in general contexts because that's just how the patriarchy functions. maybe see which one is affecting you the most and figure out if that helps.

but like i said before all that, i really can't tell you because i don't live your experiences. what i will say is that i used to identify as a lesbian for a year because i went through something very similar, but then i realized my attraction to men just wasn't comphet. it might be the same for you, it might be different. maybe you'll go with bi sapphic and later realize it actually was comphet instead. nothing you do from here will be morally wrong and you shouldn't let anyone, especially radfems & exclus, tell you otherwise, because they will. even then, you could be super perfectly confident and still end up being wrong in the future. really only you can figure this out, with help of course, but i can't give you a definitive answer. hopefully my suggestion will get you somewhere.

but neutrally-speaking, regardless of stance, does that negate any of their points about comphet? i'm obviously not gonna interact with any of the terf stuff and just because i agree with most of their stuff on one topic doesn't mean i support all that they post about the rest - that was kinda the whole point of the post i mentioned them in in the first place. hell, as an unrelated example to the transmisogyny stuff, i don't actually think i agree with how they say you can't be both asexual and a lesbian, or aromantic and bisexual, or whatever else like that about sexuality discourse. but i'm not gonna ignore them entirely because of that. ignoring sources altogether because they don't match your viewpoints 100% of the time is really not a smart move; it narrows down your options greatly and shows that you have no interest in debate, only forcing others to agree that you're the one in the right.