i'd been out as bi for something like 25+ years (i just turned 40 three weeks ago). i thought that since i'm not a †3®ƒ and i'm attracted to women and nonbinary ppl no matter their hardware, and since i'm transmasc/genderqueer myself, that it fully excluded me from being able to call myself a lesbian. i've heard and internalized some really cruel takes (mostly on leftbook, ugh) from tankies screaming that no one can be a lesbian unless they strictly identify as a woman in a very binaristic sense, are only attracted to women also in a binaristic sense, and only use she/her pronouns.

what a crock of shit, amirite??

comphet got me real bad, too. i'd been partnered with an uninterrupted stream of men since i was 15 (also dated women/nb ppl during that time, polycules, yadda yadda). i was married to a man for almost a decade, then only a handful of months after we split up, i jumped straight into another almost-decade-long relationship with a man (lovebombing is one helluva drug). i'm still friends with my ex-husband but that latter partner was horrendously abµs¡ve and thank fuckin' Satan i'm no longer with him.

up until i escaped The Arsehole, the longest amount of time that i wasn't in any kind of relationship with a man (whether romantic or just a hookup) was only a couple months at most. the societal pressure to never say "no" to a man is crushing. to always seek validation from men, because if men don't find me attractive then i have failed at life. the pressure when identifying as bi and internalizing the message of "but if you're bi, why don't you want to date men? if you're really bi, you shouldn't exclude any gender(s) from your dating pool."

...and then i spent an entire year without having any sort of relationship with a man. and hooooooo-lee shit, y'all...!! i had an existential crisis that was.. honestly...? set off by Tracy Chapman's performance at the Grammys. i made a whole 3-hour long Spotify playlist of as many songs as i could think of that had made me feel the gayest. (the playlist is fuckin' siiiiiiiiick, if i may say so myself. but i'm sorry to non-paying Spotify folks, since i prefer to craft playlists meant to be listened to in a specific order. still slaps on random, tho.)

i spilled my guts to a few trusted friends (as well as my lovely nb partner), and i in a conversation with one of my closest friends (whomst, in the past, i'd had multiple deep-dive conversations about our identities as bi) i said, "so like... if i'm nonbinary... and i'm only attracted to women and nonbinary ppl who identify more with that 'end' of the timey-timey gendery-wendery gender spectrum...." and she told me, "Linden... Linden. that is literally in the definition of lesbian." and... that was that, then.