females? in my feminism?

i wrote something into lesbian connection and bonnie j morris fucking reached out to me and offered to meet up because she will randomly be teaching at my school this upcoming semester. yes, that bonnie j morris, the woman who wrote the disappearing l. i am going to talk to the woman who wrote the fucking disappearing l

Boston Marriages

Boston marriages - romantic unions between women that were usually monogamous but not necessarily sexual - flourished in the late nineteenth century. The term was coined in New England, around the time that numerous women’s colleges such as Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley emerged.The concept of love between women was, of course, not new; “Boston marriage” and the very similar, earlier nineteenth-century term “romantic friendship” connote a type of relationship that dates back to at least the Renaissance in the West, and possibly further in the non-Western world. Boston marriages signified a new phenomenon, however, in that the women involved in them tended to be college-educated, feminist, financially independent, and career-minded - hardly the social norm among females of the day. These characteristics distinguish women bound together in Boston marriages from participants in the earlier romantic friendships.

Boston marriages were long-term and committed, and resembled traditional marriages in many ways. But remaining unattached to men gave women a chance to attain significant decision-making power over their own lives, power they would have forfeited to their husbands in a conventional marriage.The social acceptance of the Boston marriage was predicated upon the common assumption that the women involved did not practice any form of genital sexuality with each other. At the time, sexologists had not begun the regular use of pejorative terms such as “sexual inversion” and “perversion” to decry homosexuality, and the term “lesbian” was not yet in popular usage. Since nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were often considered not to have strong sex drives - sex for them was supposedly a duty, and intended for procreation only - nothing was deemed wrong with women’s public displays of affection. Neither were their sharing households and even beds considered suspicious.Whether women in these romantic relationships did indeed refrain from sexual contact with each other is difficult to determine, but it is very likely that some, if not all, of Boston marriage couples were physically as well as emotionally involved. Their love letters to each other often indicate a passion that could hardly be considered platonic, and modern lesbian historians and writers have speculated that if members of Boston marriages were alive today, they would openly identify as lesbian.

Her name is Edith Windsor. 

But sure, you can just have your tumblr revisionist history of Stonewall where Martha P. Johnson wasn’t a gay male tranvestite/drag queen, somehow was the only person who mattered out of the hundreds of people involved in the uprising, and imply that gay people did nothing to fight for their own rights in the following 46 years. 

And pretend the AIDS crisis never happened and how that brought to light the gross inequality of gays in the US.

And pretend that Matthew Shepard’s murder never happened and didn’t launch the gay rights movement into the modern incarnation that eventually lead to marriage equality. 

supreme court

trans women of color throwing bricks at cops

Why didn’t you say something sooner? – You’re asking the wrong question, Julie Diana Robertson, Huffpost US (via hypnictwitch)

“Calling things out is intimidating, but lesbians need to know what’s really going on right now—  We’re seeing an insurgence of homophobic advice from non-lesbians directed at young lesbians— Teaching them that same-sex “preferences” are “exclusionary and wrong.” (Pride.com) Vice magazine is advising lesbians on condom use, and shaming the few lesbian bloggers we have, alleging they’ve been “excommunicated” by the “LGBTQ.” Excommunicated, a religious word, a warning to all lesbians: Conform or else. The mainstream is now teaching lesbians that their innate same-sex “preferences” make them bigots, and that although “gay ‘conversion therapy’ has been proven not to work… you can unlearn your own [same-sex] prejudices… it just takes time and conscious effort.” (EverydayFeminism) Go Magazine just put out an article by the same non-lesbian writer who changed my Q&A answers— It’s titled “The Sexpert: How Can Lesbians Have Safer Sex.” The byline reads, “Newsflash: We should be using condoms.” The use of “We” offers lesbians advice under the guise that the author is a lesbian. However, the author recently stated (publicly), “I’m not a damn lesbian” and “I’ve never written on behalf of lesbians.” The article offers lesbians advice like, “You can use condoms as a barrier when having a penis in vagina or when having anal sex.“

[…] Publications that are lesbian in name, make it seem like we’re okay with redefining ourselves, erasing ourselves… We’re not. Someone needs to fight and give lesbians a voice. Because lesbians don’t currently have a voice. We have the illusion of a voice. And the silencing of lesbian voices within the alphabet is unparalleled. It’s 2017 and we’ve been so heavily censored, that we’ve gone underground. […] To have a voice, lesbians must be willing to publicly apologize for their inherent sexual orientation. Willing to suspend our own reality. Lie to ourselves and to others about our innate sexual boundaries. Asking someone to suspend reality and have faith in a belief system, is called a religion— Enforcing those beliefs by silencing others, is called a cult.  […] Why don’t women say something sooner?— Just look at what happens when we do! […] I spoke up and there were consequences. The interviewer unapologetically claimed that the words were her own and that she was looking to “provide space for all LGBTQ women.” But in providing this “space,” she excluded me from my own story. Excluded all lesbians. I spoke up and there were consequences for all of us— The publication promptly changed their mission statement on social media. A community that was already hurting, that’s fought long and hard for the right to name and take pride in our boundaries, was slapped down.”