What are you looking at?

With help from a bunch of lesbians from youtube:

“I think lesbians are smarter in a sense that we know what we want and we go for it, that’s why we’re gay”

“so if you’re at a party and you see the hottest girl there who turns out to be bisexual, whats your reaction?” “that’s really unfortunate”

“if she can make me laugh then I might be able to get past the fact that she had a dick in her mouth last week”

“if you’re with a lesbian then you know that they’re going to be going for you, for a woman, but if you’re with a bisexual…”

and a special mention for personal experience:

“I’ll have to keep a meter away from you tonight, otherwise you might make out with me haha”

“I wanted to tell you that you looked good last night but someone told me not because you might make out with me”

we constantly get told not to attend pride unless we’re in a same sex relationship, get degrading comments from both the gay community and straight people, are told we aren’t ‘queer enough’ and that because we can pass as straight we don’t deserve a place in LGBTQ+ spaces.

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

women: 91%

men: 9% 

median salary (source):

women: $17,629

male: $30,514

victims of domestic violence (source):

women: 85%

men: 15%

people murdered by their significant other (source):

women: 75%

men: 25%

BECAUSE PHYSICAL ABUSE HAPPENS SO OFTEN IN THIS COUNTRY THAT THEY HAVE TO BUILD THESE BUILDINGS IN EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. CITY. 

The main culprit to blame for there being more homeless men than women is a lack of adequate welfare programs, accessible mental healthcare, and veterans services, since veterans are more likely to suffer from mental health disorders and are overwhelmingly male and more likely to come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. 

The main culprit to blame for there being more female college students than male ones is that women have less job opportunities than men, so college has become more of a prerequisite for finding a stable and comfortable career and income than for men, who are paid better for the same job and have more career opportunities available to them with less training.

The main culprit to blame for women having a longer life expectancy than men is mainly a combination of biology (women tend to be more iron deficient than men, which is actually better for cell regeneration) and life choices (men are more likely to smoke cigarettes and eat high-cholesterol foods for example)

And, as previously stated above, there are more gender-specific shelters for women because women are over 5 times more likely to experience domestic violence than men are.

So yeah.  There’s that.

JUST NOTICED A THING AND IT IS SUPER IMPORTANT!!!!!

tldr; THERE’S AN OPTION TO BLOCK UNREGISTERED OR LOGGED OUT USERS FROM SEEING YOUR BLOG NOW. IF IT’S OFF, THEY SEE THIS:

this is a BIG DEAL to me because I’ve been being actively stalked by my ex for more than a year now. we all know blocking does nothing since it doesn’t stop someone from going to your blog directly to see your posts while logged out.

well NOW YOU CAN OPT TO ONLY ALLOW LOGGED IN USERS TO VIEW YOUR BLOG. YES, EVEN YOUR MAIN.

this is FAR from fixing the problem since there’s no way to SEE which users have viewed your blog (so you can block them if you deem this necessary) or to only allow followers/mutuals to view your blog, but it’s a BIG step in the right direction. i’m sorta astounded i haven’t heard about this via another post but it’s important enough to me to make this post and let people know about it.

so PLEASE REBLOG THIS FOR THE PEOPLE WHO NEED IT.

i’ll gladly endure the flood of notes this post is sure to bring if it means a bit of control and some peace of mind for anyone else out there who’s also living with the fear and anxiety of their blog being monitored by unwanted watchers.

i encourage anyone with this issue to create a statcounter account too.

statcounter is a free, easy to use site for monitoring site traffic. statcounter’s code tracks visitors to your site and its branch links (like readmores!) and the site itself offers a sizable, free storage log to record and store this information.

My mother didn’t sleep for three days straight due to withdrawal symptoms. Subsequently, she had a psychotic break. She started talking word salad and hallucinating. At one point, she thought my father, who was holding me, was the devil and grabbed me from my father’s arms and started running blindly down the street with me, thinking she had to protect me. As a result, she was admitted to a psychiatric ward and stayed there for a whole week to recover, separated from me, her newborn child, the entire time. She had vivid hallucinations, nightmares, fevers and other horrible symptoms for days. 

1. It is not actually an effective argument for dissuading homophobes or transphobes. Take a look at the developmental disability community for some examples of what oppressors do when we’re born this way.

2. It contradicts the idea of actively introspecting to discover your sexual orientation and/or gender identity, invalidating anyone who didn’t just know automatically.

3. It implies that our inability to change is the only good reason to accept us, and by extension implies that we ought to change if we could. Therefore, it actually reinforces that notion that there’s Something Wrong With Us, rather than challenging it.

I’m not entirely sure who to tag. I don’t have a talking relationship with many of my followers, which is a real shame, so I want to know more about the people who actually like and reblog my lame ass shit. @notangelic99, @lovinlife028, @ladynakia, @kayaking-yellowhorse, @super-random-shit, @awitchandhersecrets, @iammyfather, @impossiblelibrary, @empath-warrior, @shebeingbranded, @wankingwhippingwatching, @thepseudohipster, @neverknwsbest, @porn4smartgirls, @femmelillies, @the-problematic-sapiosexual, @kiwianaroha, @the–boy–who–waited

And if I missed you, know it was because my alerts bar wouldn’t go down past a certain point. I apologize. If you wanna give this a try, be my guest.

Name: For the sake of my privacy, call me Mal.

Nickname: None that I’d like to share in this, but if you wanna give me one, I’d be honored.

Gender: Fluid

Star sign: Cusp-born, Scorpio/Sagittarius. 

Height: 5′4″

Sexual orientation: Bi Bi Bi, baby. 

Hogwarts House: Malkavian? I’m sorry, but I was a fan of Books of Magic, which came out a year before Harry Potter. Do yourself a favor and google Timothy Hunter.

Favorite color: I love green, like the lungs of the world.

Time right now: 9:08pm

Average hours of sleep: This is not a fair question because I’ve been an insomniac all my life. My hours can differ wildly from 20 minutes a night to 9 hours, or none at all for weeks, depending on how drugged or manic I am.

Lucky number: 22, for some strange reason. It’s the only number that’s ever won me anything.

Last thing I googled: Ummm, honestly? Diego Luna. Two of my friends (who were together at the time watching netflix) both texted me to harass me at work saying they saw Elysium and I looked just like the one character in it named Julio, so I did an image search and I was like, “that looks nothing like me”. Which it didn’t. But they insisted that it did, especially “the angry face ones”. And then for the next almost 3 hours they sent me pic after pic of his stupid face. It was irritating and they wouldn’t stop. The texts eventually devolved to, “go, Diego, go!” and that’s when I threw my phone in the garbage for a while. I need new friends.

Favorite fictional character:  Me! No, I’m kidding. It’s John Constantine.

Number of blankets I sleep under: 1-2, depends on whether I shut off the heat or not.

Favorite artist/band: Are you seriously going to make me choose??? NO, NO NO NO I can’t, don’t you understand, I have 2-5 favorite artists/bands for nearly every genre there is, there’s no way I’m going to narrow all of it down to just one. But, like, if you’re, looking, for some, song recs, here, you, guys, go. You’re, Welcome. [=D

Dream trip:  I would fucking kill for this.

Dream job: Writer, artist, spiritual teacher, nothing at all, I don’t care. If I could get paid to fuck around on tumblr all day, let me do that.

What I’m wearing right now: Pajamas because I’m sick and exhausted and it’s about my bedtime.

When did you create this blog?: I have no idea, I know I’ve been here for years.

Current amount of followers: 206, jesus fuckballs, I still can’t get over that. I know for some that’s pathetic but it means a lot to me.

What do you post about?: I think this post sums it up fairly nicely.

When did your blog reach its peak?: About 20 seconds before I started it? I don’t know, I hope I haven’t hit it yet.

What made you decide to get a tumblr?: The truth? Porn. LOL My handle on here used to be fleshandfoodporn, and then one day I realized I was posting more about health, finance and social justice than anything else, so I changed it. The rest is history.

Do you get asks on a daily basis?: Nobody really bothers me. On the rare occasions I do get an ask, 9 times out of 10 it’s spam asking me to fall for their their clickbait. Most of those I simply delete.