Yeah, Pretty Much How It Goes For Me Too

yeah, pretty much how it goes for me too

sometimes butches are trans men and sometimes they were, once, and sometimes it depends on the day. and sometimes they are faggots, and sometimes they were, once, and sometimes it depends on the day

So much of what society treats as a joke is just mocking disability. Their idea of lazy is a disabled person trying to survive, whether that be living with their parents as an adult or using pre prepared food. Cringe culture is based entirely around mocking neurodivergent people and their interests. Symptoms and characteristics of disability such as urgency issues, drooling, tremors, tics, strabismus and speech impediments are used as cheap punchlines.

In children’s tv shows disabled characters such as those with speech impediments are treated as a joke, with symptoms of disability being portrayed as synonymous to stupid.

This idea is being taught from a young age in the media and it’s engrained into our language and culture. This goes beyond jokes, it contributes to the alienation of people with disabilities.

Once you start noticing these things you realise how constant and normalised it is.

Reducing an entire person to a punchline is wrong. Using a disability symptom as an insult is wrong. It’s disturbing how normalised it is to not treat people with basic decency and respect.

This lesbian visibility week, I'd like to take a step back and bring to light one of the issues the lesbian community has. Specifically, those with gender binaries.

And yes, I do mean multiple. We all know and hate the man/woman binary, but in its wake many different gender binaries have risen out of the queer community.

The gender binary I'd like to talk about is nonman/man.

(I'd like to preface this by saying if you like this definition for yourself, that's fine! I'm talking about a certain kind of lesbian that pushes this definition onto everyone around them.)

I was there on TikTok when this definition rose to popularity, and even then I was uncomfortable with it. This obsession with men, or lack-there-of, went a bit too far when they tried to make it the central definition of lesbianism.

However, as I'd soon learn, the lesbian community is only as obsessed with men as they are because TERFs infiltrated us back in the 80s/90s. Cishet TERFs came in, saying that lesbianism was the only moral orientation for a woman to have, and worked to exclude anyone they deemed too "manly" out of lesbianism. This included all transgender and non-binary people, people of color (because they were "fighting for men's rights"), bisexuals, and butches. This was known as lesbian seperatism.

The lesbian community is still healing from lesbian seperatism, and there's still people who participate in what I call "modern lesbian seperatism". Excluding butch lesbians who feel a connection to manhood (lesboys/butchboys), excluding lesbians whose orientation is as multiple and complex as their gender (bisexual lesbians), it can be a dangerous thing just trying to live online as a gender-complex lesbian.

So, as a request this week of lesbian visibility, I'd appreciate it if you'd consider multigender people more in your lesbianism. There are women who are men who are women. There are butches who are men. There are lesbians who're bisexual, and yes that's often an expression of gender-complexity. Take the time to talk to us, hear what we have to say; you'll probably learn more about your history. :)

genuinely so funny to me how Emily fr just ripped off the whole flag so now her version - which is literally just flipped, how unoriginal - is seen as THE lesbian flag. she's like some lesbian messiah to people for creating THE flag, and it's not even her design. you can't just flip someone else's creation and call it your own💀

@butchspace I loooooove your orange butch flag. and i thought it’d be cool to splice together the lipstick lesbian & orange butch flag. as well as add the More Color More Pride stripes.

and mod T from butchspace suggested a great idea of having the white stripe symbolize those who dont ID as femme or butch.

 i think this combo would be a great flag for the general lesbian community. i always see the lipstick femme flag used as the default for the lesbian community on tumblr. which is an act that treats femininity as the default, and makes butches feel left out and ignored.

this is the shit that makes me want to rip my hair out. I feel so left out even when I see trans inclusive lesbian stuff, because it isn't really all that inclusive of anybody but transfems and feminine nonbinary people (way to just essentially recreate the binary to shove nonbinary people into, guys). it completely ignores the history of transmasculine lesbians and even trans guy lesbians, and to ignore queer history is so insulting to every queer person who has ever lived in a way the Twitter/Tumblr exclusionary lesbians don't approve of.

being a lesbian who ISNT an exclusionist (meaning mspec lesbians and trans(men) lesbians dont bother me) is NOT for the weak. Specifically when you identify w “controversial” identities too. Im not a binary trans man but I personally know 1 irl trans man who is a lesbian and plenty online and i have spoked w them and ultimately related more to their experiences than I do to cis lesbians (for context I am a transmasculine nonbinary lesbian) idk it was just so easy for me to understand where they were coming from and understand why they would want to identify that way, and personally i identify with terms like “boydyke” and “lesboy” and its so crazy to see all the online drama over these terms… and its so hard to find online lesbian spaces where I feel ..safe?? Tiktok is an absolute dumpster fire. Most of the lesbian reddits are super terfy, even towards trans women and fems, god forbid you mention you are transmasculine youll get downvoted to hell. Even on r/butchlesbians!!! I got banned for trying to explain why a binary trans man who lived his life as a butch woman for 25+ years, whose friends are all lesbians, whose wife is a lesbian, *MIGHT* still identify as a lesbian/with the lesbian community. And literally every other post on that sub is people questioning their gender confused whether they are butch or ftm or both! So idfk! Im tired of being called transphobic and lesbophobic for being transgender and a lesbian!! What the fuck!! I tried joining some facebook groups and the ones in my area literally either specify cis lesbians only or one of them literally had a questioneer asking if you think trans men are men and therefore cant be lesbians or if youre a disgusting terf that thinks all trans men are lesbian. Like… whatever happened to nuance..

Even if you were a difficult child, you didn't deserve to be hurt.