you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]writerlylesbian 38 insightful - 3 fun38 insightful - 2 fun39 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Didn't read it all, stopped when it got to 'cis' lesbians and evol lesbian feminists.

What seems to have escaped the writer is that the reason it was formerly difficult to distinguish between lesbians and bi women is because women did not have independence or sexual autonomy. Very few women could survive without marriage, so it's virtually impossible to sit here hundreds of years later trying to guess which women having affairs were lesbians trapped in marriages or bisexual women who liked sex with both.

The era of second wave feminism and women's liberation, including women's sexual liberation, meant that lesbians started to be much more able to articulate and name their exclusive sexual attraction for women, as well as have the freedom to only pursue relationships with women. That started to make it pretty fucken' obvious which ones were the lesbians and which ones were the bisexuals.

I didn't even understand why she dragged butch/femme into the mess of an argument she was trying to make - that has always been something associated with lesbian culture, not bisexuals.

Edit: I finished reading it, because I'm a masochist. The gist of the argument seems to be: bisexuals have always hung around lesbians, therefore lesbians and bisexuals are indistinguishable, therefore lesbians don't own butch/femme, and a transwoman agrees with her so she's right. And the only reason lesbian-only culture/spaces existed in the 2nd wave was because evol radfems, not because feminism meant that tons of lesbians were suddenly able to come out of the closet and start their own communities.

But you can't expect much from someone who thinks they can fit the history of the evolution of lesbian identity into a twitter thread.

[–][deleted] 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Butch / femme is lesbian and these people can fight me.

[–]writerlylesbian 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

What I have always said about this for years is that - no one is stopping bisexuals from building their own culture, if that is what they want. They can create their own language, their own spaces, their own art or whatever that centres bisexuals. They can invite their partners/friends/whoever into their spaces, where their bisexuality is celebrated. But they absolutely never seem to want to do that. They just shimmy between the straight world and the gay world, depending on who they're dating. And that's fine if they want to do that, but they can't then complain about how they're exactly the same, or conversely 'invisible', depending on what they're pissed off about that day, and that everything that's gay really belongs to them too.

[–][deleted] 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Whenever someone bisexual is complaining like that it just makes them seem less bisexual to me. Most women that spend time in the community should at least get that it’s different to be with women, and it’s just illogical to expect to be visibly bi when there is no way to be distinguished from straight people when you’re in a straight couple.

[–]writerlylesbian 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

agree. bisexuals who actually spend a decent amount of time around lesbians generally get it.