butchcommunist:

Even if the origin of the term “wlw” lies in black lesbian communities, that isn’t reflective of its use anymore and attempting to get nonblack wlw to just stop using it is more useless praxis (an empty political gesture with no real benefits for black lesbians except getting a few people to self-flagellate over it) than a powerful shift in language use. This is all without mentioning that the Tenorio paper I see being passed around lies on shaky politics and it is poorly written- she tosses around the term “queer” without acknowledging the political implications of that action, makes several claims with little evidence in places where we need it and includes it in ways that aren’t helpful or analytical, totally mishandles the sexualities of famous black female blues performers like Bessie Smith by saying “this image [of a bisexual woman] may have been a ploy they used to protect themselves from discrimination” and then claims that there’s evidence these women identified as bisexual in contemporary senses because in the 20s bisexual women were seen as more acceptable than lesbians, uses loose and baseless analyses of several important songs and texts, and so on. This is not an author we should be trusting to produce any meaningful insights into anything, let alone to make claims about useful political changes in our language use.