Tag: LGBTQ

The fact that fashionable terminology within LGBTQ circles changes back and fourth and like which identities are fashionable shifts from era to era suggests to me that sometimes changes in terminology have less to do with political progress than with fashion and a sort of weird semi-magical belief that if we found the perfect terminology material circumstances would change.

A few years ago queer was the THING TO BE and identifying as lesbian or bisexual was unfashionable… and before that identifying as a lesbian was THE THING TO DO and it’s just like… IDK it feels like a substitute for actual liberation like if we said our right words the straight/cis folks would leave us alone, but like as much as I understand the theoretical shifts that have lead to the linguistic shifts… it doesn’t work that way.

I feel weird cause IRL I don’t have many girl friends, most of my IRL friends are dudes… this has been true for most of my life.  TBH I think it’s because I’m faaaairly gay and I tend to feel super awkward around straight women because I think I’m very aware of a lot of stereotypes about “predatory lesbians” and like had to be hyper aware of them during a lot of my formative years so I tend to avoid physical and/or emotional intimacy with straight women, but also my current relationship is straight passing and I feel kind of awkward in LGBTQ+ spaces a lot of the time (especially because like… IDK I sometimes feel like people assume I’m straight because of how I look… actually a lot of people assume I’m straight because of how I look.) and I dunno… I’m a feminist, I don’t think I’m dismissive of other women, I’ve definitely tended to have more “girl friends” when I’ve had girlfriends because it was easier to hang out with other WLW and not feel weird.  Though also a lot of the time when I develop a close friendship with another woman it kinda turns into something romantic and I feel really weird and bad about that.

IDK I feel isolated and queer and like maybe I am a “predatory lesbian” because I can’t be emotionally close to other women my own age without catching feelings (which is additionally complicated by the fact that I am profoundly monogamous)

You Know, Every Time I See One of Those “Homophobe Caught Doing Gay Stuff” Stories

I actually feel really sad, because it’s not a funny comeuppance for some dickhead, it’s an indication of just how much self loathing society has forced this person to internalize.  These aren’t “haha, what a hypocrite” stories, these are “can you even begin to imagine the emotional turmoil and self hatred this person must be dealing with?” stories.

They’re sad, not funny.

The idea that there’s a single “Cause” of different sexualities or gender stuff is really weird actually

Like… there are probably a huge number of things that result in creating LGBTQ people, in utero, genetic, early experience, and like there can be a huge number of each of those that result in gender or sexuality stuff in a huge variety of ways.  Like some might be endocrine some might be neurological some might be psychological some might be a bunch of other stuff.  The idea that there must be one single mechanism for this stuff is really pretty obviously wrong.  There are probably a whole bunch of mixes of a whole bunch of stuff that create things.

Like humans are complicated AF.