Tag: sexuality

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.

People who are supposedly leftists who believe in essentialist racial categories worry me. Race is a social construct, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t effect shit in hideous, evil ways, and the fact that the lines are drawn in arbitrary as fuck ways shouldn’t draw attention away from the fact that the construct of whiteness has caused the loss of countless lives not to mention languages, cultures and histories.

Like human genetic variation is a gradient not a thing with clear lines that match national or even continental borders.  Borders on maps are socially constructed but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect real people’s real lives in terrifying ways.  Who has been socially constructed as white has varied by time and place (and no this doesn’t mean that racism against white people exists because racism has always been carried out by people who were in that time and place white, against people who were in that time and place not white).

Which ethnic/cultural groups are considered white is indeed socially determined but that doesn’t mean that the oppression isn’t real

Similarly what forms of sexuality are considered normative or straight varies by time and place (in much of the Ancient Greek world, for example, a straight guy could have plenty of homosexual sex provided he was on top and remain within their category of sexual normalcy).

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)

Also I Feel Like I Exist In This Weird Liminal State Sexuality Wise

Cause like I’m bi/pan/whatever I guess… like I like fem people of all sorts of genders… but like I mostly prefer women and most of my sexual and romantic relationships have been with women and like I kind of get where some lesbian stuff comes from and where bi/pan/non-lesbian wlw stuff comes from and IDK and like it’s shitty that a lot of women feel like they have to “catch a man” in order to be thoroughly validated, like there have been partners I’ve had where I can’t give them that kind of validation and it’s sucked and IDK.