Seeing a lot of misinformation flying around regarding lesbian flags this year, particularly the pink one, so here’s my attempt to set the record straight!
FAQ/Common Misconceptions and Sources are listed below the cut - if anything in this post contradicts what you’ve heard, I’d encourage you to read through them before responding.
Please DO NOT promote flag redesigns on this post :)
We really have harmed a whole generation of trans and gnc children by failing to communicate how serious a decision binding actually is, how there’s no ACTUALLY safe way to bind, how it permeneantly damages the body, how it can make top surgery more difficult in the future. I don’t think we should be keeping trans kids from binding (we let kids do all sorts of things they’re really not old enough to understand the potential consequences of) but we owe them the ability to make informed decisions at LEAST
So this is definitely an important conversation to have, but can you point me at some reading about “permanent damage”? I might just be lucky, but I had zero lasting effects from binding. I’d like to at least read up on it so I can have this conversation and be more specific than “be careful.”
Of course! I can’t easily source right now but I am more than happy to provide further info when I am not at work and on mobile. Unfortunately, like a lot of trans healthcare, a lot of what we know about binding is anecdotal and word of mouth. BUT permeneant damage can include:
-Musculoskeletal damage. Binders are indiscriminate compression tools; they can’t flatten the chest without applying pressure every other anatomical structure underneath including the spine, ribs, lungs and heart. Many people who bind experience chronic back pain, shoulder pain, sharp stabbing chest pains, permeneantly decreased lung capacity, literal spine deformation, etc etc.
-A continuation of the above but the ribs are actually jointed bones. Their ability to flex is absolutely vital to their ability to withstand trauma and protect your vital organs. Imagine the damage that would be done to your elbow if your bent your arm to full flexion and then tightly bound it closed like that, for six, eight, twelve hours per day, every day, for weeks or months or years. And you don’t NEED a functioning arm to live!
-Tissue atrophy. Forcing chest tissue to lay in an unnatural way can and will change the way that tissue looks, even to risk of atrophy. Some people who bind and only moderately dislike the way their chest looks find that they HATE the way it looks after binding for a period of time. Tissue atrophy can also make top surgery more difficult in the future, and increase the risk of complications like nerve damage.
-Worsened dysphoria. Once someone starts binding and becomes accustomed to seeing themselves with a flat chest, it can be much more difficult to see yourself without one, and dysphoria that much more intolerable. You can imagine the psychological feedback loop of binding more in response.
The typical safety measures passed around about binding are harm REDUCTION measures and should not be advertised as making binding “safe.” Binding is not safe. It is a very serious health decision with long term consequences and should be treated as such. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision, but it should not be considered the DEFAULT decision for chest dysphoria which is frankly how it’s currently treated.
some people on insta said i should post my workout routine since i mentioned how im so happy with the results, so here’s my little workout guide for my fellow trans folk! I focused on getting a more masculine body because obviously that’s what I want. I’m so happy with the results, this workout is saving my fucking life!!!! I can’t get on T soon so this has really been keeping my dysphoria in check. I barely get body dysphoria, i love how my clothes looks on me, i love feeling confident for once in my life!!! HOWEVER Don’t go overboard with working out my friends. Do not work out in a binder, you MUST take days off to let your muscles heal, and you CAN’T starve yourself! Fitness is all about health and diet! Take care of yourself. This is also MY workout routine, you may not get the same results as I have! Every body is different.
Out of
curiosity, I recently googled “Am I lesbian quiz”. Half the “Are You a Lesbian” quizzes just asked outright, “Are you attracted to women?” as though that isn’t the
very answer a questioning lesbian is trying to figure out. The other
half marked me as heterosexual for things like owning more nail varnish than
dogs. I hope this list will give you more nuanced ideas to think about
as you explore your identity.
These experiences are all really common among - but not universal or exclusive to - people who later realize they’re lesbians and find a comfortable home in the lesbian label and community.
It’s mostly stuff that I and
other lesbians I know have wished we knew when we were first coming to
grips with our lesbian identities, because the fact is it takes a long
time to discover how common a lot of these experiences are among
lesbians, and not knowing what to look for when trying to figure out if
you’re a lesbian can be hard.
‘Attraction’ to men
Deciding which guys to be attracted to – not to date, but to be attracted to – based on how well they match a mental list of attractive qualities
Only developing attraction to a guy after a female friend expresses attraction to him
Getting
jealous of a specific female friend’s relationships with guys and
assuming you must be attracted to the guys she’s with (even if you never
really noticed them before she was interested in them)
Picking a guy at random to be attracted to
Choosing
to be attracted to a guy at all, not just choosing to act on it but
flipping your attraction on like a switch – that’s a common lesbian
thing
Having such high standards that literally no guy meets
them – and feeling no spark of attraction to any guy who doesn’t meet
them
Only/mostly being into guys who are gnc in some way
Only/mostly being attracted to unattainable, disinterested, or fictional guys or guys you never or rarely interact with
Being deeply uncomfortable and losing all interest in these unattainable guys if they ever indicate they might reciprocate
Reading your anxiety/discomfort/nervousness/combativeness around men as attraction to them
Reading a desire to be attractive to men as attraction to them
Having a lot of your ‘guy’ crushes later turn out to be trans women
Relationships with men
Dreading what feels like an inevitable domestic future with a man
Or looking forward to an idealized version of it that resembles literally no m/f relationship you’ve ever seen in your life, never being able to picture any man you’ve actually met in that image
Being
repulsed by the dynamics of most/all real life m/f relationships you’ve seen
and/or regularly feeling like “maybe it works for them but I never want my
relationship to be like that”
Thinking you’re commitmentphobic
because no relationship, no matter how great the guy, feels quite right
and you drag your feet when it comes time to escalate it
Going
along with escalation because it seems like the ‘appropriate time’ or bc
the guy wants it so bad, even if you personally aren’t quite ready to
say I love you or have labels or move in together etc.
Or jumping ahead and trying to rush to the ‘comfortably settled’ part of relationships with guys, trying to make a relationship a done deal without investing time into emotional closeness
Feeling
like you have to have relationships with guys and/or let them get
serious in order to prove something, maybe something nebulous you can’t
identify
Only having online relationships with guys; preferring not to look at
the guys you’re interacting with online; choosing not to meet up with a
guy even if you seem very into him and he reciprocates and meeting up is
totally realistic
Getting
a boyfriend mostly so other people know you have a boyfriend and not
really being interested in him romantically/sexually
Wishing your boyfriend was more like your female friends
Wishing your boyfriend was less interested in romance and/or sex with you and that you could just hang out as pals
Thinking you’re really in love with a guy but being
able to get over him in such record time that you pretend to be more
affected than you are so your friends don’t think you’re heartless
After a breakup, missing having a boyfriend more than you miss the specific guy you were with
Worrying that you’re broken inside and unable to really love anyone
Sex with men
Having sex not out of desire for the physical pleasure or emotional closeness but because you like feeling wanted
OR: preferring to ‘be a tease’ to feel wanted but feeling like following through is a chore
Only being comfortable with sex with men if there’s an extreme power imbalance and your desires aren’t centred
Using sex with men as a form of self-harm
Feeling
numb or dissociating or crying during/after sex with men (even if you
don’t understand that reaction and think you’re fine and crying etc for
no reason)
Being bored with sex with men/not understanding what the big deal is that makes other women want it
Doing it anyway out of obligation or a desire to be a good sport/do something nice for him
Never/rarely
having sexual fantasies about specific men, preferring to leave them as
undetailed as possible or not thinking about men at all while
fantasizing
Having to make a concerted effort to fantasize about the guy you’re “attracted” to
Early interest in women
Not recognizing past/current crushes on women until you’ve come to grips with your attraction to women
Being unusually competitive, shy, or eager to impress specific women when you’re not that way with anyone else
Wanting to kiss your female best friend on the mouth for literally any reason (”to practice for boys” included)
Getting butterflies or feeling like you can’t get close enough when cuddling with a close female friend
Looking at a close female friend and feeling something in your chest clench up and being overwhelmed with love for her - love you may read as platonic
Having
had strong and abiding feelings of admiration for a specific female
teacher, actor, etc., growing up that were deep and reverent
Having had an unusually close relationship with a female friend growing up that was different and special in a way you couldn’t articulate
Thinking
relationships would be simpler “if only I were attracted to women/my
best friend who would be perfect for me if she/I weren’t a girl”
When
a female friend is treated badly by a man, having your protective
thoughts turn in the direction of “if I was him/a man I’d never do that to her/my girlfriend”
Being utterly fascinated by any lesbians you know/see in media and thinking they’re all ultra cool people
Having
your favourite character in every show be that one gay-coded or butch-looking woman
(like Shego from Kim Possible or Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica)
Feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable in locker rooms etc., when your
female friends are less clothed than they normally would be around men
and being more careful not to look than they are
The ‘straight’ version of you
Thinking that all straight girls feel at least some attraction to women
Thinking
that your interest in seeing attractive women/scantily clad women/boobs
is an artificial reaction caused by the objectification of women in
media
Being really into how women look “aesthetically”/“just as artistic interest”
Thinking it’s objective and uncontested that almost all women are way more attractive than most men
Being a really intense LGBT+ “ally” and getting weirdly
emotional about homophobia but assuming you’re just a Really Good Ally
and v empathetic
Having like half your friend group from school turn out to be LGBT+
Getting emotional or having a strong reaction you don’t understand to f/f love stories etc.
Having had people think you were gay when you had no suspicion you were gay
Exploring attraction to women
Feeling like you could live with a woman in a romantic way, even if you can’t imagine doing anything sexual with a woman
Feeling like you could enjoy sexual interaction with a woman, even if you can’t imagine having romantic feelings for a woman
Thinking
you couldn’t be a lesbian because you’re not attractive enough, cool
enough, or otherwise in the same league as most of the women you know
Interacting
with het sex/romance in media by imagining yourself in the man’s
position or just never/rarely imagining yourself in the woman’s position
Really focusing on the women in het porn
Being really into the idea of kissing/being sexual with a woman ‘to turn guys on’
Being really annoyed when guys actually do express interest in watching or joining in when you do that
Only feeling/expressing attraction to or sexual interest in women when you’re inebriated or otherwise impaired
Gender Feelings
Having a lot of conflicting gender feelings that are only possible to resolve once you understand you are/can be a lesbian
Thinking
that being gnc and feeling a disconnect from traditional womanhood mean
that you can’t be a woman even if that’s what feels closest to right -
many lesbians are gnc and many lesbians feel disconnected from
traditional womanhood since it’s so bound up in heteropatriarchy
Knowing
you’re attracted to women and not being able to parse that (esp + any
gender nonconformance) as gay, taking a long time to figure out if
you’re a straight man or a lesbian
Being dysphoric about the
parts of you that make straight men think your body is owed to them,
having to figure out what that dysphoria means for/to you
Knowing
you’re attracted to women, but feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable
trying to interact with them as a straight man, and only later
realizing you’re actually a trans lesbian
Knowing you’re gay, but experiencing a lot of the symptoms of comp het
when you try to interact with men romantically/sexually, and only later
realizing you’re a trans lesbian and not a gay man
Being
nonbinary and taking a long time to sort through being able to
respect/understand your nonbinary identity and your lesbianness at the
same time
Considering lesbianism
Wanting to be a lesbian but feeling like if you don’t already know you are one you can’t be
Feeling
guilty about wanting to be a lesbian, feeling like you’re just
attention-seeking or trying to be trendy
Suppressing your lesbian
dreams because you think exploring that desire would mean you’re a
bad/homophobic person using lesbianness selfishly
Wishing you were a lesbian to escape the discomfort of dating men
Fantasizing
about how much fun it would be to be a lesbian and just be with women/a
specific woman, but thinking that can’t be for you
Worrying that some of your past attraction to men was actually real so you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that bc you can’t be 100% sure you’re not attracted to men and can’t be 100% sure you won’t change your mind, you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that you only want to be a lesbian because of trauma and that means your lesbianness would be Fake
Worrying that trauma-induced complications in how you experience sex (e.g., a habit of self-harming via sex w men or a fear of any sex at all) mean you’re not a Real Lesbian
Every item on this list is common among Real Lesbians. It’s all Normal Lesbian Stuff. If you’re worried that you can’t be a lesbian even though it’s the life you really want for yourself, I hope this gives you permission to explore that. You are allowed to be a lesbian.
And if you’re not sure yet – if you took the time to read this entire thing because you’re curious about your identity, if you identified with a bunch of items on this list – you may or may not be a lesbian, but friend, you almost certainly aren’t cishet. Welcome.
(I’d love to hear other things lesbians wish you’d known were A Thing when you were first exploring your identity!)
this is fascinating.
hey guys really noteworthy: a lot of the “relation to men” sections are applicable to asexuals
The 519 has a long history of working to build inclusive care environments for older LGBTQ people, including delivering training to
care providers. Given the aging population in Canada, we want to
continue to build upon those efforts.
The current generation of
older LGBTQ people have experienced a lifetime of discrimination due to
their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression and
they face very specific challenges as they age:
- They are less likely to seek health care when they need it;
- They often do not disclose their sexual orientation and/or gender
identity and expression to their care providers for fear of
discrimination;
- They report more feelings of isolation from their communities;
- They are at a higher risk for negative health outcomes later in life,
including depression, suicide, substance abuse, smoking, etc.
(Brotman & Ryan, 2008)
The 519 Education and Training Team offer workshops and resources that
support safe, welcoming and inclusive care environments for LGBTQ older
people. The training supports organizations and individuals to
understand the needs of older LGBTQ people. Workshops will help
participants to:
- Identify and discuss reasons an older LGBTQ
person may be distrustful of the health or social care systems and/or
reluctant to seek the care they need;
- Demonstrate and share an empathetic understanding of the barriers faced by older LGBTQ people;
- Make appropriate use of pronouns;
- Propose ways to foster a safe and LGBTQ-inclusive care environment for older people, their friends and chosen families.
For more information about training and resources, please contact:
PHOTOS: Transgender Elders Show Us The Meaning of Survival
In the many years that Jess T. Dugan, a Boston-based trans photographer, has spent capturing images of gender-variant people, she says she’s consistently noticed a striking absence in both art and social sciences: imagery of older trans folks.
“And,” Dugan explains further on her website, “those [representations] that do exist are often one-dimensional.” So Dugan set out to fill this gap, teaming up with social work researcher Vanessa Fabbre since fall 2013 to develop the evocative photo project, “To Survive on This Shore.” In the recently released collection, diverse trans elders ages 50 to 86 are pictured at home or in meaningful spaces, gazing unapologetically into the camera, as if asking the viewer to look deeper into their unique context and life story.
I started writing this as a comment on another post, but it got too long so fuck it, this is going to be its own post, and it’s going to be a collection of basically everything I can get my hands on about asexual oppression, history, and the shit aphobes say. Yeah, this is going to be long, heavy with links to a lot more reading, but I’ve had it up to here with the “discourse”.
Everyone who wants to is free to reblog this post and use it as a reference when arguing with aphobes. (fyi, I created the blog @asexuality-and-aphobia in the middle of this project to be a reliable source for my links.)
Asexuality was listed in the DSM as HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) until 2013, making it officially a mental illness that would be treated with therapy and medication. It is still in the DSM, except that you can ‘opt out’ if you self-identify as asexual, which is great except that asexuality is still so unknown that there undoubtedly many people who are asexual but don’t know that it’s “a thing”. This means that who knows how many asexuals have been sent to therapy and told they’re sick, then been “treated” for their orientation to try and force them to experience sexuality “correctly”.
Posts of people describing the hardship they’ve faced for their asexuality: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
The blog @acephobia-is-real has so many submissions and examples of hatred, harassment, hostility, and abuse, of aces who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted in an attempt to ‘fix’ them, and made suicidal due to aphobia and/or their own perceived brokenness, that it would be pointless for me to try and link any. Just go and start reading. Try their suicide tag.
There may be dissatisfyingly little research done on asexuality, but there has been enough done to prove that they do face discrimination, no matter how hard some may find that to believe. But guess what? You, an allosexual person, do not get to say shit like “aces don’t get kicked out” or “aces don’t _____” any more than I as a white person get to say that things I don’t experience must not happen to black people either. Just because you haven’t experienced it personally or witnessed it with your own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You haven’t walked in an ace’s shoes, you don’t know what they deal with. Period.
Not even other aces can tell asexuals that their experiences aren’t real or aren’t valid. Different people can deal with different amounts of oppression, that doesn’t mean the lack of oppression is the default “truth”.
Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it “as bad” or worse than gay or trans people, but we don’t HAVE to “have it worse” to be included and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone else’s.
Told asexuals to die: x, x, x, x, x (tbh this is only a tiny sample and I don’t have the heart to go digging for more)
Are all aphobes this vile? Maybe not, but this is still the disgusting, hateful attitude festering in the gatekeeping community, and it stinks like shit. The examples I have provided above are only a fraction of the harassment and abuse that is perpetrated on a regular basis.
“Het aces/aroaces are straight”
Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.
“We accept SGA (same-gender attracted) and trans aces”
Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand, a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. Secondly, it enforces a gender binary of “same” and “opposite” gender that leaves a large number of nonbinary people out in the cold. Is a genderfluid person only “same-gender attracted” if they’re attracted to other genderfluid people who are genderfluid in exactly the same way? How about agender, intergender, demigirl/boy people? And before the argument “well they’re included as trans” is made, there are plenty of nonbinary people who do not identify as trans. I’m one of them.
The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.
The modern American movement was first known as the “gay community” when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the “gay and lesbian community”. (Good reading on the subject.)
“After the elation of change following group action in the Stonewall riots in New York, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, some gays and lesbians became less accepting of bisexual or transgender people.
Critics said that transgender people were acting out stereotypes and bisexuals were simply gay men or lesbian women who were afraid to come out and be honest about their identity.
Each community has struggled to develop its own identity including whether, and how, to align with other gender and sexuality-based communities, at times excluding other subgroups; these conflicts continue to this day.” (source)
“From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States.
Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people gain equal respect.” (ibid)
Insisting that LG people have always been accepting of bi and trans people is incredibly revisionist and does a great deal of injustice to those who have been excluded.
Despite the fact that bisexual and transgender people have always been around, and have done great things for the community, they have faced a great deal of lateral oppression from the LG part of the group that did not want to see them get an equal share of attention, support, or legitimacy. This post is not about proving LG transphobia and biphobia, but it’s so rampant that I don’t feel like I need to provide sources whatsoever. Nevertheless, here’s a collection of biphobia, and the blog @terf-callout documents some of the violent transphobia on this site, particularly in the lesbian community. This post is an example.
“The A stands for Ally so that closeted people can be the community without being outed”
No one is saying that we don’t care about closeted people, but a) even if you’re a closeted L, G, B, or T, you are still a L, G, B, or T. Allies do not need to be part of the acronym to be intrinsically welcomed. As someone said, this is like saying the ‘B’ in BLT stands for ‘bread’. We can pretty much safely assume that a sandwich is going to include bread, we don’t have to go of our way to give it a letter. Either you are outing every “ally” as a closeted queer person, or you are giving 100% cis straight people an LGBTQ member card, the very thing you are arguing against by trying to exclude asexuals.
Furthermore, this puts forth the argument “I’m willing to let cishet straight people into the community for the sake of a few closeted people” while at the same time stating “I’m not willing to let the A stand for asexuals because I don’t think letting cis heteroromantic asexuals into the community is worth giving all asexuals representation and support”. Which says that you consider asexuals less valuable and more of a threat than cis straight people.
“I have proof of an asexual being homophobic/transphobic/racist/a terrible person”
Of course there are asexuals who are terrible people. There are legions of gays and lesbians who are racist and transphobic. Does that make them not gay/lesbian? Does their bigotry invalidate their sexual orientation, or remove the L and G from the acronym? No, I don’t think so. Some asexuals being bad people doesn’t justify you trying to invalidate all of us.
“’Allosexual’ is a bad word because ____”
I actually have an ‘allosexual’ tag just for posts about why ‘allosexual’ is a perfectly fine word: x, x, x, x, x. x
“The split-attraction model is homophobic”
What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)
“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”
No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.
“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”
The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”
It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and
gender non-conforming people
in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.
“Aces are valid, they’re just not queer/LGBTQ”
You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.
“Aces take resources from other LGBTQ who need them”
I’ve seen some pretty wild claims about this one, insisting that asexuals “steal” things such as scholarships, beds at homeless shelters, food and space at pride events, suicide hotlines, and so on, yet I have never seen any actual proof that any “stealing” has ever taken place. For one thing, I thought “you’ll never get kicked out or fired for being ace”, “no one is suicidal because they’re asexual”, so why would you think aces need these resources? Either we don’t need them or we don’t use them, you can’t have it both ways.
For another, how heartless do you have to be to tell asexuals that they can’t use suicide hotlines? Do you realize that you’re saying that asexuals should be denied life-saving services? That, in essence, asexuals are suicidal due to their orientation, but you think they’re not “queer enough” so they deserve to die? Because that is the logical progression of refusing someone suicide prevention, and that’s the message aces receive when you tell them they are “stealing” suicide prevention.
Lastly, do you not realize we are also PROVIDING resources? We are bringing bodies and minds to the community, we are here to be voices, to volunteer, to bring encouragement, information, and support. We earn our keep. You just have to admit that you don’t WANT us here.
“Nobody wants to hear about your nonexistent sex life”
