mattmacburn:

you all need to think very fucking carefully about repeating this “queer is a slur” horseshit, because it serves a very particular purpose that is definitely not in the interest of the vast majority of the queer (gasp!) community.

(screencaps from the ever-erudite Aevee Bee: https://twitter.com/MammonMachine/status/1015730533303611392?s=19 )

[Image: screencaps of tweets from @MammonMachine:

“Hey, remember a year ago, when folx decided out of nowhere ‘queer’ was a slur again, despite its ubiquitous decades long use in academia and advocacy groups, and thens creamed at trans ppl who told them this was TERF rhetoric they were repeating?”

Beneath is picture of an outdoor protest with partial text that reads: “So they’re allowing a group of TERFS to star…”“I’m referring to the “lesbian, not queer” sign there)

“This rhetoric was used against a local queer and trans center in the US that I am close to; it’s pretty blatant and common! It’s so upsetting to see grooming from hate groups work because people want to yell at girls so much.“

"They spread this because they think ‘queer’ is too nonspecific and thus, of course, much more inclusive of people they don’t think belong, like trans folx, especially trans women. Trying to rebrand it as a slur is to make it feel toxic to too without questioning why.”]

Source: mattmacburn

acepilotlombardi:

bemusedlybespectacled:

wetwareproblem:

periegesisvoid:

thequeercrow:

foundtheaphobe:

foundtheaphobe:

don’t use gay, it’s a derogatory term that’s been used against us for years and still happens today!!!
you can reclaim it for yourself, but there is no gay community because it’s a fucking slur, not an umbrella term.

teddyisabear said: I know this post is a joke but like you’re being really insensitive and ugly. Queer is a fucking slur and gay has never been a slur lmao get it together

have you perhaps been outside
or at least in a public school
or maybe looked at LGBT+ history

growing up, gay was quite frequently used as an insult. Constantly used in a derogatory manner.

growing up, the word gay had negative connotations. Do I ask people to tag things as g sl*r? No, because that would be homophobic. So why the fuck is it okay for people to tag stuff as q sl*r?

High school was a constant parade of people calling bad things “that’s so gay” meanwhile there were no publicly out students or any GSA type organization until after I graduated. But no one there was getting called queer as a slur, just gay. I recognize that use of negative meanings of queer is regional, but “that’s so gay” was pretty much universal for several years at least, in recent memory.

When I was in high school, I knew damn well who was gay or bi. But we literally didn’t dare utter the words. The only way I heard that word at all on school grounds was as a weapon, usually backed by a fist.

But it’s never been a slur. Sure, kid.

literally there were ad campaigns about using “gay” as a derogatory term. in 2008.

The time I spent in public school taught me 6 neat ways to remember the formula for calculating speed, and that if you don’t like someone, the first thing you do is call them gay.

fierceawakening:

storywonker:

fierceawakening:

cromulentenough:

ms-demeanor:

rosalarian:

asynca:

luckyladylily:

queerly-tony:

boatiechat:

authoratmidnight:

smallswingshoes:

softbutchelliewilliams:

idk if this has been posted yet but i read this thread by @teamarimo and found it SUPER interesting and thorough and thought it’d be good to share it

This is good, just wish it wasn’t posted as a Twitter essay, they’re so hard to read.

[Caption: a series of tweets by twitter user @teamarimo. It reads:

the debate on who can use the terms “butch/femme” keeps coming up so i
did a ton of research & i’d like to weigh in on the issue. i’ll post
sources at the end

too many people credit anne lister (a historical lesbian) with coining
femme in her journals but she was speaking french and “femme” has been a
french word forever

going in chronological order of gay words in the english-speaking world,
“lesbian” began as a synonym for tribade. “tribadism” = scissoring;
both words meant women who slept with women & the sexual act itself.
this was long before IDpolitics

so lesbian/tribade was something you did, not something you IDd as, bc
they were labeled by their sexual activity since IDpol hadn’t come
around yet. there was no concept of who was or wasn’t exclusively
attracted to women. that’s why bi women are closer to lesbians than bi
men

tribade dominated the 17th-mid 19th centuries until sapphic & lesbian took prominence. it wasn’t until 1892 that a neurologist used bisexual to describe sexuality. from then until the 1960s, bi was used only in academic contexts. it still wasn’t an identity yet

bi women have always been here but shared community with & organized
under “lesbian” until (and even into) the 60s. before then, any text or
study that said “lesbian” meant gay & bi women unless it (on the
rare occasion) specifies otherwise, so context matters

butch/femme began in gay bars in the 40s-60s. women-only gay bars were
frequented by lesbian & bi women. so for the first decades of
butch/femme history, “lesbian” includes bi women bc there was no bi or
“women-exclusive” yet & they were at the bars, participating in the
culture

in the 70s, lesbian separatism begins with 12 white cis lesbians, the
furies. They suggest that women engage “only (with) women who cut their
ties to male privilege… as long as women still benefit from
heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will…

at some point have to betray their sisters, especially lesbian sisters
who do not receive those benefits.” demon TERF sheila jeffreys says “our
definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does
not fuck men.” this marks the split between bi & lesbian women

lesbian separatism others bi women who shared space, identity &
oppression with lesbians centuries prior. it deems trans women as
inextricable from male privilege they (don’t) have. it others lgbt woc
who share oppression with men & therefore can’t exclude men from
their politics

tldr it’s bad lol. with events like stonewall (1969) & increasing
anti-gay violence in the 70s, anyone with proximity to heterosexuality
in gay spaces was viewed as a threat & shunned. so bi groups begin
to pop up, since they had no place in straight or gay communities
anymore

in the 80s, 2nd-wave bi organizing was feminist bi orgs forming bc
lesbians posited bisexuality as anti-feminist. by 1988, LGB officially
separates lesbian & bi. now lesbians are invested in specific
lesbian history & everything before the 60s says “lesbian.” see the
problem here

texts with the word “lesbian” before the 60s are also referring to bi
women but modern meanings of old words are applied to them, &
consequently, bi women are denied a massive chunk of our history,
including butch/femme culture

in the 60s, ball culture emerges in houses created as safe spaces for
black & latinx queer youth. the genders are butch queen, femme
queen, butch & women. here, butch & femme embody: the
intersections of race, gender & sexuality; the freedom of it; and
the resulting persecution

in the 70s, lesbian separatists say any form of masculinity harms women,
materializing against butch & trans women. femmes are framed as
wanting to reap benefits of heterosexuality while still toying with
women (this is heavily wrapped in biphobic rhetoric too, if you can’t
tell)

butch/femme is framed as heteronormative, anti-lesbian &
anti-feminist. so androgyny is proposed as the lesbian ideal. now
lesbian feminism is centered on white, middle class, androgynous
lesbians at the expense of working class + nonwhite lesbians, bi women,
and butches & femmes

butch/femme fall out of popular use, only kept alive by the same working
class & nonwhite women who are ousted by white lesbians.
butch/femme usage among queer youth of color includes lesbians &
nonlesbians as it had since 60s ball culture & since 40s gay bars
with gay & bi women

it’s interesting that people say butch/femme is for lesbians only when
the beginning of lesbian as an exclusively-woman attracted identity
& the downfall of butch/femme go hand-in-hand. it was queer youth of
color who kept that culture alive, lesbian or not

white lesbian TERFs who demonized the culture embraced it again when
genderfluidity became trendy in the late 80s. they claimed it as theirs,
and stripped it of its history with bi women, trans women & queer
youth of color that they wanted no association with

so that history was lost among many, and now well-meaning lesbians who
definitely are not TERFs don’t even know butch/femme’s roots in race,
trans/gnc identity, & class struggle, or its origins among gay &
bi women as one group

tldr: TERFs suck, bi & lesbian women’s history is inextricable, and
bi women were using butch/femme before the bi identity even existed.
historically, “lesbian” encompassed a set of behaviors & became an
identity later

Sources:

gay & bi women going to the same clubs: Source 1, Source 2

bisexual etymology: Source

lesbian separatism: Source

tribade: Source

butch/femme: Source

more on butch/femme; Source

origins of bi movements: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

lady with history & women’s studies + LGBT studies degrees: Source

ball culture: Source

hi here’s a trans lesbian (homojabi@tumblr) saying exactly what I just
said from a trans perspective for the “everyone’s trying to steal from
lesbians” crowd. I’m going back to sleep

https://confide–nemini.tumblr.com/post/149527067504/is-it-okay-for-bi-girls-to-refer-to-themselves-as

end caption]

@queerly-tony I think you were discussing this a short while ago? Might be of interest 🙂

OMG I was!! Awesome! Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me it was TERFS trying to exclude trans women who started that shit.

Well cool. I’m… probably definitely some kind of butch. ❤

Entirely unsurprising that hard division between queer women has at its root extreme prejudice, hard division always does.

@asynca, might be interesting to you? I assume you probably know this, but possible you don’t.

Thanks! I knew some of this, some of it (like ‘tribadism’) is new.

this is my favourite summary:

tldr: TERFs suck, bi & lesbian women’s history is inextricable, and bi women were using butch/femme before the bi identity even existed. historically, “lesbian” encompassed a set of behaviors & became an identity later

Essentially – block anyone who tries to force a wedge between lesbians and bisexual women, between cis women and trans women, etc, etc. Exclusionary politics and separatism is ALWAYS founded in genuinely untrue bullshit, dodgy politics and discrimination.

Important history, darlings. Don’t let anyone rewrite it.

Some folks are asking for LGBTQIA+ history aside from Stonewall and marriage equality – here’s some good stuff.

@fierceawakening

thank

The Anne Lister claim is especially weird – not only would she have simply been speaking French, as the Twitter thread correctly notes, but the coded portions of Anne Lister’s journals that contain records of her sexuality were only published in the 1980s, and publications about her only started addressing her relationships with women in that decade. (source: Helena Whitbread’s introduction to her edition of Anne Lister’s diaries)

Lister scholarship hit the mainstream in academia with the growth of queer british history study in the 1990s and early 2000s and has only really recently got to the mainstream. The idea that American communities would be calling themselves slang derived from Lister’s diaries, when the only way to decode her diaries was kept locked in a safe in the local library and local authorities pressured academics not to mention this in publications, is a hell of a reach.

so this was a thing

what other citations do we have?

or is this known to be wrong?

this is the first mention I’ve seen of this but the teamarimo thread seems thin on corroboration

(personally, it’s not at all clear to me femme is a lesbian word though—it seems to me possible that some of the characters called femmes in stone butch blues could be bi. there seems to be a strong sense that they favor butch women because men have hurt them, rather than that they’re all, to a person, monogay and “intentionally subverting femininity by performing it to attract women and not men.”)

Source: masteraquasgf

When you wanna claim something as your Hyperfixation or your Special Interest…

jumpingjacktrash:

lysikan:

candidlyautistic:

noonewouldlisten25:

But you don’t know if you’re autistic/ADHD and don’t wanna be offensive if you’re not

¯_(ツ)_/¯

For all y’all still exploring this, or are self diagnosed or community diagnosed… y’all aren’t being offensive. Keep on being you. It doesn’t matter if you ever get a clinical diagnosis or not. If you relate to the autistic and ADHD communities, and you find comfort in the advice and coping techniques we have to share, then chances are that you belong.

and word policing doesn’t help acceptance, it hurts it. Any of y’all what feels a thing feels the thing and can use the same words as nother peoples what feels the thing.
Words is for communicating – if you restricts who can use them then they lose their value.
Making up new words for the same thing based on tiny differences if F-ing stupid – we already gots too many words!

erm – end rant?

special interests are called that because they’re specially interesting, not because autistic people are so very different from Real People that you need special terminology to denote us liking something.

word policing is othering. don’t do it.

clatterbane:

Another Google Photos Assistant auto-animated delight from a series of photos (“Rediscover this day: Jan 14 2013”) 🐶

Reminded by discussion coming up yet again over ownership of “butch” (and connections to Polari – British gay slang).

Not long after we adopted this little guy, I took him along to Pets At Home to buy some things for him. As you do.

And some older, rather camp gentleman came across the store to make over him. First words? “He’s SO butch!!!”

(While Nervous Boy kept eyeing the guy’s fluffy little dog like it was a wolverine that might chew his face off at any moment…)

So yeah, at least in that guy’s estimation? You don’t even have to be human to qualify as butch. And he should know appropriate usage there better than many.

lines-and-edges:

canadianwheatpirates:

vaspider:

bullet-farmer:

vaspider:

a-polite-melody:

socialjusticeichigo:

Another thing that confuses me about the ‘butch/femme are lesbian only terms and m-spec women shouldn’t use them’ thing is that I’ve been seeing queer men use femme for like, a really long time?

Same. And it’s… telling that not a single word about them, that I’ve seen anyway, has been said by the “they’re for lesbians only” crowd. Like. If they are lesbian-exclusive words, shouldn’t gay men using them be just as in the wrong as multispec women?

I would ask why it is I haven’t heard a single word about that, but… I think the answer is pretty clear. (Hint: it’s multispec antagonism.)

It’s also just a complete lack of understanding of where the terms butch/femme came from. I can’t yell enough about how people need to look up Polaris and learn about the whole fascinating history of the cant that gave us butch and femme in the first place.

I mean, “Stone Butch Blues” shows men and women identifying as femme in Buffalo, NY’s bar scene in the 50s, but of course some random exclusionists on Tumblr.hell can go off, I guess.

Stone Butch Blues is actually set in the 1970s, but otherwise you’re dead on. 🙂

Hell, there’s a book on my shelf with quotes describing men as butch that go back to the 40′s (so what’s that whole “it came out of 50′s lesbian bar culture” thing again?):

Like most of Derrick’s partners – among them the “butch number” in charge of the electricity generator – Fred marries and raised a family after the war [WWII] was over.

[…]

The New Zealand Pictorial drew 1955 to a close with tales of this new urban phenomenon. Like the Observer some eight years earlier, the Pictorial managed to moralise, inform and titillate all at the same time:

“Homosexuals have a strict code of their own and on no account will they sexually associate with women. Oddly enough they fight among themselves like kilkenny cats [sic]. For this reason a group of homosexuals is always controlled by the “queen bee” whose word is absolutely final. Others in the sect are “marthas”, who dress as women; “arthurs”, who adopt the normal male role, and “butchs” who stand in either way.”

[AN: this was written by straight people, and as such may not be accurate terminology, but it also stands as evidence that these terms were widespread enough for straight people to notice them.]

[…]

One avid party-goer wrote about this in-between time of evening in “The Night Is Young and We’re So Beautiful”, an unpublished 1966 story about his Auckland social circle:

[cut for length] “The more discreet or nervous would exit hurriedly and linger not. They would attempt an air of “How ever did I get mixed up with this lot when I was really drinking in the side bar with all those butch sporty types?”, and rush to their transport looking neither to right nor to left. “

– from Mates & Lovers: A History Of Gay New Zealand by Chris Brickell

Also, there’s a claim that floats around sometimes that butch and femme mean different things for lesbians because they relate to gender identity and expression. That’s a cool claim! It also goes for gay men:

Many stereotypes of gay men presume some form of cross-gender identification and remain prevalent even though the past two decades have seen a large-scale “butch shift” among gay men in Western communities.

[…]

“Butch is to straight-acting what camp is to effeminate – it’s like taking qualities that we consider masculine and over-emphasising them.”

“Butch can be camp in a way. It’s almost like it’s an exaggerated, overblown, unrealistic version of masculinity – you know, it’s not real.”

While butch is taken to clearly be a performance and generally a self-conscious and entertaining one, straight-acting is ambiguous in the same way as camp.

[…]

“When I first came out I actually got quite camp in both my speaking style and my movement style and then sort of when I decided that was actually really dumb, I swung back and got sort of completely butch in both and now I think I’ve sort of settled somewhere in the middle somewhere and I’m quite comfortable.”

[…]

Interviewee: I think camp’s making a parody of the masculine stereotype [whereas butch] is trying to be the equivalent of what straight men should be, like really tough, macho.

Chris: Do you think it sends it up or actually values it?

Interviewee: I don’t know, I think both to an extent. I mostly think it values it.

[…]

The interview accounts discussed here suggest that, rather than attempting to dismantle the taxonomy that incorporates butch, camp, effeminate and straight acting, gay men are refining that semantic space by introducing a new dimension of authenticity to the available distinctions.

– from “What it means to be a gay man” in Queer In Aotearoa New Zealand (2004), by Chris Brickell and Ben Taylor

And as a bonus, some comments on gay men in film by Vito Goddamn Russo:

To make matters worse, it was just about this time (1969) that gay men, themselves buyers of the American dream, rejected the sissy confessions of The Boys in the Band, opting for the macho drag of Joe Buck instead of fuzzy sweaters and teased hair, in order to prove that homosexual men could be just as butch as anyone else. (Which is true, of course, but why bother?) Instead of recognizing and destroying the worn-out myth of the real man, faggots adopted the solution of the traditional male. Just as Marion Morrison changed his name to John Wayne, they jumped on the bandwagon and became part of the parade.
[…]
George Schlatter’s Norman, Is That You? (1976) may have been the first pro-gay fag joke. Schlatter combined what looked to be good intentions with a production that only a hack could love and a solution that nobody could believe. The short-lived Broadway comedy about the parents who discover their son’s lover and gay lifestyle on a weekend visit went on to become a big dinner theater hit, and it is easy to see why: it plays both ends from the middle, refusing to make any comment on the situation for fear of offending someone. The black lover is butch, obviously the “husband”; the white lover is nellie, obviously the “wife.” Just like us, George!

– from The Celluloid Closet

Butch and femme are very important terms to lesbian history, I’m not arguing against that. But it hacks me the hell off to see the claim that they’re only for lesbians because that’s an active denial of my history and culture as a bi man. Plus, there are gay men out there right now with “no fats no femmes” in their grindr bios; try going and telling them that it’s a lesbian only term lmao

Thanks for adding all the citations! This is very good reference material.

alarajrogers:

lines-and-edges:

canadianwheatpirates:

vaspider:

bullet-farmer:

vaspider:

a-polite-melody:

socialjusticeichigo:

Another thing that confuses me about the ‘butch/femme are lesbian only terms and m-spec women shouldn’t use them’ thing is that I’ve been seeing queer men use femme for like, a really long time?

Same. And it’s… telling that not a single word about them, that I’ve seen anyway, has been said by the “they’re for lesbians only” crowd. Like. If they are lesbian-exclusive words, shouldn’t gay men using them be just as in the wrong as multispec women?

I would ask why it is I haven’t heard a single word about that, but… I think the answer is pretty clear. (Hint: it’s multispec antagonism.)

It’s also just a complete lack of understanding of where the terms butch/femme came from. I can’t yell enough about how people need to look up Polaris and learn about the whole fascinating history of the cant that gave us butch and femme in the first place.

I mean, “Stone Butch Blues” shows men and women identifying as femme in Buffalo, NY’s bar scene in the 50s, but of course some random exclusionists on Tumblr.hell can go off, I guess.

Stone Butch Blues is actually set in the 1970s, but otherwise you’re dead on. 🙂

Hell, there’s a book on my shelf with quotes describing men as butch that go back to the 40′s (so what’s that whole “it came out of 50′s lesbian bar culture” thing again?):

Like most of Derrick’s partners – among them the “butch number” in charge of the electricity generator – Fred marries and raised a family after the war [WWII] was over.

[…]

The New Zealand Pictorial drew 1955 to a close with tales of this new urban phenomenon. Like the Observer some eight years earlier, the Pictorial managed to moralise, inform and titillate all at the same time:

“Homosexuals have a strict code of their own and on no account will they sexually associate with women. Oddly enough they fight among themselves like kilkenny cats [sic]. For this reason a group of homosexuals is always controlled by the “queen bee” whose word is absolutely final. Others in the sect are “marthas”, who dress as women; “arthurs”, who adopt the normal male role, and “butchs” who stand in either way.”

[AN: this was written by straight people, and as such may not be accurate terminology, but it also stands as evidence that these terms were widespread enough for straight people to notice them.]

[…]

One avid party-goer wrote about this in-between time of evening in “The Night Is Young and We’re So Beautiful”, an unpublished 1966 story about his Auckland social circle:

[cut for length] “The more discreet or nervous would exit hurriedly and linger not. They would attempt an air of “How ever did I get mixed up with this lot when I was really drinking in the side bar with all those butch sporty types?”, and rush to their transport looking neither to right nor to left. “

– from Mates & Lovers: A History Of Gay New Zealand by Chris Brickell

Also, there’s a claim that floats around sometimes that butch and femme mean different things for lesbians because they relate to gender identity and expression. That’s a cool claim! It also goes for gay men:

Many stereotypes of gay men presume some form of cross-gender identification and remain prevalent even though the past two decades have seen a large-scale “butch shift” among gay men in Western communities.

[…]

“Butch is to straight-acting what camp is to effeminate – it’s like taking qualities that we consider masculine and over-emphasising them.”

“Butch can be camp in a way. It’s almost like it’s an exaggerated, overblown, unrealistic version of masculinity – you know, it’s not real.”

While butch is taken to clearly be a performance and generally a self-conscious and entertaining one, straight-acting is ambiguous in the same way as camp.

[…]

“When I first came out I actually got quite camp in both my speaking style and my movement style and then sort of when I decided that was actually really dumb, I swung back and got sort of completely butch in both and now I think I’ve sort of settled somewhere in the middle somewhere and I’m quite comfortable.”

[…]

Interviewee: I think camp’s making a parody of the masculine stereotype [whereas butch] is trying to be the equivalent of what straight men should be, like really tough, macho.

Chris: Do you think it sends it up or actually values it?

Interviewee: I don’t know, I think both to an extent. I mostly think it values it.

[…]

The interview accounts discussed here suggest that, rather than attempting to dismantle the taxonomy that incorporates butch, camp, effeminate and straight acting, gay men are refining that semantic space by introducing a new dimension of authenticity to the available distinctions.

– from “What it means to be a gay man” in Queer In Aotearoa New Zealand (2004), by Chris Brickell and Ben Taylor

And as a bonus, some comments on gay men in film by Vito Goddamn Russo:

To make matters worse, it was just about this time (1969) that gay men, themselves buyers of the American dream, rejected the sissy confessions of The Boys in the Band, opting for the macho drag of Joe Buck instead of fuzzy sweaters and teased hair, in order to prove that homosexual men could be just as butch as anyone else. (Which is true, of course, but why bother?) Instead of recognizing and destroying the worn-out myth of the real man, faggots adopted the solution of the traditional male. Just as Marion Morrison changed his name to John Wayne, they jumped on the bandwagon and became part of the parade.
[…]
George Schlatter’s Norman, Is That You? (1976) may have been the first pro-gay fag joke. Schlatter combined what looked to be good intentions with a production that only a hack could love and a solution that nobody could believe. The short-lived Broadway comedy about the parents who discover their son’s lover and gay lifestyle on a weekend visit went on to become a big dinner theater hit, and it is easy to see why: it plays both ends from the middle, refusing to make any comment on the situation for fear of offending someone. The black lover is butch, obviously the “husband”; the white lover is nellie, obviously the “wife.” Just like us, George!

– from The Celluloid Closet

Butch and femme are very important terms to lesbian history, I’m not arguing against that. But it hacks me the hell off to see the claim that they’re only for lesbians because that’s an active denial of my history and culture as a bi man. Plus, there are gay men out there right now with “no fats no femmes” in their grindr bios; try going and telling them that it’s a lesbian only term lmao

Thanks for adding all the citations! This is very good reference material.

Nothing that is useful to someone else is an anyone-only term.

I keep seeing this kind of thing. Guys. Guys, you cannot own a part of language. That is not how language works. We have made an exception for reclaimed slurs that describe identity, only because it does considerable actual harm to let members of a historical oppressor group run around using a term that people who look just like them used to scream at a specific group while trying to beat them to death (and even then there is ambiguity; the queer community freely gave their word to the academic community to describe them with, and now the term “queer” is a fully reclaimed term that can be used by anyone, despite what radfems and kids who can’t seem to grasp that every single term for homosexuals is a former slur have been trying to push on Tumblr). But you cannot say “only autistics can use the term ‘stim’ to describe repetitive actions they undertake that give them pleasure”, you cannot say “only black people are allowed to use vernacular terms that have passed into the media and the wider community of language because they invented those terms”, and you cannot say “only lesbians are allowed to use a specific term for gender nonconformity.” Among other things, a bi woman is absolutely in a position to be able to use any term lesbians use to describe anything other than “exclusively dates/loves women only”, and terms regarding gender nonconformity? All of the LGBT+ community has the right to those.

You invent language for the use of all of humanity. If you want to keep it to your community only, keep it off the internet and use only in small groups vetted to be your community exclusively. As soon as you use a term that is useful to someone else, expect them to pick it up, because humans are overall more similar than they are different. Your words have to have part of their definition applying to your group (for instance, misogynoir cannot be used to mean either prejudice against women in general or black people in general because it was specifically invented to mean prejudice against black women, and you can hear that in the word’s roots) for you to be able to keep them exclusive.

When you wanna claim something as your Hyperfixation or your Special Interest…

lysikan:

candidlyautistic:

noonewouldlisten25:

But you don’t know if you’re autistic/ADHD and don’t wanna be offensive if you’re not

¯_(ツ)_/¯

For all y’all still exploring this, or are self diagnosed or community diagnosed… y’all aren’t being offensive. Keep on being you. It doesn’t matter if you ever get a clinical diagnosis or not. If you relate to the autistic and ADHD communities, and you find comfort in the advice and coping techniques we have to share, then chances are that you belong.

and word policing doesn’t help acceptance, it hurts it. Any of y’all what feels a thing feels the thing and can use the same words as nother peoples what feels the thing.
Words is for communicating – if you restricts who can use them then they lose their value.
Making up new words for the same thing based on tiny differences if F-ing stupid – we already gots too many words!

erm – end rant?

fierceawakening:

kdkorz10211:

nonbinarypastels:

Since I keep getting anons WRT multisexuals being able to use the terms butch + femme and positivity posts I’ve made for multisexuals who use these terms, I want to address that:

I’ve already answered a question about whether I think multisexuals are allowed to use these terms that included sources

Namely among them being this source which goes over the history of the terms butch + femme and the fact that multisexuals have been using them since they were created

Now here’s the deal I’ll make with anyone who comes to this blog and takes issue with my posts: if you can refute these sources and provide me with actual evidence showing that the information is all bullshit and that multisexuals without a doubt have zero rights to use these words? I will be absolutely be happy to hear you out, read whatever sources you provide, reconsider my position on this issue, and apologize if I was wrong.

However anyone who comes into my ask box to complain without any legitimate argument + sources that show that multisexuals have no right to use these words (which “lesbophobe go die” does not count as, jsyk) is getting instantly blocked and I’ll be adding 10 positivity posts for butch/femme multisexuals to my queue just for you.

Deal? Deal. 🤝

multisexuals and queer men have been using butch and femme for a long-ass time. and hello, the standard “asshole gay” dating site marker is “no fats, no femmes”

That.

fierceawakening:

nonbinarypastels:

nonbinarypastels:

nonbinarypastels:

Since I keep getting anons WRT multisexuals being able to use the terms butch + femme and positivity posts I’ve made for multisexuals who use these terms, I want to address that:

I’ve already answered a question about whether I think multisexuals are allowed to use these terms that included sources

Namely among them being this source which goes over the history of the terms butch + femme and the fact that multisexuals have been using them since they were created

Now here’s the deal I’ll make with anyone who comes to this blog and takes issue with my posts: if you can refute these sources and provide me with actual evidence showing that the information is all bullshit and that multisexuals without a doubt have zero rights to use these words? I will be absolutely be happy to hear you out, read whatever sources you provide, reconsider my position on this issue, and apologize if I was wrong.

However anyone who comes into my ask box to complain without any legitimate argument + sources that show that multisexuals have no right to use these words (which “lesbophobe go die” does not count as, jsyk) is getting instantly blocked and I’ll be adding 10 positivity posts for butch/femme multisexuals to my queue just for you.

Deal? Deal. 🤝

This offer is still on the table, my pals.

Let me just casually bring this back around for y’all since I get a flood of asks ‘correcting’ me about who is/isn’t allowed to use the terms butch and femme literally every time I make a positivity post about the terms (none of which, btw, have had countersources – still waiting on those).

Also a reminder to y’all to read my byf/faq before you send in asks. This post was linked there, literally under a header that says “call me out”. I mean? 🤷

This is still so weird. Less than ten years ago, my gf and I called ourselves a butch/femme couple. We were both bi and both were open about it and NO ONE SAID SQUAT.

This thing is new.