KIBI GôApr 17, 2018
does there yet exist a book or analysis or discussion on lesbian terminology in the late twenty teens because i know a lot of the tumblr crowd uses terms like “wlw” or “sapphic” but i've never understood the cultural or community distinctions that those connotate over gay and/or lesbian
Show threadsummer sprite

@kibi i think part of it is that there are a lot of people on tumblr who insist on a very narrow definition of lesbian (i mean not unique to tumblr but like, nobody yells at you if yr like, pan and dare to call yrself a lesbian on masto forex afaict)

so like some of it is being influenced by those folks' usages, some of it is due to wanting to avoid getting harassed by the more strident of them, some of it is an intentional positioning in opposition to them

Apr 17, 2018 at 11:02amWeb
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018
@kibi oh also some of it is because of treating "lesbian" as, like, an identity term instead of a descriptive one, in that, like, if yr talking about some woman who's into other women but you don't know whether they'd call themselves as a lesbian, "wlw" can feel safer, less charged, less likely to be upsetting, in that cultural context
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018
@kibi tho i can’t really offer any insight on like how the terms originated or came into popularity, just on reasons why people choose to use them in present-day tumblr (okay actually i’m like 1.5 years out of date on the dynamics of tumblr tbh but, 1.5-years-ago tumblr at least)
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018

@kibi i should also make it explicit that this is all from the perspective of a white pan trans woman. like ofc you know all of those things are true of me, but it's still useful to make explicit that that's shaping how i relate to the words

in particular, iiuc sapphic and wlw are also p common in some black and poc communities on tumblr and i definitely cannot speak about the reasons why the terms are popular with them

Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018
@kibi wait fuck is this another case of white people appropriating words introduced by black people without understanding their nuances and purposes
Show threadKIBI GôApr 17, 2018
@srn i am extremely the wrong person to ask for this lol
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018
@kibi yeah not so much asking you as just like thinking the question at myself aloud to you
Show threadaschmitzApr 17, 2018
@kibi @srn I'm probably not the right person to be commenting all too much, but I'll agree with this: it seems "wlw" is a little softer in its intent even with the same effective meaning (reference, for example, "amab [woman]" versus "trans woman"). Regarding sapphic, I don't really know, other than it just being a little less common in public discussion and therefore maybe a bit more open for claiming. (Similarly, "dyke" in some circles.)
Show threadaschmitzApr 17, 2018
@srn @kibi (Though I don't think "sapphic" has the same reclaimed history that "dyke" does, so it's a limited comparison.)
Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018
@srn @kibi Biphobic gatekeeping about who's really a "lesbian" isn't new, though - I saw it in the 90s, and it wasn't new then either. Like, as far as I ever knew, the idea that "lesbian" meant you are exclusively or at least primarily attracted to women was the standard definition. It's only in the last few years I've started seeing people use "lesbian" explicitly to include all queer women-and-allied-enbies.
Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018
@srn @kibi It is honestly surprising to me that anyone would expect bi/pan women to feel comfortable under the lesbian banner. Like, sure there's some "lol I'm gay" shitposting but that's not the same as being able to walk into a space thinking "yep this bar is definitely gonna be friendly and inclusive to me, no one will be weird if I bring my male partners to the softball game, my date will not demand to see my queerness resume".
Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018
@srn @kibi (oh just realized that could be read in a more combative way than i meant - not saying "expect" as in I think you're demanding that our feelings conform! just "expect" as in starting with that assumption and being surprised when it turns out not to be true.)
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018

@mcmoots @kibi i mean i feel like i describe myself with a lot of terms that i don’t trust that people fitting under will be inclusive and friendly to me

like “woman” and “pan” and “queer” forex

Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018

@srn @kibi Fair. There are definitely other spaces where I fight for inclusive definitions rather than shrugging and picking a new label (it's probably part of why I haven't embraced an agender label for myself, I've still got political if not personal attachment to "woman"hood).

Not sure what the difference is here. Maybe just that the exclusive definition was the first one I encountered + I have another label that I'm happy with.

Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018
@srn @kibi Or the lack of symmetry, since if "lesbian" is an umbrella term that leaves no specific label for monosexual queer women. Which means they're the default class and bi/pan women are a marked case? Like if you tried to talk about "women" and "trans women" without using the word cis.
Show threadKIBI GôApr 17, 2018
@mcmoots @srn see for me terms like "wlw" have *more* implicit gatekeeping and erasure than just "gay" or "lesbian"—if i went out and started dating a man, literally no passerby on the street would see that as "straight" but it doesn't fit under the labels of "mlm" OR "wlw"—and same for literally any relationship involving a nonbinary person. so it creates solidarity between (mostly cis) binary gender identities but while erasing everyone else?
Show threadKIBI GôApr 17, 2018
@mcmoots @srn "gay" has always been an umbrella term for anything not-straight and "lesbian" for me is just "gay only for people who also have to deal with misogyny"—which isn't to say the political history of lesbianism isn't problematic, but no more so than feminism as a whole? but cis girls generally have no problem calling themselves a feminist despite the existence of TERFs so :P
Show thread👀🌲Apr 17, 2018
@kibi @srn Out of curiosity, how old are you? Trying to figure out if there's a generational component to our conflicting intuitions here (I'm 37).
Show thread👀🌲Apr 18, 2018
@kibi @srn
First person to come up with good inclusive shorthand for "people who have to deal with misogyny" is gonna get their name in a lot of gender studies textbook footnotes. I feel like *everyone* is struggling with this and it makes a lot of community jargon really unsatisfying.
Show thread👀🌲Apr 18, 2018

@kibi @srn "Gay" has always been an umbrella term but it has *also* always been used to talk about homosexual men. If everyone felt equally included in "G" why did we need "LGBTQ"?

Firming up my take, I think it's like using "guys" or "dude" as gender neutral terms. There's a lot of generic usage & it's 99% fine, but when it's not, I don't feel more comforted by "lesbian is a generic term for me" than I would "dude is gender neutral in California".

Show thread👀🌲Apr 18, 2018
@kibi @srn Yeah, "wlw" explicitly includes cis bi women while asking trans women & women-allied enbies to just kinda hope they're covered by any given community's definition of "women". Not endorsing it.
Show thread👀🌲Apr 18, 2018
@kibi @srn I also don't want to frame the situation as "wlw scores 12 gatekeeps, lesbian 4, queer femmes 2" - or w/e the score is when we've worked out all the intersectionalities. That pits the interests of Bs and Ts (and other groups sidelined by various language options, like elders who don't want to reclaim queer) against each other, priming us to argue about whose marginalization should score more points.