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 spriteApr 17, 2018

@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

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into popularity, just on reasons why people choose to use them in present-day tumblr (okay actually i’m like 1.5 years out of date on the dynamics of tumblr tbh but, 1.5-years-ago tumblr at least)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 Gô
@srn i am extremely the wrong person to ask for this lol
Apr 17, 2018 at 11:44amWeb
Show threadsummer spriteApr 17, 2018
@kibi yeah not so much asking you as just like thinking the question at myself aloud to you