And ykw, in re: queer people eating up terf rhetoric uncritically, I'm STILL reeling about how, when I came back from Twitter, i was seeing all these ads for Folx and Plume on Tumblr, and the ONLY comments and reblogs were attacks, things saying "this company exploits trans people, don't use it."

Plume is a company run BY trans people. It's a bunch of trans doctors who will prescribe you HRT via telehealth and do all your labs, refills, needles etc for like $99/mo (last time i checked). Folx is the same but a bit cheaper and operates in different states, in an attempt to cover gaps in trans Healthcare coverage.

As soon as I started blocking terfs I stopped seeing those comments. But I also stopped seeing anyone talking about Folx or Plume. Point blank. I dont even get the ads for it anymore. It's like everyone just absorbed the idea that they're "preying on trans people" by giving you HRT, which is TERF 101 LEVEL SHIT. None of you even fucking Googled it!!!

Like honestly I'm pretty bitter about this whole thing, and the fact that I've not yet seen ANYONE talk about this or own up to it in the 2-3 years since???? Folx and Plume are both still around. I've had to consider using them multiple times even in relatively "safe" states like Michigan, because sure, your insurance might cover HRT, but good luck finding a doctor who will prescribe it, because PP doesn't do HRT there, there's like 4 doctors in the whole state that will, and they will be like a 6 hour drive from you if they're accepting patients at all.

So like idk especially with all the absolute HORSE SHIT that you guys like to put TPOC, intersex ppl, asexual ppl, and trans men thru at the mere SUGGESTION of terfs, I just have to wonder how many of you are STILL repeating word-for-word terf rhetoric without unpacking it. (I mean, in addition to those of you I SEE STILL DOING THIS.) You may be critically/outwardly against TERFS, but if you don't actually take ANY time to block them, or even recognize and challenge their rhetoric in your head, you arent doing enough to avoid them. Cause you're STILL repeating it and you look foolish, WHICH WAS THE GOAL, BTW. To make queer (esp trans) people look foolish and disorganized, and to drive a wedge between our communities about struggles we actually fucking share.

Another example: I've said it before and I'll say it fucking again, "trans men can't speak to being oppressed bc you are MEN and therefore have Male Privilege, SILENCE, OPPRESSOR," is the SAME ARGUMENT from a few years ago about "ace and aro ppl aren't queer bc you don't experience sexual attraction, you can't be oppressed for something you dont experience, therefore, silence, cishet!" Signed, an asexual gnc transmasc. This was another instance of queerphobic, divisive terf rhetoric getting passed around uncritically for YEARS. (I can't speak to this bc I'm not a lesbian but it does feel eerily similar to "bi lesbians are harmful to our community" as well, that whole, "anything that could even feasibly one day sorta be tied back to Men means its #unsafe" vibe, but also a very, "anyone queerer than a cis political lesbian is a threat to our community," vibe, which feels r/dfemmy to me.)

I see people TALK about the dark ages of asexual hatred on this site, but I dont see a lot of you dissecting how that happened or how to prevent it from happening again to other communities. I see people talking about "wow everyone on this site sure was unhinged about asexual ppl" and then turning around and saying shit like "transandrophobia truthers." fucking look at yourselves.

Do you have any dirkjane/dirkjaye recommendations (fanfic, other accounts that post about them, ect) also i need to know your dirkjaye hcs i love them so much

im gonna be honest w you i dont keep up w the fandom much & i know that there isnt a lot of content abt dirkjaye that's like.. not weird?

(readers note: im about to go check AO3 and see if they even have anything that's dirkjaye. ok two minutes later found a user who did transmasc jane. ok a minute later they ship str-dercest thats a no)

SO dirkjaye can actually be so personal (to me. specifically) and a lot of my thoughts abt their relationship & dynamic mirror how i've been in past relationships so :) it's very fun.

hcs under the cut

dirk thought jaye was a boy when they first met at 13. he knew he was gay so he was DEVASTATED finding out that jane was a "girl". roxy is the only one who knew about this. he does not admit it until years later

they do everything together. even errands. dirk is the designated driver and jaye is quite happy about that because while they CAN drive they like watching dirk do it

they're the couple that would have two separate bedrooms but occasionally share a bed

in a non-sburb universe they love thrifting together and jaye wants to decorate stuff like the 1950s/60s and dirk wants to decorate like the 80s so they have rooms that look ripped out of completely different decades. jaye got the kitchen and dirk got the front room

they don't really put a label on their relationship, especially after the stuff that happened with jake & their own experiences with loneliness and acceptance. they know they love each other a lot though

dirk witnessed in real time jaye transition from being "lesbian girl" to "gay transmasc" and it still gives him whiplash thinking about it

jaye fell first but dirk fell harder. he confessed to jaye and jaye was like "I KNOW!! PEOPLE WHO AREN'T IN LOVE DON'T ACT LIKE THAT DIRK"

jaye is a very loud and emotional person in contrast to dirk, so in public if they ever need to do anything jaye is the one to ask employees or other people for help. dirk sometimes is extremely stubborn about it but jaye does it anyway. if anyone except jay or rox tried doing that then dirk would be pissed off forever

they are bipolar (jaye) x borderline (dirk) audhd in love forever

How & why do you keep going? i'm butch and plain exhausted. Lifelong intolerance and bullying of my being, then my only butch friends all transitioned then this mess in lgbTQ everything, now i get constantly theythem'ed, and dating is shittier to top it off. COVID doesn't help but i just think about offing myself because i dont see a point at all in existing. To me butch lesbianism is a futile deluded joke at this point. We're nothing. Nothing meant to be sustainable. We're a mistake. Nonsense.

Hi there, I’m really sorry that you are feeling so low. Things can be really though sometimes, and like you say, the pandemic sure isn’t helping :/

I know what you mean; it is hard to keep going when it feels like your way of existing seems fundamentally incompatible with people’s worldview. Of course, butch lesbians have never been particularly well accepted in society, but the additional homophobia and marginalization of butch women within “queer” spaces is particularly depressing. And even in somewhat accepting spaces, it can get just plain lonely. It’s not easy to feel so left behind.

As for why & how I keep going, there are actually quite a few reasons:

The main one is: there is more to life than gender. Don’t get me wrong, both my sexuality and the shit I experienced due to being female matter to me, and not being able to talk about this completely openly with people and therefore never being really understood even by people who matter to me is actually quite painful. However, that doesn’t erase the good things in my life. I get to pet cats and float in rivers. I get to spend time with people I like (less so now of course, but this is not forever). I keep my plants alive (or at least I try to). I try to be kind and to make the world a slightly better place. Sometimes, when I feel a bit better, I make art. Sometimes I walk around in the woods until I can’t see any other people anymore. No gender there, just trees and birds and the smell of moss. This is probably something where I have a bit of an advantage from being somewhat older, but I also have some straight normie friends whose opinions on queer stuff tend to range from “of course trans people are valid, but saying that gender identity changes your sex is kinda dumb” over “I just don’t understand any of this weird stuff” to “if she talks about her girldick one more time I’m gonna scream”. They do not relate to my constant ruminations on gender identity or my frustration with queer homophobia, but we can hang out and make pizza, play board games and complain about the general state of the world…and I can even talk about being female without being accused of causing people’s suicide. That helps.

I think there is worth in the butch identity. I know that it’s not the cool thing at the moment, especially of you add “woman” to butch. It’s old-fashioned and not in line with many branches of gender ideology and maybe people do think I’m a joke, but that’s on them. I am female and I am like this and that is okay; I do not need to change anything about myself just to be. I do not need to perform nor curate how other people perceive me. While womanhood exists, it will have to make space to include me. There is both revolution and a certain peace in that thought.

Things will not stay like this forever, so much is certain. Having followed the discourse at least peripherally for quite a while now, things have already changed a lot, rather rapidly, over the last few years and seeing the multiple contradictions in opinions even within queer spaces it’s highly unlikely that we have somehow now reached a stable equilibrium. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that things will change for the better (just look at the last few years), but it’s also not a given that it won’t. Maybe we can contribute to that, but I’m definitely sticking around to see what happens.

As lonely as it can feel sometimes, especially with a lot of my former role models recently coming out as not-really-a-women-and-definitely-not-an-icky-terfy-homo-lesbian, we are not, in fact, the last two butch women around. There might not be many of us, but butch lesbians are still a thing, both younger (often desisted or detransitioned) ones and older ones. There are lesbians not just surviving, but thriving away from mainstream queer spaces. There are people talking about the dysfunctional dynamics. There are people who are trying to rebuild community. There are people who understand, although it can take a lot of effort to find them.

I know how important it is for me to see other butches just…exist, so I want to be this person for other people. If I can show even one baby butch that it is possible and totally okay to be like this, that would be worth it.

None of this is really new. Homophobia has been around for a long time, and so has been the hatred of butches (or masculine female people in general), often even within lesbian spaces (radical feminism e.g. has some fairly nasty history there)…and butch lesbians still existed, whatever they may have called themselves at that time. Yes, the homophobia in the queer community is a particular betrayal and I don’t think I will ever get completely over that particular disappointment, but if hundreds of years of persecution didn’t stop people from being gay, neither will queer theory.

In many ways, it’s not like all the former butch women are truly gone. This doesn’t mean that there is no real loss there, there definitely is: of community, shared language and even shared experiences, because living your life as a trans man or nonbinary person is different from existing as a butch woman. But people don’t just stop being female/afab and homosexual when their identity changes and there is still a lot of overlap in experiences, especially when it comes to transmasc butches, FTM/butch cuspers and many nonbinary/agender lesbians. And while there are currently many people who really hate acknowledging that, there are also people who don’t (especially in private). It sucks that talking about this can be such a minefield and navigating the ever-changing rules regarding approved terminology and ideology can definitely be really stressful, but I still think that it is worth trying to build these bridges. Although I also think it’s also totally okay to draw back when needed for self-protection (I can’t be around surgery talk and every time I hear an enby say something along the lines of “I’m not a woman, I’m a human being” I want to scream).

When nothing else helps, there is always spite & anger. I am not going to let this homophobic bullshit be the end of me. That at least keeps me to going long enough to go back to the forest and smell some trees and stuff.

Hang in there! I really hope things will get easier again soon. But even while things are hard, I think it’s still worth it.