I really like this passage from Stone Butch Blues. I feel like it really summarizes much of the discourse going on in LGBT community (and TERF retoric)

You can be butch and not be some stoic badass. You can be femme and bE that stoic badass. You can be butch and wear earrings. You can be femme and not wear any jewelry.

Just in case someone told you otherwise.

Man, I just do not vibe with that post that was like "if you're butch, you're obligated to throw yourself into dangerous situations to protect feminine queer folks."

Like, one, wtf? Butches are still human beings, not fantasy knights. Being butch doesn't mean signing up to put your life on the line! A crew cut isn't enlistment in the Armed Forces Of The Queer Agenda, thx.

And second, isn't that just the good old "men go to war, protecting the women" patriarchal bullshit binary transposed onto the queer community? Taking the folks who are busting through those arbitrary designations of gender roles and acting like it's fresh and progressive now that you've swapped out men for butches and women for femmes? It's still the same turd, just with a little new polish.

Femininity doesn't require vulnerability. Masculinity doesn't require sacrifice. Doesn't matter what language you dress them up in.

MY pitch for a tutu remake is the exact same plot but with an all girl cast. Imagine her… butch lesbian fakir. Now hold my hand

i actually think the idea that lesbians hate men is ideal. if we convince enough people that being a lesbian means you hate men, then people who love men will avoid using it like the plague. same with butch and femme

Had a moment of clarity seeing a post about whether Harrowhark is butch or femme or whatever

Which is: It's a very interesting discussion, and a very stupid fight.

Depending on who you ask, butch and femme are aesthetics, gender roles, positions in a relationship, or social identities. In fact, so many different people have so many different experiences that some definitions will be mutually incompatible with others. There is no simple definition.

This gets extra complicated because Harrow lives in a society with very different social norms and gender roles and we don't currently know for certain how she is perceived by others, or identifies herself.

So insisting that "of course" this or that thing about Harrow means she's "obviously" one or both or none of them is just applying a really narrow definition to an incredibly diffuse social phenomenon, and inadvertently saying that your experience and attitudes are more valid than anybody else's. Which, I think that LGBTQ+ people, especially WLW, have had enough invalidation for the next myriad.

Talking about your varied experiences and definitions and identities through Harrow as a prism? Fuck yeah! Fandom at its best! Rock on!

At which point, why would you want to shut that conversation down with a flat answer? That's boring. There's a hundred more shades to that rainbow

not to project my very own complex feelings about haircuts and femininity but imo harrow's haircuts are thematically important just like her face paint... the narration in htn remarks time and time again how she needs a haircut. you could argue that she keeps up the haircuts in the mithraeum because of tradition and familiarity, but the in-text explanation as to why she /doesnt/ cut it is because she's terrified its her only symptom of lyctorhood. in the same passage we get this:

those last two sentences specifically are something that will be intimately familiar to anyone who's had their haircut dissected as a topic of conversation by family members, deemed "too masculine", "too short", "not feminine enough", "you would look so much prettier with long/longer hair", all while knowing that the alternative (something long, ""classically feminine"" or whatever that means) will feel annoying and uncomfortable and very far removed from the way you want to present.

all throughout this ianthe is there being proud of her makeover moment, and harrow rebels against it in the only way she knows how, by doing the one thing she can do in that moment to make herself less "pretty" because freedom of presentation and self-determination go hand in hand

ianthe's manipulation of harrowhark's appearance through her hair ("it's the little things") purposefully takes away some of her agency in an environment thats already fraught, and combined with the popular theory ive seen that ianthe changed corona's appearance with necromancy it really reads as just another way to control the people around her ("i made you, you owe me etc etc"). even with john her longer hair leaves her vulnerable to gestures like this, which in any other circumstance would feel uncomfortable and overfamiliar, but in harrow's unstable emotional situation it feels like being offered gentleness:

but it's not! it's not a gentle touch, he's touching her to examine her after trying to convince her there is no way she could have opened the tomb, lowering harrow's defenses and leaving her to doubt herself more than she already does

anyway. this rant doesnt really have a Point point but its one of those details that i think are Very interesting in the narration and id love to see it explored more

I love being a lesbian, I really do. I've found peace in my identity, I've found love for myself hidden in my love for other women, and no one makes me feel happier or safer than my girlfriend does.

When I realized I was a lesbian, though, I was heartbroken. I lied to my friends in high school, saying I was bi because then I wasn't so ostracized, I let myself believe in my comhet because it felt safer, I tried so hard to convince myself I was still attracted to men.

That past will always be a part of me. No matter how much I focus on queer joy, no matter how much I preach that being a lesbian is something to find happiness in, to love about yourself, to be proud of - there will always be a part of me that remembers being a terrified 14 year old, a lonely 17 year old, an 18 year old who finally found community and safety with other lesbians, and finally wasn't afraid of what it meant to be one.

I love my bisexual friends, all of the sapphic friendships I have are held very near and dear to my heart, but it was when I befriended other lesbians that I felt like I could finally breathe, and that's why I think lesbian exclusive spaces are so important. Because I know I'm not the only girl who felt like she was drowning in the loneliness of her Identity.

discourse over whether harrow is butch femme or neither just really shows none of yall know what being femme means

Sometimes I'm butch in a butch way or femme in a femme way but also sometimes I'm butch in a femme way or femme in a butch way or both at once or neither and yeah that makes no sense to most some of you but I'm actually beyond the point of caring.

every time someone does “valyrian culture was more egalitarian than andal culture” discourse i point to the fact that jaehaerys invented the doctrine of exceptionalism and was an evil misogynistic menace to every woman he knew, how visenya was not the ruler of their house despite being older, and how the vale which is STEEPED in andal culture & chivalry & the seven regularly has their houses ruled by women in a way that almost no other region outside of dorne has ntm having the ONLY ruling lady of a paramount house INCLUDING VALYRIAN AND FIRST MEN HOUSES and also i start shrieking

im a bisexual FEMME and im not going to apologize for using a "lesbian exclusive term". I bet u don't remember when we were included in the les community before the separatist movement. it's our birthright as sapphics. I'm not going to say sorry and I'm not going to stop. end this biphobic rhetoric. WE BELONG HERE AND WE ARE NOT LEAVING.

One of the funniest 70-ies radfem ideology nonesense that's still making circles online is that strap ons are heteronormative and that true lesbians EXPLODE at the mere idea of penetrative sex. If not for the icky transgenders lesbians would never think of attaching an inserteable object to their groin area in order to sleep with women... This part I made up but honestly that's very much kind of the logical conclusion isn't it

Bisexuals can't use butch or femme regardless of whether they're het partnered or not.

Bisexual women can and have been calling themselves butch/femme for decades.

The main argument I've seen against it is that historically it was used for lesbians. This argument ignores that historically "lesbian" meant what "sapphic" means today - women who love women. Even if you claim (with no proof) that butch/femme was for women who *exclusively* date women, that still includes febfems. Homosexual women don't have a monopoly on terms that come from shared wlw history.

man I don't want to be an asshole but I really do mourn the popularity of butch & femme dykes and how it's morphed into masc & fem sapphics. like. it feels like we are miles and miles apart. I can't relate to 90% of these people and so many of them are deeply exhausting. most of them do not do any work on delving into their gender presentation and identities or the political aspects of lesbianism/bisexuality/queerness. and they just act like masc = Man Lite and fem = powerful strong girly girl. and it makes me a little crazy. and also makes me feel very alienated from what is technically my own community. but I just can't relate. at all. they left behind so much substance and meaning and history for the sake of aesthetics, white femininity, and repackaged gender roles and I'm Tired

idgaf anymore it's 2023 if your against non-lesbians identifying as butch/futch/femme I'm killing you