not sure if this warrants a NSFW tag but i thought i should be safe to not risk upsetting anyone. there are brief mentions of sex and sexual anatomy in a pretty abstract way.

otherwise content warning for lesbophobia featuring conversion therapy rhetoric. “lesbians haven’t found the right man” bs.

….

a couple days ago this straight woman posted a tiktok where she asks the Very Important Questions That Lesbians Hate To Answer. paraphrasing but something like “why do lesbians date women who look like men? is it not basically dating a dude but worse bc there’s no penis??” when i saw it all of the replies were praising her for asking as if nobody has ever thought that before. another person added (paraphrasing again) that we will even buy fake penises in what she views as an attempt to simulate “the real thing”.

we all know why this is ridiculous. i don’t have to say why.

initially i saw this video from a reply by a person i follow. i don’t know if she considers herself a lesbian since she only tagged the post as “wlw” and generally avoided the term lesbian, but she brought up some reasonable arguments. i’m just clarifying because she may have made the choice not to date men rather than not dating them because she isn’t attracted to them which is obviously a different conversation. her arguments were mostly along the lines of “some women choose to date other women because they find it easier to connect and relate to people of the same gender”. like i said i don’t have a problem with her arguments i just don’t really think they are necessary.

for me at least as someone exclusively attracted to women, i do not date women because i prefer their companionship over men’s. i prefer women’s companionship because i am attracted to women, not men. i don’t date women because i want a partnership with another woman, i want to have a female partner because im a lesbian.

mind you this is never a discussion gay men are forced to have. nobody is being like “why do gay men have anal sex? don’t they know they can just fuck women and it’s like way awesomer?? are they stupid???” even within the queer community i find that people don’t understand what “i am attracted to women and not attracted to men” means.

other queer people want to find the parameters of who is and isn’t in my dating pool like i can look at a scale with “man” and “woman” on one end and point to exactly when someone stops being “woman” enough for me. because my attraction is based on something somewhat ambiguous like gender, it is like they view it as inherently shallow and irrational. if i can’t give a sensible reason for why i don’t like men it’s not enough. i simply do not like men in that way. never have and i doubt i ever will. we are fundamentally incompatible.

if i saw who i thought was an attractive masc lesbian then found out he was a man, i would stop being attracted to him. the reason is simple: he is a man and i don’t like men. when i was under the impression he was a woman, i may have found him attractive, but finding out he is a man changes how i view him. when a woman wears a dress she is gender conforming. when a man wears a dress he is gender nonconforming. is it not hard to understand how gender can change how we view people?

there’s also this failure to recognize that maybe my partner being a woman is what i want, not something i’m settling for and trying to compensate for with toys. a woman does not “lack the equipment” to me because i am not attracted to men’s bodies.

when i say that im not attracted to men people inevitably bring up trans people which is once again just trying to get me to decide when someone stops or begins being womanly enough for me. that is not how it works!!! someone who is actively striving to become what i view as an absolute dealbreaker is incompatible to me. as for anyone else under that umbrella … what do you want me to say? that i’m attracted to every single woman on the planet? the difference between men and women are that women are in my dating pool.

also why i hate people trying to define lesbian as “liking women and nonbinary people”. i like women and in some circumstances nonbinary people who consider themselves adjacent to women. i want a girlfriend who might one day be my wife. i don’t want to tell people i have a husband. i don’t want to be perceived as a heterosexual couple. some nonbinary people want to present as women and use feminine terminology for themselves. some do not and i think it’s disrespectful to include someone who explicitly doesn’t want to be a woman under “women i’m attracted to”. if i wanted to be perceived as a man or some third thing i would feel offended if a lesbian was attracted to me??

attraction is not this mysterious thing that we can never begin to understand. i hear a lot of “im bi but i don’t want to date men or have sex with them or do anything romantic or sexual with them” and vice versa. like girl do you really like men??? what is attraction if not the desire to pursue someone romantically and/or sexually? are we okay???

when i was 11 i came out as not straight. at 18 i realized i was a lesbian. i think id have saved a lot of time if i wasn’t on tumblr and twitter obsessing over micro labels. i was told that “id know it when i felt it”. i thought i “felt it” but i was just male centered and could not imagine living without a man. attraction is like anything and also nothing. i liked attention. i drew anime boys that looked like girls. when my boyfriends tried to get serious i blocked them. was i feeling butterflies or was i scared? why did the idea of dating women make me sad? why did i like the idea of men but not actually dating them? maybe i’m demisexual, maybe im abrosexual, maybe im actually a guy..

five years ago id have told you a billion different sexualities i identified with. maybe its not that complicated. being a lesbian is actually not restrictive at all. if being a lesbian feels like it’s not representing your whole identity you probably aren’t one. for me i feel relief. i’m myself now. i’m not hiding or compensating.

(to be clear i do not actually care if you want to use microlabels. i don’t know you do whatever. i am commenting on how our perception of labels and sexuality can be regressive and lesbophobic)