I've recently been checking out some of the better lesbian Reddits, and I believe there is so much of value to be found in these spaces, but there are so many things that I am fundamentally incapable of grasping.
I do not understand this weird, very current trend in trying to make "lesbian" a matter that is determined entirely by your specific ability to rightfully gauge and identify every little internal feeling, which are affected my trauma, culture, hormones, and a whole slew of other things. This aim at making sure no one calls themselves a lesbian unless they can fully prove, or at least believe beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they only ever have and only ever will experience attraction to women feels absurd and pointless.
I do understand that much of this has been born out of a direct pushback against bi women who do not seem to know this about themselves wrongfully telling lesbians that they MUST be willing to fuck live human dick, and a weird perception that bi women who wrongfully identified as lesbians in the past are to blame for men and trans women insisting that lesbians be chill with fucking them. Men are to blame for their refusal to take no as an answer. End of story, bottom line. Punishing women because they were stupid and/or wrong should not be the main focus when the issue is men and blaming women for it just feels like a more accessible goal than making men stop... acting the way men act. If a bi woman NEVER again called herself a lesbian only to be lying or later realize she was wrong, if that NEVER happened again anywhere on the whole planet, men would still feel entitled to sex from women who do not want them.
When I say I am a lesbian, the only fucking thing someone needs to know about me is that I am exclusively interested in the romancing and centering of women in my life. I am fucking autistic and grew up experiencing extreme abuse and making sexuality out to be a complete and truthful internal inventory that you're announcing to the world after careful cataloguing and inspection instead of a scramble in the dark to find whatever misshapen words you can to most accurately describe what you think is happening inside you to the very best of your ability. The only thing my sexuality label has to fucking do is announce present action and future intention. This feels like a weird extension of the move to microlabel every tiny identifiable facet of your sexuality with a new word or identity as if there is any internal aspect of the self that is completely immutable or exists as Pure Truth to be discovered. Mainly, I think the problem is every single body is spending too much time thinking about themselves and not enough time actually engaging in anything of use and it feels so fucking difficult to find and form community when so many people are gatekeeping shit that does NOT actually matter.
Like, yes, obviously I think it's an issue when people who are loudly not lesbians or who should be completely barred from identifying as such call themselves that and then position themselves as the arbiters and experts of lesbianism but if those people are being louder than actual lesbians it's still that we should be better organizing ourselves and picking our fucking fights better. If I want to be heard, it's my job to fucking speak, no one else can do it for me and no one else can be blamed if I am not being a loud enough self advocate or I'm not setting hard enough boundaries in the spaces I have control over.
I just. I very much don't understand why I still seem to find more animosity towards women than men in spaces that should be about celebrating all women, even if they aren't gay, or haven't passed whatever other imaginary purity test is being held up today. I don't understand why these spaces still treat other women as the enemy more than as, oh, I don't know, an occupied people who have more in common with you than they don't. It's so damn disappointing.