Mspec Lesbian Misconceptions
I still get exclusionary comments and reblogs on my friend's mspec lesbian infographic so I thought I'd make a sort of 'addon post' that answers basically everything!
Please check the infographic out! It's much shorter and it looks pretty
🌺 "Mspec always means that you're attracted to men"
⤷ Mspec is short for the 'multisexual (or other multi- attraction type) spectrum', meaning the attraction to multiple genders. Most folks who experience attraction to women and non-binary genders don't consider themselves mspec, but that doesn't mean that nobody can
⤷ As we understand the complexities of gender more and move past the 'only two genders' way, what counts as being bi or otherwise mspec will change
🌺 "There's no reason to reclaim old uses for the word lesbian from before lesbian separatism"
⤷ Lesbian separatists tried to exclude anyone that associated themselves with men or masculinity from lesbianism. This included bi people, trans people, butches and mascs, lesbians still married to men, lesbians living with men, and more. Some went as far as considering butch-for-femme relationships to be harmful. Why wouldn't people want to reclaim lesbian from a time before this ideology spread? See more here
🌺 "But bi women wanted to make their own spaces and stop using lesbian spaces and the lesbian label" ⤷ Obviously, some bi sapphics of the time would've wanted to be distinctly and only viewed as bi, and have no affiliation with lesbians, but plenty didn't. Implying that the rise of radical feminism in the lesbian community was wanted by all of the people they excluded is ridiculous. It wasn't a consensus
🌺 "Mspec lesbians just want to feel included in lesbian spaces"
⤷ You've hit the nail on the head actually, this isn't the gotcha you think it is. Mspec sapphics were originally welcome to use the word lesbian and exist in the lesbian community, and then they weren't, so some of them would like to be included again yes
🌺 "It takes away spaces that are just for monosexual lesbians"
⤷ There have been attempts made to create terms for monosexual lesbians (though usually people just mean 'not attracted to men' rather than monosexual), but the lesbian community thrived with bisexuals in it for a long time. Lesbian spaces are heavily dominated by monosexual lesbians as well
⤷ The real question here is why are you so keen to know for definite that nobody in your space is attracted to men? And what are you counting as 'attracted to men'? Are you assuming it based on dating habits? What label they use? What you consider to be attraction? Everyone views this stuff differently, you can't police it properly
🌺 "Lesbian can't be used in the split attraction model, it means no attraction to men at all"
⤷ Insisting that someone has to use 'homoromantic' rather than lesbian just because they're bisexual or vice versa is pointless. Not only is lesbian a more open and functional label (it specifies attraction to women and doesn't imply that the user is also a woman), but defining it as an absence of attraction to men is very 1970s lesbian separatist of you
🌺 + "If you're fluid between mspec and lesbian just say abrosexual", "If you heavily prefer women just say homoflexible" and so on so forth
⤷ There are probably terms that technically apply to you that you don't use because you're not connected to the label or it doesn't fit quite right. The same applies here. Abrosexual is very broad, homoflexible implies 'same gender' attraction to women, and we've established that there's nothing stopping them from using mspec and lesbian instead
