âPeople are called the d-slur because they reject men! Thatâs why bi women canât use it! Lesbian-only word!âÂ
Nice separatist rhetoric, but thatâs not how any of this works.
First off, literally nobody is going to ask a woman whether or not she likes men, or âmake sureâ she doesnât, before they hurl slurs at her. Not only is it impossible to know who someone isnât attracted to unless they tell you, but bigots do not give a damn. Gay/bi people experience homophobia and fight for rights on the basis of our attraction to the same gender, not the lack of it towards different ones. No gay man is fighting for the right to not marry women. The idea a lack of attraction is what homophobes attack people for also implies that theyâd be similarly mad at aroace women. They⊠are not.
Second, there are bi women who only date women and straight women who donât date anyoneâlesbians arenât the only ones who âreject men.â Insisting that other women inherently âcaterâ to men just because of their attraction is straight-up misogynistic.
Third, it takes about two seconds to research the etymology and see that itâs alsoâif not primarilyâabout women being masculine (which most people associate with same-gender attraction, which bisexual women experience). It arguably came from âbull-[d slur],â which was used to describe masculine women or those who âengaged in lesbian activitiesâ (âlesbianâ used to be a synonym for âtribade,â something one did rather than who one was.) Plus, a lot of homophobic violence comes from perceived gender-nonconformity.Â
Fourth, lesbians and bi women have shared community spaces and terminology (including butch/femme) since forever. âBisexualâ wasnât a (recorded) reclaimed identity term until the 50s, and in the 60s, some bisexuals chose to âcall [themselves] homosexual, not bisexualâ because they saw the âbisexualâ label as a cop-out, and theyâll âbe gay until everyone has forgotten that [same-sex attraction] is an issue.â Score one for internalized biphobia!
Until the 70/80s or soâwhen political lesbianism came about and gained popularity, especially among modern-definition lesbiansâthe word âlesbianâ typically (though not exclusively) referred to all woman-loving women (but sometimes, only butches were considered âtrueâ lesbians). The political usage of âlesbianâ increased as the gay movement grew in response to its misogyny and power imbalance.
The lesbian community didnât significantly split off from bisexual women until around the 80s/90s, and even during the 90s, âlesbianâ was sometimes defined as âany woman who has at some time in her life loved another woman.â There werenât many organized and independent bi communities until the 80s/90s. During this political shift, lesbians deemed bisexual women the âonly true heterosexualsâ and âparasites attaching themselves to the Lesbian communityâ even though, for decades, the lesbian community was their community.
Even without this history, so many bi women I know talk about how the d-slur is virtually all theyâve ever been called by strangers and even family and friends in regards to their bisexuality, and still, people go âwell, sorry, but youâre attracted to men so you canât say our word,â as if bi womenâs attraction to men negates the homophobia they face, as if they canât be gender-nonconforming in the same way butch lesbians are.
Even by saying that âbi women are only called d-slurs because people assume theyâre lesbians,â one acknowledges that bi women can have so much in common with lesbians that they get âmistakenâ for each other and attacked for the same reasons: their love for women, and sometimes the gender-nonconformity that comes with that.Â
When bi women argue that they should be able to reclaim the d-slur, itâs not that theyâre itching for shiny new ways to be edgy or even that they necessarily want to say itâitâs simply because this word targets them for the same reason it targets lesbians. It has always been their word.
