lesser-known terms/labels for bisexuals: a review
look, i know what i said about hating the fact that twitter coins all these useless terms to keep bi sapphics from using butch/femme without using doe/stag, but i have to admit that some of them actually kinda rock....... and some of them (expectedly) kinda suck. ALSO THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY OF THEM JUST STOP TRYING AND STICK WITH BUTCH/FEMME OR DOE/TOMCAT/STAG DEAR LORD. I BEG. YOUR COINED SET WILL NOT BECOME FAMOUS AND EARN REWARDS.
1.) to start, solis/lunith/saros are based on the sun & moon, which y’all know i’m such a sucker for the dynamic of, though i’m not a fan of the saros flag being all-blue even though it’s my favorite color. i don’t know why. since given the other two it can easily have a more androgynous context than a masculine one (i.e. “boy = blue”), but to be fair it’s started to grow on me.
2.) similarly, i like solyn/lunyn/mercyn just as much, except that my preferences are switched in that i love the flags much more than the terms. green for androgyny is actually pretty clever imo and the lunyn flag is GORGEOUS and the solyn flag has a color palette that works perfectly for a lot of my favorite characters. they sound pretty, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just weird words to me (and that’s fine!!).
3.) but then you have this “one presentation type for each gender” system that follows the infamous tumblr animal format (with a mixture of pretty and ugly flags, just to mention it) and it just gets complicated. not to mention that i actually dislike this replacement set more than the original, which should say something considering just how much bi sapphics have expressed their hatred for calling themselves deers or other wild forest animals (especially due to implied antiblackness). i mean... moths, beetles, butterflies, and mantises for nonbinary folk? really?? are you just oblivious to all the infantilizing stereotypes that are applied to (usually afab) nonbinary people? and of how much other trans people hate that for us too? i feel like that’s self-explanatory but whatever, if twitter finds that more acceptable than bi history being “lesbophobic” then i’m not gonna prohibit them lmfao. i do actually like the flower system for bi mlm/nblm though, i’ll give op that, and although i’d probably choose different color palettes for the bi wlw/nblw flags due to them reminding me of your classic cartoon-alien-themed children’s outer space playground, they’re not bad. i like celestial body themes. dunno why “moon” and “star” aren’t flipped in meaning, though.
4.) moving on from that rant though, i’d just like to say as a nblm person that these cloud-themed terms are not bad. they’re alright. i do like them better than knight/mage/druid (linked in the above paragraph), which is what they were designed to replace. the corresponding flags can be found here in this thread below this tweet and i personally have a bit of bias in favor of them because i have a preference for blues, grays, and desaturated colors. “cumulous” bi for masculine men, though....... no criticism, i just find that an odd choice in a funny lighthearted way. :)
5.) all i have to say about these three replacements coined for bi sapphics to replace doe/tomcat/stag are that the terms are nice, i wouldn’t use them but they’re pretty enough, but 2/3 of the flags (excluding “forte”) are just plain ugly as hell and i’m not gonna sugarcoat it. sorry, i don’t like them and that’s my opinion. no hate to op but dear god.
6.) this more simplified insect set for (especially nonbinary) bi sapphics basically just gets the same judgement as #3′s moth/beetle/butterfly/mantis since everything was already said in that paragraph. the flags do look nice to be fair, although the butterfly one looks eerily similar to the eclipsis/eclipse bisexual flag, which i see as more of an aesthetic combining the sun & moon rather than a presentation identity.
7.) lastly, i’ve already given my opinion on the damme/tomme pairing in that reblogged post considering they’re the stupidest copycats of butch/femme i’ve ever seen. while i might cringe at some of the options in this post i think i’m gonna have to judge this set as the one i genuinely dislike the most. it’s the biggest “fuck you” ever to bi sapphics coming from fellow bi sapphics and i’m not changing my mind. i hate them. like, imaging calling yourself a “damme bi” and the response is just “damn bi wtf??” it’s just silly.
like i said, there were a lot, and none of them actually really hold any weight or history that seem appealing enough for me. maybe i can adopt solis/saros and solyn on the side, and nimbus when i feel more man-aligned on those rarer days, but that’d be it. please stop embarrassing yourselves is all i have to say to end this post. :/
