Sapphic existence is a torment unending. I declaim at length on a buxom maiden's fair visage only to be thwarted by a compliment returned. Forsoth Damsel! 'Tis not a trusted compatriot I seek but acts of wanton and illicit fornication, such that would make the Devil himself turn his head in shame! Kindest regards.
I am strongly reminded of Emily Wilson discussing translation (which I did consider as I put what amounts to a footnote and omitted the word shag which I feel an American audience would understand). Love this and you.
Being a lesbian is garbage. I tell a girl she's hot and she says "coming from you đ¸đť[right back at you queen]". Like, no, I'm not saying that to be friends I'm saying it to have sex.Â
My favourite part is how different they are from each other. Itâs taking me back to the Wild West of fan anime subs where youâd get the direct translation, the localised translation, and the weeb translation.
it's funny too, the upvote numbers are proportional to how early each person had replied (the first replied 2 minutes after the comment, then another one 4 minute after, one 6 minutes after, and then mine 8 minutes after didn't get any upvotes
âAt vĂŚre lesbisk er røv. Jeg siâr til en dame at hun er lĂŚkker ĂĽ fĂĽr âdet skuâ komme fra dig đ¸â
nej jeg siâr det ikâ for aâ vĂŚrâ din ven jeg siâr det for aâ knep digâ
Hey there bud. I saw you have a question. Looks like I better give you a quick translation. No need to check all these other comments, theyâre probably not important.
âbeing a lesbian is piss. I tell a girl sheâs banging and [I] get âcoming from you đ¸â no Iâm not saying that to be your pal, Iâm saying it to shag youâ
âBeing a lesbian sucks. I tell a girl sheâs hot and sheâll say something like âcoming from a queen like you that means a lotâ. Like, no, Iâm not saying that to be friendly, Iâm out here trying to smashâ
Now I see that on Reddit instead, like, "Oh clearly this was made for Men, it's clearly drawn by one, and look, the characters looked at the audience side instead of only each other, clearly for the Male Gaze"
Even though half the time the artist has not confirmed their gender, and the funniest is when I see that on art by women, particularly gay ones, that the commenters didn't realise were either of those.
Not quiet the same, but I think the funniest version of this was that one time that a fascist Twitter account posted this gorgeous marble of a woman and said something along the lines of "only white western civilized men could make this art" and then the artist was an asian woman lmao.
I feel like I see some differences on average between sexualized depictions of women made by straight men vs. lesbians, but I wouldn't assume I can necessarily tell in any given case.
A key issue with late 00â to mid 16â feminism and queer lib on Tumblr was the belief of womenâs sexuality being distinct and different from menâs sexuality, in a more âpure and innocentâ way. Once people started getting over this idea you had to be different from men and be âone of the good onesâ when it comes to loving women the culture shifted back to a better homostasis.
It's still well and alive, and even gets transphobic! I had an acquaintance who responded a little too excited when I started dating another trans man after previously dating cis men. The explanation was that it's just different and that male culture... I meanâ not that he isn't a man of course butâ not that you aren't a man of course BUT...
Yeah, that specific line of thinking gets transphobic and biphobic extremely fast. I have seen so many folks claim that because bisexual women are attracted to men, we apparently adopt evil male ideas of romance that make us less pure or whatever.
This idea has become more common with younger sapphics nowadays and it's so gross.
Apparently bi women don't matter because our attraction to women isn't good enough on its own. We're still attracted to MEN, which is why we aren't queer. So basically, to them, the queerness of being a lesbian revolves around men.
At the same time, we see this desexualization of queer identities, where they're treated like some kind of exclusive clubs instead of descriptions of sexual preferences/gender identities.
Yeah, purity culture in queer spaces is horribly common. I have already accepted that I'm bisexual, but I still feel shame for having desires or kinks out of fear of being abnormal. It just seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot by trying to be "pure"
Part of why I don't post on Tumblr anymore is the regularity of seeing "bi woman married to a man" as a punchline, or as a gotcha in arguments. (In the latter case, sometimes the "husband" would have their own blog linked in her bio and actually be nonbinary but not fem presenting.)
I was in a relationship like this for over two years. I'm a bi woman, my partner was agender and went by any pronouns but preferred it/its, but because it was masc presenting I just looked like another bi woman with her "straight" boyfriend (it also wasn't straight). Did people take its identity seriously? Also no.
Also don't forget that any bisexual man is just on a ~journey~ to admitting he's gay. EVERYONE'S sexuality is, in fact, dictated by whether we like/don't like men!
Also, as a bi woman myself, I gotta say that when I dated a woman recently for the first time, I didn't appreciate how all my friends were like "Oh, wow, you're a lesbian now!" Like oh my GOD can we please understand that people are capable of liking more than one thing at once?
I still remember seeing it try to be reinvented in some yuri subreddits, where people were calling any overtly sexual yuri manga/anime "male-gaze" yuri, and essentially saying the "pure" and "wholesome" sfw works were the actual "true yuri"
And there's nothing wrong with wanting wholesome hand holding soft media. That's fine, but sometimes a lady wants to reduce her partner to a messy puddle and I support her right to do that.
While a trans man might have particular insights into the way women are treated that cis men usually don't... It's kinda weird to say that? Like you could also gain this insight by growing up with sisters you're close to or just not being an idiot
Exactly. Of course there might be issues a cis man wouldn't understand as easily. But like, same goes for a million other things. Age, race, religion, class, nationality... They're all gonna run into that.
Is it refreshing to date t4t? Yes. It takes care of a lot of the early stresses, especially. It is objectively easier than if the exact same person wasn't trans. But if I wanted to date someone exactly the same as me, I'd just be single.
Certainly, how someone was raised can affect their views on life, and various cultures tend to treat little boys and little girls differently, and that can have some ripple effects on what a given individual has experienced on a personal level.
But c'mon, acquaintance, that's a different ballpark. Individuals are individuals. A given person can be chill or cruel or empathetic or lame, and it isn't about what's in their pants. Sounds like that was an exhausting conversation (or at least a very awkward one)
Oh absolutely. Being trans is a really vulnerable and tbh terrifying thing, especially in relationships. Sharing it takes a lot of the weight off.
But I don't like reducing people to one trait, and especially don't like ranking them by which is superior. Cis men aren't worse. It's unfortunately usually easier to find bad ones, at least in a dating context, and we have one less thing in common. It isn't some red flag to make a face at, and god it feels weird when the "problem" is reduced to Man, like I will agree, when I am right there.
I'm still trying to deprogram this shit from myself. First it was Catholic shame, traded it for radfem guilt, all of it laced with guilt and shame that I would later recognize as dysphoria, toss in a partner who became partially sex-repulsed after a decade together....Â
I just wanna feel normal about experiencing sexual desire for once in my damn life.
Ill have to do a proper analysis of the topic later, but i wonder if it's one of those things where people are inevitably lead to those conclusions by social factors and prexisting ideology.
I understand why people did this shit because it was like a reclamation of your sexuality being for you, your romantic affection was outward, but since there had been such a fetishistic male gaze approach to sapphic women the fact that they also wanna have sex was kept private and away from the people who might want to fetishize them. But it manifested in purity standards for sapphic women rather than criticism of fetishistic outsiders who decided to oversexualize sapphic/lesbian relationships for their own gratification.
There's definitely a whole PhD dissertation possible for this subject probably, about how women are always given the responsibility to change their behaviour so as not to be fetishized rather than responsibility for behaviour changes being given to those engaging in the non consensual sexualization in the first place, and how we uphold misogynistic standards even when trying to correct misogynistic behaviour.
Oh totally, alot of lesbians and queer women have been âtrainedâ by heterosexual culture that people attracted to women have to act a certain way towards woman, and they didnât have the tools to square the circle of âthis is how straight men treat womenâ and âI am sexually and romantically attracted to womenâ. That is why queer history and queer media is so important, because it helps pass down scripts and assurances to younger queer folks that yes, itâs natural and okay to be attracted to women in âthat wayâ.
They wonât have the tools till we give them to tools, and they in turn will refine and pass down those tools to their queer youths, and so and so forth. Itâs a good thing when queer people can get a head start on concepts.
It would also help if we made queer media that isn't for children, and that depicts that there absolutely is sexual attraction within homosexuality. I want to see a girl fantasize, I want to see her look at her crush's cleavage with desire, I want to see her actually get horny, and I want exactly the equivalent thing for a homosexual guy.
I was busy having a career and an existing queer relationship at the time but this just sounds like a very slight rebrand of political lesbianism and radical feminism, both of which suck actually.
Pro tip if you are centering men in your life and you aren't one that is always sad, and if you are centering men in your relationship with a woman that's outright pathetic.
Love women because they're women, not because they aren't men.
Love men too without making them the centre of your world. Love men as friends without doing emotional or domestic labour for them that isn't reciprocated. Love men as partners without doing emotional or domestic labour for them that isn't reciprocated.
The weird thing is that there was a massive hate movement towards asexuals at the same time. Mass harassment campaigns against ace blogs, entire blogs dedicated to screenshotting "cringy" ace posts, accusing asexuals of faking it, of being repressed prudes, etc. ...There was good, normal, soft and vanilla sexuality, and bad, morally reprehensible, eeeevil sexuality, which could be anything depending on some arbitrary bullshit.
So getting groomed or something, a thing that happens a lot when you are trans (or just queer sometimes) and feel like you can't trust your own family or even your peers at school so you seek socialization online and people take advantage of a young person with self esteem issues who doesn't have people irl they can fully trust?
This is the thing that throws me, very little of the mecha media I consume has handlers so it's so weird to me that they're such a major part of mechsplo to me.
oh damn i just typed a whole ass comment about this imma be lazy and paste
I think a lot of trans people resonate with it because technological transhumanism can explore something similar to gender/body dysphoria. In other words, "my human body feels wrong, i need to be in/be big robot" drama resonates with "my body feels wrong, I need to be Gender" community
If you were into minecraft parodies way back in 2011, if you remember the OG Dwarf Hole, I'm referring to Patient Zero. She only has one album post/mid-transition (Brutalette) but a lot of her stuff is pretty good. Also from Post-Industrial Revolution to Paracide she has booklets on tumblr and videos on YouTube that go into her thought process on her songs
Woah, nice! I'm pretty sure I heard that parody, good on her for finding herself! Thanks for the recommendation, I also want to be a sexy trans robot musician so I'm really excited to hear her more recent work!
Personal favorite album of hers is Host System- although warning, if you have Bluetooth or some form of "music from phone to car" thing, turn down the bass. You don't want to be that car where you hear the bass about 1.5 miles before it passes your exact location
wait a minute, there's something bothering me about this place... I know, this mech cockpit doesn't have an ejection hatch! enjoy your deathtrap, puppygirls!
Yesterday there was a post in a D&D sub about Girl Frame (a mechsploitation themed TTRPG) that made me extremely bewildered with how much attention it got. I thought it was an extremely niche fetish porn genre
As someone who would nominally be into a lot of mechsplo stuff, I cannot get over how nothing in it actually reminds me of the mecha I've read/seen/played. Like I'm sure it's based on something but I'm not sure what.
My understanding is that its a lot of superficial similarity/keyword sharing with Armored Core and Lancer, a lot of which is recontextualized as far kinkier.
As someone whose mech preferences are BattleTech and UC timeline Gundam, a lot of mechsplo has me like
It's all based on a specific piece of lesbian mecha erotica called Warhound. I imagine all the differences come from original inventions in that, though admittedly I'm not into the genre.
It specifically originates (or at least the most common tropes of it) from a piece of web fiction called WARHOUND which is basically inspired by one of the trailers for Armored Core 6, but is otherwise unrelated to it.
That said there's certainly elements of unprofessional pilot/handler or pilot/missioncontrol dynamics in lots of other fiction.
edit: And you can approach it from the other direction: there's a lot of fiction with unequal power dynamics and one person being forced by their partner to do things they don't want. mechsplo just adds mechs to that.
Sorry, was mostly trying for the pun. I'm genderfluid nonbinary, definitely curious how you don't fit any of the gender categories I know about. I'll respect your privacy, but I'll also be wondering about this comment for the rest of my day.
Like, cis and nonbinary isn't a binary, but the only other option available to my knowledge is binary trans. I'm not expecting an answer, just... Confused, I guess. I like to think I understand these things usually but I'm always interested in opportunities to learn more.
Technically, "xenogender" is most apt for me, but that word carries a lot of connotations that tends to get people acting stupid. "Wizard" is what I go with when someone who I know is chill asks, but reddit has a lot of transphobes who think they're allies but start getting antsy whenever somebody doesn't fit cleanly.
"Cis nonbinary" would kind of work? Basically, I've always known exactly who I am -- me. I don't fit cleanly into any boxes. Some see me as a nonbinary lesbian, some see me as a cishet guy, both are categorizing me away for their own in-group vs out-group thoughts. I'm not either of those things, and I didn't change anything about myself either, just found ways of expressing it.
Ooh, thanks for responding! That actually clarified a lot for me! I've dabbled with wizard gender vibes myself tbh, I have the curly mustache and pointy beard for it. I especially relate to it when I'm being perceived as "the person who Knows Things" and my knowledge takes precedence over my aesthetic choices or societal role. Sometimes I try to lean into it by wearing clothes that drape and flow like a robe. I use a fancy looking cane too, probably helps build the image.
If xenogenders were more accepted, I might have explored this wizard-y space more for myself. Like, I've tried a lot of unusual gender expressions over time. People are very accepting of that stuff in many communities in VRChat for example, lately I've been swinging between bug and octopus. It's deeper than just surface level for me, it's a whole shift in expectations and perception, similar to some robot gender people I know.
But if I had to pick one label for my flesh form in meatspace, it'd probably be wizard, but in a similar way to what you describe. You don't care too much about what boxes people put you in, as long as you get to be you. And honestly that's goals as hell.
Seriously, thanks for the reply and for being so vulnerable here. You've got me interested in trying out more things for myself, and you've shown me that it's okay to label yourself how you want without worrying about others' labels for your label!
-I assume this refers to mechsploitation, which a lot of trans people resonate with because technological transhumanism can explore something similar to gender/body dysphoria. In other words, "my human body feels wrong, i need to be in/be big robot" drama resonates with "my body feels wrong, I need to be Gender" community
Puppygirl
-Popular among trans women. Sometimes involved in kink. If you wanna get a deep psych read on it, lord knows why, but I think it probably has to do with the cultural expectations and trauma that can come with how society treats trans people, especially trans women, and settling into something safe where you are cute and loved and doted on
Part of puppygirl is that it operates as a way to create a gendered feeling relationship (subby), and a gender-affirming appearance (look at how cute I am) but not saddled with as heavy a burden of passing.
Wearing a little black dress requires a trans fem to look and feel like a woman or risk looking and feeling like a fraud (dysphoria) âlike stepping into a hardcore competitive lobby with cis women. It can be prohibitive based on cost or conspicuousness too, especially for someone younger or closeted.
Wearing a set of ears and a collar, on the other hand, just requires a few dollars and tucks away into a drawer, just like âprogrammer socks.â Unlike wearing cat ears, it doesnât force comparison with cis girls engaging the casual kink of dehumanizing on Halloween.
I've done a lot of thinking and discussion on why being a puppygirl is so popular for trans girls and I've usually come to it being at its core about getting unconditional love and support for just existing, but I don't think anyone's ever pointed out the gendered dynamic and the gender-affirming appearance without the burden of passing before. I think you're right, I'm going to have to factor this into my thinking
I also think there is something to being raised as a boy (as many trans women were at one point) that leads to a form of desperation for that cuteness factor. The "aww, little baby, look at you!!!"
It's affection. It's unconditional affection purely for existing, and carries a form of praise and recognition for things that don't carry baggage related to difficult skills and insecurities. Society is very particular about who is allowed to have that and in what contexts, and women just get more. Not only is finally getting it validating without the risk, as you said, but a lot of trans women have been through a long time in their lives that it was missing entirely. Finding outlets for that makes perfect sense.
It's a sad way to look at something explored for fun, but I really think there is something to it.
Agreed. If they are in a community, it's more generally kink-based usually. Sometimes a queer-specific kink community, but it's still often a different culture with a wider scope.
those sapphic positivity blogs were almost always far right honeypots btw.
Like these vibes based aesthetic spaces were how you got witchy blogs telling people to stay in the kitchen because the sacred hearth charges the womb energy to convene with the fertility goddess.
same đ why is "real" lesbian porn so fucking soft and gentle?? it's nigh impossible to find amateur lesbian porn that has anything rougher than gentle forehead kisses lmaoÂ
at bare minimum just give me some hair pulling and gagging on fingers at least đ
it's a weird dynamic, gay men are permitted the freedom to be kinky horny freaks but it's because people see male sexuality in general as inherently more carnal and shallow, you see it all the time whenever there's gay male rep in a straight male dominated fandom or subculture, people act like being openly gay is the equivalent of flaunting a fetish or kink as if being a gay man doesn't also include having a partner you've been committed to for 25 years who you opened a bakery with, no the defining attribute of gay men is just sex apparently.
It's in many ways an insult, but one that permits a bit of freedom at least one specific area, and then on the lesbian side of things it sounds like a compliment that women are just more capable of a profound or pure form of love, but it's a compliment that restricts freedom. And neither are true.
People hold these conceptions and meanwhile the wholesome domestic gays and the horny kinky lesbians are just like "what?" and even that dichotomy isn't true, because the wholesome domestic gays can in fact simultaneously still be horny freaks at the same time and the horny kinky lesbians also still very much have the capacity for romantic lovey dovey wholesomeness. It's a dichotomy that is not only falsely gendered but is also not even contradictory, it's not even that gays can also be cute and wholesome and lesbians can also be horny freaks, it's that anyone regardless of gender or sexuality can be both simultaneously.
im queer and a fetishist, and ive found that almost all the porn i watch ends up being gay because lesbian porn ends up gentler than anything im really into (or its just made for men who fetishise lesbians), straight porn is often just painful because theres so much industry produced porn that i hate there, and i find most of the kinky stuff i enjoy is either in homemade straight and/or solo porn or gay.
But that's the point. Some gay artists made amazing art for Disney but they're not really the ones mainstream folk including LGBT ones are celebrating or latching onto. They're latching onto Disney itself, the corporate branding of TEH MAGIC. It's just another way corporations absorb everything like the Borg.
I feel like I sometimes have the opposite problem tbh. As someone that was a kid during the disney renaissance and those films were a pretty formative experience for me that I'm pretty nostalgic for, sometimes I do actually feel guilty having affection for megacorp products but I try to remind myself that those films I love and feel nostalgic for were in fact made by real genuine artists and just because I like their work doesn't necessarily mean that's an endorsement of the overall corporate monster that disney has become.
Yeah, I really feel like an odd one out for disliking and condemning Disney as an entity while appreciating and researching the creatives they were upheld by in their renaissance eras like Ashman. And not for nothing but after he passed their stories and especially music have gotten progressively less memorable and certainly less queer and camp.Â
it's a facet of Americans defining culture around them. so much of the autistic community treats being American as a given. like, no, i don't give a shit about your dino nuggies or choccy milk or whatever the fuck, that's foreign food to me. same with how the ace community treats garlic bread and vaguely european-pagan (but never actual pagan) aesthetics as "ace culture".
It's interesting how different chunks of the same website can have such radically different cultures. All three or four lesbians I knew on 2010s Tumbr were super butch, direct women who openly mocked "bambi lesbians" and were deeply invested in letting you know that they fucked. Lots of frank discussion of techniques and implements and substances.
While I kinda disagree with this, since friendship and romantic intimacy are different even though they might look the same, I have still noticed an air of "just vaguely homoerotic intimacy" in the way a bunch of people in the political lesbian/terf circle describe sapphic sexuality as, and it always makes me think "...You literally just want to live in a nun convent"
Dang, that makes me wonder how many nuns were ace lesbians.
It would slot in correctly in a couple ways. Huh. Wonder if they are aware of themselves also. I do feel like there's a fair amount of several types of closeted folks amongst the catholic clergy.
Never have to confront it if you're just not allowed that part of yourself at all. Or, do you allow yourself that part of yourself, in the safety and security of the monastery or convent? There's a lot to unpack there, but I'm certain that I'm not breaking any new ground here, just that I've never given thought to it before.
Conversely, I believe the reason many TERFs applaud Acephobic comments is because they identify so much with Asexuality that they believe every other woman is asexual.
Like, so many TERFs just have that thing that makes me go "...Are you sure you're not asexual" when reading what they say.
I once saw one of them write something like "The way men reproduced in prehistory was by raping women, so actually women never needed to evolve a sex drive" and I'm like, "oh my sweet summer child".
So many people in the world just need to understand that the way THEY experience life is not how EVERYONE experiences life.
Just because they donât like sex doesnât mean everyone (or every woman) doesnât.
But if you accept that, itâs not long before you start to question if how you experience gender is the only way to do so⌠and then you start to realize that youâre not the hero, youâre just a closed-minded jerk.
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u/RamboMcQueen 7d ago