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Aug 21, 2020

I think what I want all the babyqueers trying earnestly to police the use of "dyke" by people who identify as (among other things) as dykes is this: The language of gender, sex, sexuality, desire is not fixed. We are always becoming, and doing so in relationship with the world.

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10:28 PM · Aug 22, 2020

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Aug 22, 2020

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Just as one single example of how ahistorical that notion is, as recently as the 1970s historians have seen the use of lesbian/ism and lesbian desire to refer to (typically cis) women desiring women ... the *exclusivity* of that desire wasn't necessarily assumed.

Aug 22, 2020

So many women who identified as lesbians / with the lesbian or gay community experienced bisexual desires during their lives. In some cases they also identified as bisexual, or shifted to using bisexual as their primary language of identity. But not uniformly so.

Aug 22, 2020

So it's fascinating to me, from a historian's perspective, to see that there's a cohort of people who've suddenly decided this group of jumbled-up queer women constituted two entirely separate groups with separate genealogies requiring a boundary that needs linguistic police.

I'm skimming through primary sources here on social media and so struck by the fact that a recurring definition used for "lesbian" by the people saying bisexuals can't use "dyke" is "lack of attraction to men".

As a reader and writer of romance, I will say that a story about desire that is defined by what is NOT desirable rather than what is desired is always a huge red flag to me.

Like ... you can't describe your attraction to women as attraction to women? You *still* have to define it in relation to men? That's fucked up.

Another slippage that I'm seeing as a scroll through the primary sources here on social media is that there's no distinction being drawn between hurling "dyke!" at someone as an act of aggression and someone using that word as a cozy self-descriptor.

For me, in reference to myself, it's like pulling on a fuzzy oversized sweater. But, like, dudebro hurls it out of his pickup truck at me and my wife on our walk to the grocery store -- not fuzzy at all. "Gay" is a totally mainstreamed word that bigots still weaponize.

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The worst part is that they use dictionary definitions of the word “dyke” to “prove” their point. It’s a term used by the community I’ve been a part of for 20yrs-I don’t need an internet dictionary defining it for me? It doesn’t even mention the political implications of the term