evelyn

a basis of comparison is gay men who do drag. gay men in gay spaces often refer to each other with she, queen, sis, etc. this is ballroom drag culture. in gay spaces, drag is used as an expression of gender identity as being gay is inherently gender nonconforming

heres where lesbians come in. dyke bars are basically slim to none at this point. most gay spaces are primarily occupied by gay men and lesbians in general dont occupy that space because gender plays a big part in our community

lesbians do not have many spaces we can occupy the way gay men occupy gay bars. we have almost no lesbian/wlw only spaces. we dont have spaces to express ourselves and our gender nonconformity. drag kings are super uncommon in comparison to drag queens.

HENCE why some lesbians will put in their online bio "he/him". there are no IRL spaces for lesbians to exist like gay men do. most of our spaces are curated online because lesbian culture is much more stealth and camouflage oriented.

a majority of he/him lesbians i have known do not use these pronouns in their day to day life like a trans person would. they use these pronouns in their corners of the internet where they interact with a lot of other lesbians.

but its not unheard of for lesbians to use those pronouns as a safety net. homophobic hate crimes against "gay-looking" lesbians are super duper common. yes, even in the united states. yes, even in the year 2020. it is still a danger to be gender nonconforming in america.

this is not an uncommon occurrence. throughout history, lesbians have been included in transgender spaces. the original definition of transgender was just short for transgressing gender, AKA those who did not abide by their assigned gender at birth's gender roles.

many of you have heard of leslie feinberg, a historical lesbian who explained the gender nonconforming identity of lesbians throughout many pieces published. she attended camp trans (humyn-born humyns) with other trans activist riki wilchins.

while our understanding of gender has become more refined since these activists first came into the spotlight, a lot of LGBT my age have failed to take time to look into our history and historical gender/sexuality analysis and arent 21 and therefore cant witness it in IRL spaces.