Reddit can be just so awful sometimes.

I find it interesting that you've noticed a lack of sympathy for GNC, because being a lesbian is GNC, being masculine of centre (stud, butch, etc) is very GNC. I'm not saying it's not happening I'm just saying without seeing it I can't quite wrap my head round that one. I mean when I was a kid a lot of the talk was 'being attracted to women doesn't make me more like a man' and so on. When my parents were kids they would sometimes give gay and lesbian people huge doses of sex steroids as the believed some defect in responding to those hormones like a normal person cause the non conformity.

Personally I am a feminist, so to me the word gender is complicated. It first describes an enforced set of behaviours conditioned into us based on sex. It then has come to also mean the way someone might identify differently from their sex at birth. It is hard to separate those two concepts, as I think a gender neutral world, one where gender i.e. the system of describing behaviours by the sex of who should perform them should not exist at all. But that language has now become complicated as gender has yet another definition.

Anyway getting off track here. I think my difference in perception comes from this - I do not expect people to qualify their statements as not being generalizations, I decipher that myself from the specific language used. Example "the bi women ive dated blah blah blah/in my experience blah blah blah" vs "bi women are _." The first two to me are obviously not generalizing where as the third one is. If that makes sense.

As to your partner, can you describe that to me? Genderqueer has no concrete meaning. It can mean someone who is slightly gender non conforming and it can mean someone who presents aggressively gender neutral. It can imply a fluidity or not. So I would need way more info to say anything.

On to sexual fluidity, I can understand why you like the phrase and why it can help the people who have experienced some measure of fluidity in their lives. But to me 'Sexuality is fluid' does read as a generalization (i.e. 'bi women are') and so it 100% reads to me, and to most k6s who hear and have heard this message a whole lot 'you just haven't found the right man/it is just a phase/it is a lifestyle choice/the things sleezy men say in an attempt to pick up lesbians/the plot line of Chasing Amy.' So it sends off a lot of alarm bells and reads very very homophobic.

Its okay, feel free to vent. I listen, it's what I do.

/r/actuallesbians Thread Parent