Read on Twitter
as promised: this is a thread talking about why some lesbians don’t use she/her! this post gives a good summary of everything i’m about to cover.
the reason for folks doing this that i have heard most is alienation from womanhood. gender, especially womanhood, is entirely constructed and is defined by how we *relate to* and *serve* men
in a patriarchal society, the most significant things that make someone a woman are:
1. being attracted to men
2. being able to bear children to men
3. being attractive to men.
1. being attracted to men
2. being able to bear children to men
3. being attractive to men.
all lesbians don’t fit at least one of these qualities, therefore we are labeled failed women. the more we fail to meet these social and sexual duties, the more likely we are to feel disconnected from womanhood in many regards.
there are external factors that contribute to these feelings of disconnection. one of these is race: settlers violently imposed these notions of gender on colonized people, so many people of color may continue to feel trapped by these white supremacist notions of gender.
for further reading, i highly suggest checking the book “the invention of women: making an african sense of western gender discourses” by oyèrónké oyewùmí!!! it’s free on jstor
. @soymilkgoth made a good point: another factor is eugenics. disabled women are discouraged from having children to prevent their “undesirable” traits from being passed on. since they are not filling their sexual duties, these feelings of disconnection may be heightened.
protection is another reason people do this. some folks use he/him pronouns and “pass as male” while still identifying as a lesbian because being out can potentially put their lives and the life of their partner at risk.
for others, using other pronouns is empowering! choosing to use pronouns such as they/he gives us a sense of agency. by not using traditionally “female” pronouns, we are distancing ourselves from men and taking away to an extent their ability to sexualize us.
generations of lesbians have used he/him pronouns for many of the reasons i’ve talked about here. doing the same makes many of us feel connected to the long history of women, especially butches, that came before us. (read stone butch blues by leslie feinberg!!!)
. @possibly_toni put this very well: “I think a big thing is that being a lesbian has always meant noncomformity and now we have the language to express in what ways we don& #39;t conform.”
this isn’t to say that lesbians who use she/her are less gender non conforming - it just means the possibility to use other pronouns helps give us language to identify our experiences!
tldr: we are not men. using alternative pronouns gives us the opportunity to express our relationship with gender, connect with our history, and protect ourselves. we’ve been around longer than you think, and we’re not going anywhere.
if anyone has any feedback or similar experiences with this they would like to share i would love to hear from y’all. thank you for reading & plz reply/dm w any questions unless you’re going to be an asshole about it 
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. @altleftbaby made a very good point in saying not to assume that we are all woman aligned!! a lot of us don’t feel any connection with womanhood whatsoever and that doesn’t take away from our identity.
