thinking abt that time i saw lesbians talking abt how they mostly or excl. wanted to date other lesbians, bc it was a different + easier experience to date someone who understood them instinctively in certain ways vs having to at times continually explain their own experiences https://twitter.com/tlgerslippers/status/1279001324424531968

and at the time i was kind of... affronted, bc i was bi, but i ended ip empathising in some ways and understanding, specifically from the perspective of being Black and dating white people vs poc, and non-Black POC vs Black pepple. i don’t support AT ALL the belief that +

bi women are somehow tainted by their interactions with + attraction to men, at all, in ANY way but i want to stress that is NOT what these lesbians were trying to say, at all. they were talking about their experiences with trying to bridge a gap in understanding w/ in their +

relationships with bi women that kept cropping up because of, basically, lesbophobia from bi women; insecurities from bi women about their own attraction to women + non-men; and a distinct lack of shared life experiences + willingness to understand

and i think all of this needs to be spoken about openly bc pretending that in a society rife w/ systemic lesbophobic oppression + beliefs, that a bi woman + a lesbian in a relationship aren’t going to run into issues relating to that systemic oppression.......... :-///

now, from the perspective of a lesbian who runs into a LOT of bi women online who speak about lesbians like we’re predators, aggressors and are basically out to get them for dating / being attracted to men but also ...want.. to date them - i understand those lesbians even more

so many bi women don’t do work to undo their lesbophobia but still want to date lesbians, while often being 100% convinced we hate them — and i’m not dismissing the experiences they may’ve had tht led to tht, but we have to face how that belief matches + is influenced by the +

narrative, societally, that lesbians are these perpetually angry, aggressive, woman-stealing assholes who want to basically segregate themselves from men in every single way and think they’re above anyone who’s attracted to men; that every single lesbian thinks bi women r tainted

acknowledging the different life experiences between you and your partner(s) )(and friends!) esp when you‘re not of the same race, the same class, sexuality etc and doing the work to bridge those MASSIVE gaps w/ deliberate understanding + empathy is VITAL

and even though it’s not abt lesbians ofc, a scene that i think perfectly conveys my point in a way is the scene in Being Mary Jane where she tells the white guy she’s dating that she doesn’t want to have to explain who she is (her Blackness) in particular ways, over + over

she wanted to be with someone who understood certain parts of her, certain specific experiences, feelings, needs without her having to vocalise every inch of them. and i don’t think there’s any way to inherently demonise that kind of longing to be fundamentally understood

(end of thread — for now )