Bimisogyny - Blog Posts
also stated that it’s ’less a bi woman makes a relationship queer, and more a straight man makes the relationship straight’
so (not @ OP) that's fucking gross and frankly misogynistic as hell; it also goes back to how often bi women are seen not even just as conscious perpetrators/enablers but simply inherent extensions of men. like that's basic level textbook misogyny, to see an average couple that can be safely assumed to have an equal partnership and decide the man's legacy has more power & worth somehow, and it couldn't be more obvious.
I saw a post from someone who was talking about how lesbians and bisexual sapphics have differences in what they are, not what they do, for example both lesbians and bisexual sapphics dating women and other sapphics is something we do together, but they then went on to talk about how a bi woman in a relationship with a straight man is not as queer as sapphics who are living within ‘queer relationships’
and while it is true to a degree that society has differences in how they treat and react to different types of relationships but i have to wonder, do you guys think that cis bi woman in relationships with straight men cannot have a meaningful and DISGUSTINGLY queer life (/pos) simply bc of their proximity to a straight man???
do you think these bi women cannot go out and participate in queer culture without their man?? do you think that bi woman are chained into the position of lesser queer bc they have a straight male for a partner??? do you think that they cannot contribute to the health and well-being of queer communities??
the person who posted the original post which got me thinking about this also stated that it’s ’less a bi woman makes a relationship queer, and more a straight man makes the relationship straight’ and i cannot tell you how fucking upsetting it is to see the resurgence of this rhetoric, bc this is what gets bi women abused and killed.
our oppression as the bisexual community is not hinged or limited to who we fucking date or how we present to society and i’m so tired of people assuming our queerness based on the gender and orientation of our partners.
the things that a lot of y’all assume are “lesbian only” feelings and experiences and tag with “non-lesbians don’t touch” rlly reveals a lot of assumptions u have abt what bi women feel and experience. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, lesbians and bi women have far more in common with each other than not, and the differences should not be defined without input from bi women themselves
what does febfem mean?
@bai-xue-lives and @prismatic-bell both asked me the same question, so here goes nuffink
Febfem: On Bisexual Radfems, Facts Don’t Care About Feelings, and Lesbians Essentialism
Radical feminists describe ‘febfem’ as a bisexual female* who, by choice. exclusively dates females. It arose out of a specific subset of radfem tumblr, which holds some ideas about gender, sexuality, and identity to be self-evident. these facts include:
lesbian refers exclusively to homosexual females. words like bisexual and lesbian are not identities but statements of fact. any person who self-identifies as a lesbian must be a female homosexual. if you’re not a female homosexual for any reason (you’ve dated men in the past, you were assigned male at birth, you’re bisexual but only date women) then you cannot be a lesbian. you need other words.
females who are exclusively attracted to females are the most oppressed group. everybody else needs to protect them; their terminology, and their spaces. they are inviolate. an attack upon them is the greatest crime. bisexual women are their oppressors because bi women benefit from heterosexuality (what these benefits are is unclear)
lesbians are allowed to call bisexual women anything they want, including slurs like cockslut, bihet, handmaiden, etc. a lesbian referring to bi women using these slurs is venting about her trauma at the hands of her bisexual oppressors and is above question or reproach. bisexual women are not allowed to vent about their trauma at the hands of lesbians because they have privilege over lesbians and it would be lesbophobic.
bisexual women are untrustworthy rapists who want to invade lesbian only spaces and abuse lesbians. [please note that in this case, “bisexual women” also refers to trans-inclusive lesbians.] all bisexual women are untrustworthy, cheating cocksluts until proven otherwise.
Bisexual radfems who want to have access to spaces that keep them safe and people who don’t treat them like cocksluts who are only waiting to cheat on the nearest lesbian, must find some way to signal their virtuosity. “Look at us!” They say. “We’re good bisexuals, unlike these other bihet handmaidens. Please allow us into your safe spaces, and make room for us in your rhetoric. We promise to hate ourselves for being attracted to men, constantly apologise for oppressing lesbians, and allow lesbians to target and bully us whenever they like. Look, to make it easy for lesbian radfems to tell when a bisexual is one of the Good Ones, we’ll put this handy word that we just made up - Febfem - in our bios, so you know precisely how to find us.”
It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for them. If you go through the febfem tag on tumblr, a lot of posts talk about the importance of not talking over lesbians, not infringing on lesbian-only spaces, and not appropriating lesbian terminology, and reiterating constantly that lesbians don’t owe bi women anything (Just be grateful they didn’t call you an abusive slut today!). Of course, all this ground is won at the cost of bisexual women who aren’t female-exclusive, trans-inclusive lesbians, and trans lesbians. So I don’t really feel sorry for them. Except when I do, cause hyperempathy is a bitch that way.
also, they hate mogai tumblr even though they’re literally the radfem version of mogais
*Note: I use female when talking about AFABs (as radfems use female) and women when talking about people who identify as women regardless of AGAB.
sorry, and i mean this lightheartedly, but the article title is so fucking funny out of context bc of the wording of “use” instead of “reclaim”
use this reaction image when ur bi bestie starts making jokes and it makes u biphobic 🫵🤨 /j
Bi Dykes have my whole heart + check out this amazing article I read explaining bi sapphic’s (aka selenic’s) reclamation of the slur dyke!
a snippet from the article I adore :3
We have a language philosophy who focuses on slur reclamation on our side. Twitter biphobes who insist selenics can’t reclaim dyke have like no research on their side <3
we have reached a new level of hatred for bi women even i thought unimaginable. you're criticizing fascist cops? yeah well, you like bi women and that's obviously more harmful. gotcha!
like, i haven't even watched TLOK so maybe there's something i'm missing about a certain aspect of their relationship (i honestly don't know, maybe @bisexual-coala could confirm), but instead of choosing to point out something that might be legitimately problematic, your discomfort is with bisexuality...
and as one of my twitter mutuals pointed out, this is one of the few times i've seen korassami not get erased as lesbians ─ because now it's apparently bad to like them instead of the actual les4les couple*!
don't ever tell us prejudice towards bisexuals always has a reasonable, founded basis again. 🖕
*this is not me sharing my opinion on caitvi or claiming you should(n't) like them. however, it's usually a good idea to be critical of certain elements in media.
bisexual sapphics are allowed to be assigned lesbianism, but never may they have autonomy to label themselves.
The thing is, radfems (and other biphobic lesbians) DON'T have a problem with bisexual women using "lesbian terms". Not really.
They see a woman talking about her attraction to women, and call her a lesbian with no further thought. They see a masc woman, and they call her a butch, or the d-slur (affectionately). They see a pair of women in a relationship, they call them a "lesbian couple". They see no issue with these things. If you have a problem with it, maybe you should figure out why you have such a big problem with the word "lesbian"!
It's good, when it's used for bisexual erasure. Thus, the only conclusion we can draw is that their real problem lies in bisexual women having the autonomy to call themselves these terms.
People who get really bothered by the fact that bisexual women like men are so funny to me . “Bisexual women be like I am into a man 😂” yes that is something that often happens when a person is bisexual
Bi women can’t talk about being in relationships with men because that’s seen as forcing heterosexuality upon gay and lesbian people. Bi women who previously identified as something other than bi can’t talk about the process of realizing they were bi because that’s seen as forcing heterosexuality upon lesbians. Bi women can only talk about being in relationships with women if they add 15 caveats about how they hate other bi women now and have discarded their bisexuality. Bi women in relationships with bi men or with lesbians have to swear up and down that they aren’t fetishizing their partners.
Bi women can’t talk about being happy (either single or in a relationship) because then people will take that as us having no problems in the world. Bi people can’t talk about mundane issues such as media representation or language about bisexuals because that’s too trivial. Bi women can’t talk about their sex lives or wanting to be polyamorous because that’s seen as too dirty and too gross and too predatory. Bi women can’t produce or consume “sappy wuhluhwuh content” because that’s seen as defanging and disrespecting lesbian identity and yet they can’t talk about bisexual social alienation/trauma/invisibility/loneliness because “invisibility is a privilege” and because “those things are just stolen terms from gay and lesbian people”.
Bi women can’t talk about being unicorn hunted on dating apps because apparently they don’t face that issue and instead perpetuate it and force lesbians to have threesomes with their male partners (apparently). Bi women can’t talk about intracommunity biphobia without being told that we aren’t radical for dating men and that LGBT spaces are safe gay spaces that we’d be invading.
Bi women can’t call themselves gay even when they’re in gay relationships. Bi women can’t call themselves tops or bottoms even when they’re having regular gay sex. Bi women can’t call themselves queer because that’s a slur but oh wait, it’s okay when other people weaponize that word against us. Bi women can’t call themselves masc or femme because they’d be stealing those terms from lesbians but oh wait they can’t call themselves tomcats, does, or stags because those terms are cringeworthy imitations of butch/femme. Bi women can’t talk about gender expression without being told they’re appropriating “real” gay culture. Bi women can’t talk about femininity without being told they perform it for men and bi women can’t talk about masculinity without being told that being bi makes it impossible for them to be masculine.
Bi women can’t talk about how unique relationships between bi women and bi men or bi women and bi women or bi men and bi men are. Bi women can’t call their relationships “bisexual” relationships because that’s somehow “anti-materialism”. Bi women can’t talk about loving their male partners because that’s anti-feminist but they can’t talk about hating men as a class or their trauma with respect to men without being told that it means they must actually be “lesbians suffering from comphet”.
Bi women can’t talk about solidarity with LGBT people without being seen as selfish, nor can they talk about just bi women without being seen as selfish.
Bi women can’t talk about the material, systemic, and sexual violence we face because apparently it isn’t real, no matter how much empirically validated proof we offer, and if we do talk about it, we’re stealing lesbian specific experiences or erasing lesbian specific experiences or trying to claim gay and lesbian specific experiences.
Bi women can’t talk about our place in overall LGBT history (because we were apparently invented in 1998) and we can’t talk about bisexual history (because that’s *spins wheel* taking the focus off the REAL radicals in the community).
Bi women have to be politically perfect all the time and have to allow people to scrutinize their personal lives and interpersonal relationships and sexual histories/traumas but it’s okay for people to not be in solidarity with us or to even offer us an ounce of empathy (and if we ask for it we’re whiny, selfish, and crying about non-issues). Bi women have to hate themselves and each other and hold each other responsible for all the world’s problems 24/7 but can never hold people responsible for biphobia.
Bi women can’t even talk about any of these things on their own blogs, in their own spaces, on their own time, with other bi women, because that’s just too much.
There really is no winning.
Image description: A Twitter thread from @BlizzardAvis that reads,
[Tweet 1] "If your criticism of bi women is 'well sometimes they bring their homophobe boyfriends to gay bars' oh boy do I have news for you about *your* transphobic and racist same sex partner in gay bars."
[Tweet 2] "You don't care about the safety of queer people in gay bars, you are just bimisogynistic."
[Tweet 3] You know what! Let's add to this. Why is your first instinct to blame the bi woman, who is very obviously in an abusive relationship and suffers from his homophobia more than any of you combined? Why aren't you offering her help? An escape? Resources to help her leave her abuser?"
/end ID
