@wlw-orchids replied to your post “Femme bi women married to men still have stories about queerness to…”
actually femme is a lesbian term but bi women can use stag/tomcat/doe!
Just a few notes!
1. Tumblr is the ONLY place I’ve ever seen it claimed that “butch” and “femme’ are lesbian-exclusive. EVERYWHERE else–LGBTQ+ organizations, wlw magazines, drag shows, pride parades, academia–recognize that while many different groups under the LGBTQ+ umbrella have had special histories with the words “butch” and “femme”, the terms actually originated in straight culture and have been used by people of EVERY sex, gender, and sexual orientation, for decades.
2. Bi women CAN use stag/tomcat/doe, if they want. But overwhelmingly, we DON’T want to, and ACTIVELY resist having those terms shoved on us. The doe/stag/tomcat paradigm was invented in 2014 by two bi teenagers who were bowing to pressure from lesbian exclusionists; bi women have called themselves butch and femme for as long as lesbians have. (Until the 1970s, ”lesbian” historically meant “a woman who has been known to love/have sex with another woman” and wasn’t very strict about its definitions; historical “lesbians” include people who today would be recognized as bi, asexual, trans, or nonbinary) And if a large number of bi women WERE willing to give up the identities they’ve carried since forever, which is dubious, it would NOT be for terms as dehumanizing, and sex-essentialist, and hypersexual as doe/stag/tomcat..
3. I’m really disturbed by how much this claim is being pushed on Tumblr, because a lot of Tumblr’s audience is teenagers and people newly discovering their LGBTQ+ identities, who don’t have a ton of LGBTQ+ and allied friends to give them support and community. And, well, a lot of LGBTQ+ people, a lot of lesbians, really disagree with the idea that everyone should get scolded for using words they’ve always used. But Tumblr discourse primes teenagers and newbies to think “Anyone using butch/femme incorrectly is bad,” so when they go to their local pride parade or safe space or LGBT center or queer community, they’ll see ways those groups have talked about themselves for over fifty years and assume these are bad people who won’t support them. It teaches new/young people to look with suspicion and distrust about people who can be really valuable in their lives, and to interact with them in ways they don’t know come across as really hostile.
That keeps newer/younger LGBTQ+ people from forming friendships with or learning from other LGBTQ+ people outside a small circle on Tumblr–and when someone is isolated, and has been taught they can’t look to any outside source or do any independent research to tell them about their history or identity or what makes a relationship healthy, they are very at risk of being preyed upon, with no knowledgeable outside friends to say, “Hey, some of what your online friends are saying sounds really extreme. Are you sure letting them tell you what to call yourself, what to watch or read, how to dress, or who to sleep with is really healthy? Maybe you should tell them to back off and let you decide those things for yourself.”
