Photo By Ann E. Zelle 1986

I’m a lesbian and somehow I manage to walk down the street and not ogle women I find attractive, or cat call or degrade them, or touch them without permission, or interrupt their daily lives, it’s almost as if I’m treating them like human beings despite my attraction to them. What an insane concept.

omg same

We were arguing about dress code in a meeting at work. And while my department knows I’m queer the other departments did not. As people (men) were saying that women showing skin and wearing tight clothes was distracting. I spoke up finally and said.

“I’m attracted to women.”

Everyone turned and looked at me and I was like “uhhh” so I finished.

“I’m attracted to women and I can still do my job. Regardless of what someone in my class is wearing. I can still teach. So why can’t you?”

The men all stayed silent.

Something that bothers me about a certain type of Femslash

There’s this idea in femslash that “exotic” features are the domain of “interesting” white women who are supposed to stand out of a group of “traditionally white” characters.  At the most everyone is a “tan”, but she’s going to have almond eyes, or a certain build, or a darker skin tone that makes her different (but not enough for them to admit she’s probably not white).  

They use terms that they know exclude many WoC (they usually assume we can’t be blond, brunette, or redhead…and the “black” hair they think we have doesn’t get the poetic treatment that the “jet black hair” characters they decide are white get).  So they can have their “blond + brunette, light vs. “dark”, feminine vs. masculine” without having to deal with any real nuance.  

I’m tired of fiction that treats WoC poorly, especially when its femslash.  We’re women too, but you wouldn’t know it from how overwhelming white femslash circles can be.  Like, why is it that people who can find any justification to pair two white women (who often hate each other) suddenly can’t figure out what to do if one of those women becomes black?  Suddenly writing her features out leaves a bad taste in their mouth and the relationship just isn’t viable anymore. But they don’t want to admit this is because they’re writing for a certain gaze.  They’re too invested in seeing themselves as morally superior to sexists who only write for the male gaze that they fail to address how their writing reflects the white gaze in very problematic ways that wind up erasing (and/or fetishizing) a lot of women.  I HATE that.  

I swear, if I find another femslash story where the brunette has my skin tone and my features but is written as white I’m going to flip.  Don’t erase me but then use my features so that a white character can “contrast” with their significant other in a way that allows you to still feel comfortable.  I’ve had enough of that crap used against me offline in LGBTQ circles, I don’t want to deal with it in my fantasy or my sci-fi or any of the fanworks that derive from it. 

Queer women DO exist, and no we aren’t all a part of cisgender, pale skinned, “traditionally white blond” and “exotically white” brunette combinations.  Write what you want, and yeah, part of this can be blamed on the lack of WoC in these shows and movies (especially in regards to Black, Indigenous, and Asian women, though this can be applied to WoC as a whole).  But fanfic (or even original fiction) doesn’t require you to accept the same limitations that the source material has, you CHOOSE to write things this way, and its your responsibility to unpack that if you want to fix it.