Compulsory Femininity and Growing Up Fat - Or, Why I'm Still Afraid to be GNC

CW: food, discussion of weight and harassment, homophobic slurs

I actually wrote the title to this post like a week ago and saved it as a draft because I didn't have time to write.

But anyhow, I have shaved my head. Or like...not completely. It still has hair on it. It's a buzz cut. Which, as the title says, I was absolutely petrified of. I like it now though. I'm keeping it this way.

Those of you who have been here longer probably know by now that I was fat for most of my life thus far. I was medically overweight from around seven or eight years old to almost twenty.

My highest weight was in the 190s with very little muscle mass when I was fifteen. Then I realized I was bi, that I could get away with being gender nonconforming (and therefore stay closeted) more easily if I was thin, and that I was also just sick of constantly being harassed. So I lost forty pounds by my seventeenth birthday, then gained about 20 or 25 the summer before my senior year of high school and couldn't seem to lose it again no matter how healthily I ate or how much exercise I did.

Full disclaimer - I eventually made my peace with my 170-something-pound body. There was nothing wrong with my body (besides the blood sugar, eye, and pain issues). I get that. And I'm trying to be that okay with myself now too, at 140.

But even with my insecurities, I recognize that I am privileged because I no longer experience fatphobia.

Like I was saying, though, I'm technically thin now for pretty much the first time since my dad died (I tend to eat my feelings). And even though I've lost weight and recognize that I'm treated very differently now, I still have a lot of residual insecurity about my body and my femininity - or lack thereof.

I don't feel thin, basically. I don't think of myself as thin. I still have a lot of the same body image issues as I did when I was fat.

GNC women who are thin are able to get away with a lot more in terms of their gender nonconformity than GNC women who are fat. Sure, there are other factors at play like transgender status, class, disability, sexuality, and race, but I'm not talking about those other factors. I'm talking about weight.

Fat women who don't wear makeup, who don't shave, who shave their heads, who don't wear feminine clothing, who are generally perceived as "unfeminine" and "not caring about their appearance", are seen as sloppy and ugly. If I were still 198 pounds, there's no way I would be able to look the way I do without being sneered at and lectured and told that I should at least try to look feminine and fuckable and straight if I'm going to dare to exist as a fat woman.

If my hair was longer, I could pass for a tomboyish cishet woman today. But I wouldn't be able to do that if I were still fat because I would automatically be perceived as less feminine, no matter what I'm wearing, and I know that and part of me still feels like that fat, insecure fifteen-year-old girl who just doesn't want to be harassed.

That girl never would have gotten her hair buzzed. That girl certainly never would have dreamed that she would be a he instead of a she. She would have wished it, quietly. Would never have voiced that desire or any other that expressed her alienation from girlhood, would never have called it dysphoria, would never have dared daydream about loving women. She never would have known any of that was possible for her. I'm glad I'm not that girl anymore, but at the same time all I want to do is protect her.

That part of me, the part of me that is her, almost cried when I walked out of that beauty salon with my hair shorn so close to my scalp that I couldn't even grab a shock of thick honey blonde waves between my fingers. I felt and still do feel like I have to compensate for my gender nonconformity and my bisexuality by being feminine in some way.

I've changed a lot, but she's still a part of me. And sometimes...I forget. I forget how much I've changed and all that old toxic shit comes back and I feel a rush of shame, of internalized homophobia and transphobia. I feel the need to tone down my masculinity so I still look like a woman. As if there's only one way for a woman to look.

I feel that way about my hair. I feel that way about my clothes. I feel that way about my sexuality. I feel that way about my gender, about my pronouns. I feel that way about going on T and getting top surgery.

I'm not wholly a woman, and other than through the lens of being a gender nonconforming woman who loves women, I'm not a woman at all internally. But I'm not a man either. I don't want to be one and I don't want to look like one.

I don't want to date gay men or straight women. But who would date a woman who looks like a man, and if I choose to medically transition is just going to look even more like a man when he's older? I've never even heard of a GNC bi woman or of a tomcat, besides me, going on T or having top surgery. Especially not while using he/him pronouns and being nonbinary. What is my future going to look like? What is my body going to look like? Is it possible for someone to love me the way I want to be loved?

I feel years of psychological burden, of emotional trauma, coming back sometimes, when I think about gender nonconformity and transition. I used to be a fat girl and part of me will always feel the need to compensate for that. Part of me will feel like an imposter. Part of me will feel the need to apologize when I did nothing wrong. Part of me will always be afraid.

In All Fairness, We're Just as Bad

Yes, there are lesbians who have given me excellent reasons to mistrust them. That said...the bi community has given lesbians plenty of reasons to mistrust us and I want to address why. I don't care how badly individual lesbians have treated us, hating all lesbians is never going to be okay.


So since I'm good with numbered lists, I'm going to do that.

1. Calling lesbianism restrictive or limiting.

Being attracted to men is not inherently freeing, but so many lesbians are told that it is by men and straight people. Do you really want to agree with them?


The truth is, when you don't want to be with men, doing it anyway can feel suffocating. It can harm your mental health to force yourself into a relationship that doesn't actually bring you joy.


There are also bi women who don't date men, and you probably don't say they're limiting themselves. You probably don't say that gay men or straight people are either. Why the double standard? Just let people date who they want. Not all women date men, die mad about it.


2. Believing in monosexual privilege.


Hot damn this is the big one. Monosexual privilege, that shit that was made up by resident lesbophobic dumbass bitch Shiri Eisner? Yeah. It's not real.


50% of all LGBT people of color are bisexual. 50% of trans people identify as something other than gay or straight. Both populations are disproportionately impoverished and likely to be mentally ill or to engage in survival sex work. Both populations are disproportionately likely to be sexually assaulted.


Do you really think that statistics like bi people being more likely to experience employment discrimination, to be abused, to be sexually assaulted, to be suicidal, to be poor, are going to apply to cis white bi people? That I, a white bi woman, automatically have more in common with a bi person of color than a gay person of color does? Do you think that cis bi women have more in common with me than I do with a nonbinary lesbian?


When I was seventeen and die-hard believed in it, screamed-at-any-lesbian-who-tried-to-reason-with-me believed in it, made-shitty-homophobic-Tumblr posts believed in it, there was this guy Mike who was really popular in those kinds of cringe-y circles of ignorant bi people who didn't know shit about politics or history and were way too defensive over our m/w relationships. Mike was a cis white bi man, but acted as if fucking women made him about a million times less privileged than a cis white gay man and I totally fell for it. Not in a romantic way, but like...I looked up to him.


He was also about...uh, ten years older than me? So the fact that he seemed to take me seriously and treat me like an adult felt like a huge compliment, but the truth was that he was just some predatory creep who liked to tell lesbians they were oppressing him by not fucking him and manipulate young bi people, especially bi girls, into agreeing with him. Oh, and despite being cis and having literally no evidence for any of his claims, he constantly accused trans people of being TERFs, gatekeepers, and truscum if they weren't MOGAI.


He was hardly the only bi adult I encountered who believed in this. In fact, a lot of the adult MOGAIs who helped lure me into that hellscape were bi women. Bi women, who either didn't know or didn't care that they were just helping their oppressors sexually harass lesbians. Bi women, who wrote horrible homophobic thinkpieces against the evils of the LGs. Cis bi women, who would constantly try to affix themselves to the trans community as if they weren't being homophobic to trans gay people and nonbinary gay people too, as if they were somehow less oppressive to trans people than cis lesbians were.


Which brings me to my next point...


3. Erasing, speaking over, and tokenizing non-cis lesbians and lesbians of color.


Cis bi women and even non-cis bi women do this all the time. White bi women do this all the time. Equating our implicit racism as white women to lesbians' biphobia. Acting as if lesbians can't date trans women or nonbinary women. Using white fragility to our advantage. Saying that being gay is cissexist, as if cis bi people don't have that "I don't see gender" or "Hearts Not Parts" BS. Ignoring our privileges. Conflating TERFs with lesbians, as if TERFs don't hate trans lesbians more than anyone or there aren't straight, aroace, and bisexual TERFs. As if associating lesbianism with transmisogyny isn't playing right into TERFs' hands.


4. Not even trying to listen to lesbians and always assuming the worst.


There were lesbians who legitimately tried to be patient with me and educate me when I was a MOGAI. They were good people who genuinely cared about bi women, but they weren't pushovers and they weren't going to put up with my homophobic bullshit. So when they finally lost patience with me, I took it as evidence that lesbians were nothing more than shrieking, bimisogynist, oppressive monosexual bitches who resented me because I was attracted to men.


I admit, I'm guilty of this even now. Always assuming the worst of lesbians. Scrutinizing them and judging them based purely on their orientation. I just admitted it to myself tonight, when I came across a butch lesbian blogger and my first thought was not to appreciate their writing and promote it in solidarity with my butch and lesbian siblings, but to hunt down everything they'd ever written and put it under a microscope to find something, anything negative that I could use to justify my prejudice.


Lesbians are human. They are women who love women, just like we are. They aren't perfect, but they aren't monsters either. Stop treating them that way. You're not some flawless little princess either, you know, so treat lesbians the way you would feel you deserve for them to treat you.


5. Not letting lesbians have anything for themselves.


It's great for lesbians and bi women to be allies to one another and to seek solidarity with each other. We have a lot in common and we're targeted by the same oppressive forces. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't ever be anything just for one group. Not everything has to be all-inclusive.


Let femme and butch lesbians make things exclusively for femme and butch lesbians. Let lesbians have lesbian-only spaces. Let lesbians talk about how they tried to be bi out of self-hate. Let lesbians acknowledge that m/w relationships are privileged. Let lesbians not care about men. Let lesbians prioritize other lesbians in their feminism.


If they're actually being biphobic or bimisogynist, you can call them out. But someone not focusing on YOU YOU YOU all the time doesn't mean they hate you. Don't be so self-absorbed. Some things aren't that deep.


6. Appropriating butch/femme terminology and reducing those identities to aesthetics.


To clarify, I just mean the wlw gender labels here, not the ball culture ones.


I know that bi women can be butch or femme and honestly I think we have bigger problems than some newly-out teenage bi girl tagging her selfies with those words when they don't apply to her, but it is not okay to take butch and femme out of a strictly woman-for-woman context.


Don't say shit like "haha it's so funny that I have a boyfriend when I'm butch" or "I bet I'm femme because I like guys too." Especially don't call yourself these terms if you're that kind of pick-me bitch who tries to appeal to guys by telling them you're a feminist or you like girls or you like to wear masculine clothing, but you're not one of those hairy ugly butch lesbians. Those hairy, "ugly" butch lesbians are family. They are a huge part of our culture and history and they are often amazing people if you actually give them a chance.


It's not cute and it's a slap in the face to the butches and femmes who made our community as great as it is.












Are you a bi woman? Do you feel attacked or personally insulted by this post?


Do you think lesbians should feel attacked or personally insulted by my last post, when I talked extensively about the alienation I felt from the lesbian community and why I felt like I couldn't trust lesbians?


Think really fucking hard about your answers to those questions, girls. And do better. Do better yourself, encourage other bi women to do better and call out their lesbophobia, do better for lesbians and the bi women who love them. I hope I can do the same.

Why We've Been Inactive

It's because Roman is gone and I've been too busy to write.

Why is Roman gone, you ask? Did it get fired? Did it quit?

Both.

So here's what happened. I don't know exactly when, but it has decided that I'm a "lesbophobic nightmare" and left, apparently too much of a coward to actually confront me on this, to make its own blog.

But it still kept reblogging from my Tumblr, which is so fucking funny. And hypocritical. I blocked it.

Okay, I guess? I'm not holding it prisoner. I can't force it to write and I don't want to. I'm just trying to figure out why it feels that way about me.

Admittedly I do have a lot of mistrust toward lesbians, especially cis lesbians, because of the way I've seen them treat bi women and nonbinary women. Admittedly, that mistrust is undeserved because it's directed toward the lesbian community as a whole and I don't scrutinize cis bi women the way I do cis lesbians, even though both groups are equally transphobic.

I guess it feels like a betrayal, that so many lesbians treat bi women like we're just juvenile, man-obsessed, traitorous dick-worshippers who are too stupid to talk about our own oppression. Because like I expect men, straight women, and aroace women to hate me. I shouldn't have to expect that from lesbians, considering that they don't oppress me, but I do and I wish I didn't.

I feel like the lesbian community as a whole, not necessarily individual lesbians, has been toxic, cruel, elitist, and hypocritical toward bi women. I have seen so many leftist lesbians talk about how lived material realities matter more than identity politics, and I think it's hypocritical and bimisogynistic of these lesbians to assume that the most important thing about any bi woman's lived material reality is her attraction to men and that it is, therefore, absolutely unjustifiable and disgusting for any bi woman to apply terms to herself that are associated with lesbianism (not counting, of course, actually identifying as lesbian or gay) or to resent being ignored or treated as an afterthought when it comes to conversations like feeling alienated from womanhood, being pressured to prioritize men, or facing homophobic misogyny.

I feel the same way about how many leftist cis lesbians - and it is mostly cis lesbians, from what I've seen - treat nonbinary women and CAFAB trans people. They, along with all other cis LGB people, are way too eager to remind us "afabs" that we benefit from transmisogyny, as if they don't benefit from it to a greater extent than we ever will and as if they don't benefit from transphobia as a whole.

Cis lesbian and bi women in leftist scenes have a tendency to tokenize trans women and use them as social capital as long as they agree with them, prioritize them over other trans people, and espouse exactly the right political opinions for cis women's benefit. They're essentially capitalizing on trans women's hypervisibility, but then they'll turn around and say it's misogynistic to be mean to TERFs or call out any lesbian's transmisogyny when you're not a lesbian yourself.

As for the rest of us trans, nonbinary, and generally non-cis people? Well, we don't make good social justice props for cis women, so we're pretty much useless unless they want to fetishize us (which, yes, cis lesbians have done to me). Which makes it okay for cis women of any kind to openly laugh at us, misgender us, lecture us on issues that we understand far better than they do, and generally treat us like we're just silly white blue-haired MOGAI fifteen-year-olds who are hopped up on identity politics, don't understand anything about real oppression, and (specifically for woman-aligned nonbinary people) only "internally identify" as nonbinary but are basically just cis women with a twist.

They also assume that they always know any non-cis woman's assigned sex, which is dehumanizing, invasive, and transphobic toward all trans women and all woman-aligned nonbinary people. That kind of behavior from cis women leads to fetishization, harassment, and sexual violence against us. They appropriate our experiences (i.e. cis femmes claiming that they share oppression with trans women under "femmephobia" as if GNC trans women don't exist, or cis WLW in general uncritically promoting rhetoric like "dysphoria is just internalized misogyny" and "woman-aligned nonbinary people are always functionally cis"). They dismiss and infantilize non-cis women who are feminine and sexually harass non-cis women who are not, even to the point of assuming we're violent because of our gender nonconformity.

Honestly? I'm pretty much convinced by now that ~*~sapphic solidarity~*~ is mostly a way to shut nonbinary and trans WLW up about cis women's transphobia and to downplay any mistreatment bi women and lesbians face from one another.

Of course, bi women are exempt from absolutely none of this, are sometimes genuinely awful toward lesbians, and if they are cis then they're just as capable of transphobia as cis lesbians are. There are also nonbinary and trans lesbians who have been hurt just as badly by cis women (including cis bi women!) as I, a nonbinary bi woman, have. It's also important to remember that straight women, aroace women, and men of all sexualities are far more capable of being cruel to bi women than lesbians are.

So I know the mistreatment I've faced and the alienation I feel from (cis) lesbians as a result is not an excuse to be lesbophobic, okay? I'm working on it and trying to be genuinely respectful of lesbians, but I will still expect that respect to go both ways and I will still always prioritize other bi women - especially TGNC and gender diverse bi women - before anyone else.

And honestly? I think that's part of why Roman believes I'm a lesbophobe. It is uncomfortable with me putting bi women first, addressing the issues we face from cishet, cis aroace, and LGBT people alike, and saying that our material realities are often very similar to lesbians' and even if they're not, that doesn't mean it's okay to condescend to us, mock our mistreatment, group us with men or straight women, or act like we're stupid, catty, unfaithful, hyperfeminine bihet cocksucking breeders who are too dumb and unwoke to give up men and are only good for sex.

Good riddance, overall. Anyone who is so entitled to bi women's labor that it can't even handle seeing one say "hey don't treat us like shit" without accusing him of being a lesbophobe isn't someone who is worthy of my time - especially when it wasn't the world's greatest ally to us itself.

As for myself, I've been dealing with personal issues. I've struggled with my mental health, especially binge eating, impulsive eating, and emotional eating, for most of my life - there's a reason, but I don't feel ready to go into it now - and I'm trying to get that under control and focus on my health and recovery, especially since I relapsed this year. I'm also trying to focus on school, get the rest of my life in order, doing an internship, and trying to get up the nerve to ask out the pretty doe in my psychology class.

I guess that sums up why I've been inactive. I'm hoping to write more soon, but no promises. And finally: I'm looking for new mods! If you are an LGBT leftist who likes to write and fits my requirements, please head over to the mod applications page.