Read on Twitter
hi! tons of posts are circulating about how i don’t care if sapphics reclaim dyke and how i support bi/pan lesbians so i’m quite literally just going to clear this up myself because at this point people are making entire threads about me, so keep reading if you want to know 
when i first joined lesbian twitter all i participated in was bi/pan lesbian discourse. the idea of bi lesbianism made me nervous and to me, meant that my label, “lesbian” meant i also should like men or allow men in my attraction. for good reason, that upset me, like, a lot.
so, i dedicated my account to fighting people on it. it pretty much consumed my life. it got to the point where i was driven off the app and didn’t log back on for a month. my mental health was completely fucking shot. the anger and confusion i felt had surpassed the internet.
this started affecting my relationships in real life in ways that i will not go into publicly, but i had some close friends come to me about their views on the word dyke, and from then on, i started educating myself on lesbian history in ways i hadn’t before. it was eye opening.
so, i changed my mind about the reclamation of dyke, because at the end of the day, i understand how deeply personal slur reclamation can be. i made it clear when i shared this that other lesbians can have a different opinion, but that i personally didn’t mind. that’s all i said.
now, onto bi/pan lesbians, i personally still define lesbian as a lack of attraction to men, but i’ve realized that other people may define the word lesbian differently, and there’s truly nothing i can do about that. people are going to use the words that feel affirming for them.
i came across the term “good faith self identification” one day and that really struck a chord. i understand that someone using a label differently than i shouldn’t change what that label means to me. i stopped assuming that everyone who did so was a bad actor trying to do harm.
so, i reached a point of genuine indifference. i think discourse culture demands some sort of high intensity opposition or its counterpart in order for you to just...exist on here. i’ve truly found those expectations tiring. i’m just a person with a twitter account. seriously.
the amount of mental energy i was using worried about how other people identified completely infringed on my real life AND started to derail the entire reason i joined the online community. to me, solidarity has always been so important, and i’m tired of the fighting. it hurts.
so, i’d appreciate it if people on here stopped making these long call out threads to try and “expose” me for something i feel like i’ve been pretty clear about. it’s okay to stop caring about what other people do. it’s not my responsibility to determine that and it never was.
if you still adamantly care about discourse issues and are speaking up about them, that’s fine. you’re allowed to use your voice. i’ve certainly been there, i’m just not in that place anymore in regards to thes topics, and if that’s a good enough reason to unfollow, then okay.
at the end of the day, my time in this online community is best spent focusing on fighting our collective oppression and encouraging solidarity. after spending months on this discourse, it feels like the thing we need most, even if we don’t always agree about everything.
this is the last thing i’ll say regarding all of this discourse. again, i’ve just reached a point where i have to be at peace with what other people want to do, because caring so deeply and being so angry was harmful to me personally and i had to just let go.
thanks for reading.
thanks for reading.
totally forgot that people are ALSO claiming i said lesbianism is fluid, so here’s a tweet i made yesterday about that whole ordeal, since this feels like an appropriate place to put it. okay that’s all for now https://twitter.com/radiantbutch/status/1303118592897093633
