Cottagecore is the epitome of the problem of centering white femininity in sapphic spaces and upholding colonial ideas.

As a Black dyke, it makes me feel even more allienated in a space that already has problems with centering white femininity and a purity culture that seeks to get rid of anyone outside that.

I’m viscerally terrified it as white femininity has been weaponized time and time again to instigate anti Black violence.

It’s part of why exclusionism in the lesbian community gets so intense. If something as seen as a threat to the purity of “vulnerable” white femininity, it’s deemed necessary that it must be eliminated expeditiously and often with violence.

It’s also part as why at first, I thought I couldn’t be a lesbian because white femininity and whiteness is centered so much in what it means to be lesbian and that’s something as a Black dyke, I’ll never be included in as it’s a part of white supremacy.

A lot of coming to terms with my gender was reclaiming my masculinity from the modern colonial gender system which doesn’t afford Black people femininity and also masculinises them. I learned I didn’t have to chase white femininity and I can be masculine on my own terms.

The modern colonial gender system also is the origin of misogynoir which I’ve faced through my life and now even though my Black womanhood isn’t the full picture of my gender.