Validity discourse is rampant in the queer community. It’s toxic and pointless, and only seems to escalate each year.
For example, “Lesbian Visibility Day” was this week. That’s the cherished holiday where we all fight about who counts as a lesbian. People post things like “bi lesbians are valid!” and “he/him lesbians are valid!” and “non…
Validity discourse is rampant in the queer community. It’s toxic and pointless, and only seems to escalate each year.
For example, “Lesbian Visibility Day” was this week. That’s the cherished holiday where we all fight about who counts as a lesbian. People post things like “bi lesbians are valid!” and “he/him lesbians are valid!” and “nonbinary lesbians are valid!” (etc… there are infinite variations*) – and then people bicker in the replies about whether they agree.
It’s an awful combination of the mentality Freddie observes (“validity can only come from communal decree”), the fact that gender and sexuality are contested concepts right now, plus the youth’s tendancy to adopt a lengthy list of micro-labels that most people can’t even parse let alone validate. But they demand, argue, call out, block—everyone MUST agree that “x is valid” because a single dissenter can send them into a spiral. It's not healthy behavior, to say the least.
I’m not interested in policing the boundaries of who counts as a lesbian, mostly because I recognize that the days of a coherently defined gay community are over. This is mostly for good reasons (acceptance, assimilation) and while I miss the old days sometimes, there’s no point in trying to get it back. But I feel for the kids who invest so much in their labels and affiliations, when the big terms (gay, trans) have lost meaning and the new terms are incomprehensible to most adults.
For various reasons, they’ve imagined they can locate their sense of self-worth in being a member of an oppressed community, and they want their chosen affiliations and their unique identities to be validated all at once… and it’s just not going to happen. Most people will not see you as a “bisexual lesbian” because that’s not how they understand those words. Pounding the keyboard and insisting that you’re “valid” won’t change this—and even if everyone genuinely came to see you as a bi lesbian, it wouldn’t make you feel any better.
Same goes for the gatekeepers. The kids have new terms, and they’ve twisted the old ones, and it’s not like it was in 1995. But we have to let go of all that and live our lives. Dress how you want, date who you want, and just be glad that we have that freedom in 2022.
In seriousness, this has some older roots - I've known it to be a thing among older, very very masculine butch women. Kind of the female equivalent of very femme gay men who affectionately/jokingly refer to each other as "she," but with an added acknowledgment of butch women who very visibly take on a masculine role in relationships. Sometimes butches will just use it among each other, kind of a private in-group marker.
These days it's become a much looser term - sometimes it says, "I'm fine with being female and a lesbian and am not transitioning, but am still a masculine-presenting person who feels more comfortable with he/him pronouns." Sometimes it's trans men who still identify very strongly with the lesbian community they came up in and want to hold on to both alignments. The thing about the "validity" discourse around it is that, like... however valid the identity, it still requires some explanation for most people because it's inherently counterintuitive. There's nothing wrong with a counterintuitive identity, imo, especially a pointedly queer one - but then it feels like... well, you maybe should have expected that this might be something you need to explain to people outside your immediate circle before they accept what you mean by it.
Exactly. You said this so well. And even after explanations, some people are always going to think, "Well, that doesn't make sense." But that's okay. I want people to respect my pronouns and choice of partner, and to treat me like anyone else. I don't need them to validate my specific understanding of my identity and attractions.
And really, I don't expect anyone to care. Now that I'm married, no one even asks about my specific sexual orientation anymore. I say "I have a wife" and they say "Oh cool." And that's the end. The kids will learn one day that all of this navel-gazing is of limited interest to others.
People forget that you can identify as something and get it wrong. Plenty of women, for instance, identify as being overweight when they aren't. It's called body dysmorphia. We needn't validate that identity, we need to show that it's wrong
I don't think of it as "getting it wrong," though - he/him lesbians, or at least the ones I've been around, basically never think of themselves as actual men. Trans men, sure, but generally a trans man who still goes out of his way to identify with lesbianism is someone who understands his own body and sexuality in terms of female-ness, if not femininity. It's a way of using language to acknowledge a level of visible masculinity that is central to someone's female experience in the world.
I'd maybe put it as, "People forget that you can identify as something and it's meaningful only to you and a small group of other people who understand exactly what you're referring to." He/him lesbian is one of the hundred thousand million ways to put words to one's sense of self; the lesbians I've known who identify with it tend to care more about it as a signal to other lesbians and/or trans men who are in the same boat as them re: their masculinity. As Carina mentioned above, the insistence that everyone around you exhibit the same level of perfect understanding of your niche identity is unrealistic and immature. But among friends, it can be really... well, validating, to be able to say "These are the people among whom my contradictions make perfect sense."
......Also, to be clear because I don’t have an edit button: I didn’t mean to say that I think trans men are “getting it wrong,” I meant that they do generally think of themselves as men. I very, very, extremely do not want to start a conversation here about whether that’s right or wrong, so I hesitate to even clarify, but thought that was an important ambiguity to clear up.
I meant it a bit differently. I mean that saying "I think your identity is wrong/incoherent" isn't equivalent to saying "you shouldn't exist." You can believe someone got a piece of their identity wrong without challenging their existence.
Another one I don't like is "naturally skinny." Genetics BMR don't differ that much for people with the same height and bodyfat percentage. The differences in percieved "metabolism" generally stem from a) people being terrible at estimating their food intake and b) non-exercise activity levels. I think "naturally skinny" people get the facts wrong. I don't think they shouldn't exist or something.
Naturally skinny people exist, as do naturally heavy people. I mean no disrespect, but frankly, the idea that they don't is in very direct contradiction to every bit of my "lived experience". I've been close enough to genetically different other people in my life to know how much we were both eating, and it was not a misestimation. The same kind and amount of food did not have the same effects. Period. My very thin husband can eat damn near anything and routinely stuff himself silly without gaining a pound, while I look twice at a salad and gain weight. I am more active than he is. One of my best friends growing up hated being extremely thin, and she couldn't put on weight to save her life. She ate easily *way* more than me (much less healthy food) and was not particularly active. There are plenty more examples.
Yes, people can gain and lose weight -- obviously they can. It isn't as set as height, sure, but it is definitely impacted by genetics. I think it's more outlandish to argue that it isn't. It's akin to the people who think practically every human trait is influenced by genetics, except intelligence. Never intelligence. I understand the allure and simplicity of believing weight is just a "calories in, calories out" matter of hard work and moral fortitude, but like most things in life, it's just not that simple.
If you want to have at me with the "laws of thermodynamics" stuff, be my guest. Obviously, I don't think the laws of physics are somehow magically suspended -- I just think the particulars that impact the equation are complicated, and that's the part we likely don't agree on. Bodies have ways of conserving (or not) energy. There are so many bodily processes we have little to no active control over that could impact how our bodies do or don't expend energy. We're no more at the End of Science than we are at the End of History. We do not have enough data of sufficiently high quality to be confident we have every factor that impacts weight worked out. I wish we did. It would make my life -- and many others' -- much easier.
Anyway, despite my inability to refrain from adding my two cents this time, I'm really not in the market for a protracted back and forth on this topic. Not meant as a cop-out, just the truth. So, I probably won't respond further, and you can have the last say, if you like. No hard feelings, hopefully, and I'll continue to see you around, I'm sure.
I said of the same height and bodyfat percentage. I'm guessing your husband and taller and has a lower bodyfat percentage. That's going to lead to a substantial difference in BMR.
Serious question. Is this weird queer/nonbinary stuff is just the feminine version of autism spectrum/low agreeableness behavior? I'm not talking about your everyday boring lesbian/bi women, I'm talking about the really weird stuff.
My friends are almost all men, and I don't see any of this. I met most of my friends through board games, so you could imagine the level of autism spectrum and social awkwardness among them (yes, I include myself). I see a lot of deep interest in bizarre subjects, but not any of the weird queer stuff.
I feel like this is the proper outlet for women to express weirdness, while men have a bunch of others.
This is a really interesting thought! "Nonbinary" is such a broad term - I have trouble categorizing because among my own social groups, I know both plenty of AFAB people who I definitely think have some autistic traits informing their gender identity (and many of them would readily agree with that), and plenty of AFAB people who are taking they/them pronouns almost in order to be *more* agreeable. "She/they" not as a statement of how they want to be perceived as a gendered or not-gendered person, but as a statement that they're cool with whatever, they know the lingo, they're not so attached to their gender so as to be unapproachable.
But I think "this is the proper outlet for women to express weirdness" gets at something really true. Especially young women - as I get into my 30s I'm noticing that the people who were most obsessed with these categories 10 years ago, even when they've held onto some of the labels, have mostly abandoned the desperate need to announce it or to correct others for doing it wrong.
From what I've seen (anecdotes ahoy) the nonbinary stuff for women seems to mostly be for women who want to be seen as "not like the other girls". It's a way to stand out from the crowd and feel like there's something special and different about you that makes you unique. I think some of it is misogyny - they hear the term "woman" and think it inherently means some kind of submissive, baby-crazy individual who just wants to stay home and make sandwiches.
Queer seems a bit different. I've seen it used for women who are actually lesbian or bisexual, but I've also seen a number of straight women using it. I think this is because they want to participate in events like Pride and wear rainbows, but being an "ally" doesn't feel cool enough so they say they're "queer" and then they have a right to take part in the festivities.
On some level, I get it. There is a lot of Pride focused stuff in our society and it feels bad to not really be "allowed" to take part in the fun, celebratory side of it. No one is making tote bags and enamel pins and dresses just for straight people, so many adopt one of these easy identities as a way to feel like they're part of a community.
Yeah, I was recently reading a news article about a women’s college and how it was expanding the definition of who their clientele is. They had interviewed a student who said something like “I identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns, because womanhood doesn’t define me.”
And I thought, well, does womanhood define *anyone*? Also, I would say that I’m not defined by my ethnicity, in that I defy many of the stereotypes and norms around it (some deliberately, some just by happenstance) — but nobody would say that that makes me not be a member of that ethnic group.
With the word “queer” — yeah. It makes me kind of sad, though, because I would like a vaguer term to describe myself — I’m maybe bi, maybe lesbian, didn’t realize I was into women until an embarrassingly advanced age, but I eventually realized that even just the thought of being with a woman was more natural to me than that of being with a man. I’d like to pick a label that doesn’t force me to answer the question “were any of my romantic feelings towards men real, or did that come about because I sensed that society wanted me to be attracted to men and I talked myself into thinking I was attracted to them?” But there isn’t one. So I guess it’s “bi, but significantly more interested in dating women than men” for now.
I have a bit where I catcall my husband and say "if I were a gay man..." in reference to his butt. But then I've realized that based on how I feel about his hot bod, I'm either the woman I think I am OR I'm a gay trans man. Just gotta decide which.
I've had that same thought (ahem, not specifically about your husband's butt), and then I further wonder, If I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body, does that make my bf gay? Conclusion: I think we should steer away from "deciding which"! I'm fine with how things shook out, and, uh, we're all on a spectrum. Or something.
I have heard several different explanations. Here are the 3 I've seen most often:
1) "Lesbian" is an umbrella term and bisexual women should be considered lesbians.
2) The split attraction model (argues that sexual orientation and romantic orientation are different, so someone can be bi-romantic but homosexual, or vice versa).
3) "Bi" doesn't necessarily mean men and women; it could mean women and nonbinary people, or women and non-men, so someone can like 2 genders but both fall under the sapphic umbrella.
I can't remember hearing the fluid sexuality explanation for this term specifically, but I'm sure it has been used.
Validity discourse is rampant in the queer community. It’s toxic and pointless, and only seems to escalate each year.
For example, “Lesbian Visibility Day” was this week. That’s the cherished holiday where we all fight about who counts as a lesbian. People post things like “bi lesbians are valid!” and “he/him lesbians are valid!” and “nonbinary lesbians are valid!” (etc… there are infinite variations*) – and then people bicker in the replies about whether they agree.
It’s an awful combination of the mentality Freddie observes (“validity can only come from communal decree”), the fact that gender and sexuality are contested concepts right now, plus the youth’s tendancy to adopt a lengthy list of micro-labels that most people can’t even parse let alone validate. But they demand, argue, call out, block—everyone MUST agree that “x is valid” because a single dissenter can send them into a spiral. It's not healthy behavior, to say the least.
I’m not interested in policing the boundaries of who counts as a lesbian, mostly because I recognize that the days of a coherently defined gay community are over. This is mostly for good reasons (acceptance, assimilation) and while I miss the old days sometimes, there’s no point in trying to get it back. But I feel for the kids who invest so much in their labels and affiliations, when the big terms (gay, trans) have lost meaning and the new terms are incomprehensible to most adults.
For various reasons, they’ve imagined they can locate their sense of self-worth in being a member of an oppressed community, and they want their chosen affiliations and their unique identities to be validated all at once… and it’s just not going to happen. Most people will not see you as a “bisexual lesbian” because that’s not how they understand those words. Pounding the keyboard and insisting that you’re “valid” won’t change this—and even if everyone genuinely came to see you as a bi lesbian, it wouldn’t make you feel any better.
Same goes for the gatekeepers. The kids have new terms, and they’ve twisted the old ones, and it’s not like it was in 1995. But we have to let go of all that and live our lives. Dress how you want, date who you want, and just be glad that we have that freedom in 2022.
* Proof that I’m not making this up: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22bi%20lesbians%20are%20valid%22&src=typed_query&f=live
Very much so.
He/him... lesbians?
In seriousness, this has some older roots - I've known it to be a thing among older, very very masculine butch women. Kind of the female equivalent of very femme gay men who affectionately/jokingly refer to each other as "she," but with an added acknowledgment of butch women who very visibly take on a masculine role in relationships. Sometimes butches will just use it among each other, kind of a private in-group marker.
These days it's become a much looser term - sometimes it says, "I'm fine with being female and a lesbian and am not transitioning, but am still a masculine-presenting person who feels more comfortable with he/him pronouns." Sometimes it's trans men who still identify very strongly with the lesbian community they came up in and want to hold on to both alignments. The thing about the "validity" discourse around it is that, like... however valid the identity, it still requires some explanation for most people because it's inherently counterintuitive. There's nothing wrong with a counterintuitive identity, imo, especially a pointedly queer one - but then it feels like... well, you maybe should have expected that this might be something you need to explain to people outside your immediate circle before they accept what you mean by it.
Exactly. You said this so well. And even after explanations, some people are always going to think, "Well, that doesn't make sense." But that's okay. I want people to respect my pronouns and choice of partner, and to treat me like anyone else. I don't need them to validate my specific understanding of my identity and attractions.
And really, I don't expect anyone to care. Now that I'm married, no one even asks about my specific sexual orientation anymore. I say "I have a wife" and they say "Oh cool." And that's the end. The kids will learn one day that all of this navel-gazing is of limited interest to others.
I like this very much: “The kids will learn one day that all of this navel-gazing is of limited interest to others.”
People forget that you can identify as something and get it wrong. Plenty of women, for instance, identify as being overweight when they aren't. It's called body dysmorphia. We needn't validate that identity, we need to show that it's wrong
I don't think of it as "getting it wrong," though - he/him lesbians, or at least the ones I've been around, basically never think of themselves as actual men. Trans men, sure, but generally a trans man who still goes out of his way to identify with lesbianism is someone who understands his own body and sexuality in terms of female-ness, if not femininity. It's a way of using language to acknowledge a level of visible masculinity that is central to someone's female experience in the world.
I'd maybe put it as, "People forget that you can identify as something and it's meaningful only to you and a small group of other people who understand exactly what you're referring to." He/him lesbian is one of the hundred thousand million ways to put words to one's sense of self; the lesbians I've known who identify with it tend to care more about it as a signal to other lesbians and/or trans men who are in the same boat as them re: their masculinity. As Carina mentioned above, the insistence that everyone around you exhibit the same level of perfect understanding of your niche identity is unrealistic and immature. But among friends, it can be really... well, validating, to be able to say "These are the people among whom my contradictions make perfect sense."
......Also, to be clear because I don’t have an edit button: I didn’t mean to say that I think trans men are “getting it wrong,” I meant that they do generally think of themselves as men. I very, very, extremely do not want to start a conversation here about whether that’s right or wrong, so I hesitate to even clarify, but thought that was an important ambiguity to clear up.
I meant it a bit differently. I mean that saying "I think your identity is wrong/incoherent" isn't equivalent to saying "you shouldn't exist." You can believe someone got a piece of their identity wrong without challenging their existence.
Another one I don't like is "naturally skinny." Genetics BMR don't differ that much for people with the same height and bodyfat percentage. The differences in percieved "metabolism" generally stem from a) people being terrible at estimating their food intake and b) non-exercise activity levels. I think "naturally skinny" people get the facts wrong. I don't think they shouldn't exist or something.
Naturally skinny people exist, as do naturally heavy people. I mean no disrespect, but frankly, the idea that they don't is in very direct contradiction to every bit of my "lived experience". I've been close enough to genetically different other people in my life to know how much we were both eating, and it was not a misestimation. The same kind and amount of food did not have the same effects. Period. My very thin husband can eat damn near anything and routinely stuff himself silly without gaining a pound, while I look twice at a salad and gain weight. I am more active than he is. One of my best friends growing up hated being extremely thin, and she couldn't put on weight to save her life. She ate easily *way* more than me (much less healthy food) and was not particularly active. There are plenty more examples.
Yes, people can gain and lose weight -- obviously they can. It isn't as set as height, sure, but it is definitely impacted by genetics. I think it's more outlandish to argue that it isn't. It's akin to the people who think practically every human trait is influenced by genetics, except intelligence. Never intelligence. I understand the allure and simplicity of believing weight is just a "calories in, calories out" matter of hard work and moral fortitude, but like most things in life, it's just not that simple.
If you want to have at me with the "laws of thermodynamics" stuff, be my guest. Obviously, I don't think the laws of physics are somehow magically suspended -- I just think the particulars that impact the equation are complicated, and that's the part we likely don't agree on. Bodies have ways of conserving (or not) energy. There are so many bodily processes we have little to no active control over that could impact how our bodies do or don't expend energy. We're no more at the End of Science than we are at the End of History. We do not have enough data of sufficiently high quality to be confident we have every factor that impacts weight worked out. I wish we did. It would make my life -- and many others' -- much easier.
Anyway, despite my inability to refrain from adding my two cents this time, I'm really not in the market for a protracted back and forth on this topic. Not meant as a cop-out, just the truth. So, I probably won't respond further, and you can have the last say, if you like. No hard feelings, hopefully, and I'll continue to see you around, I'm sure.
I said of the same height and bodyfat percentage. I'm guessing your husband and taller and has a lower bodyfat percentage. That's going to lead to a substantial difference in BMR.
Ha, we both commented about Lesbian Visibility Day at the same time. You're completely right.
Serious question. Is this weird queer/nonbinary stuff is just the feminine version of autism spectrum/low agreeableness behavior? I'm not talking about your everyday boring lesbian/bi women, I'm talking about the really weird stuff.
My friends are almost all men, and I don't see any of this. I met most of my friends through board games, so you could imagine the level of autism spectrum and social awkwardness among them (yes, I include myself). I see a lot of deep interest in bizarre subjects, but not any of the weird queer stuff.
I feel like this is the proper outlet for women to express weirdness, while men have a bunch of others.
This is a really interesting thought! "Nonbinary" is such a broad term - I have trouble categorizing because among my own social groups, I know both plenty of AFAB people who I definitely think have some autistic traits informing their gender identity (and many of them would readily agree with that), and plenty of AFAB people who are taking they/them pronouns almost in order to be *more* agreeable. "She/they" not as a statement of how they want to be perceived as a gendered or not-gendered person, but as a statement that they're cool with whatever, they know the lingo, they're not so attached to their gender so as to be unapproachable.
But I think "this is the proper outlet for women to express weirdness" gets at something really true. Especially young women - as I get into my 30s I'm noticing that the people who were most obsessed with these categories 10 years ago, even when they've held onto some of the labels, have mostly abandoned the desperate need to announce it or to correct others for doing it wrong.
From what I've seen (anecdotes ahoy) the nonbinary stuff for women seems to mostly be for women who want to be seen as "not like the other girls". It's a way to stand out from the crowd and feel like there's something special and different about you that makes you unique. I think some of it is misogyny - they hear the term "woman" and think it inherently means some kind of submissive, baby-crazy individual who just wants to stay home and make sandwiches.
Queer seems a bit different. I've seen it used for women who are actually lesbian or bisexual, but I've also seen a number of straight women using it. I think this is because they want to participate in events like Pride and wear rainbows, but being an "ally" doesn't feel cool enough so they say they're "queer" and then they have a right to take part in the festivities.
On some level, I get it. There is a lot of Pride focused stuff in our society and it feels bad to not really be "allowed" to take part in the fun, celebratory side of it. No one is making tote bags and enamel pins and dresses just for straight people, so many adopt one of these easy identities as a way to feel like they're part of a community.
Yeah, I was recently reading a news article about a women’s college and how it was expanding the definition of who their clientele is. They had interviewed a student who said something like “I identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns, because womanhood doesn’t define me.”
And I thought, well, does womanhood define *anyone*? Also, I would say that I’m not defined by my ethnicity, in that I defy many of the stereotypes and norms around it (some deliberately, some just by happenstance) — but nobody would say that that makes me not be a member of that ethnic group.
With the word “queer” — yeah. It makes me kind of sad, though, because I would like a vaguer term to describe myself — I’m maybe bi, maybe lesbian, didn’t realize I was into women until an embarrassingly advanced age, but I eventually realized that even just the thought of being with a woman was more natural to me than that of being with a man. I’d like to pick a label that doesn’t force me to answer the question “were any of my romantic feelings towards men real, or did that come about because I sensed that society wanted me to be attracted to men and I talked myself into thinking I was attracted to them?” But there isn’t one. So I guess it’s “bi, but significantly more interested in dating women than men” for now.
It's the worst holiday. No presents, no chocolate--just bitter infighting and a smattering of heavily photoshopped selfies. No thanks.
I have a bit where I catcall my husband and say "if I were a gay man..." in reference to his butt. But then I've realized that based on how I feel about his hot bod, I'm either the woman I think I am OR I'm a gay trans man. Just gotta decide which.
I've had that same thought (ahem, not specifically about your husband's butt), and then I further wonder, If I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body, does that make my bf gay? Conclusion: I think we should steer away from "deciding which"! I'm fine with how things shook out, and, uh, we're all on a spectrum. Or something.
I legit can't fathom what a bi-lesbian would be. Like, honestly don't even have a plausible answer.
[Edit: Waitwait, I came up with a guess! Is it someone who's sometimes bi and sometimes lesbian?]
I have heard several different explanations. Here are the 3 I've seen most often:
1) "Lesbian" is an umbrella term and bisexual women should be considered lesbians.
2) The split attraction model (argues that sexual orientation and romantic orientation are different, so someone can be bi-romantic but homosexual, or vice versa).
3) "Bi" doesn't necessarily mean men and women; it could mean women and nonbinary people, or women and non-men, so someone can like 2 genders but both fall under the sapphic umbrella.
I can't remember hearing the fluid sexuality explanation for this term specifically, but I'm sure it has been used.