Turns out that rule is still less widely known then you and me had assumed. The folks i'm talking about aren't some terfy boomer lesbians, either, they're all trans and mostly nonbinary themselves, and usually in one or several t4t relationships and actually younger than me. Like, the absolute last people you'd expect that from.
It's more complex than that shitpost of mine would make you assume, though, i was not being 100% serious there. Some people have a different perspective on this because unlike me, they do not want to be included under the lesbian label. Like, one of the people i had that discussion with is part of a system / plurality with differently gendered personalities making up that system. So if they'd date a lesbian, said lesbian could actually be faced with the situation that the person that is, as they call it, "at the front" at a given moment is one of their male personalities, and that obviously has led them to the understandable conclusion that they can only date bi / pan people, because anybody else would not be able to love all of them. Yes, i know, this already breaks the "non-man" definition, but at that point of the discussion, we hadn't arrived at bringing that one out.
And in general, that's really something many people can forget with the non-men loving non-man definition of lesbian, there's a lot of NB people who do not want to be included under "people a 100% lesbian person is attracted to" because reading them as tomboys or butch women is such a core part of their experiences with misgendering and with having their identity and validity called into doubt. As a nonbinary trans woman, my perspective on this is from fighting for inclusion in the community and being confronted with transphobic and enbiephobic gatekeeping, but a lof of AFAB nonbinary people have good reasons to feel as invalidated when a lesbian is interested in them as i would feel invalidated when a gay man suggests that he could date me, and with their amount of passing being as it is, they get into that kind of situation more than once and that just fucks with people.
Shit's complicated, because an umbrella term like nonbinary necessarily includes people with experiences and needs that are vastly different from each other.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. I know I acted like it was obvious but I think lesbian is sort of a… complicated term in general, because of a lot of reasons. I dunno, I feel like maybe it should be a self-labelled thing but that’s just my inclination.
Self-labeling should always be foundational to these things. As queer people, we all come from communities that have a history of having had taxonomy forced upon us, of being treated as specimens labeled by outside authorities for the purpose of control and stigmatization, of having been denied the very ability to express our experiences in our own words, something that continues in the present day with don't say gay bills and the like, and that makes it so important that we have agency over how we're referred to.
I am once again asking for you to stop meowing at me
Turns out that rule is still less widely known then you and me had assumed. The folks i'm talking about aren't some terfy boomer lesbians, either, they're all trans and mostly nonbinary themselves, and usually in one or several t4t relationships and actually younger than me. Like, the absolute last people you'd expect that from.
It's more complex than that shitpost of mine would make you assume, though, i was not being 100% serious there. Some people have a different perspective on this because unlike me, they do not want to be included under the lesbian label. Like, one of the people i had that discussion with is part of a system / plurality with differently gendered personalities making up that system. So if they'd date a lesbian, said lesbian could actually be faced with the situation that the person that is, as they call it, "at the front" at a given moment is one of their male personalities, and that obviously has led them to the understandable conclusion that they can only date bi / pan people, because anybody else would not be able to love all of them. Yes, i know, this already breaks the "non-man" definition, but at that point of the discussion, we hadn't arrived at bringing that one out.
And in general, that's really something many people can forget with the non-men loving non-man definition of lesbian, there's a lot of NB people who do not want to be included under "people a 100% lesbian person is attracted to" because reading them as tomboys or butch women is such a core part of their experiences with misgendering and with having their identity and validity called into doubt. As a nonbinary trans woman, my perspective on this is from fighting for inclusion in the community and being confronted with transphobic and enbiephobic gatekeeping, but a lof of AFAB nonbinary people have good reasons to feel as invalidated when a lesbian is interested in them as i would feel invalidated when a gay man suggests that he could date me, and with their amount of passing being as it is, they get into that kind of situation more than once and that just fucks with people.
Shit's complicated, because an umbrella term like nonbinary necessarily includes people with experiences and needs that are vastly different from each other.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. I know I acted like it was obvious but I think lesbian is sort of a… complicated term in general, because of a lot of reasons. I dunno, I feel like maybe it should be a self-labelled thing but that’s just my inclination.
Self-labeling should always be foundational to these things. As queer people, we all come from communities that have a history of having had taxonomy forced upon us, of being treated as specimens labeled by outside authorities for the purpose of control and stigmatization, of having been denied the very ability to express our experiences in our own words, something that continues in the present day with don't say gay bills and the like, and that makes it so important that we have agency over how we're referred to.
I’m still salty over not being able to identify as a lesbian because I like a cartoon rat. Aphrodite is up there, laughing at me.
Edit: MRW I remember Reggie the Rat is nonbinary