The growth of terms like “mlm” (as in gay + bi men) and “Achillean” are interesting because it seems to mainly be from trans men who are imposing an artificial similarity from women’s gay/bi communities into gay male spaces when the histories and relationships between gay and bi men are like completely different because gender (and therefore gay communities) isn’t just two complimentary groups that Are just mirrors of each other
It’s like basically reinventing the wheel but like a wheel that doesn’t actually fit onto the car
This is fucking transphobic.
I’m not imposing shit all from women’s communities because guess what I was never capable of deciding or understanding anything about communities designed for women. I do not have the capability of understanding the lesbian community enough to impose aspects of it onto anything.
I’m fucking gay. I like gay men and the gay men’s community, even though all it ever seems to do is tell me I’m not fucking good enough.
You have seriously overstepped and it’s not okay.
So since I’ve already been misgendered by some people’s responses to this (despite them not having v much like actual content) and you wrote something more substantial, I’ll like clarify what I’m not meaning.
Like, I don’t think that trans men were lesbians/women prior to transition, and I think that gay trans men are equally as gay as cis gay men.
What I’m saying is that the language of communities was v clearly borrowed from lesbian communities and then promulgated primarily by trans men.
So like, “mlm” is a clear borrowing from the wlw acronym. Achillean was explicitly created as a male version of sapphic (at least here on tumblr and not in the reactionary way). And from my experience, while those terms are used by some who aren’t trans, the vast majority of its usage (esp early on) was trans.
The genealogies of these words are pretty clearly based on borrowing from women’s communities, despite the fact that both wlw and sapphic were created to specifically address tensions between bi women and lesbians that simply does not exist the same way among gay and bi men.
I think that those factors go into like, talking abt how gender and gay communities are being conceptualized thru language, but I feel like I’m pretty explicitly not talking abt this in a way that ungenders people but like talks abt what communities they might have at one point had affinity w or in commmunity w and how that affects the language/the way we talk abt our spaces.
I find it really mind boggling that people are getting all pissed about this and calling this an important issue but never explaining why it matters.
Like, I have never used either term but apparently men looked at a term that is used by women to bridge the gap between monosexual and bisexual women and thought “You know what, we’ve got a significant amount of biphobia going on in men’s spaces too and even though that takes different forms this word could help with that”. Like, SO WHAT?
We have a pretty much unlimited supply of words. Unless there is something specifically harmful going on like the meaning of the original word being changed (like the obvious acephobia in ‘a is for ally narratives’) this seems like 0% harmful to me. Calling this stealing seems like a ‘YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A CAR’ kind of reasoning that pretends like language is a restricted resource. So they use a similar word. Did you lose your word? Did the meaning of your word change? No? Them what is the harm?
Real harmful appropriation of words happens, but that doesn’t mean every borrowed word is harmful. A lot of words are just damn useful and can serve multiple good causes with some alterations to avoid conflation. Pretty much every word we have to talk about oppression is an adaptation of a previously existing word. Like, maybe there is some real harm being done here and I’m just not seeing it yet, that’s possible. But until someone explains exactly how this is harmful it just seems pointless and a lack of solidarity to fight over this.
If a group that’s not your group benefits from a word you invented and wants to use a similar sounding word for a similar but different purpose, WHY NOT LET THEM HAVE IT. Where is the harm? Why not celebrate that men have found in your subculture some useful language to lessen biphobia in their own? that’s a good thing, right?
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(On a side note: it is shady as fuck to point out that something is being done more by trans men but not explain any further why that is happening. Either it matters and needs to be explained or it doesn’t matter. Right now it just leaves a general distaste towards a minority group without any reasoning behind it.)
QueerAnarchism 