fakingloveforfroot:

queeranarchism:

intersectionalityisnecessity:

queeranarchism:

intersectionalityisnecessity:

queeranarchism:

peppermintpaulina:

queeranarchism:

queeranarchism:

This week I had a lovely conversation with an older dyke who reminded me how much a lot of people have always hated TERFs and SWERFs. 

She was talking about the time in the 1970s and 1980s when she was a young radical dyke and how many of the awesome dykes in the radical scene were trans women. So I asked her if there was ever any problem with TERFs and SWERFs. She didn’t know those words so I described them. Her reply was (paraphrasing a longer conversation):

“Oh, you mean the political lesbians? That’s what we called them at the time, no one really considered them radical. They hated everyone. They hated bisexual women who dated men. They hated us leather dykes and kinky dykes because they thought we were ‘copying the patriarchy’, they hated trans women. None of us in the radical scene liked them. A lot of them later left and admitted that they were straight but were presured to identify as lesbians in that group because being a feminist to them meant cutting all ties with men. They were like a cult. They often lived together and if you didn’t walk the political line you were dead to them. Intense stuff.

”

And like, I know her memories don’t have global relevance and there have also been places where TERFs had a much more prominent impact on the local radical women’s community, but still, to hear how despised these TERFs have always been by these truly radical dykes cheered me up a lot. 

So this post got pretty popular so I wanna repeat that these individual memories don’t have global relevance and certainly can not be taken as universally relevant facts. Statements like ‘so all seperatist women’s movements were terfs?’ or ‘so all political lesbians were like this?’ or ‘so most terfs are straight?’ misinterpret this story. 

This is just one story from one city, seen through the experience of one radical dyke at one time in that cities history. There are many other cities, other communities, other times, other stories. Some will be similar, some will be different.

Also dyke is a slur so don’t use in RL

The people in this story self-identify as dykes. So I will describe them as such. Online and offline. Dyke is a reclaimed slur that is cherished in radical queer communities and has been for about 50 years already. The backlash against words like dyke and queer is an attempt to create a conservative lgbt movement that excludes radical queers. The dykes in this story had to deal with the shit, appearantly little has changed in that area.

If someone says she is a dyke, call her a dyke. Not a lesbian or a sapphic woman or a wlw, a DYKE. Don’t try to make her identity more respectable. She chose to call herself a dyke, respect that.

But alternatively, if she calls herself a lesbian, a womyn, or a wlw, maybe don’t call her a dyke, as that would make her uncomfortable. My wlw friend had this experience with a stranger(who also thought I was into my bf when were walking on the street late at night downtown), and it was really uncomfortable and problematic.

Like yeah, obviously.

I’m just pissed off right now because dykes who have fought so hard for our right for decades are being referred to as ’d-slur’ in some of the comment on this post and elsewhere and that’s no way to treat queer heroes.

There is a distrubing trend towards towards conservatism in the queer community these days. I wish they would stop trying to crush the spirit of and silence radical queer voices.

Yeah absolutely, the recent intense campaign against words like queer and dyke is a tell-tale sign of it. Along with the mainstreaming of the identities that are allowed to remain. Somewhere yesterday I read a post by a butch who was so disappointed that ‘butch’ has started to mean pretty short-haired lesbian in a slightly boyish outfit with natural make up, and that being a proud fat hairy leather-wearing scarred-knuckles tattooed dyke isn’t part of ‘butch’ in most queer people’s minds anymore. That rang so true. There is an effort to make the most vocal and visual queers disappear, our language, our styles, they’re being pushed away and with it our voices and ideas.

I feel like this has a lot to do with the fact that gay marriage in America is legal so a lot of more moderate gay people are like “okay, time to pack up. Homophobia is over. I can now put down the protest signs and put on my suit and go back to exploiting my queer brothers and sisters by using remaining homophobia to be the Respectable Queer Token” and just in general with the growing societal acceptance of white supremacy and such. And when I say acceptance, I just mean the white supremacy that has lingered doesn’t feel the need to hide anymore.