wanna give a transbian a nice gift on lesbian visibility week? do you enjoy the work i've done with FediPact? the rad instance i've set up? the cool clothes i DIY together? my pirate radio station, vantaradio? my awesome videos? my amazing selfies? my posting generally?
well i'm unemployed, job searching, was recently kicked out of the place i'd been staying for years, and am surviving solely off donations for the moment so if you wanna support me anything helps me keep being able to do all those cool thingies!!!
i still need $100 to order groceries $60 for medical weed ($160 total)
i'm currently unemployed and job searching and couch surfing after being kicked out of the place i'd been staying for years. i'm also an impoverished neurodivergent lesbian trans woman just trying to surive. details here: https://cyberpunk.lol/@vantablack/112210278064840816
This #LesbianVisibilityWeek, look out especially for the lesbians who are the least visible within this minority. Shout out to the disabled lesbians, the Black and Brown lesbians, the lesbians who can't come out, the trans lesbians, the working-class lesbians, the older lesbians
Chavela Vargas officially came out as a lesbian very late. she was 81 at the time.
she was brilliant, obviously, but she was also with a woman 34 years her junior. that's not very important. I just wanted to point out that loving older women is just wlw brand. @sapphicarchive#LesbianVisibilityWeek
Huh. The irony of reading lists for #lesbianvisibilityweek that don't include much, if any, from lesbian run small presses or indies. Which out publish the mainstream by what, a 100 to 1?
Being made invisible by so many book influencers who refuse, time and again, to SEE small press and indie publishing as vibrant, decades-long massive output that represents a vast spectrum of lesbian and sapphic lives is frustrating. #lesbianvisibilityday
#LesbianVisibilityWeek is a time for lesbian people of all flavours to tell their stories, be heard and discuss the issues that deeply affect them, outside of the ones that encompass the rest of the rainbow or womankind/enbykind.
One of these very specific issues that I and many other trans/enby lesbians deal with is the fear of even mentioning the L word, despite living it in our everyday lives.
From my personal perspective, I have to say that I have always known I was a woman, but that label of lesbian was the most scary one to claim.
This is because while I know inside that I am a woman, with every ounce of my being, "lesbian" is a social label as much as a personal description of my sexuality and there's some large parts of that community that vehemently exclude me from their definitions.
Often, when talking to strangers, I'll prefer to just say "I like women" rather than risk having to have to justify my inclusion and talk about my genital configuration, or possibly even meet with conflict or abject rejection.
So this week, I stand in solidarity with all my fellow lesbian human beings. I can hear your voices, I will read your stories, I see you and will try to empathize with your trials and your pains, I will add my voice to yours and amplify!
IMO, an underrated fictional #lesbian romance (between two WOC!) is Delle Seyah Kendry and Aneela on the SYFY series #Killjoys, which blew my mind because it aired during the Bury Your Gays era. Aneela and Kendry both started out as terrible, vicious people who, in part through their love story, gradually learned to aim their anger and ruthlessness in more constructive directions and use their power for good. It was the first queer romance I ever saw that had a redemptive aspect to it, and the women remained powerful and formidable while trying to atone. Several of their lines and exchanges live rent free in my head (warning for spoilers):
Kendry: “Everything falls, Aneela, from fathers to empires. But we are queens. And queens... rise.”
Kendry: “Be careful.”
Aneela: “Be BRUTAL.”
Aneela: “If you want to stay human, I will hold your hands when you turn gray. I will bury you with honor and burn worlds in your name, and you will not be forgotten.”
Kendry: “Or?”
Aneela: “The war is over. And we have a son and an empire. And I need my queen.”
The show also contained one of the fiercest, strongest #QueerPlatonic relationships I have ever seen, some disaster bis, and an adorable M/M romance, and none of them got buried either! This show buried none of its gays! And it didn’t get canceled before its planned ending, so the story arc is complete!
Oh, it's one of those days where I reflect and absorb photons!
I grew up in a horrible time when the mainstream perspective was that people like me could never be lesbians, but despite the impossibility, I exist. Thanks to numerous trans dykes that came before me and will come after me, the world is larger and brighter.
Today is the start of Lesbian Visibility Week. TransActual would like to share our support and love to trans lesbians and cis lesbian allies!
In the current media climate it can feel like trans people and lesbians are being divided, but recent research by Just Like Us has found that lesbians are the most likely of the whole LGBTQ+ community to be supportive of trans people!
It's #LesbianVisibilityWeek and those who stayed silent when people like me were vilified for being lesbians will use it to try to claim that trans rights harm lesbians.
Where were they when we fought to keep our kids in the 80s?When they called us sexual predators?When they said we shouldn't be teachers? The appropriation of the lesbian struggle by those who would remove all lgbtq rights needs to be challenged.Every slur thrown at trans people was also used against lesbians.#LwiththeT