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• 1 2022-08-09T09:15:10-07:00 He/Him Lesbians 10 A brief breakdown of a complicated disagreement plain 2022-08-09T12:19:41-07:00 He/Him lesbians, or lesbians who don't identify as women, have been a source of disagreement in the lesbian community for decades. The gist of the disagreement is that some lesbians reach a point in their life where the label of woman, no longer actively describes their experience but the label lesbian does. This could be due to the community formed within lesbian spaces, being in a lesbian relationship, or understanding one's relationship with women through lesbianism as a relationship structure instead of traditional understandings of what it means to be in a relationship that tends to center men as the basis of a relationship. These are all valid reasons for someone to call themselves a lesbian; but, some lesbians feel as if the distinction of 'women who love women' is the most important, and only reason someone could call herself a lesbian. There are reasons for this, some women use lesbian spaces to escape trauma associated with men, or argue that allowing he/him and other non-women lesbians will allow anyone to claim the term lesbian essentially totally devaluing the label and leading to a breakdown in the community. As a whole though, instituting distinctions has tended to lead rapidly to an exclusionist breakdown in which only women who are exclusively attracted to and have only ever been attracted to/slept with women are 'allowed' to call themselves lesbians. This also has a nasty reputation of leading to a continuous redefinition of who is allowed to be a lesbian that often leads to women of color not being seen as women enough.
  Inclusionist lesbians on the other hand argue that, in general, people who use lesbian as a word to describe themselves do so in a genuine effort to describe themselves rather than to display sexual pedigree. They argue that as a result, bad actors, trolls, and other people looking to abuse the label of lesbian will eventually be filtered out since lesbianism isn't just about being with women but how people relate to each other.
  This argument has recurred regularly and is a common point of discourse today as some women seek to 'reaffirm tradition' in opposition of gender politics in the lesbian community, but as has been established time and time again, queerness cannot be confined by only one label. 
  
  Since the earliest days of queer community, both lesbians and gay men have used he/him and she/her pronouns to describe the experience of queer people that challenge gender expectations.
  Additionally, a very common experience amongst lesbians in the twentieth century is the feeling of misalignment in their gender and desire to be male before eventually settling on the label of lesbian as a result of a lack of awareness and rampant stigmatization of ftm transition.
  When those young lesbians grew up, a rigid structural system existed in the lesbian community of butches and femmes. Butches presented more masculinely with short hair and male coded clothing, and femmes presented more traditionally feminine and relationships between the two groups and crossover were incredibly complicated and political.
  Gender, as a whole, is a massive part of lesbian community and history and while initially it's understandable to feel hesitation or confusion at the idea of nontraditional lesbians, they not only belong but represent an essential part of the history and community of lesbianism as a whole, contrary to some's idealized views of communal 'purity.'