I myself experience sexual attraction to both masculine and feminine people, leaning strongly toward feminine, but I have a hard time imagining myself being with a binary man. It feels a bit awkward to identify as a bi woman sometimes because my sexual attraction for men just kind of exists, yet I don’t feel entirely comfortable identifying as a lesbian for the same reason. I just learned about the bi-lesbian flag/identity and it feels more right to me because I don’t want to erase by bisexuality, even if I never choose to act on my sexual attraction to men. Curious what others think.
I’m in a similar camp. My attraction is almost exclusively fem leaning in practice. Even tho it’s actually about understanding and safety for me, so some men do occasionally fall under that umbrella. Tho it’s true that these men are also usually queer in some way and super kind and soft :P
I’m quite comfortable using sapphic for my self, especially since when it comes to romance, the area of attraction tightens further once emotional resonance becomes more than just a vague preference.
I am a lesbian and I really have no desire to gatekeep what labels someone uses to describe their sexuality. It’s up to other people to convey their preferred labels to me for the purposes of clear communication. But ultimately it doesn’t really affect me at all.
I think prioritizing the rigidity of definitions is the business of fascists. Words are not sacred. We should be the end all be all for the labels we use for our gender and sexuality, no one else should get to decide them for us.
If the term bi-lesbian has meaning to you, that’s alright. I’m glad you’ve found a label that feels right to you.
I feel like labels make sense to point someone in a general direction. If I’m interested enough in them that specificity is worthwhile, I’ll explain myself, or like if their specific sexuality is relevant to a conversation, I’m down to learn more, but otherwise I just do not have it in me to memorize 60 different flags for niche levels of attraction. Get me in the ballpark and it’s probably close enough.
It’s why I like ‘hetero/homoflexible’ despite some people being against it. “Oh, you’re mostly straight or mostly gay? Cool, I gotchu.”
Edit: Oh my god, I’m an idiot. I meant to post in response to OP, but I got so distracted, because I literally tried to grab the username LadyAutumn when I signed up. 🤭 You have amazing taste.
I just call myself queer.
Physically, I’m attracted to men more than I’m attracted to women. But romantically, I can be attracted to anyone that labels themselves queer.
Which means I mostly end up dating queer women. I don’t feel that bi or gay sum up my experience. So I just call myself queer
Back in the day I’ve always just identified more as homoflexible in that regard. Like yea physically I more tend towards feminine people but I am flexible enough to have a boyfriend now.
I think to actually find what label you’re comfortable with, or just to accept to ignore labels, you kinda have to try around. For me, i’m at a point where I’d consider myself just Bisexual since in my experience there are reasons both for and against someone based on their gender (or lack there of).
I think usually the trouble you get into is with the term “lesbian” which is seen as a term reserved only for women attracted exclusively to women (not capable of attraction to men).
The typical way I’ve seen getting around this is a broader term being used instead like “sapphic”, so calling it a “bi-sapphic” flag might make some people hung up on “lesbian” happier.
But even “sapphic” gets complained about because then people who identify as lesbians and not as sapphic can feel like they’re seen as not using inclusive language, the way sometimes people have been criticized for calling themselves “bisexual” because it can be seen as transphobic (the implication is that you should identify as pansexual and not bisexual, because you should be trans-accepting in your attraction; but other people just reject that “bisexual” was ever really transphobic, etc.).
Controversies aside, I’m definitely more than incidentally attracted to men (probably like 60% attracted to women, 40% attracted to men at this point), but I really relate to your experience - in practice I’m just a lesbian, I’m only going to date women, I’m not going to date men, and my attraction / sexual orientation feels irrelevant and separate from how I actually live and present, which is as a woman who is in a relationship with a woman.
Other people see me as a lesbian because they know I’m married to a woman (and ngl, a big part of this is that I pass and don’t disclose my trans status), and I’m pretty much happy with that designation. I’ve felt like a lesbian most of my life, as weird as that is to say, and even if I’m “technically” sapphic, I live my life as someone who has only ever dated or been with women and who prefers to keep it that way.
So yeah, I get it - makes sense to me!
I probably won’t use the label or flag (esp. since it will be confusing and require explanation).
I’ll probably just call myself a lesbian because it’s what most people will understand.
Yeah militant lesbians being really defensive about the term only applying to wlw exclusively is what gives me pause identifying as a lesbian. You still hear about drama in the lesbian community when someone dates/fucks a man (or so I’ve heard).
I’ve heard people make the claim that bisexual is transphobic but that never really sat right with me because it’s a literalist interpretation of the word and in the end just feels like an unnecessarily anal semantic argument at best, and another example of bi erasure at worst. Words mean things beyond their etymological roots, so bisexual doesn’t literally mean only attracted to two genders, it means attracted to multiple genders, at least that’s how I use it and how bisexual people have historically used it.
Honestly at this point I don’t think I’ll be dating anyone who isn’t queer anyway, so any confusion would be pretty easy to resolve. The only option for me dating someone who isn’t queer would be cishet men and they are the group I’m least interested in lol.
I see no issues with using multiple labels in any combination. If it describes you well have at it! People are complex. No system of categories can survive contact with the real world. There will always be exceptions and edge cases.
I am an asexual lesbian. You can be a bi lesbian. That’s fine too!
