one of the most interesting lgbt phenomenons to me is how many gay women love and adore m/m fiction, how many of us know without a doubt that despite our love for women if we were men we’d likely be gay, etc. i think it comes from a desire to find that shared experience and community and its part of what makes “LGBT” as a label more than just a collection of identities.
but it makes me really sad that you dont typically see it done the other way? like there isnt a large amount of interest in lesbian fiction from gay men in the same way. there may be that same gendered overlap i mentioned but i dont rly see it discussed. and i think it rly comes down to misogyny and a lack of empathy for women and it makes it hard.
and not to keep harping on abt the fiction bit but – i think this ends up at the root of discourse abt gay women enjoying m/m. because while women can def b awful and fetishy w m/m, id argue its almost always (if not always depending on definition) done by straight women? and i feel like gay men dont get how we can see ourselves in this content, how its from a place of empathy & solidarity, because they dont extend that same empathy to us. 😦 misogynys evil
On a related note, I’ve been HAUNTED by this video since I first saw it.
Pretty much every lesbian I know would say that they feel like they have a lot in common with gay men. Certainly we all feel like we have more of a connection to them than we do to straight men. But there’s so much evidence that many gay men don’t see lesbians the same way at all.
I just don’t understand the attitude of gay men who see lesbians and think “They don’t like men at all, so there’s nothing for me to relate to.” When it seems to me like it should be, “Lesbians also experience homophobia and know what it’s like to love the same gender in this society, so there’s everything for me to relate to.”
Olga Krause (born March 15, 1953) is a Jewish lesbian from Russia, a poet, author, and musician. She is a prominent personality in the Russian lesbian community, in the 1980s organized “Клуб независимых женщин” (Club of Independent Women), was one of the founders of the Association for the Protection of Gay and Lesbian Rights “Крылья” (Wings) created in the early 1990s. She also co-created the magazine “Гей, славяне!” (the title being a play on words ‘gay’ and ‘hey’ which are written the same, lit. trans. “Gay/Hey, slavs!”) with Olga Zhuk.
“My eldest daughter, Suldana, is in love with another woman. She is eighteen and she spends her days working at our kiosk selling milk and eggs, and at night she sneaks out and goes down to the beach to see her lover. She crawls back into bed at dawn, smelling of sea and salt and perfume. Suldana is beautiful and she wraps this beauty around herself like a shawl of stars. When she smiles her dimples deepen and you can’t help but be charmed. When she walks down the street men stare and whistle and ache. But they cannot have her. Every day marriage proposals arrive with offers of high dowries but I wave them away. We never talk about these things like mothers and daughters should; but I respect her privacy and I allow her to live.”
— – Diriye Osman, “Fairytales For Lost Children.” (via water-veiled)
wraithsandstraysofparis 