generalleia:

honestly one of the scariest & hardest things about being Out as a wlw is the feeling you get when you’re around someone that you know knows about your attraction to women. You’re blindsided by every connotation of that, even though your attraction to women has nothing to do with it, you’re painfully conscious of every stereotype, every false perception, every act of hatred against your identity, all the fetishization and rejection by society sapphic women have faced and still continue to face. And even though you know none of that mistreatment is justified, you worry that whoever you’re interacting with does, even if it’s deep down. There’s this inescapable feeling of shame knowing you’re considered the Other, the Oddity, and it’s so toxic how deeply that mentality gets ingrained in you. Around straight women you’re afraid they’re revolted by you and the notion that you may be attracted to them, you have to be conscious of everything you do for fear of giving off a vibe they don’t like. Around men you’re afraid they see your identity as a perversion, that they’re sexualizing it immediately, that all they’re seeing is a porn category. That any of those things could be used as a reason to hate you immediately. And the worst part is there’s always a small part of you that can’t shake the thought that maybe you deserve that hatred. It’s so hard and I can’t really ever imagine it not being hard, and it’s so, so unfair.
So I’m just here to say that attraction to women isn’t inherently predatory, isn’t inherently objectifying, and women don’t have the male gaze because we aren’t men. We don’t have a history of violent objectification and oppression against women, our desires will never ever perpetuate that, because we’re victims of it in a unique way that even straight women will never understand. A woman’s attraction to other women, romantic or sexual, IS good and pure, it is untouched by the violence that makes the male gaze something to be rightfully wary of. We aren’t something to fear and we aren’t defined by societal standards and ridiculous ideas that we’re perpetuators of the oppression that we have to fight more often and intensely than straight women ever will. I’m proud of all of us. I love all of us even though the world tells us our love is wrong.