#i think I'm gonna tag stuff like this as something silly like sauce or something lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

docholligay · 7 years

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I'm gonna be honest I had to come to your blog for some reassurance that "feel bad for all femmes that are into butches" thing wasn't actually hatred because I've seen so much vitriol thrown at butches over the last couple years that my kneejerk reaction is to assume even something playful like that is hate. I'm glad it wasn't, but ugh I wish my brain hadn't been conditioned to assume that of people.

I think the couple of nasty comments I got actually come out of a couple things, and I’m glad you said this, because I think it’s something, we, as a people, need to talk about

(When I use ‘you’ in the context of this talk I mean ‘all y’all’ not you specifically)

1. The point you made–People are so used to butch lesbians being attacked that there’s a knee-jerk desire to protec and attac. I UNDERSTAND THIS INTIMATELY, TRUST.

2. You’re not gonna like this one–the second factor is a pretty uncharitable lack of reading comprehension. Not just in my post, i see this all the time, but I’ve read my post several times now, because I do in fact have a very aggressive communication style, and sometimes I come off TOTALLY wrong. But I think it’s tough to read what I said and take it as anything other than poking fun at how oblivious butches are about flirting, and how we as femmes end up hilariously tossing ourselves at them.

3. Tumblr’s really really terrible pattern and impulse of seeing a post, looking at the reblogs and comments for something that pisses them off, and popping off about it devoid of any context. One person, that I had never seen in my life, reblogged it, directly from me, with the addition “Feel sorry for yourself, ugly” (which, hilariously, actually that was what I was doing, yes, I do, rest assured I have been this femme writing notes about coogne and hope you get the message) (It was deleted quickly because I assume they flipped over to my blog and figured out they made a mistake) Oh of raw curiosity, I went to my blog and searched ‘butch’ for the posts that come up not involving this. First was a huge fanfic, where you would have seen it used positively BUT NO ONE BLAMES ANYONE FOR NOT GOING THERE, but the next two were these:

my (butch) friend E: I drank Hershey’s syrup out of the bottle as a kid. me: I drank soy sauce.my buddy D: there it is folks, the butch- femme dynamic.

Reasons my butch is crying:

today in the Buffalo Bill museum she felt sad that the buffalo no longer freely roam the Plains

Literally a 2 minute search could have told you this was probably being interpreted in an uncharitable way, but we don’t do that on tumblr, we shoot first and ask questions later, and that’s how stuff gets blown up to ridiculous proportions. Maybe don’t flybynight on blogs of people you don’t know and assume the worst of them. It does not take a lot of time to search key terms (my blog even has dates when you search! So you can see that maybe what I thought 3 years ago isn’t what I think now!)

I really want all of my followers to read this, and think about this next time you want to pop off.

It is important to be thoughtful in our criticisms, because these things are important, and popping off and crying wolf makes them look silly.

Thoughtful literally just means sit and think about it. Check your facts. Stop reblogging stuff blindly. Please, for the love of God, Harumichi, chicken strips, whatever you need to swear to, stop and think to yourself:

Am I reading what they really said? Is there another way to read this?

What does the rest of their blog indicate about this? Does this maybe ask a personal context I don’t have?

Is this actually a big deal that requires a stranger’s intervention? –picking your battles is literally one of the hardest things to learn to do.

If I am unwilling to put my name to a criticism, do I truly believe it’s worth defending? Do I have the courage of my convictions?

If a news story/scholarly thing: Let me google this really fast) PLEASE DO THIS BEFORE YOU REBLOG SHIT EVEN WITHOUT COMMENTARY OH MY GOD. (If I see that anime was a mistake thing passed around again, when he never fucking said that, I am…gonna lose it)

I think you’ll find in general your experiences on tumblr are more positive and less anxiety prone if you just take on a little bit of this responsibility. For example me: I have a major major major major issue with people removing Tracer’s CA for art. It sucks. It’s disability erasure because her CA interferes with outfits or some dumb reason. When i see it, I go to a person’s blog, i check art tags, i try to figure out as much as I can before I speak to them about it ALWAYS UNDER MY ACTUAL NAME.

It’s been largely positive! Not always, but often! (Actually its mostly the wide scale rebloggers/content ~curators~ who are really really terrible about this no matter how many times I message them and if it didn’t violate my own personal understanding of lashon hara I would absolutely at them and post about it ahah)

Anyway, you don’t have to agree with me, but I think it’s valuable to sit and think about these things, before you act. Sometimes I just take a walk! I’m impulsive as fuck and I need to not have access to answer for a few minutes.

IN conclusion: I love butch lesbians, I think tumblr really needs to work on open communication

#Anonymous

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