Read on Twitter
mfw I have to see a 15 y/o make a mlm flag and say "bi/pan gays can't use this" please please learn mlm history, "gay" has literally never been exclusive to m-spec mlm and they never had a monosexual separatist movement!!!!
gay is literally still an umbrella term for the entire LGBTQ+ community, including ppl of all genders and sexualities. We literally still call it gay pride, gay marriage, etc. no matter whether the people involved are men, or are homosexual.
The AIDs crisis only created more solidarity within the mlm community because HIV didn't discriminate between bisexuals and gay men. Bi+ people (of all genders, not just men) have ALWAYS called ourselves gay, and it has NEVER been a problem. I cannot stress how ahistorical it +
is to suddenly insist that bi men can no longer be gay when they've been gay since before your parents were even born. The wlw and mlm communities are separate entities with their own histories and culture, and you can't map wlw experiences directly onto mlm
gay has never been exclusive to homosexual men. It always included all LGBTQ+ people. It even included trans women through the 60s and 70s while the language trans ppl used to refer to ourselves was still developing! If you listen to ppl like Sylvia Rivera speak, you'll hear +
her talk about gay rights, gay power. Bi people have always always always been included under the umbrella of "gay" and regardless of your opinion on m-spec lesbian discourse, dragging mlm into it when our community histories are completely different, and the movement to +
create distinction between monosexuals and m-spec ppl was entirely contained within the lesbian community and never took root in equivalent mlm communities, is offensive to the generations of bi queers who have been calling ourselves gay since forever
we've already had the "bi people aren't allowed to say 'i'm gay' if they're not monosexual" discourse, and the resounding response was "yes we are, shut up"
as a nonbinary bisexual who is gay for all genders, "I'm gay" is probably one of the most common phrases outta my mouth lmao. I see a cute girl? "well I'm gay." I see a hot n-b person? "fuck I'm gay" I see my boyfriend? "damn boy, I'm gay as fuck!"
I love and support baby gays but if I have to listen to one more child tell people who have been IDing a certain way since the 70s and 80s that their ID is uwu not valid, I'm going to have six simultaneous aneurisms
we need some kind of "you need to be this tall to ride" on LGBTQ intra-community discourse. You have to have engaged with at least xyz number of historical sources before you can have an opinion.
LGBTQ identity doesn't exist in a 2020 bubble. The history of our language is older than your grandparents, and its evolution has been shaped by a complex history of societal and cultural context, and the communities who used those labels. They're not just words.
If you don't have even a cursory awareness of the history of our language, you have no business prescribing how others are to use it.
