If Anyone Out There Would Want To Make Barbie Icons With A Bi Flag Background I Would Be Sooo Eternally

i was gonna go with a poison ivy icon but i like the look of this layout (+ character pose) better tbh

Glitter Bi Dyke Flag 💜💛❤️

Flag made by @dykenotdeer!

oh you totally should’ve mentioned that, it’s cool that we both thought of it then!

Hecatic flag 💜💜🤍💜💜

Hecatic (dervived from the Greek goddess Hecate) means when you’re bisexual + sapphic, I’ve seen many bi sapphic combination flags and just wanted to make my own :) Hecatic is all bisexual sapphics regardless if they have a specific preference or not, and regardless of relationship status (or lack of) <3

I wanted to make it pink and purple to showcase bisexuality and sapphicism :3 and the flower in the centre is a moonflower! It felt fitting with moons being a bi symbol and a flower on the sapphic flag!

Bisexuality and sapphicism is a gift

Bisexuals with no preference… you are so valid. No you are not faking it, no you do not need to pick a ‘favourite’ side that you’re attracted to, no you’re not actually pansexual, you are you

Bi women aren’t secretly straight. Bi men aren’t secretly gay.

Yang Xiao Long Bi Dyke Icons 💜💛❤️

As Femme As We Want to Be

Tracy Schmidt Reports from the 2nd Annual Femme Gender Conference

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The Second Annual Femme Gender Conference, sponsored by the Harvey Milk Institute (HMI) this May, gave more than 400 people a chance to explore that question and more – what femme is, how we work it, struggle with it, display it, honor it. HMI put on a huge event, with film screenings, four different performances, an art display, and two days’ worth of panels and workshops.

Just like the term “femme”, this conference covered a lot of territory. The conference organizers aimed to welcome every kind of person with more than a drop of femme in their souls, and to make plenty of space to talk about how we are, perform, or just love femme. Girls, boys, dykes, bi-femmes, fag-femmes, people from communities of color, young femmes, trans-femmes, lesbians, drag-femmes, working class and rich femmes, parents, fat femmes, and a few garden-variety freaks like me crowded the 33 workshops.

Femmes flocked to sessions like Femme As An Evolving Gender Identity; Bisexual Femmes and Femme Bisexuals; Fag and Drag Femme; I’d Love To Ask You Out But I Don’t Know Who You Are; Trans Femme: Beyond the Bedroom; What We’re Rolling Around In Bed With (femmes of color only); Femmes With FtM Partners; Switch Femme; Fem-man-inity; and How To Fuck In High Heels. We spoke with incredible panelists including Kate Bornstein, Lani Ka'ahumanu, Liz Highleyman, JoAnn Loulan, and Karen Bullock-Jordan.

We examined the challenges and joys of claiming femme identity alongside other identities in our lives. We discussed how different communities hold different experiences of femme. We debated whether we should speak of femmes as somehow transgendered. We ranted about inclusion. We argued about community. We laughed at ourselves. And we celebrated the power and range of our femme styles.

Most important, we met each other in a world where it can be hard to even see one another. It was experimental and emotional and challenging and practical and brilliant and contentious and connected all at once – two amazing days of the best of queer culture

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Tracy Schmidt was the Conference Coordinator for this year’s Femme Gender Conference. She identifies as a bi and poly femme dyke top whose areas of obsession include gender, motorcycles, S/M, travel, and cleavage. Her current project (with Liz Highleyman) is an anthology focused on newly emerging gender identities.

Anything That moves, issue 17, summer 1998.

If a bisexual woman disagrees with me I will immediately change my views. I have no principles

Bi women can’t talk about being in relationships with men because that’s seen as forcing heterosexuality upon gay and lesbian people. Bi women who previously identified as something other than bi can’t talk about the process of realizing they were bi because that’s seen as forcing heterosexuality upon lesbians. Bi women can only talk about being in relationships with women if they add 15 caveats about how they hate other bi women now and have discarded their bisexuality. Bi women in relationships with bi men or with lesbians have to swear up and down that they aren’t fetishizing their partners. 

Bi women can’t talk about being happy (either single or in a relationship) because then people will take that as us having no problems in the world. Bi people can’t talk about mundane issues such as media representation or language about bisexuals because that’s too trivial. Bi women can’t talk about their sex lives or wanting to be polyamorous because that’s seen as too dirty and too gross and too predatory. Bi women can’t produce or consume “sappy wuhluhwuh content” because that’s seen as defanging and disrespecting lesbian identity and yet they can’t talk about bisexual social alienation/trauma/invisibility/loneliness because “invisibility is a privilege” and because “those things are just stolen terms from gay and lesbian people”. 

Bi women can’t talk about being unicorn hunted on dating apps because apparently they don’t face that issue and instead perpetuate it and force lesbians to have threesomes with their male partners (apparently). Bi women can’t talk about intracommunity biphobia without being told that we aren’t radical for dating men and that LGBT spaces are safe gay spaces that we’d be invading. 

Bi women can’t call themselves gay even when they’re in gay relationships. Bi women can’t call themselves tops or bottoms even when they’re having regular gay sex. Bi women can’t call themselves queer because that’s a slur but oh wait, it’s okay when other people weaponize that word against us. Bi women can’t call themselves masc or femme because they’d be stealing those terms from lesbians but oh wait they can’t call themselves tomcats, does, or stags because those terms are cringeworthy imitations of butch/femme. Bi women can’t talk about gender expression without being told they’re appropriating “real” gay culture. Bi women can’t talk about femininity without being told they perform it for men and bi women can’t talk about masculinity without being told that being bi makes it impossible for them to be masculine. 

Bi women can’t talk about how unique relationships between bi women and bi men or bi women and bi women or bi men and bi men are. Bi women can’t call their relationships “bisexual” relationships because that’s somehow “anti-materialism”. Bi women can’t talk about loving their male partners because that’s anti-feminist but they can’t talk about hating men as a class or their trauma with respect to men without being told that it means they must actually be “lesbians suffering from comphet”. 

Bi women can’t talk about solidarity with LGBT people without being seen as selfish, nor can they talk about just bi women without being seen as selfish. 

Bi women can’t talk about the material, systemic, and sexual violence we face because apparently it isn’t real, no matter how much empirically validated proof we offer, and if we do talk about it, we’re stealing lesbian specific experiences or erasing lesbian specific experiences or trying to claim gay and lesbian specific experiences. 

Bi women can’t talk about our place in overall LGBT history (because we were apparently invented in 1998) and we can’t talk about bisexual history (because that’s *spins wheel* taking the focus off the REAL radicals in the community). 

Bi women have to be politically perfect all the time and have to allow people to scrutinize their personal lives and interpersonal relationships and sexual histories/traumas but it’s okay for people to not be in solidarity with us or to even offer us an ounce of empathy (and if we ask for it we’re whiny, selfish, and crying about non-issues). Bi women have to hate themselves and each other and hold each other responsible for all the world’s problems 24/7 but can never hold people responsible for biphobia. 

Bi women can’t even talk about any of these things on their own blogs, in their own spaces, on their own time, with other bi women, because that’s just too much.

There really is no winning.