Febfem: On Bisexual Radfems, Facts Don’t Care About Feelings, And Lesbians Essentialism

what does febfem mean?

@bai-xue-lives and @prismatic-bell both asked me the same question, so here goes nuffink

Febfem: On Bisexual Radfems, Facts Don’t Care About Feelings, and Lesbians Essentialism

Radical feminists describe ‘febfem’ as a bisexual female* who, by choice. exclusively dates females. It arose out of a specific subset of radfem tumblr, which holds some ideas about gender, sexuality, and identity to be self-evident. these facts include:

lesbian refers exclusively to homosexual females. words like bisexual and lesbian are not identities but statements of fact. any person who self-identifies as a lesbian must be a female homosexual. if you’re not a female homosexual for any reason (you’ve dated men in the past, you were assigned male at birth, you’re bisexual but only date women) then you cannot be a lesbian. you need other words.

females who are exclusively attracted to females are the most oppressed group. everybody else needs to protect them; their terminology, and their spaces. they are inviolate. an attack upon them is the greatest crime. bisexual women are their oppressors because bi women benefit from heterosexuality (what these benefits are is unclear)

lesbians are allowed to call bisexual women anything they want, including slurs like cockslut, bihet, handmaiden, etc. a lesbian referring to bi women using these slurs is venting about her trauma at the hands of her bisexual oppressors and is above question or reproach. bisexual women are not allowed to vent about their trauma at the hands of lesbians because they have privilege over lesbians and it would be lesbophobic.

bisexual women are untrustworthy rapists who want to invade lesbian only spaces and abuse lesbians. [please note that in this case, “bisexual women” also refers to trans-inclusive lesbians.] all bisexual women are untrustworthy, cheating cocksluts until proven otherwise.

Bisexual radfems who want to have access to spaces that keep them safe and people who don’t treat them like cocksluts who are only waiting to cheat on the nearest lesbian, must find some way to signal their virtuosity. “Look at us!” They say. “We’re good bisexuals, unlike these other bihet handmaidens. Please allow us into your safe spaces, and make room for us in your rhetoric. We promise to hate ourselves for being attracted to men, constantly apologise for oppressing lesbians, and allow lesbians to target and bully us whenever they like. Look, to make it easy for lesbian radfems to tell when a bisexual is one of the Good Ones, we’ll put this handy word that we just made up - Febfem - in our bios, so you know precisely how to find us.”

It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for them. If you go through the febfem tag on tumblr, a lot of posts talk about the importance of not talking over lesbians, not infringing on lesbian-only spaces, and not appropriating lesbian terminology, and reiterating constantly that lesbians don’t owe bi women anything (Just be grateful they didn’t call you an abusive slut today!). Of course, all this ground is won at the cost of bisexual women who aren’t female-exclusive, trans-inclusive lesbians, and trans lesbians. So I don’t really feel sorry for them. Except when I do, cause hyperempathy is a bitch that way.

also, they hate mogai tumblr even though they’re literally the radfem version of mogais

*Note: I use female when talking about AFABs (as radfems use female) and women when talking about people who identify as women regardless of AGAB.