crossdreamers:

I have never been fond of the term “girlfag”, and have spent some time with girlfags trying to come up with a better term. 

The term was not intended at a slur, however. Quite the opposite, actually. It was coined by Jill Nagle in the late 1990s, at a time when the LGBT community appropriated a lot of smear words for its own purpose. As Janet Hardy has pointed out: This was at the time the column of gay activist Dan Savage was called “Hey Faggot!” Since gay men used it, the girlfags believed it to be a positive word in gay and queer circles, which it was.

Indeed, the term girlfag was based on the term fag hag. The term fag hag was coined by gay men for describing heterosexual women who associated  with gay and bisexual men. It was originally meant as a slur. Later on it became a term of endearment, as it is today.

In other words: I guess Jill & Co believed that if gay men were allowed to call women fag hags, women should be allowed to call themselves girfags. This sounds reasonable to me.

Your historical presentation is interesting, though, and says a lot about the hostility against people who do not follow the expected pattern of sexuality and gender.

But following this logic, we must also abandon the terms queer and genderqueer. Queer originally meant  strange, odd, peculiar, or eccentric. Many girlfags identify as queer. I would hate to see them banned from that term as well.

I would like to add that gay men have come up with a lot of alternative terms for fag hags, including queen bee, homo honey, fruit loop, Goldilocks, flame dame, fairy princess, cherry fairy, gayboy bunny, gabe (“gay” and “babe”), Tori (in honor of Tori Spelling and Tori Amos), and fairy godmother. Following your own logic, I suppose women who feel an affinity with  gay men should fill tumblr with hate posts against gay men. I, for one, am unable to to get upset by this, as are my girlfag friends.

The gay tolerance of both fag hags and slur words tell me that the current criticism of the word girlfag is not so much about the the insult gay men might feel, but rather about forcing girlfags back into the closet. It is yet another example of intolerance against sexual variation and gender diversity. The girlfag-bashers lack the means to burn “the witches” at the stake, but  they believe they can stone them with words. You really do not want to be remembered as one of them!

More on the real etymology on the word “faggot”

A good girlfag friend sent me a comment regarding the origin of the word faggot that is of relevance to this discussion. Here is what she says:

 ”Faggot” was (and is) a bundle of sticks used for kindling. However, the term came about in the British public school system. (British “public schools” are what in the US we’d call “private schools.”) Students in their last year had the right to be waited on by younger students, whose job it was to bring them snacks, take care of their clothing, etc. The rights of the older student over the younger one were extensive and typically not supervised heavily by school authorities, so it was common for the younger student to be pressed into, er, service for all sorts of activities.

“A very common form of service was for the young student to keep the older one’s fire burning (yes, the older students had fireplaces in their rooms). When the older student wanted a fire, he’d shout “Faggot!” and the younger student would be expected to show up with kindling. The path from the bundle of kindling to the other “services” is a short and self-evident one  Eventually, the whole activity of providing services to an older student came to be called “fagging.”

My friend adds:

"It’s still not a pretty story, falling as it does well afoul of contemporary mores regarding consent, child sex, etc. But it is considerably less violent than the false one your correspondent is promulgating. (There is history showing that the relationships between older students and their "fags” was sometimes abusive and harsh, but sometimes tender and mentor-like.)“

Most sources agree with her interpretation of the origins of the term faggot.

And yes, there are girlfags with gay male lovers

By the way, one girlfag told me that her gay boyfriend did not appreciate being called bisexual. He loves this girlfag because he sees his lover as a man.

In other words: I was completely wrong about there not being any gay man/girlfag love relationships.

I apologize.

nonbinary-support:

block out the haters
and keep on being you
the greatest way to prove them wrong is to keep being nonbinary
if they don’t believe you/we exist, then no amount of words will help them
so just keep existing and constantly proving them wrong

-Mod Virgil

One of the major problems I have found blogging on tumblr is how hard it is for some people to understand that neither biological sex nor cultural gender are binary.

Intersex people prove the first point. Indeed, there are XX men out there who do not know about their “condition”, and XY women who give birth to babies.

And even though I believe there may be a biological component to gender identity formation, I know for a fact that expressions, abilities and interests do not follow the traditional gender divides. We all know men who care for children. We all know women who are aggressive leaders.

But in spite of all this, a lot of tumblr bloggers hold on to their binaries, whether they are about biological sex (“penis equals man”) sexual orientation (“bisexuals do not exist”), gender roles (“all men are rapists”) or gender identity (“snowflake identities are not real”). 

We are definitely not wired for this kind of binary thinking. Before the 19th century most people in Europe followed a  model where men and women were considered variations of one gender. So this is all about harsh social conditioning where beliefs in diversity are made to look like tickets to absolute loneliness.

But hey! This is 2014! It does not have to be this way. Accepting a gender continuum does not mean that people cannot identify as men or women. It simply means that we open our minds to a richer and more colorful world of sex and gender.

I have never been fond of the term “girlfag”, and have spent some time with girlfags trying to come up with a better term. 

The term was not intended at a slur, however. Quite the opposite, actually. It was coined by Jill Nagle in the late 1990s, at a time when the LGBT community appropriated a lot of smear words for its own purpose. As Janet Hardy has pointed out: This was at the time the column of gay activist Dan Savage was called “Hey Faggot!” Since gay men used it, the girlfags believed it to be a positive word in gay and queer circles, which it was.

Indeed, the term girlfag was based on the term fag hag. The term fag hag was coined by gay men for describing heterosexual women who associated  with gay and bisexual men. It was originally meant as a slur. Later on it became a term of endearment, as it is today.

In other words: I guess Jill & Co believed that if gay men were allowed to call women fag hags, women should be allowed to call themselves girfags. This sounds reasonable to me.

Your historical presentation is interesting, though, and says a lot about the hostility against people who do not follow the expected pattern of sexuality and gender.

But following this logic, we must also abandon the terms queer and genderqueer. Queer originally meant  strange, odd, peculiar, or eccentric. Many girlfags identify as queer. I would hate to see them banned from that term as well.

I would like to add that gay men have come up with a lot of alternative terms for fag hags, including queen bee, homo honey, fruit loop, Goldilocks, flame dame, fairy princess, cherry fairy, gayboy bunny, gabe (“gay” and “babe”), Tori (in honor of Tori Spelling and Tori Amos), and fairy godmother. Following your own logic, I suppose women who feel an affinity with  gay men should fill tumblr with hate posts against gay men. I, for one, am unable to to get upset by this, as are my girlfag friends.

The gay tolerance of both fag hags and slur words tell me that the current criticism of the word girlfag is not so much about the the insult gay men might feel, but rather about forcing girlfags back into the closet. It is yet another example of intolerance against sexual variation and gender diversity. The girlfag-bashers lack the means to burn “the witches” at the stake, but  they believe they can stone them with words. You really do not want to be remembered as one of them!

You argue that girlfags are erasing the bisexuality of men. Here is my reply:

First: Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: I am an MTF gender dysphoric crossdreamer allied to girlfags and FTM transgender. I was assigned male at birth. The reason I defend girlfags is because crossdreamers and girlfags/guydykes are categories that overlap. Many, if not most, girfags are FTM crossdreamers and/or crossdressers.

To your comment: I know of no girlfag who expects gay men to love them back sexually. I am sure there must be a few girlfags out there who believe that this can be possible. Naivete and hopeless dreams are equally distributed among all groups of humanity. But I am convinced these girlfags are rare and far between.

What I do know is that there are many strong friendships and loving relationships between gay men and girlfags. In spite of what some people on tumblr may tell you, gay men are in general not hostile to girlfags and they do not feel threatened by them. Most of call them by their favorite term of endearment: “fag hag”. These relationships tend to be purely platonic, for obvious reasons.

There is still hope for girlfags, though. They can establish relationships with bisexual men who can complement their own desire to express  masculinity. And they can hook up with heterosexual MTF crossdreamers, crossdressers and guydykes.

I find it helpful to look at these relationships as mirror images of the butch/femme dynamic you find among some lesbian couples. I should add, though, that in the same way that there is much variation found in  lesbian romantic and sexual dynamics, you find the same among girlfags and their lovers. The stereotypical girlfag does not exist. 

I know of no girlfag who has called a bisexual man gay. You are mixing up the level of sexual fantasies with the real life of girlfags and their lovers. Sexual fantasies are normally not representations of practical reality. Through sexual fantasies we express deep and often hidden sides of our psyche. Because of this sexual fantasies may also tell us something about the identity we hide under the mask we present to friends and family.

It is clear to me that for many — but in no way all — girlfags these fantasies reflect some kind of masculine identity. They dream about being a man involved with a man, because they in many ways are men attracted to men. Indeed, many of them are truly transsexual. 

So, the reason these girlfags dream of being a man with a man is because this seems to be a perfect way to express their sexuality and (in many cases) their identity. But the main point here is that they want to be men with men. Few of them insist on this man being gay. 

So no, girlfags are not erasing the bisexuality of men.