Okay yes, I know, and thank you all for the (multiple) messages explaining this, you’re all very gracious (sometimes I just can’t keep my pet troll at bay).
I do understand why we’d use the term WLW, it just annoys me. Not the term itself, but our propensity to just create more and more definitions and acronyms.
I understand the desire to have the perfect category to put ourselves in, but it always comes at the risk of alienating those outside it as it puts up another barrier to understanding and entry (the transgender community especially struggle with this).
For me part of the joy of living in this liberated age is how most of us have started to appreciate that all the binary definitions of previous generations are really far more fluid and that’s wonderful, whether it comes to gender, sexuality or any other boxes we like to put other people in.
Personally, I like to go the opposite direction and just broaden out definitions to make them more encompassing. I vote for less boxes, not more – and yes, WLW is actually probably a better, bigger box, but ‘lesbianism’ is so much more elegant, based off a sexy, beautiful Greek Island. It sure has more charm than WLW (an acronym, that actually requires more syllables to say than what it stands for…don’t get me started on that).
So thank you for the notes, it was only meant as an amusing post in the first place as the #humour tag showed. But it’s good to think about these things – and most importantly, treat each other with respect and grace as we work out what it all means, who we are and how we describe that.
Also if we’re throwing WLW in the ring, what was wrong with ‘girl on girl’, works great for the back covers of porn videos?
More love, less boxes, yay!
James