unpopular f/f opinion

Meta
Title:	unpopular f/f opinion
Creator:	grison-in-space
Date(s):	July 11, 2018
Medium:	online
Fandom:	panfandom
Topic:	Femslash, Meta
External Links:	unpopular f/f opinion, Archived version
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unpopular f/f opinion is a short meta essay by grison-in-space, posted to tumblr. The essay garnered over 4000 notes and is one of the more popular femslash metas posted to the site. The essay got a healthy amount of responses in reblogs and replies, mostly in agreement.

Post

I am tired of soft lesbians. I would not mind them, but they are everything I can find.

Give me hard lesbians: women who have suffered, and women who have caused suffering. Give me survivors. Give me women who know what it is to live in a world that is unforgiving and know how to make love in that world anyway.

Give me broken lesbians: women with scars mental and physical, who are stretching their cut tissue into something functional. Give me women who know what being broken looks like and who know how to put themselves back together again. Give me women who don’t know they are broken and who are trying to fix themselves anyway. Give me women who make bad decisions because they are in pain or never learned how to do better.

Give me experienced lesbians: women who have had sex before and like it (or don’t), women who know what they like and what they don’t, and women who negotiate different opinons on what is good. Give me women who know that they have sensitive nipples (or not) and who prefer stimulation (or not) of different types; give me women with strong opinions about strap-ons, and penetration, and vibration. Give me women who have sex, because that ain’t just something that men do.

Give me conflicting lesbians: give me women whose relationships are imperfect, and messy, and complicated. Give me women who fight about silly things or looming, massive things. Give me women whose relationship is tense sometimes. Give me women who are unhealthy, women who need to break up, and women who have already mentally checked out and are looking for the next place to land.

Give me inexperienced lesbians: give me women who make obvious errors in interpersonal relationships. Give me women who don’t know what they want or how to become acquainted with their bodies. Give me women who don’t know how to be supportive of others, and give me women who don’t know how to care. Give me women who are greedy.

Give me f/f with one lesbian or even no lesbians at all: f/f with bisexual characters, or pansexual characters, or asexual characters. Give me f/f with people who have a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and tastes. Give me f/f with women whose tastes do not match up completely, women who negotiate different orientations or different preferences, and show me how they reach a comfortable medium.

Give me all of these things, because I need them and I want them.

I am tired unto death of soft lesbians. There are only so many iterations on specific well-trod f/f themes that I want to engage in, and soft dollies that sit next to each other and gaze emptily and softly into each other’s eyes is not enough. I want women with personality, with flaws and strengths and sparking character. I want women who step off the page or out of the screen and impress their realness onto my mind. I am greedy for them; I will consume them and roll their lifelike words into my skin.

Why is that so hard to find?

Responses

[sea-anon on tumblr] "I know this is about characters, but you can be both. I’ve been broken, beat and scarred, but I’m still soft because I am determined to be. Also it’s hard to find because not enough of us are popular writers/artists/producers and what the media wants is passive gays that they can bury without a second thought."

[alrightish on tumblr] "As soon as there’s troubled, flawed wlw everyone is throwing a tantrum about “unhealthy representation” .. like y’all really think wlw characters need to be perfect or you boycott. I hate that sentiment so much"