Men, The Center of My Universe.

happy 2025. sorry this is all "me me me", but if that's too much, then you you you should go elsewhere because this is my my my substack.

I realized that I think about men all the time. In fact, I think about them just about every second of every day.

This is not a reverse-coming-out post. I am still very much a proud dyke, even though I did make out with that man in that three-way this fall, thank you very much. We talk a lot about how straight and bisexual women need to de-center men, and that’s probably true, but as a lesbian I think that I allow cisgender men to populate my thoughts much more than I’d like to admit. Sometimes, you hate them so badly that you let them live in your head. I always say I think they’re below me, which is true in the sense that they serve no real purpose in my life aside from a few trusted and beloved male friends.

I also always say that anything they can do, I can do better. So why am I so afraid of them?

I love being a woman. I want to be a woman, I want to coexist with a concept of queer masculinity that affirms my femininity… I want to work out like a man, have big, strong arms and a solid chest, a small waist that looks good in baggy pants and hard features. I want their underwear to be cut to fit me, I want it to be okay to not be thin, I want to be relied on for physical labor, I want to feel in charge and confident, and…

Why do I believe that men are so much better than me that women with the choice will always choose them?

If it’s true that I can do anything they can do better, then why do I feel like the losing horse every time I am seeing or interested in a woman who ends up dating a man instead?

We can cop out, we can say that it’s because a lesbian relationship can be scary to a first-timer, or that they just don’t want to roll with the big dogs, and maybe that’s all true. Or, maybe, it’s because she got along with him better. She was more compatible with him. It wasn’t a question of gender at all, maybe, and I’m the one making it about gender because of my inferiority complex and my deep disgust with the way that I am too soft or short or chubby or my features are too small to allow me to wear my masculinity well. Maybe a pretty girl doesn’t want to involve themself with a desperate person who is allowing their wounds to bleed all over themself and everyone else. Is it possible to be a masc lesbian “pick-me”? In a world central to men, it is, I am, and I can’t stop until I de-center men from my existence.

Don’t get it twisted- I do hate men. I find them repulsive in many ways, but that’s why I have to stop outwardly insisting that I’m somehow better than them and understand things as less black and white. I need to live a life far more queer than the one that’s dragging me down. My identity is too defined by comparison. More gray area, more grace and care, and more celebration of queer identity instead of a hope to be something that I’m not.

In all good worlds, I see myself being happiest as a masc lesbian, though ideas of being butch frequently come to mind and make me consider if that will fill the hole I feel through my comparison to men. But a lesbian identity ideally exists without societal comparison and binaries, without male and female as solid concepts and instead something more fluid. I am a lesbian, I am a person, I am someone with my own convictions about gender, but those ideas shouldn’t be held in comparison to others.

I am masculine, but not like a man. I’m a dyke, and that’s important, and I need to grow into it instead of away from it. Happy New Year, 2025.