As the resident bi mod, I can confirm we're more enlightened here

Yeah, it can be real shitty. When I experience bigotry from The Straights(TM), it doesn't bother me so much because I've sort of hardened myself in anticipation against that. When it comes from what you thought was your own community, it hurts.

The sad thing is that experiencing this has caused me to sort of self-police how I express myself in queer spaces, in a way that echoes how it felt to be closeted. Working to combat that instinct within myself is part of why I asked this question in the first place; I'm not surprised that the response here has been positive, and it was my hope that it might help to combat the negative self talk if I can point to an explicit confirmation that this is indeed a space I have as much claim to as anyone else here.

I see what you did there 👈😉

That's a funny joke, but if I may use this to go on a wee tangent: I've actually found that in terms of dating, sometimes it feels like I might as well be a lesbian.

On the surface, it might seem like a bi woman's dating pool is gonna be mostly men, because there are far more straight men in the world than sapphic women, but that doesn't account for the quality of the dating pool. For instance, it feels like a significant proportion of straight men say shit like how if not for my short hair, I might be pretty, or that it's a shame that I've ruined myself with piercings.

I'd say my attraction to men is roughly equal in magnitude to my attraction to women (though different qualitatively), but in practice, I seem to mostly date women because actually finding men who are chill with me being queer (and who don't fetishize my sexuality) are much rarer than sapphic women. Not that I'm complaining necessarily, because women are great; I just find it interesting.

For culturally appropriating from lesbians apparently. Which was utterly absurd, because part of why I had a tool harness was because I'm the kind of queer woman who goes around fixing things for fun! Which is extremely gay of me (and indeed, this aspect of being unabashedly myself is great for improving my dating pool. Many sapphic women dig the vibe, and it also tends to repel the kind of men who I would rather not interact with at all)

Yeah, that was my vibe. It's reasonable that even if this is my space (in that I am welcome here), it's still necessary to respect the scope and boundaries of the community in question. It's basically like saying "don't post tech help questions or productive discussions in !iiiiiiitttttttttttt@programming.dev , it's for memes"