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Lesbian Grows Hair Out and Marries a Guy-Emily Thomes


DomWackTroll

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There is a long subcomment conversation that she is having with some friends regarding the Scripture and modesty and where the line is. I'll give all involved in that conversation due credit, they're discussing it fairly maturely and not completely dogmatically.

Anyway, this comment from her friend and then Emily's reply interested me:

Friend: Emily Thomes I don't know that it would. For example, no way I would cover at all if I'm nursing my baby amongst only women. It's natural and womanly and even healthy for women to feel comfortable with one another in that way. I mean I suppose blatant toplessness would be immodest but I can't really imagine a situation where that would be an issue

Emily: the other aspects would be the intent of the wearer, and then some. 
I have women who make that assumption with me in the room often and it's not always helpful when they do. With women whom you've spoken and are in terms with, yes, but not all women are going to be ideal for that kind of situation.

 

It sounds like that she would still be struggling with 'lustful' thoughts for other women, even if they were breastfeeding in front of her potentially? This kind of indicates to me that she doesn't consider herself "heterosexual" but rather someone who has chosen a more "Christian" path for marriage and she is purposefully denying or avoiding some of those feelings to be in line with her beliefs? I'm not speculating as to whether she is a lesbian or bi or where along the spectrum, just that it seems that she is not magically without same-sex attraction and it is still something she struggles with.

 

I've just read through this whole thread and will probably comment on it more in a bit (once I finish procrastinating on her FB page). I don't necessarily dislike her so far. I feel a bit sad for her, her message could be a dangerous one and it is feeding some of the Christian bigotry, but she seems fairly inquisitive and exploratory in many of her beliefs and engages with commenters in a more "learning" rather than "lecturing" tone. 

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I watched the video, and all I can think is how much her voice reminds me of Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona. 

 

"Turn to the raaaaght!"

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On 5/1/2016 at 11:11 PM, SoybeanQueen said:

So the pic on the left is from a time when she was using drugs regularly. The pic on the right is from a time when she is not using drugs. But the difference in looking healthy is because she's sleeping with a dude.

Yeah, it's definitely trying to correlate same-sex attraction with promiscuity, drug abuse and rejecting their idea of correct gender roles.

I think it's very interesting that so many people, esp. fundies, conflate gender identity with sexual orientation. The idea that sexuality determines appearance (or vice versa) is ridiculous, but I've witnessed plenty of conversations about it shift to a "no true lesbian" fallacy.

If this girl's happier being in a monogamous relationship with this guy, great for her. Hopefully she's not only doing it because of church/social pressure, or because she was told her same-sex attraction was the cause of any other issues like drug (ab)use.

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58 minutes ago, December said:

I think it's very interesting that so many people, esp. fundies, conflate gender identity with sexual orientation. The idea that sexuality determines appearance (or vice versa) is ridiculous, but I've witnessed plenty of conversations about it shift to a "no true lesbian" fallacy.

Every time there's a high-profile lesbian wedding in the news in which one spouse is wearing a suit and the other is wearing a dress, I brace myself for the idiotic "that-one's-the-man-and-that-one's-the woman" comments I know I'll see in the comments section. Ugh...

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23 minutes ago, DomWackTroll said:

Every time there's a high-profile lesbian wedding in the news in which one spouse is wearing a suit and the other is wearing a dress, I brace myself for the idiotic "that-one's-the-man-and-that-one's-the woman" comments I know I'll see in the comments section. Ugh...

Always makes me things of this routine: https://www.justpo.st/channel/short+haired+vegetables

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"An atheist who refused the god of the bible" 

That's... That's now how atheism works.

Nor do atheists "pick and chose" or "obey god when it's convenient'. We don't believe in God!

Someone buy this poor girl a dictionary.

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.

On a side note, from her page I somehow ended up on this woman's page https://www.facebook.com/leah.johnson.121?fref=ufi and my gosh, she's like the most negative, joyless, lecturey person ever. She makes John Shrader look like a ray of sunshine.

There is NO joy! She comes across as angry, bitter, and judgmental. I especially love her lists of men she would not marry.

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1 hour ago, iheartchacos said:

There is NO joy! She comes across as angry, bitter, and judgmental. I especially love her lists of men she would not marry.

I saw that too! I sure hope the Christian Reconstructionist, Theonomist, Christian Evolutionist, New Apostolic Reformation-ite, Word of Faith-ite, pluralist, Hebrew Roots-ite, and Roman Catholic/Mormon/Jehovah's Witness men can somehow find a way to carry on.

Her previous post was also rather delightful. She must be fun at parties.

 

 

leah.png

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11 hours ago, Coy Koi said:

I saw that too! I sure hope the Christian Reconstructionist, Theonomist, Christian Evolutionist, New Apostolic Reformation-ite, Word of Faith-ite, pluralist, Hebrew Roots-ite, and Roman Catholic/Mormon/Jehovah's Witness men can somehow find a way to carry on.

Her previous post was also rather delightful. She must be fun at parties.

 

 

leah.png

I've never bought a house, but let me tell you all about how your expectations and attitude are wrong. Because one doesn't have to be a homeowner to understand that. (Sarcasm, of course.) 

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34 minutes ago, Ex-Creationist said:

I've never bought a house, but let me tell you all about how your expectations and attitude are wrong. Because one doesn't have to be a homeowner to understand that. (Sarcasm, of course.) 

I'll listen, but ONLY on the condition that you do it as scoldingly as humanly possible. Also try to work in how I'm going to hell.

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32 minutes ago, iheartchacos said:

I want Leah to meet The Godly Mentor.

Who is that? They sound pretty great.

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On 5/2/2016 at 6:23 PM, DomWackTroll said:

To clarify: I certainly did not mean any bi erasure in the title of this thread. If she had in any way described herself as bi, the title would have reflected that. But she didn't. She described herself as someone who was exclusively with women: “sleeping around with various women.” 

Hell, I hope she is bi, for her sake, because she is now having sex with a man. But honestly, I didn’t get that from her post and I still don’t.

Bi women can primarily or exclusively sleep with women. It's not as simple as "half and half" or having some kind of ratio of sexual attraction to different genders - sexuality is fluid and I don't get how her focus on women automatically rules out the potential for bisexuality. Bi women can be Really Really Gay, too. And we usually get called gay when that happens. 

To be clear: I get the impression that she's a most likely a lesbian too, but I take issue with people acting like she's expressing things that would make her Too Gay to be bi (or that she has to ~define~ that way for us to notice the possibility... like, she never said she's a lesbian but that didn't stop you all from calling her that immediately). Bisexual people can look butch as fuck and sleep exclusively with women too, because like... we are part of the gay community (very conditionally so, though) and always have been. The label "bisexuality" came out of a need for us to actually be seen in all facets of our lives so that we could start to address the specific advocacy our demographics need-- not just exclusively acknowledging and validating the "gay" or "straight" side of us and shunning us for never having the right partner or relationship set-up for either communities while demanding our labour and resources for The Cause that rarely benefits the most marginalized of us. It's not a way to unite with straight people -- it's a way to see us even IN "straight" relationships, to at least have a word that can resonate for a lot of people within this spectrum of varying degrees of attraction.

(But god I'm getting off topic from what I'm responding to - apologies for that. Bisexuality and biphobia are really difficult topics for me to not go 20 different directions in discussing -- because it's just really personal and emotional for me to talk about. I'm trying not to unload everything in this post but it's very, very hard to manage that.

Anywho---)


We're assuming she'll enjoy the sex they might be having because she could be bi and that's just gross to me, like it's really presumptuous and hits too close to the "sexually available" mentality people subconsciously apply to bisexuals all the time (but especially those they read as women). Bi women are capable of not enjoying sex with a man, of feeling conflicted or nearly incapable of doing it with a dude particularly when there's some abusive shit going on in that relationship. I just see it as another tool for him to use to further shame her for being attracted to women. I definitely see him being sexually coercive and Corrective about their "sex life" either way, which scares me.

I mean, if you all feel like that's a "positive" compared to what could be, fine, but I'm definitely not new to men making advances on me trying to degrade my queerness with comments like, "Stop worshipping the vagina and start worshipping the cock" or asking if I do oral sex on other women (... even my cousin fucking asked me that when I came out to him, and then he bought me a porn subscription which was pretty creepy and inappropriate, so...) or, yknow, raping me after finding out I was a bi teenage girl, and making everything from then on really hypersexual and uncomfortable and predicated on somehow "converting" me to being monogamous and straight. And this is shit I've dealt with from STRAIGHT ALLIES who befriend lots of gay people and post LGBT-friendly shit all the time (while only ever being friends-with-benefits/fuck buddies with bi women). Bi folks are easy to fuck with when nobody except bi people really give a shit about what's happening to us and repeatedly tout the lie that we somehow have it Less Bad because we might sometimes like men to some capacity. Because we all know that dating men totally doesn't come with all sorts of oppressive, patriarchal bullshit! But it only seems to be a concern if it happens to straight or lesbian women in Progressive-type spaces. Bi women should just be grateful for the "silver lining" of an abusive relationship, I guess. I can't even begin to fathom anyone here telling a straight woman "Well, at least you can enjoy sex with your shitty partner who married you to correct your sinful nature!" without people cringing due to how obviously not appropriate that sentiment is.

I'm not saying she is bi, or that you need to believe so or else it's bi erasure -- it's just that, even when we talk about people who are most likely lesbian (as I do believe she is for a myriad of reasons), we need to be aware of how bisexual people are, in turn, talked about. "Hopefully she's bisexual" is a problem because it erases the very present, ongoing lived reality bi women have to deal with in relationships where their spouse is homophobic and biphobic. Having sex isn't really a "silver lining" when you're trying to do it all for God, as a way to erase the gay from you. That's damaging regardless as to whether or not she's bi - there's still a "corrective" mentality going on behind that intimacy and gay people are not the only ones who are put through that kind of traumatizing shit. My god. And it's not unusual for bi people to try and "pick a side" and then hate themselves for not fitting the mold and realizing that "picking a side" doesn't erase the thing they see in themself as the problem.

I hope I'm not coming across as personally attacking anyone -- like I'm not inherently furious with people who've made this remark. Having this conversation is really difficult for me and it's why I can only do so in small, spaced out dosages -- if I didn't think it was an important and necessary thing to bring up in light of the discussion going on here, I wouldn't have. But I really did feel like it was something you all should bare in mind; so thank you for listening. 

Edited by mizandry
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I feel that it would have been presumptuous of me to identify her as bi when nothing in her post indicated that. That's all I got. 

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On 5/1/2016 at 6:04 AM, Gellhorn said:

...clueless? 

I had no idea.  How disheartening for the individual and society at large.  After all, people make up our communities and one's sexuality shouldn't minimize the damage done by abuse.

I don't know if it's patronizing to say I'm so sorry for the suffering you endured or if it's okay.  I'm going to take a chance and hope that it's not offensive. 

So, what would be helpful support to offer a (bisexual) woman in this situation?  I have straight friends who were abused and other than offering tea, company, a place to stay and discussing various ways of involving the legal system while helping them dust off their resumes and juggle the kids activities and issues - is there something else that should be remembered?  I don't know that any of my friends are bisexual - thus far it seems to be gay/straight but people change through the years.

I'm floundering.  Hopefully I'm getting my meaning across without sounding like too much of a dope.

 

It's not patronizing at all to me; thank you, I appreciate it.

I don't want to make it sound like I've had it The Worst of all bi people - I know I haven't and there's a lot in my life I'm incredibly grateful for, particularly my partner and the role he played in getting me out of an increasingly messed up situation at 18. 

I'm 22, so not much living as an out bisexual person (I "came out" somewhat at 13) -- but my youth experiences were pretty life-changing and I'm pretty sure I've been suffering from some kind of C-PTSD because of the shit I dealt with from my schools, friends, family, and general community in large part due to being Not Straight and, for a time, visibly so. When I stopped displaying all my "gay markers" (because my mom wouldn't stop calling me a homeless dyke to other people and in front of my friends), people treated me like I was straight now and it really fucked me up and made me shrink myself even more. My friends were always trying to talk me into looking less straight. It was clear I wasn't cool enough of a queer for them and it hurt. But I kept those "straight" markers on purpose after that, just out of spite. 

And even when I was embraced, I often disappointed people in my general lack of sexual availability and noticed my gay friends would withdraw from me and talk even less about queerness once it became clear I wasn't interested in us dating. And then I'd get the questions about my "ratios" and just how attracted I am to different genders... like that mattered and somehow had to do with my lack of interest.  I was constantly made to feel like a "tease" by men and women, because I am usually more interested in having friends than intimate relationships but also want people to understand that I don't identify with Straightness and that it does not represent me or my perspective towards life.

I think that, in addition to doing the things you've done for your straight friends in that kind of predicament (which I commend you for!), it may just help to at least have an awareness in mind about what sort of dynamics can occur in mixed orientation relationships with bi women, if that makes sense. Also, to send your bi friend(s) resources that may be relevant to their predicament, if that makes sense. I wish I had a better answer than this right now; but it's something I'm still trying to figure out myself. 

Maybe it'll be more helpful to just send you some resources for future reference where you can get better information and possibly a stronger sense of things to look out for with any bi women friends you have in tumultuous relationships, because I suck at giving solutions (which I'm trying to work on as it's a major flaw of mine, but alas...) :

http://biwomensupport.org/
http://biresource.net/bisexual-partner-abuse-handout.pdf (Good Handout from biresource!)
http://www.thehotline.org/help/help-for-friends-and-family/

Even just sending these links, or similar ones, to a bi friend in an abusive relationship, could make a big difference in terms of their sense of security and support. Additionally, I'd like to think that there may be some comfort in just having this kind of outreach happen from someone who isn't bi -- if only to affirm the idea that bisexual advoacy IS something people consider as part of queer Allyship, rather than as optional/a non-thought. As of now, people absolutely treat bi advocacy as optional (even going so far as to imply it's a Privileged position to center that) and almost always only bring up bi women to disparage us... even in the Bay Area, where bi activism has a strong presence. So really... any effort you make to see a bi friend fully has the potential to make a positive difference; or so I'd like to think.

Sorry I couldn't give you a better response. :\ Thanks for asking though! Maybe some of the other bi folks on here have links/ideas?



 

9 minutes ago, DomWackTroll said:

I feel that it would have been presumptuous of me to identify her as bi when nothing in her post indicated that. That's all I got. 

I don't think we're having quite the same conversation. My contention wasn't with your title - it was with the people hoping she's bisexual instead. My response about you being able to call her a lesbian without her explicitly labeling herself as such was more a reaction to the idea that bi people have to call themselves bi for them to be described as such than it was admonishing you for using that label.

I totally get why you're referring to her as a lesbian in this context, and don't inherently disagree with it -- just trying to also argue that it's not impossible for her to be bisexual to some degree just because she makes posts where her relations with women are the focus. I'm certainly leaning on the side of her being a lesbian, so I hope people don't think I'm trying to push for her to be labelled a specific way - I'm not. That's really not what my soap-boxing is about at all; it's more about the way we talk about gay vs bi women and how it can be harmful.

Edited by mizandry
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8 minutes ago, mizandry said:

My contention wasn't with your title - it was with the people hoping she's bisexual instead.

Well, I was one of those people and I agree that perhaps I should not have said it. But I hope you do realize that it was coming from a place of concern about her. It sickens me to think of a lesbian having to go through what you rightly call corrective rape. Yes, I know it could still be corrective rape if she's bi-- but in that case at least there's a chance that it's not. If she's a lesbian... *shudder*

Anyway, you make some very good points and I thank you for taking the time to make them. 

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Just now, DomWackTroll said:

Well, I was one of those people and I agree that perhaps I should not have said it. But I hope you do realize that it was coming from a place of concern about her. It sickens me to think of a lesbian having to go through what you rightly call corrective rape. Yes, I know it could still be corrective rape if she's bi-- but in that case at least there's a chance that it's not. If she's a lesbian... *shudder*

Anyway, you make some very good points and I thank you for taking the time to make them. 

I do realize that - but it's also why I felt the need to address it, since I see room for people to hear what I'm saying here and figured it just wasn't something you all realized was being implied.

"Yes, I know it could still be corrective rape if she's bi-- but in that case at least there's a chance that it's not."

I'm having a hard time imagining what that chance would look like. Like, how would this relationship NOT be predicated on correcting her gayness?

The reality of the situation is still there and the load isn't lightened if she were to be bi - like people might feel less bad for her then, but at the end of the day, the corrective rape is happening on the part of her spouse and is being supported by her entire community & religion -- not necessarily her. So her sexuality isn't really going to mitigate that; the emotional turmoil may be different, depending on her attraction (or lack-thereof) to men in general, but again, this would just call for her straight partner to come up with new tactics to keep her from straying out of the straight people box. It's still abuse. It's still all about suppressing her attraction to women. No amount of enjoying sex with men, including her husband, will make that less impactful.

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At least speaking for myself, my hope that she is actually bisexual is a hope that she has chosen a partner to whom she is physically and sexually attracted. Obviously bisexuality doesn't guarantee happiness, attraction, and/or enjoyment in a female/male sexual pairing (nor does being a lesbian married to a man automatically exclude those things,) but a compatible orientation makes it a whole lot more likely than an uncompatible orientation does. 

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If she's bisexual, then there is a chance that she is attracted to this guy, right? In which case, she might actually enjoy having sex with him, right? That's all I'm saying. That doesn't mean I think this set-up is "right" or "okay." It just means it might not be totally horrific for her. 

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I think labels need to exist, because thinking you're something so "out there" that no word for it exists is crappy. But we want to make them rigid, which is a problem. In the end, I hope there's more to their relationship than "fixing" her (or him).

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  • 3 weeks later...

She also posted this one recently: 

Because, you know, if your marriage isn't awful, you won't become a better person. 

Worst evangelical teaching ever. 

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Poor girl. I hope she realises it's not going to work and gets out soon, before she wastes years of her life in a joyless marriage.

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One of her friends says there's no need to sleep with someone before you marry them because"if you're a man and a woman, you're compatible"... :my_confused:

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She also just posted that she miscarried this week.  I can't imagine the changes she's had to go through in such quick succession. 

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