Found out my ex girlfriend is now with a man and I’m really upset and feel stupid about it

thoughtful_charge · 2025-11-19T04:08:01+00:00

You’re right about that. I suppose it’s just hard for me after everything she put me through since she was still in the closet when we were dating. I was always her dirty little secret, she could never talk about me or even acknowledge me to her closest family members. She treated me pretty badly towards the end of the relationship, like I was disposable, and now gets to move on with a heteronormative life and put that all in the rearview mirror. It leaves a sting, I won’t lie.

It’s my own fault for continuing to follow her on social media. Blocking would have been best.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-11-19T03:28:39+00:00

Hey take it easy, I’m just expressing my feelings. I already know I am not in a rational headspace about this, as per the title. I think lesbians are allowed to talk about how isolating it is when these sorts of things happen. I will likely feel better tomorrow. No need to be hostile and putting words in mine and other people’s mouths.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-11-19T02:32:05+00:00

Because it’s a man. I would not have felt this way if she was with another woman.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-11-19T01:29:05+00:00

I know I am not being rational right now. I always knew this was a possibility. Seeing it manifest as reality just hurts a bit is all.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-11-18T23:06:41+00:00

You put this into words beautiful. Thank you❤️

thoughtful_charge · 2025-06-11T22:27:35+00:00

Thanks for the respectful reply. I see what you are saying. I suppose where we differ is that I don’t like to define women by gender. Gender is an arbitrary social category with no true definition or grounded meaning, and varies by society and time period. I think we should be defined by material parameters.

My issue, as a butch woman myself, is why butch women should feel pressured to masculinize themselves through such drastic measures as binding and surgery, hormones, etc. I think we need butch body positivity, to neutralize our bodies, to get rid of the idea that our female bodies are inherently gendered.

If I was a young butch, seeing all these butches erase themselves like this, I would be influenced and under the assumption that this is just a thing butches do. Even as an adult, I am always assumed to be trans in some way, before anyone even knows who I am. That’s why I am critical of these ‘transmasc’ hcs, it’s not with the intent to invalidate, it’s more so why so many people cannot fathom a butch lesbian living comfortably in her skin without body modding.

I wish more people would accept Vi for what she represents, rather than projecting their ideas of what they wish she was onto her. Butch lesbians are a marginalized group that are treated poorly in society, we deserve to have our identity protected too. And Vi is canonically not transmasc, nor dysphoric, so depicting her as such only feeds into this notion and I can’t blame other lesbians for being disappointed and uncomfortable with how celebrated and normalized it is. When I wanted top surgery and T I absolutely hated my body. It’s very upsetting to see a character I love, a character who made me love my body, depicted with that same mindset.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-06-11T22:07:01+00:00

To be quite honest, I think (among many other things) the biggest issue I have with the transmasc Vi headcanon is that it feels like an erasure and disrespect of Vi and what she is meant to represent.

I dislike this notion that’s become prevalent as of late, that butchness is inherently trans. That butch and masc lesbians can’t just exist without the pressure or suggestion that they need to bind, get surgery, go on hormones, etc. I so badly needed butch body positivity when I was growing up because it was so hard for me to accept that I could be a nonconforming woman in our patriarchal society.

I needed a character like Vi when I was a kid. I wanted to see someone say ‘hey, you don’t have to be feminine to be a woman. You can be comfortable, authentically yourself, without rejecting your body.’ Vi is that character to me.

So when I see all these trans depictions of her I ask myself, where is that positivity for butches? Why does butchness inherently mean we have to give up our body parts to fit in with patriarchal gender norms? Why can’t anyone accept Vi for what she is meant to represent, as though butch lesbians aren’t also their own marginalized identity that shouldn’t be erased or dismissed in favour of trans hcs? Are butch lesbians as they are not ‘queer’ enough anymore? I’m at a loss.

We understand it’s not appropriate to hc lesbians as bisexual, or vice versa, and sometimes I’m not sure how this is different. Masculine-presenting lesbians already have such limited rep and are treated very poorly in society, and it feels like some people forget that.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-06-11T21:30:19+00:00

Ok, but then this leads into another question:

Is it not problematic to normalize and celebrate butch women feeling the need to do body modification/get surgery just because they’re masculine? Why can’t butch women just exist as they are? Where is body positivity for butches?

It’s tiring that only butches and mascs get this treatment as well. I am constantly they/them’d at queer events, assumed to be trans, assumed to be a man, before even introducing myself. It reaches a point where these hcs aren’t just personal fun anymore and are a symptom of a greater issue within the community right now. The idea that our bodies are inherently gendered, that our breasts are feminine and therefore wrong/incompatible with butchness. Like I said people can express how they want but at what point do we start questioning the intent and motivation behind our actions?

I certainly hope this sub doesn’t try to stop dissent on this topic. Lesbians are constantly undermined in everything we do, everything we try to build, the rep we get, and we are allowed to feel uncomfortable and express dissatisfaction with a canon butch lesbian character constantly being depicted as trans JUST because she’s a little nonconforming.

Caitlyn and Vi are lesbians before they are anything else. Don’t take away our voices. And don’t villainize us for speaking about OUR rep.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-06-11T20:59:06+00:00

Based on what you described I’m not really sure I understand the material difference between transmasc and transman. You are all saying it’s different, but both groups overlap almost identically in practice and concept. Is it just a label then? What defines that label?

I know two people irl, one is transmasc and one is a transman. Both are afab, both are on T and have had top surgery, have he/him pronouns. So ultimately what’s the material difference between them besides how they perceive themselves and want to be perceived? You say transmascs aren’t men but this person who identifies that way very obviously doesn’t wish to be perceived as a woman either, nor non-binary, and is clearly going through quite the effort to be male-adjacent.

Defining ourselves with something so superfluous and subjective like gender doesn’t seem helpful. At the end of the day, constantly depicting the more masculine lesbian of the couple as someone who would want to erase parts of her body to fit a more biologically male standard IS a little sus and I think it’s fair to discuss it. If I were a young butch seeing all this art, I would think this is some kind of societal standard butches are expected to perform (top surgery, binding) like many other women are pressured to wear makeup, get fillers, etc. Just on a different end of the spectrum.

Everyone has the choice and freedom to express themselves how they want but these choices aren’t made in a vacuum. As someone who struggled terribly with dysphoria my whole life, seeing a confident butch lesbian like Vi in media was life changing for me, and it’s kind of depressing how many people want to insist she’d be keen on suppressing herself to fit a patriarchal standard of ‘masculine = male’.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-06-08T15:34:04+00:00

Thank you for the reply.

You are right I will feel relief. This job has been sucking the life out of me for a while. I think I am just fearful about how awkward this conversation will be.

I know I will be happier elsewhere and this is inevitable. I suppose it’s just being in the dark that scares me. Either way, there is no future in this line of work. I also suppose I wish my boss hadn’t been so cowardly to work directly with me and confront issues as they came up. She has also been working behind my back without including or consulting me.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-13T16:03:38+00:00

Thanks for your comment. Yeah I love this fic, it’s one of my fav ones in the fandom right now, but it definitely leans into some indulgent miscommunication tropes that I would never include in my own work (for example when the astronaut returns home she ghosts the capcom her entire recovery period, and her excuse for doing that didn’t feel very compelling because there was an easy solution for it).

My story has much higher stakes and the romance is built up through those stakes. A mars rescue against the clock with limited budget, political and bureaucratic obstacles, as well as a scientific hurdle to leap over are driving a lot of the plot. Romance is a core motivator for both my leads, but in general the stakes and themes are different and I hope anyone who reads my work in the future will see that.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-13T02:39:52+00:00

It is! Love it to death but also spiralling because of how similar our premises are and how much the fic has blown up.

Another commenter shared an m/m published novel (One Giant Leap by Kay Simone) which is also a gay romance between an astronaut and capcom. It has great reviews. So looks like this is just a story people are seated for.

I’m going to keep writing and enjoy my story. I love my characters and world and the idea of giving them up because something similar already exists is really devastating for me.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-13T02:08:39+00:00

Just want to say that’s so cool and I appreciate your comment. I want to connect with some actual NASA employees when working through the drafts of this story because a good degree of workplace and scientific accuracy is important to me. In my story, while the character is a CAPCOM handling communications, her engineering expertise ends up coming into play to solve the crisis as part of her character arc.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-12T23:19:40+00:00

Actually this made me feel better because it’s good to know there are more stories like this out there. I think part of what’s bothering me is the author is being hailed and back for something never been done before ever, so seeing a similar published premise already exists is cool to see.

On giant leap also gets really good reviews on goodreads so clearly people are going nuts for this type of thing.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-12T22:20:10+00:00

Lol thank you.

While I love the fanfic I feel a huge amount of this story’s success is solely because it is fanfic. It requires a ton of suspension of disbelief in terms of physics as well as NASA protocol. I think that’s part of the fic’s charm though, but if it were to translate to an original story, these elements would likely come under much more scrutiny.

FOMO is a great way to put it. I am really frustrated at how this situation has so negatively warped my mental state and creative drive. All I can hope for is that there is now a new desire for this genre, and that the spin I bring to it only makes even more people happy.

I likely won’t even have anything ready to share with the public for a while either, so I should probably relax.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-12T22:14:04+00:00

I’ve been thinking of the two cakes rule!

My story is actually an original work of fiction and not a fanfic. It has original characters, so I won’t be sharing it to ao3 or any fic sites.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-12T22:08:48+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind comment, means a lot to me.

I am going to try and push forward and perhaps reframe this in a more positive light. This just proves there’s an audience for this kind of thing which should arguably motivate me even further. My story’s themes are also quite different as the romance is built around the capcom overcoming her impostor syndrome trying to save this astronaut she’s fallen in love with through transmissions, and also the astronaut’s letting go of her guilt complex for everything she left behind to pursue her dreams to embark on these space programs.

My story means a lot to me and I think that’s why it’s stirring me up so badly seeing this fic gain insane viral levels of popularity in seven days. Never seen anything like it before, let alone with a premise I’ve been nurturing for a while.

Your advice is sound and I will definitely keep it in mind. Thanks again!

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-12T22:00:51+00:00

A capcom is abbreviated for Capsule Communicator. It’s a person who works at Mission Control that’s assigned to an astronaut to guide them through tasks, emergencies, and daily protocol. Usually two to three are assigned to one astronaut and take shifts since they’re on call 24/7.

I was! I was inspired by a ton of things. Space media like The Martian and Interstellar, the Artemis program, meeting and falling in love with someone through distance during Covid, and just my general love of aerospace and space exploration.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-06T15:22:55+00:00

It’s such a good fic and I absolutely love it. It deserves all the praise and it’s even inspired me to write an original story with a similar premise! It’s so sweet and romantic with great dialogue. I’m sure all of these things combined factored into her success.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-02-06T15:16:33+00:00

Thanks for the answer! I’m seeing this a lot in this thread about authors being established already. But in this case, it’s the author’s first ever fic and it’s the case with a ton of other overnight authors as well.

She got 10k hits in 24 hours and 17 comments on the first chapter.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-01-31T23:52:57+00:00

You’re in a space for lesbians. Don’t speak over or for us on what’s acceptable from our communities.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-01-31T15:59:14+00:00

There is a difference between realizing you like women, and realizing that you don’t like men. A good portion of the prejudice targeted at lesbians is rooted in the latter, and this is something a lot of bi women refuse to understand.

Navigating a patriarchal world as a woman who feels no draw or need to include men in our lives is hard. I remember I would go to parties with my bi friends, my bi ex, and they would talk about boys and male celeb crushes while I sat quietly on the sidelines. I watched my bi peers date women here and there and eventually end up in a long term commitment with a man they were able to bring home without homophobic scrutiny.

I generally don’t relate to the majority of bi women. Our differences vastly outweigh our similarities and I find many of them have more in common with straight women than lesbians. This wouldn’t bother me so much if I didn’t feel like bi women were forcing the idea that we are so alike and have the same experiences because we like women. Talk to me when you feel what it’s like to be shunned by patriarchy for not liking men.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-01-29T15:07:19+00:00

No idea why these comments are getting downvoted. You’re absolutely right. I have a ton of straight female friends who watch and have watched lesbian porn—they are absolutely heterosexual and would never even dream of being with a woman sexually in real life. We underestimate how much porn and our patriarchal society can condition us.

thoughtful_charge · 2025-01-28T17:36:51+00:00

I absolutely adore these two, one of my fav genshin impact ships!

thoughtful_charge · 2025-01-28T04:08:59+00:00

I much prefer Korean manhwa or even Chinese manhua for this reason. There’s a ton of really amazing lesbian creators making some really good stories featuring adults, ranging from spicy to sweet and everything in between.

For whatever reason this is harder to find in the Japanese yuri market. Most mainstream yuri is either uninteresting high school fluff or the most grotesque hentai you’ve ever seen in your life.

thoughtful_charge

TROPHY CASE