Originally Posted by Medusa
This is a big HELL YES for me. I have a noticed a huge difference in treatment from both Femmes AND Butches since being in a long-term relationship.
Sadly, I have also noticed that there is often a long memory for gossip and salacious drama.
I have been with Jackhammer for going on 5 years as well and yet, I had an interaction very recently with another Femme reminding me that "my past was colorful and that I had "been around". Nevermind the fact that I have dated exactly THREE people in 10 years. And it isnt even about the fucking numbers. If I had dated and fucked 50 people a month for the last 10 years, it still does not give someone the right to question my relationship status with Jack now or ever. Now, in this circumstance, I know that the person making the statements was making a shitty attempt to silence me with shame. Not so much on that for me anymore.
I even still hear people to this day questioning how the relationship with Jackhammer and I formed. I have had people gossip behind my back and even ask outright to my face "Weren't you both with other people?" as if to invalidate our relationship. I usually give the same spill when this happens:
"Although its nobody's business but ours, the answer is technically "yes". We both LIVED with our exes but had been BOTH been sleeping apart from our exes for a while (a year for me, three years for Jack). We had known each other for 6 years prior to that, we never cheated with each other. When we had the conversation about wanting to be together, we both immediately told her exes and proceeded to make arrangements to disentangle from them".
And just as a sidenote, this "disentanglement" cost me personally about $20,000 in home equity, multiple large personal items like a washer and dryer, furniture, pets, a riding lawnmower, and a vehicle that was in my exes name that was 8 months from being paid off that I had made the $2000 cash down payment on and paid every single payment on from day one that I just WALKED AWAY from. This was NOT something that I just flippantly did. It was a life decision with GREAT financial reprecussions and I still get angry when I think of all of the people who thought they had a right to make judgments on why I left and HOW I left. I also never went public with my reasons for leaving my ex, but it was assumed by most who were even peripheral that it must have been because I "cheated", that I MUST have done something wrong because I was, after all, a "liar", a "whore", a "slut", and a "golddigger". The "golddigger" part is *really* laughable since I worked 2 jobs the ENTIRE span of my last relationship.
(Incidentally, it cost Jack $30,000 cash and a year and a half in court to disentangle from her ex)
I dont mean to spew and want to make clear that none of these players are members here on BFP. The reason I give all of this background is because people who had never even set foot in my home started trying to tell me about my relationship. People who had never even held a conversation with my ex were just automatically "on her side" because of the things that they "thought" they knew about me. People who had ever had any kind of ax to grind with me came out of the woodwork like a bunch of cockroaches to befriend my ex in her "time of need", help spread vicious and untrue gossip about me, and take the personal information that my ex was telling these new "friends" of hers so that they could try to shame me, silence me, or make me feel like a pile of shit.
How this relates to the experience of being taken seriously is multiplied exponentially with all of my experiences as a single Femme, a partnered Femme, a married Femme, and a separated Femme. Intersect those identities with classism, sizism, and ageism and you have a melting pot of goo that wont quit.
Am I taken more seriously now? In some ways, yes.
I have noticed that my sexuality isnt taken as seriously on some level. Maybe because Im now "off the market permanently" or because Im aging. Who knows.
I will say that this is a brilliant discussion and I cant wait to hear more.
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