people assume the "lesbian nails" are a seggs thing but i'm gonna be real, as a somewhat butchy dyke who likes having somewhat long nails those are the two i'm always breaking when i'm working with my hands, so i've always seen it as a self-autonomy signifier. as always i think girls on the internet are just coom-brained.

historically women wearing their nails long was both a status symbol and a sign of being a "kept woman" and therefore not being required to labor. this is why a lot of cultures still grow out their pinky nails -- not for nose-drugs, but for fashion.

@rowb1t I just think of it as like a semiotic code to nonverbally signify one's homosexual proclivities

@rowb1t I think that dykes need more codes like this, style guidelines and argots and esoteric symbols, for lesbian separatist purposes. how are we going to secede from patriarchal society while still using the conceptual tools of phallogocentricism?

@nyx this too, kinda like the single earring for gay men way back when -- although tbh i don't know if that was ever actually real or just a stereotype.

@rowb1t What the shit nails have sexuality, fucking murica things

@nyx @rowb1t i like the carabiner thing despite the queerkaf popularity of it now & the objectification of top/bottom boxing

@rowb1t Interestingly I don't break mines often, specially the "lesbian nails" ones in fact, but well it's also 10+ years of having them long.

@lanodan i always end up hitting a wall where typing and playing guitar becomes too difficult, and i'm too lazy to file them consistently so then i just end up cutting them short and restarting the cycle.

@winterklaus @nyx carabiners as a lesbian thing has always been kinda funny to me because they're also very popular in the hardcore scene lmao

> top/bottom boxing
don't get me fucking started...

@rowb1t it's also kinda one of those things that codified as a stringent signifier rather than just "more likely", I know plenty of older lesbian femmes that don't trim those nails, mostly because even in a sexual situation they know what they're doing to not like harm someone. I always took it as just a tendency in a community rather than anything serious because of that.

@ripperdoll a lot of baby lesbians take it as a hard-rule it's very annoying.

@evamik @rowb1t
It's really an overlapping class and gender thing: the pragmatic, working class, dyke vs. the degenerate, lazy, femme. Patriarchal archetypes are everywhere.

@rowb1t oh for sure, but like any queer community unless you're in a like position as a pillar of your community, then the loudest portion is typically the newest. The number of times I've been lectured by some babytrans on history/identity/aesthetics is truly astoundingly annoying but also just expected at this point. Like "ah you're an arrogant teenager I'm just gonna let you learn lmfao"

@rowb1t yea i'd like them to all be More Claw but i fuck the first two up so quick it's just not worth it

@nyx @rowb1t honestly styles and aesthetics exhaust me. Signaling an in-group through style is always tedious and has a tendency to produce brainworms (the desire to callout "posers" and whatnot)

@freakshow @rowb1t I mentioned argot because I think it should have some kind of functional purpose as a system of semiotics. merely signaling being part of an ingroup or identity is indeed a dead end

@winterklaus @nyx @rowb1t im a fan of the carabiner thing although ive noticed it gaining popularity among straight people because it is just an objectively useful tool . makes it less useful as a signifier though