Oh.

It's been too long, but finally, while going over a friend's old battle over self-definition--

(Tangential: you cannot disagree with self-definition. You can think it silly, you can fail to understand it, you can find it alien, but you can't disagree. It doesn't involve you; it says so in the word itself, for crying out loud.)

--I finally understand the itch that lodged behind my skull when, years ago when I first realized my sexuality, I read about a woman who called herself lesbian for political reasons.

I know now that that's called a "lesbian separatist." At the time, it simply seemed wrong. I couldn't quite articulate why--I could mumble about how politics don't come into it, about how it doesn't work that way, but I couldn't put a word to it.

Now I can. It's called appropriation.

Oh.