You've probably seen this piece of Tumblr lore around. I don't think it's true, for any meaningful value of "true," and I thought the process of deducing that might be a fun post about media literacy and critical thinking.
So, starting from the beginning, what we have here is a declaration, or allegation; a statement of purported fact. Specifically: "In the 80s, lesbians who were more interested in cuddles and kisses rather than sex were called bambi lesbians." It seems fairly unlikely that a tumblr (founded 2007!) user with the handle "nonbinarysapphic" was an adult in the 1980s, so where did they learn this from? And when?
Googling brings up a significant clue - this wiki cites a 1990 book called The Alyson Almanac.
As it happens, it's on the Internet Archive and full-text searchable. And so, on page 61, in the section of the book titled "A Dictionary of Slang and Historical Terms," what do we find, between definitions of "BALLS" and "BASKET?"
Do you notice what's different here, compared to the original tumblr post?
First, there's no indicated gendering of the term. As other entries in this section are specific when referring to (sigh) (only, most of the time) gay men or lesbians - the definition for CLOSET starts with "The place where gay men or lesbians hide, figuratively speaking" - that's curious. It seems like the writer of the original entry didn't intend in any way to suggest that this was something specific to lesbians.
Second, there is no indication of when, in what context, or by whom this term was ever used, compared to the tumblr post declaring that the time period in question was "in the 80s." This book was published in 1990, and this section covers antiquated historical terms like HOMOPHILE, COUNTERJUMPER, MOLLY, SWAFFONDER, and PUNK (the latter extremely not in the context you're probably thinking). It's not clear in the slightest whether, in 1990, this would be terminology in contemporary common parlance.
Second and a half, I suppose, entirely speculatively... hey, you know Disney's Bambi - almost certainly the source of this, given the connotations - is a boy, right? A very feminine, queer-coded boy? It's kind of a whole thing, in the fucked-up gender politics of this 1942 adaptation of a 1923 novel (I can highly recommend this podcast on its production history), that to become A Man, Like His Father, Bambi has to be dominant and violent.
So again, just hypothetically, what seems more historically likely? That "Bambi" was used as a term of self-description by ace lesbians, or as term applied to femme gay men by others? In the absence of further corroborating evidence, I feel like one line of speculation seems as plausible as another.
Except... as it turns out, there is more evidence. May I introduce Toronto's former monthly local queer community newsmagazine, one that would eventually become the periodically-updated Xtra:
In the December 1979/January 1980 issue of The Body Politic, also on the Internet Archive, there's a letter to the editor, criticizing an article in the November 1979 issue. (I read it. It's not interesting, and the only mention of Bambisexuals is quoted in the screenshot.) And, lo and behold - what was the first mention of Bambisexuality here? It was cited in a derogatory, shaming way, applied to men (specifically men!) the author felt to be insufficiently kinky. And then, what's the second mention? Whoever's signed their letter as the Bambisexual Liberation Front, my word, in this letter to the editor, asserting that they oppose the "straight identified (STIFF) gay men's scene."
It's amazing where checking citations gets you, isn't it? Here, in "Bambisexual," we have what's clearly a term of derision (reclaimed by at least one letter-writer!) applied to insufficiently kinky gay men, when it was in common enough parlance to be mentioned in a community news source in 1979. By 1990, someone's compiling a glossary of historical slang, and the political edges have been worn away; "Bambisexuality" is memorialized in a simplified, twee, cutesy way that omits any specific mention of its application to gay men or lesbians.
And - here's where I'm hypothesizing again - I think I know exactly where nonbinarysapphic made the connection that this referred to lesbians, specifically: this 2012 Autostraddle article. The text is clearly (and cited at the head of the article!) drawn directly from The Alyson Almanac, 22 years later. But now the context has been stripped away, because Autostraddle - a lesbian-focused publication - compiled this brief excerpt. And Autostraddle - a lesbian-focused publication - must surely always be discussing lesbians whenever it's not specified otherwise, right, and...
So, yeah. The fact that there are people right now who identify as Bambisexual, and they're principally ace or aro-spec lesbians - I think that's new. That was invented fully anew, sometime in the 2010s, with an incorrect historical sheen. And, last part aside, that's great! More power to anyone for whom that term vibes. But - just speaking from the perspective of a history major and lawyer - I think it's important not to invent fictitious queer history, or erase real queer history, generally.
