I’m so sick of phallocentrism and how not even lesbians can escape it

Why is it so hard to fathom a relationship or sexual encounter between two women that doesn’t somehow involve dick?

Whenever I search the tags for a popular lesbian ship on AO3, I have to sift through so many fics with tags like ‘girlcock’ or ‘x character has a dick’, etc. To the point they almost start to outnumber the amount of fics that don’t include it. It’s always the more masculine/butch character in the relationship that gets this treatment as well. I wonder why that is.

A lot of artwork I see depicted of popular lesbian couples will give the butch/masc character a dick as well. I follow artists on Patreon because I like their lesbian art only to be jumped by PIV sex between two female characters when I scroll down their feed.

I spent so much of my life feeling ashamed and broken for not liking or wanting male genitalia or male bodies. And I find it depressing that we aren’t even given the grace of our own space away from dick and phallic themes/imagery/inclusion in everything. Anytime I’ve expressed my discomfort or disappointment with this phenomenon I’ve been labeled as all flavours of bigoted (and told that strap ons are the same as dick, which they aren’t). I didn’t realize that not wanting dick as a lesbian in a heteronormative world that clearly worships it was such a crime.

A penis is not required for sex to be legitimate and this extremely ancient notion is so harmful to lesbians. I hate seeing it celebrated as much as it is, and it has WAY too much prevalence in lesbian spaces as a whole.