Any lesbians feeling a tad battered and deflated?

OK. It sounds as if it's worse than I'd thought. We all need to stand together to defeat this madness. I have to say, though, that if people are in social circles where such crazy ideas are seen as normal, the best thing they could possibly do is challenge those opinions.

Pretty hard when your life and career is held around your social circle, for example in uni or college. Pretty hard when you are in a job, and the people that have these opinions will report you to your boss for them.

In all these cases, the people who are getting 'reported' are women.

Just another fucking nightmare women have to deal with in the world of work.

Nobody doxxed any of the men saying they had no intention of sleeping with trans women, nobody even questioned the responses.

But do it as a woman and they try and reign seven shades of shit on you.

Which is why yesterday's act was so strong.

I particularly liked this, from the thread Materialist posted ( which looks like some gay men are starting to 'get it')

A lot of things piss me off with this whole transphobia agenda but one thing that I can't get my head round is are homosexuals classed as anti trans if they refuse to have sex with trans men? By the nature of a homosexual, they don't have sex with vagina. So unless a trans man has been able to grow a dick, they won't be suitable for a homosexual.
And would straight men be accused of hate crime if they refuse to have sex with a trans woman??? Where will it end?
But again, this is what men do best. Subjugate in whatever manner they can.

I have to say, though, that if people are in social circles where such crazy ideas are seen as normal, the best thing they could possibly do is challenge those opinions.

I feel incredibly lucky now that when I came out in the 90s, I got to do it in a supportive, welcoming community of women & women's spaces, at a time when it would never have occurred to anyone that lesbians would want anything to do with penis.

When you're very young, just discovering your sexuality & looking for your people, it would be very hard to challenge their opinions.

On Twitter earlier some bright spark said they could understand if some lesbians didn’t like dick because of last trauma but that to equate penis with male is transphobic.

So there we have it. Lesbians are just traumatised straight women. And probs just need a good dicking to sort them out.

Don't be, please! This is entirely selfish of me, but I think straight women need you at the moment. Young straight women are quite often rubbish at feminism. We were all too busy trying to ingratiate ourselves with the boys. Whatever they were wearing.

*Time40, you're not taking into account the setting in which this pressure on lesbians is occurring.

In LGBT circles - say university socs - being accused of transphobia - even suspected of it - is social death. You'd be ostracized.

I heard an account on another forum by a young lesbian who'd been sexually assaulted by a transwoman who was in her social circle. When she went to the police she was shunned by all her friends. They saw the TW as the vulnerable one and her as the bigot. What she'd done was unforgivable.

Young lesbians in 'woke' circles are in the position where they can't just refuse sex with a transwoman without hunting round for an 'acceptable' excuse. It really is that bad*

OK. It sounds as if it's worse than I'd thought. We all need to stand together to defeat this madness. I have to say, though, that if people are in social circles where such crazy ideas are seen as normal, the best thing they could possibly do is challenge those opinions.

Het woman here. Don't want to come across as being "woke", but I fully support my lesbian sisters and will stand side by side with them against the transborg anyday.

I stand with these women. With every bully boy punch the number of women standing up for freedom merely inflates.

What's happening is designed to abuse and shut women down - shame it's not working, misogonyistic dick wads.

I too have been disgusted (not shocked, sadly) by how the media has portrayed this.
I’m a straight woman and I support lesbian woman. Those women who protested were very brave.
I am shocked that in 2018 someone seriously thinks they can tell someone else who they should/should not be attracted to. That is just breathtaking.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jul/09/do-lesbians-have-better-sex-than-straight-women

Good to know I have Alice speaking on my behalf. She definitely has sex like me.

Time40, you're not taking into account the setting in which this pressure on lesbians is occurring.

In LGBT circles - say university socs - being accused of transphobia - even suspected of it - is social death. You'd be ostracized.

I heard an account on another forum by a young lesbian who'd been sexually assaulted by a transwoman who was in her social circle. When she went to the police she was shunned by all her friends. They saw the TW as the vulnerable one and her as the bigot. What she'd done was unforgivable.

Young lesbians in 'woke' circles are in the position where they can't just refuse sex with a transwoman without hunting round for an 'acceptable' excuse. It really is that bad.

Imagine putting the onus on women to say no, rather than on men to stop their rapey behaviour.

The onus is always on women to change their behaviour. It's part of what makes our society a rape culture, rape is implicitly made women's fault via the various rape myths. Lesbians are being explicitly told that they have to accept dick or it's literal violence and bigotry against trans women, lesbians are being told to validate trans identities, against their sexuality and individual consent.

They are horrible examples, YourMajestyJ. But is that any different from the more usual forms of rape and male violence? It looks like exactly the same thing to me. This is just one more way for men to attempt to force themselves on unwilling women.

Saying that women can just say no makes you a rape apologist, do you realise that?

Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by this!

Imagine putting the onus on women to say no, rather than on men to stop their rapey behaviour.

It's completely different time40.

Straight men pressuring a lesbian woman into sex can reassure themselves that she doesn't want to have sex with them because she's attracted to women, so it's nothing personal.

A trans woman pressuring a lesbian women into sex wants her to believe that the trans woman herself is a lesbian woman. If she continues to say no to sex, it's because she's transphobic and homophobic and doesn't accept that 'trans women are women'. That makes her 'no' into a 'hate crime'.

It's not the same thing at all. And I can't agree that decisions about sexual relationships are taken in private by two people these days tbh. Social media profoundly blurs the private and the public, so much more goes into the public domain.

YourMajestyJ, I can actually see how it's a bit different - but I can't see how it's much different. All the thinking about this seems very much in the abstract. In the real world, a decision about whether or not to sleep with someone else isn't made with a lot of other people standing on the sidelines giving their opinions. It's a private thing between two people. If a woman turns a male "lesbian" down, what's he going to do? Run to social media and complain? He would never be able to prove that she turned him down because of his biological sex, because there are so many different reasons for fancying or not fancying other people.

How about these males stop doing it?

I see you've missed the posts on here about lesbians being punched and beaten up for saying no to transgender males. I'll add another one from Twitter just yesterday.

Then there is the transgender male who tried to murder 2 strangers with an axe, after being rejected by a woman.

Oh, and then there is Dana Rivers. Currently awaiting trial for the brutal murder of 2 lesbians and their son. With the motive rumoured to be that they wouldn't accept him as a lesbian.

Saying that women can just say no makes you a rape apologist, do you realise that?

YourMajestyJ, I can actually see how it's a bit different - but I can't see how it's much different. All the thinking about this seems very much in the abstract. In the real world, a decision about whether or not to sleep with someone else isn't made with a lot of other people standing on the sidelines giving their opinions. It's a private thing between two people. If a woman turns a male "lesbian" down, what's he going to do? Run to social media and complain? He would never be able to prove that she turned him down because of his biological sex, because there are so many different reasons for fancying or not fancying other people.

I totally agree with you all about this madness - I've never heard anything so bloody daft in my entire life. But how will the fact that TRA are trying to push this nonsense make things any different for young women, really? Young women get pressure from straight men to sleep with them, and they have to learn to say No, if that's not what they want. How is that any different from being pressured to have sex with a man who has decided to "identify" as a lesbian?

No one would defend a normal man trying to pressure a lesbian.

But a transgender male is a different story, they use accusations of transphobia and TERF to try and coerce lesbians. Other people are so desperate to look "woke" that they support this. The number of women I have had in my Twitter notifications this weekend that support this rape culture is shocking. I post examples of the disgusting things these transgender males say to lesbians, and women dismiss and ignore them.

They claim to be women and even female and thus lesbians should sleep with them.

I'm astonished that you can't see how this is differently.

*Arguing that it's up to lesbians to just say no to sleeping with someone they don't want to sleep with, completely ignores the social context we all operate in.

Young women who are still learning who they are and what their boundaries are; vulnerable women who are afraid; suggestible women who want to be "nice" or "woke", might all be pressured into sex they don't want to have. *

I totally agree with you all about this madness - I've never heard anything so bloody daft in my entire life. But how will the fact that TRA are trying to push this nonsense make things any different for young women, really? Young women get pressure from straight men to sleep with them, and they have to learn to say No, if that's not what they want. How is that any different from being pressured to have sex with a man who has decided to "identify" as a lesbian?

I had been been feeling incredibly deflated, but then those brilliant women at Pride fired me up again.

Seeing people on here, Twitter, other SM speaking out and standing up for us always gives me a lift.

I'm a straight women.

But I am outraged that the right of homosexual women to define themselves and the language to do this is being taken away without their consent.
Taken away to protect the feelings of a tiny minority of men with a sexual fetish, who want it for themselves.

It's outrageous, it shows such contempt for all women, it should outrage all of us.

Fear not OP, what's that Hannah Gadsby quote "Nothing is a strong as a woman who has been broken down and rebuilt herself", something along that line. It's true, what we women are good at is resilience, it's what we develop to counter the regular shit that life throws at us simply because we are female.

I'm another straight woman standing with my lesbian sisters.

I have been very disappointed in the media coverage of Pride. The BBC report simply called the protesters "anti trans", no mention of what they were really saying.