Reading Pride

A few years back I stopped attending marches for better pay and conditions or defending my pension because I wouldn't match besides people carrying Soviet flags or placards about Israel, most of whom don't work for my department anyway.

Start your own movement, don't hijack mine. If you can't find enough people to march for your own cause maybe it isn't supported as well as you think it is.
This this this!

Meant to make the point that as sexual orientation remains the same, and there are far more straight than gay men, it's not surprising that lesbians feel themselves under siege by the number of transwomen who identify as 'lesbian'.

Transition doesn't overcome socialization either, and I know how adding a man to a previously all women group changes the dynamic. Over the years I have read dozens of accounts of how lesbian groups have fallen apart once men who identified as women joined. Not saying that the new arrivals wanted that at all, but that was the result.

It was the Cotton Ceiling that first alerted me to the monstrous misogyny of extreme transactivism. I'm not a lesbian but I'm very clear about my own sexual orientation and the genitals of my sexual partners are very important to me. I assume the same is true of lesbians. If they didn't care that would make them bisexual.

Sexual orientation is fixed and transition doesn't appear to alter it, though I've read that some MtFs who had been exclusively sexually attracted to women will also have sex with men post-transition, but less because they've become bisexual than because it validates their feminine identity.

Homosexuals are same sex attracted, 404, not same gender. Sexual orientation is recognized and protected by law. A transwoman is of the male sex. Lesbians are people of the female sex who have sex exclusively with other females. Calling yourself a lesbian when you were born male is appropriative and disrespectful.

I'm sure there are women who will have sex with transwomen but they would not, by definition, be lesbians. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual, FFS. But words have meanings and the meaning of lesbian is very clear cut.

More generally, I'd guess there are plenty of women who are happy having a 'queer' relationship with a man who identifies as a woman, in fact you sometimes see it in desperately fashionable couples where both lay claim to minority identities while in old money they're basically a straight couple.

Hi Sandunes,

Yes, I have. Some time ago, I was chatting on-line to a, what seemed to me, to be a transvestite (he liked wearing women's clothes but had no desire to change sex as far as I know). We went out for drinks etc, and all was good until the day he sat in my living room and told me I was transphobic for not wanting to date him as he was really "Sarah", and since I'm a lesbian, surely I'm attracted to self-identified women.

Er, no.

Then I encountered it on-line too. It's what made me aware of the whole mess with self-identification after years of considering myself an ally. I have now lost friends for coming out as gender critical (and gained a heap of interesting ones!) and been told to "live and let live." Such comments tend to come from those who have nothing to lose in this debate.

thatdamn So I guess the young women go to the internet, or to Pride; where, as young women are, they are bulldozed by men's opinions..?

Yup, here's another lesbian who used to go to Pride, who even used to sit on a Stonewall committee back in the day before the T was added. I left after receiving a lecture from the supercilious lesbian queer-theory proselytising academic who headed up the local branch of Stonewall about how my feminism was so old-fashioned and how my objections to T being included were ridiculous.

Pride and related events are so straight these days that a couple of years ago when I was giving out leaflets advertising a lesbian event it was difficult to find any lesbians to give them to. For every dyke who took a leaflet I had a dozen Pride-going women say 'Oh, I'm not a lesbian.' Three or four years ago and I haven't been to one since. When other lesbians try to encourage me to go along I tell them why and I've lost a fair few people I counted as friends that way, though a few are beginning to make their way back having had second thoughts about T.

In my area local area the lesbians are mainly underground these days. We meet, there are groups, there are activities, but it's all done on personal recommendation, which makes it hard for any women new to the area or young women because there's no way of knowing we exist.
I could weep when I think of the thriving, publicly advertised lesbian groups and events that we held in the 90s and noughties. All secret now.

What Knick said.

I cannot, simply cannot, force myself to be attracted to a male born person: it's a primitive response, and one I should not be made ashamed of having. It is peculiar that gay men do not, in general, seem to be accused of transphobia for not considering transmen as partners. Why might that be? Well, male entitlement to our bodies is surely part of the explanation.

Should I be outraged that Cate Blanchette doesn't want to date me? Is she lesbophobic? Of course not. But it's exactly the same logic. I care that people treat me with respect, and that, as a lesbian, I am not discriminated against legally. But as to whether people are "open" to dating lesbians? Well that's just silly. I have no right to dictate anything and NEITHER DO TRANSWOMEN.

Hi Namechanged,

RK baffles me too. They claims that TERF is not a slur, but when you go to their Twitter feed, it's all "fuck Terfs" and so on. Very disingenuous, Neither is there any attempt to engage philosophically with objections: in fact, it appears that merely responding to their paper constitutes "harassment by TERFS" which is triggering their "PTSD." Well, if you are going to make contentious metaphysical claims like "I take it as well-established that transwomen are women. Full stop", then you had better be prepared for people to question them. In addition, it's pretty bad scholarship to merely assert a major claim like that without any defense. I was taken aback to see it appearing in one of the top journals in our profession (I'd be concerned if I saw it in an undergraduate essay, for instance).

I’M A VAGITARIAN

That slogan is total utter blissikins!

Knickknack

Powerful post.

You have no idea how many of those people apparently supporting transwomen lesbians were actual lesbians. If they sleep with people with penises, they are not lesbians. You have no idea how many lesbians (actual, female born people exclusively attracted to female born people) have given up, stayed away and gone back in the closet because they feel disenfranchised, silenced and unsafe

Yup it's a judgefest. Excluding those and freely spilling judgement, bile and threats of violence towards non compliant gay women who won't abandon (at least verbally and outwardly) their sexual orientation to avoid hurting the feelings of people born male. How progressive. How liberated.

You have no idea how many of those people apparently supporting transwomen lesbians were actual lesbians. If they sleep with people with penises, they are not lesbians. You have no idea how many lesbians (actual, female born people exclusively attracted to female born people) have given up, stayed away and gone back in the closet because they feel disenfranchised, silenced and unsafe. You will come to see a large proportion of women silently stop using women's facilities if the GRA changes go through. But you won't care, because to you those women are scum who deserve all they get for having different views and feelings to you. (Change the word 'women' in that sentence for 'Muslims' or 'Jews' or 'Blacks' or 'gays' and see how progressive or moral this view point truly is.)

And no, there is 0 chance of me ever being attracted to someone born male. I'm lesbian, that's a sexual orientation that was decriminalised some time ago, I don't appreciate you trying to make me ashamed of it. Men are different shapes, sizes, angles, they smell different - nothing wrong with any of it, but I am attracted only to women's bodies. So apparently are you, and I'm not shaming you for it. I'm still not sure how you think someone with a penis is going to 'pass' to the point of a lesbian not recognising them when they have sex? What you're implying is, give it a try, you might not notice the difference. Rather like the transwoman who wrote with indignation about lesbians refusing to consider that their woman's penis would feel totally different inside them to a man's penis, so it was transphobic to refuse. (Oi darlin', if I give you one I'll turn you straight! Oi darlin', you just haven't met the right bloke yet) - lesbians have been hearing this from men for centuries. Why do you think that might be?

I am not transphobic for being homosexual. I will not lie like a good girl that yes, of course I'd be open THEORETICALLY to sex with a transwoman lesbian, because it would be a lie. It would stop me being abused and insulted, but it would be a lie.

One of my roles is as a Union rep.

A few years back I stopped attending marches for better pay and conditions or defending my pension because I wouldn't match besides people carrying Soviet flags or placards about Israel, most of whom don't work for my department anyway.

Start your own movement, don't hijack mine. If you can't find enough people to march for your own cause maybe it isn't supported as well as you think it is.

Entryism is like a virus. It's about hijacking the reproductive powers of a host cell and giving nothing in return.

Aspie

So, not 'assigned male at birth; more like "recognised male pre-implantation" then?

Not quite so catchy, this Biological Reality thing...

On 'assigned gender at birth'. This is nonsense as most women will know the sex of the baby following their scans. In fact, have to say you DON'T want to know, if you'd rather wait till birth.

Also, if you have a genetic condition that, say, effects only male children then you may wish to have only female embryos implanted. An embryo can be sexed when its smaller than a full stop, long before the gonads develop.

sanddunes not me, I'm too butch for them, they tend to keep their previous preferences and most straight men don't fancy me! What they do instead is tell me how hideous I am and how they're much more attractive women. It's not very friendly.
I haven't read of any riots at Reading yet, so presumably OP's day was ok...

Re: the earlier comparison with being a racist at a Black Pride event. This is nothing like that. This is like being Jewish at an 'anti-racism' event that has invited Louis Farrakhan as a guest speaker. The fact that the speaker may belingvto a group that suffers prejudice in no means means that they cannot be bigoted themselves, nor diminishes the fact that you, yourself, suffer from bigotry.

Sorry, just RTFT and can see that some have. As you were!

Leaving aside politics and agendas, have any lesbians here personally been called a bigot by a transwoman for not wanting to date them? I'm just learning about this issue and am interested in how widespread it is in the real world?

‘Feminine’ men rock, as do ‘masculine’ women ❤️

I can well believe there are transwomen who pass as women, or we wouldn't we talking about women finding themselves in bed with a person they thought was a female who unexpectedly has a penis. At that point, passing as a woman is not going to happen with male genitalia. I doubt that happens all that often, given the number of trans people i see and meet who definitely don't pass, for more than a single heartbeat, and who instead are doing something more valuable and interesting - subverting expectations. Be a manly man in a dress 404. Revel in it. You weren't assigned male, you are gloriously male.

I’M A VAGITARIAN

Shocking transphobia!

I take it you reported to the police for hate crime?

I hate to say it , but all of the lesbians standing with banners at tge front of every single UK pride since Pride in London was hijacked seem to be absolutely fine with transgender lesbians
What does this prove though? How are we supposed to know if these people really are lesbian, or if they just fit under your new definition of lesbian?
See that's what happens when you start to redefine words to suit yourself. People stop listening to you, and they stop trusting that you're telling the truth and not just making shit up.
Just to address another point you made earlier, about being 'assigned male' at birth. This is incorrect (unless perhaps if you are intersex). When a baby is born their genitalia is observed and determined to be male or female. Thats it, and pretty much everyone on mumsnet (and the whole world) knows this, so it's really pretty pointless to say otherwise on here.