Feminists only claim to care about lesbians in order to justify transphobia

Start your own thread.You can beratebadfeminists as much as you like on that. In the meantime DFOD

Sorry. I've just written a long response to Sakura. I read the article. I did think that the lesbian daughter of my closest friend and her girlfriend would be likely to agree with it From the , admittedly brief, conversations about trans issues I've had with them I don't think they would recognise the concept of lesbian erasure.

If you go on threads namalting then you're a blatant anti feminist

I understand this bit. I'm sure you've called me anti- feminist. It doesn't bother me. I have my own views on what affects women and what is important. Given how often I've seen radical feminists say liberal feminists are "anti- feminist" and vice versa "anti- feminist" is pretty meaningless. All it means is "you have said something which doesn't accord with my views of what a feminist should believe"

Probably a gender ally who agrees with feminists on trans issues. Gender allies who aren't feminists should really stick to the trans threads

And you've lost me here.

That really fucking annoys me

Yeah

I can see how that would be irksome

You know what gives me the irrits? Being a lesbian who ended up married to a man because I bought into a religion that said that vagina must welcome penis, who then found my way out of the religion, began to find peace with my sexuality again, and discovered that there were great swathes of liberal minded people ready to tell me that actually, the religion that told me vagina must accept penis was right all along and that if I disagree, it's because I'm a bigot.

That really fucking annoys me.

I've been musing on the woman who wrote this drivel and other older butch lesbians supporting their trans 'lesbian' sisters. They all come out with "It hasn't happened to me so hasn't happened blah blah blah"

So bearing in mind a trans 'lesbian' is a straight male with what could be considered an obsession with what is stereotypical woman. As a straight male with such an obsession I imagine they are likely to be attracted to women/lesbians that are more stereotypical. Which is a million miles away from the butch lesbian that wrote this drivel so hardly surprising she's not had any issues with the cotton ceiling!

Young lesbians however are having a really shut time and need all the help and support they can get. Even from us less than pure feminists

Feminists only claim to care about lesbians in order to justify transphobia

That is not true for me, but it is true for me that I didn't really think about lesbians until I discovered the whole gender ideology thing going on. And for me that started from a selfish place. I got pregnant and suddenly noticed the really heavy gender divide in our society and began to feel worried for my unborn child. Feminism just wasn't in my life before that. I didn't think about women as a group. I didn't know any lesbians that I'm aware of. Once I found out more about feminism and I met (online) a lot of lesbian feminists, I began to think about women as a group. And that includes lesbian women very much so. And I could not separate feminism from lesbians. The women I probably learned the most about feminism from are lesbian feminists.

Back to the op, I'm not hiding transphobia by supporting Lesbian women that don't want to have sex with a female penis. There are Lesbian women that don't face this attempted rape, it's not coercion ffs There are Lesbian women that do face the threat of rape, as has been revealed in a fucking heartbreaking thread on FWR. I will support each and every Female Lesbian with their right make their own choice. Human beings cannot change Sex. I'll never believe that lie
@sakura184
Start your own thread. You can berate bad feminists as much as you like on that. In the meantime DFOD

Telling women that marriage is prostitution is offensive and - more importantly - it's not true

Pisses me right off

And now to be told that because im married i cant think prostitution is wrong

Just as well that i dont pay much attention to some of the opinions on mumsnet...pay too much attention and you’ll probably be driven insane

All I know is that feminism has to mean something, it can't just be anything.

So, sakura: please define feminism in your terms.

It doesn't matter if you're a lesbian or straight, almost all women have had the experience of men threatening or harming us with their penises. Of course we stand together against that.

The article ignores that it has been lesbian feminists who have led the charge against trans ideology. Mary Daly and Janice Raymond have already been mentioned, and more recently there have been Sheila Jeffreys, Julia Long, Elizabeth Hungerford (who coined the term "gender critical"). Gallus Mag set up the blog Gender Trender which recorded the assault on women and our rights long before any of this had even touched the mainstream. Years before Mumsnet FWR realised how harmful trans is to women, there were lesbian feminist bloggers creating theory and standing against this new anti-woman ideology.

This woman is yet another idiot, and totally disingenuous.

*You're not a feminist though, are you sakura?

Certainly doesn't look like one from where I'm sitting.*

Maybe I'm not then.
All I know is that feminism has to mean something, it can't just be anything. If that excludes me from feminism then so be it. I'll just post random opinions

You're not a feminist though, are you sakura?

Certainly doesn't look like one from where I'm sitting.

So at last you give an example sakura that makes sense, but taken from a completely different context.

And yes this conversation has derailed this thread.

As a feminist I am concerned about all women. I want us free.

You're not a feminist though, are you sakura? You're a TRA who has come here to derail the thread away from the scumbaggery of Carrie Lyell.

The idea that marriage is a form of prostitution only makes sense if you're thinking of the wife being kept by her husband, relying on him for money and having to provide sex on tap in return.

Now I'm not saying marriages like that no longer exist, but they become rarer all the time. Marital rape became illegal in 1992.

When I got married we talked a lot about how we wanted our relationship to be. We examined our experiences and decided to ditch things that had been unhelpful a in our families of origin. We decided that being married meant we only had to work by our own rules - our relationship was noone else's business.

I had a career, he had a job (which he didn't enjoy). As soon as we could afford it he became a house husband. He was much better at that kind of thing than I am. I would never have got my business off the ground without his constant encouragement.

A marriage can be any shape the two of you choose. It's just a formalized committed relationship. I'm assuming that lesbian marriages escape the accusation of prostitution, or is it all marriages?

This is really tiresome. Telling women that marriage is prostitution is offensive and - more importantly - it's not true.

It's always seemed to me that as most women are het then we have a lot of power if we only give our love to men who take the trouble to empathize with us, men who are worth our time. My marriage was based on the importance of truthfulness and shared values.

DarkAtEndOfTunnel

Thank you for taking on board what I'm trying to say.

As an aside, there is an argument to be had that a consensus is in order, (although it's true a consensus isn't always right). But I've never really felt the need for a consensus because when I come across a woman who is a feminist I just feel relief, I recognize her instantly. Happens to me all the time and I just assume it happens this way with other women

With regard to lesbians, this is very relevant:

www.gettheloutuk.com/blog/category/research/lesbians-at-ground-zero.html

Download the document and read?

RTB's points are always good, but this bit from Sakura
Because feminism means something. Just like the word woman means something. It's through women not safeguarding the word feminism and what it meant that got us in the situation we were in where being a stripper was a feminist act, being a prostitute was empowering and so on.

There is a good point in there, although I think, Sakura, you would find that most people on here would dislike the completely brain-fallen-out version of choicey-choice feminism you're referring to there. Perhaps a new critical self awareness among feminism - a new wave, or a return to the old - is needed. As always though we don't need to allow an extreme at one end force us to the extreme at the other. That seems to be happening everywhere and in everything at the moment, and it worries me.

Sakura, it's regarded poor form to take points from other threads and carry arguments over from thread to thread.

I did think your comments were referring to that thread and I deliberately ignored it and I won't bite further but that's a fundamental misrepresentation.

I'll let others make their own mind up rather than derail this thread.

It is hard to tell how many individual women may have felt coerced to "just try penis". If you do something because you feel it's the right thing to do not to be "phobic", you don't go around advertising that's why you did it afterwards because that would make people say you were the "phobic" you are trying to avoid.

We know the coercion is there, even stonewall are defining lesbian as same gender attracted not same sex attracted. The line that it's transphobic to say lesbian= female homosexual is everywhere. Try going on a lesbian dating site and saying born females only please, bet you get abuse. Hands up lesbians here who are same /gender/ attracted?

Coercion doesn't have to mean "come to bed with me or else".

There are also apparently people thinking it's okay to not disclose their "trans history" until well into a relationship. This is based on reading what trans people write to each other btw not any feminist sites.

But just a reminder of the thing you deny is happening: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3294339-cotton-ceiling-evidence-thread

Eg the ones saying no TW in women’s toilets.

No, that's not a transphobic view. It's just what people who acknowledge the rights of women to privacy and dignity expect. There's a word for people who don't acknowledge that right.

Ha, you'll have to ask Jessica Hynes, it was the women's Mmagazine Daisy interviewed for in Spaced, culminating in the world's most embarrassing "Girl Power".

I'd forgotten that might watch the episode later