Clarification for someone who is new to this area on being a lesbian and 'gender identities'

It’s conversion therapy.

Hi Lola,

Welcome to T**f club, where a woman is an adult human female and a lesbian is a woman who is sexually orientated exclusively towards other women.

There are lots of women in the LB parts of the LGBT who feel exactly as you do. You will find them, now that you know to look for them (although they may want to vet you a bit first)!

‘Get the L Out’ and LGB Alliance are good places to start.

The trans-identifying and their supporters thrive on redefining words and making up words to suit their agenda. They are trying desperately to redefine lesbianism and womanhood in an attempt to confuse people, especially women, and force them to lower their natural boundaries.

The people calling you "phobic" have the worst of intentions and care nothing about you. They are NOT your friends and if you want to keep your sanity, you need to go NC.

You can specify that as a lesbian you are obviously only interested in women.

In terms of day to day interactions with people as to whether you want to date them, a simple, "sorry it's not working for me" is all you need to say. No-one has a right to date you, you can be as selective as you want and you don't need to explain yourself.

“It sounds like you want to police who I have relationships with”

It's a common line, and a common theme throughout this political lobby.

Basically 'words mean what I want them to mean, don't need to have any shared meaning, and a person's identity is based on what they like the sound and feel of with no regard whatever for what impact this has on the groups appropriated for this personal gratification.'

You can announce you're vegan, march for veganism and rant endlessly at everyone else about veganism while chugging steak and bacon at every meal and insisting this is the new progressive sort of veganism, demonstrating a higher enlightenment than other vegans, and are you policing their veganism? Are you saying that they can only be vegan if they've never had meat ever and that's exactly the same as them chugging down meat as part of their veganism?

Honestly, if you do that people will think you're a bit of a prat and move on with their day. Whatever. Do your thing.

If on the other hand you start pressuring vegan groups and everyone in sight that the only correct veganism is inclusive of meat and meat products and it's bigoted and awful and you should probably report them under the equality act for saying that no, actually veganism means not eating meat products, then you're asking for people to start pointing out boundaries.

There's such a thing as being forced to a discourtesy. You may not need to bang on the table and shout in someone's face "you are a carnivore!" You may feel that someone who enthusiastically furthers the cause of meat eating at every opportunity while calling themselves vegan has a problem, and really shouldn't be standing for leader of the local Vegan Group, nor training up the young members of the group on what veganism really means in these modern times, and that it's wrong to be vegan without eating meat.

Honestly... you can't make sense of this, there isn't a full deck involved.

Contrary to what your friends would have you believe OP, not all us lesbians are jumping for joy at the influx of heterosexual males attempting to take over all our groups, jump into our dating pool and crash through the cotton ceiling into our underwear, in fact I don’t know any lesbians who are, and I know quite a lot of lesbians.

You don’t have an understanding problem OP, you have a friend problem. Ditch the rapey homophobic friendship group and find the lesbians who will respect you and your right to sexual boundaries. We are out there and we are many.

Your so called friends are gaslighting you. Their behaviour is abusive and you would be well advised to find new friends. As PPs have suggested, the LGB alliance would be a good place to start.
Lesbianism and Transgenderism are incompatible. Your orientation is based on biological reality, theirs on wishful thinking.

Lola, people who call you transphobic are simply asserting male authority — a very outdated ideology. As a feminist, I don’t accept male authority, so I don’t accept that men magically become women by calling themselves women. And I don’t accept that anyone has a right to demand sexual services from anyone.

I would get rid of the T from your social circle. It will only get worse and be very very careful on supposedly lesbian dating sites, which seem to be mainly populated by men. Remember you are not there to pander to their needs.

You've bumped up against your own boundaries of how far you're willing to pretend a lie for someone else's benefit, when that lie actually impacts you negatively.

As you retrace your steps you are about to find that there's rather a lot of stuff you're not willing to pretend about any more.

It's not an especially comfortable process, but the relief to be found from letting yourself admit some simple truths is immense.

Thank you for sharing that, stumbledin - Shonagh's ukulele was a definite highlight, really need to save that link.

Okay - it wasn't that hard to find. They are all together here:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCuU_ArcIWrBmHlqyY5pww5Q

Not saying you should agree with every word, but it shows you there is a wide range of opinions and experience from women who believe as you do that being lesbian means you are attracted to other women.

Magdalen Berns
'There Is No Such Thing as a Lesbian With a Penis!'
2016

Just to add what everyone else has said.

A lesbian is a biological female who is sexually attracted to other biological females!

The problem is what used to be a straightforward assertion has been hijacked by the trans agenda. Being trans (ie believing is "gender identity") has nothing to do with same sex attraction.

Nobody can change sex. So as a lesbian you wont be sexually attracted to a man. Anyone who tells you you should is trying to coherce you into sex.

As Rowantrees has said have a look at the LGB Alliance.

And there are other links, for instance some of the videos from the Lesbian Strength March last year in Leeds. You can google for these. If not tomorrow I will see if I can find the links.

Transwomen call lesbians who discount them 'vagina fetishists', as though that is an insult, as though liking vagina, finding it essential for sexual pleasure, is in some way an aberration. Of course it isn't!

There is another meaning for fetish, a non-sexual meaning: a charm or object superstitiously believed to have magical powers. The people fetishising vagina are male.

My social circle are from groups I've found after coming out- As such, they are very much focussed focussed on the 'T' element of LGBT+. I am hoping I can find some more like minded people. Like I said, these people were the first people I've met since coming out.

LGB Alliance is lesbian-led

lgballiance.org.uk/about/

My daughter is a lesbian. She hasn’t expressed it explicitly, but I’m certain she would not be attracted to anyone who was not female.

I know her current group includes trans individuals, and that for now, nobody seems to be forcing this issue. She doesn’t believe anyone can change sex, but wouldn’t say that, and unlike me, she doesn’t yet recognise the coercion in that situation..

They’re young and I suspect it's only a matter of time before she will come across a more insistent male. I hope I’m wrong, but it appears to be very prevalen’t in those circles. I don't have much faith in men. I’m awaiting her conversion to full Terven, though I would love to be proved wrong, for her sake,

There is nothing wrong with you at all, and I’m sorry you are going through this. I know from other lesbian friends that they are beginning to meet ‘underground’ again, in order to have women only gatherings and events. It’s a huge backwards step and I hope these problems will be resolved sooner rather than later.

It is homophobic to demand that female people who are homosexuality abandon their sexual orientation and 'learn to cope' (ffs) with hetero sex because otherwise it upsets the personal view a male has taken of themselves.

This movement is, at heart, political male supremacism. Look up 'incels', who form a definite group within this movement. There is a belief that females are service humans whose primary purpose is enablement of males; that there is an entitlement to use females for sexual purposes; a movement against consent; and its all stood on a very old belief that a female does not have the right to deny her body to a male who wants sex. That a female does not have the right to bodily autonomy to the inconvenience of males.

There have always been males who fantasised about lesbians, there have always been males who wanted to stop women doing the awful thing of denying their bodies to males. You'll note that there's no live and let live here - none. No reciprocal extension of respect. It is not okay for you to say out loud that even in theory you would deny access to your body to a male who stated he was entitled to it via self identification. The mere existence of females saying no is not ok.

I now say flat out that I'm a female homosexual as that makes it very clear, I will not be putting up with homophobic nonsense and sexual harassment in the name of male supremacist values. Get the pitchforks out, I don't care. Anyone pressuring me to use my body to validate a male in sex I won't enjoy and don't want because 'I should learn to cope with it for the male's sake' - has such a distorted grip on reality that I can't invest in anything they think.

Everything is “transphobic” nowadays

Outside tiny woke bubbles, nobody thinks there’s such a thing as lesbian with a penis.

You need a broader range of friends - people who shame you for your sexual orientation are not friends.

Weetabix with Greek yogurt, some blueberries and honey is miles better than WBHM.
Homophobia comes in many shapes and forms, sometimes it's disguised as every day ordinary misogyny. As in " you just haven't found the right dick" try mine I'm sure I can convince you. This attack on Lesbians is more sinister. As in "my penis is female". As my Scottish friends would say, aye right.
IMO it's extremely homophobic to insist that a same SEX attracted female is transphobic because she's really not interested in a female penis.

Since you ask about 'genuine transphobia' it might be helpful if you consider that, for any word, there's a dictionary definition and common usage definition, with a flexible degree of overlap.

By the dictionary you are not transphobic, OP. By common usage, the very fact of your assertion of lesbianism makes you transphobic.

Lesbianism is by nature transphobic (common usage); transgenderism is by nature lesbophobic (dictionary definition). They're not compatible.

How can they insist that they are a man, but then be angry when I- a lesbian- won't date them

How can you expect rationality from these people?

How can you expect compassion or respect from people who are so up their own behinds that they've completely lost sight of the world around them?

Being certain of your sexuality is not anything-phobic.

Expecting you to adapt your sexual preferences to theirs is coercive, controlling, and, in your case, homophobic.

Time to find new social groups.

You sound entirely sensible to me. In my youth - not very long ago, a couple of girls from school went out with boys and when they got a bit older, (inc moving away/ uni) started going out exclusively with women. Same sex attracted. No confusion. Lesbian.

If you do not wish to sleep WITH ANYBODY YOU DON’T FANCY that is your right

This.

Anything else is rapey.

They call you transphobic - that is, bigoted - for having and expressing sexual boundaries.

There's a word for people like that.

Shaming someone out of maintaining her sexual boundaries is never okay.