Do we have it anywhere on record that Stonewall does/does not support people to express their sexuality as exclusively homosexual?

It's just political posturing. If all the dictionaries were re-written, and the history books changed to say we have always been at war with EastAsia, it is still a lie.

Because a woman is an adult human female and the word has an important specific meaning that does not apply to any males.

Bilinda, surely even you must understand that an adult human female, of or denoting the sex who bears eggs, cannot be identified at birth as an adult human male, of or denoting the sex who produces sperm?

It's simply not possible.

I don't know why you are so desperate to imagine that humans can change sex, with chromosome machines, and impossible statements. But seriously, this level of denial cannot be good for your mental health.

Dictionary Corner

My earlier response:

Wanky and captured though Merriam Webster is, they don't actually include males in their definition of "woman", it's "an adult female person" so clearly they only put in the "trans woman" bit to appease genderists.

Honestly. This is just getting farcical

Just getting?

Its been farcical for ages…

Best take that up with the Times Bilinda

Honestly. This is just getting farcical.

I've seen the videos and counted. 200 is a blatant lie.

It no longer surprises me that people will continue to downplay that the abuse and coercion of lesbians happens. It is always a n+1 scenario where it simply is only ever a small ‘minority’ and never worth dealing with. Just like the answer to many vital questions raised on these boards about how many women’s futures and safety should be sacrificed before something becomes an issue to recognised.

We have had lesbians write posts here over the past 18 months detailing how they were coerced into sex with a male who identified as a woman. And the lasting legacy this act has left on their mental health, including one who tried to discuss it amongst her lesbian friends and was shunned.

So I always question the actions of those who continue to tell us what the ‘vast majority’ think, if it is only based on anecdotal knowledge. History has taught us that there are always those who simply cannot acknowledge what is happening under their noses.

What gives those self appointed spokespeople any credibility at all? They don’t back up any of their assertions with evidence. And frankly, if they are so certain it is not an issue, do they then actually wonder if their supreme confidence that it is not happening, means people simply are not talking to them if it does happen. Because those victims expect to be shunned.

And in that way, are contributing to keeping a hidden issue.

Because, we have been asked what has groups such as LGB Alliance done. iirc, they have come out in support of those saying this abuse is not acceptable. Something that is clear, because no evidence as been posted after being asked repeatedly for that evidence, is that Stonewall has not done this.

These posters also don’t seem to understand what is happening with the teenaged lesbians either. Not how prevalent the pressure being applied is and there seems little understanding of the direction that pressure is coming from.

The intention of posts that declare it is a non-event, nothing to see here, is clear. So is the prejudice held by those posting in such a way.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/17a96d00-0aa7-11ec-922b-9339a9da8961?shareToken=03530cd7c9a2af2cc8bb5b306072382d

Tell us again why we should believe any of your assertions which are rarely even attempted to be evidenced and usually with evidence that is not showing what you think?

What do you think actually happens in exchanges? Are you imagining some sort of scenario where a trans lesbian walks up to another lesbian and demands sex? This is so bizarre. Why would you think that would happen?

I don't have to imagine. I have been told in face-to-face conversations with lesbians about the general unpleasantness as well as coercion, threats and actual violence they have experienced at the hands of male transgender individuals whom they turned down. Not shouting about it. Politely. It didn't matter. Their words didn't matter. Their tone didn't matter. Their behaviour didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered was that they said no. For some male people, regardless of how they identify, a woman's no is an invitation to abuse.

I've communicated with even more lesbians, some of whom I met IRL afterwards, all telling the same upsetting tales of being expected to include male heterosexual transgender people in their dating pool. And of being ostracised from their own communities when they fail to comply. Some lesbians do try, and when they find that biology wins out, they are simply punished later for realising they really are exclusively same-sex and not same-gender attracted.

I've also met older lesbians, middle-aged plus, for whom this is something they only hear about from younger lesbians. But even many of them will tell you how keenly they feel the loss of lesbian spaces. And how the male transgender heterosexuals who were drawn to lesbian spaces when they were younger were tolerated (mostly ignored) in those spaces, but they never liked them being there. Not that most of them said anything. That those heterosexuals now have such power and influence in the spaces of younger lesbians saddens them greatly.

I think you have to be wilfully blind by this point if you're denying that this hostility towards exclusively same-sex attracted females exists and is acted upon. I mean some of it happens very publicly, like what Magdalen Berns went through at Edinburgh University.

So sexual orientation is different from other characteristics, but I would say the same approach is reasonable. So if a straight man was approached by a gay man I think they can easily say 'Sorry mate, I'm not interested', rather than saying 'Sorry mate, you've got a dick and balls and that's a real turn off for me', or if a straight woman was approached by a gay woman, she could say 'Sorry, I'm not interested' rather than shouting out 'God, no, I'm straight, your vulva is really unappealing to me". They are acting according to their orientations without going out of their way to say something that might be hurtful to others.

So, "no thanks" is okay, but "no thanks, I'm gay" is not okay? Coz one ought not to disclose one's sexuality when turning down an interested party?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4318085-interesting-interview

Meat eaters don't generally, as far as I know, experience harassment, exclusion, misunderstanding, poor health, social and educational outcomes. They're not at greater risk of taking their lives by suicide or rejection by their families. They don't walk fearfully down the streets.

Going back a few pages and slightly off the thread topic but nevertheless: can we stop this narrative that transpeople are the “most oppressed”. They quite clearly and blatantly are not. In terms of personal harm they are one of, if not the, safest demographics in the country. The claims about suicidal ideation have been debunked, and the Samaritans had to add a note to their website stating that the causes of suicide are complex and should not be reduced to simplified or single factors, directly as a result of TRAs attempting to weaponise it as a threat (“better a happy daughter than a dead son”). They have the power to alter policy, to lobby at the highest levels of government, to persuade hospital trusts to make wards mixed sex, to get innumerable numbers of toilets in businesses and public spaces designated as “gender neutral”, to get people sacked for supposed “transphobia”, to change our very language and to insert themselves into whatever groups and forums they desire. That is not, by any definition whatsoever, oppression.

Imagine what disabled people could have achieved to improve society for themselves if they had the same reach as transpeople?

Menopausal women are still women. Infertile women are still women.

Transwomen are not.

The treatment is instantly popular, but this upsets the original star-bellied Sneetches, as they are in danger of losing their special status. McBean then tells them about his Star-Off machine, costing ten dollars, and the Sneetches who originally had stars happily pay the money to have them removed in order to remain special.

To mix analogies, I’m also always reminded on Syndrome from The Incredibles. When everyone is queer and/or gender non-conforming, no one will be. So they’ll need to go through the star machine again.

The Zax in the same book is also like TRAs vs GC. Neither budging at the moment.

And what about post menopausal women, whose hormone levels plummet, do we become less womanly?

As always Sophocles, menopausal women are usually forgotten. Maybe TheReluctantPhoenix will clarify which stage of a woman’s lifecycle those males who are identifying as woman are emulating with purely artificial hormones?

A musing on hormones…from upthread that hormones can be used as part of the definition of being a woman.

There is far, far more to female hormones than oestrogen. Most male to female trans people take only oestrogen, though some also take progesterone, I understand that this isn’t common.

What about follicle stimulating hormone?
What about luteinizing hormone?

And what about post menopausal women, whose hormone levels plummet, do we become less womanly?

Hormone levels don’t change someone’s sex. A male person taking oestrogen is a male person with a higher than normal level of oestrogen. A female person taking testosterone is a female person with a higher than normal level of testoerone.

I guess we will have to wait for that chromosome swapping machine, although why this would be any more likely than finding the cause of gender dysphoria and helping people come to terms with their sexed bodies, I don’t know. I can’t help but feel that the machine would not be a net benefit to humanity, as I can see it being enthusiastically embraced by the kind of society that values boy children way more than girls, so the millions of unwanted girl children will just be made into boys rather than being aborted. Societies with millions more men in them than women tend to do so much better, don’t they?

Agree with you Hedda, transwomen who appropriate " lesbian " status often seem to share similar entitled attitudes with incels.

Examining how much of our sexual desires are programmed by the dark side of our beliefs

I wonder if that extends to questioning kink…. This person framing a discussion of the ethics of sex around “whose bodies confer status on those who have sex with them” sounds like reinventing “female privilege” to me.

Is there a discussion of this book anywhere here? I don’t think I could read it without throwing it across the room. But I’m sort of interested in the argument. Have never heard a logically coherent version of incel reasoning before.

Great post, TalkingtoLangClegintheDark. Being unhappy about not being in someone's dating pool: well, in a sense we've all been there... . But that common human experience is definitely not the same as wanting someone to change the entire basis of their dating pool, just to be nice to people who don't fit in it but would like to. Rather than said people fucking off to the far side of fuck, and staying there.

If your biggest concern is people not wanting to have sex with you, you are not oppressed.

Do you think I can expand that into a book and sell it?

For Srinivasan, differences in fuckability, reproduced as they are in pornography, exist because sex is subject to the “distortions of oppression”; there is a case to be made for removing the stranglehold these oppressive and discriminatory patterns have on our sexual desires.

For Srinivasan, the notion that people who are fat or transgender or simply don’t fit the white and blond mould are sexually undesirable is a matter for political contestation and moral analysis. Enter philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, which can play a part, not in the moralising sense of telling individuals what sorts of sex they can and cannot have, but rather so individuals can reflect on their own sexual choices. Sex cannot be made just, but examining how much of our sexual desires are programmed by the dark side of our beliefs can lessen the injustice.
…
The simplest explanation of the title is that “no one is obliged to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also who is desired and who isn’t is a political question”. The book effectively highlights how sexual desire – who we are and are not attracted to – is political and affected by the prevalent injustices in society and relevant to their elimination.

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/19/the-right-to-sex-by-amia-srinivasan-review-the-politics-of-sexual-attraction

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1526612534/?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Yes 👏

Parody account on twitter.

Any person that you are not attracted to is a person you are actively discriminating against. Try to do better, by being attracted to literally anyone and everyone.

twitter.com/wokeandwoofing/status/1432660401414721540?s=19

We are now at the point where we cannot tell the difference between parody and reality, because they say exactly the same things. And Jonathan Swift thought he had it hard with the politics of his day.