"Lesbians being anti-trans is a lesbophobic trope"

Yep. No sausage in lesbian spaces is a reasonable rule.

A male body with boobs and an artificial vagina and long hair, is still a male body.

Lesbianism is attraction to female people. The whole package of exclusive attraction to female people. The 'but if the male looked like this and this and this...'

No. People aren't human lego. It isn't the secondary sex characteristics that are the focus of attraction. I can appreciate the beauty of a male person, I can love the personality of a male person, but I can't feel sexual attraction to one. Wrong size, wrong shape, wrong smell even. What is this need to try and wangle those boundaries around until somehow it's possible to crowbar a male into lesbianism? Who is this helping? Why does it matter? If you're attracted to people of both sexes and you aren't specifically homosexual, then just be bi! Be proud, enjoy it, it's not a downgrade of any kind!

I thought the notion of passing was oh so dreadfully transphobic?

I thought the notion of passing was oh so dreadfully transphobic?

Thank you for explaining that, I wasn’t aware of the DM article or the alleged leaked email. I couldn’t see the full text of the email in the article, so it’s hard to judge precisely what was said, or meant, without seeing the context.

You may be mixing up her statement in a BBC article, with a previous email she was supposed to have written.

Apparently there was a leaked email in which it was said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10225111/Stonewall-brands-lesbians-sexual-racists-raising-concerns-sex-transgender-women.html

Yet now it has emerged that months before the article appeared Stonewall’s chief executive Nancy Kelley wrote to the editorial director of BBC News to denounce Lowbridge’s work in an apparent attempt to get her piece stopped.

In her email, Kelley suggested that the BBC article would end up being ‘transphobic’ because it represented trans women as ‘sexual predators’, which was a ‘central anti-trans argument’.

She further complained that the ‘highly toxic’ cotton ceiling issue was ‘analogous to issues like sexual racism’.

Thanks for the context to the quote and accurately what she said, rare to see on here
(Genuinely didnt know the full until now, just people saying sexual racist but no source or actual quote)

So on the logic of the majority on this thread, if a previously straight woman chats to a beautiful woman in a bar, finds herself desperately attracted to her, has a huge identity crisis because she’s never been attracted to a woman before, and finds it hard to reconcile herself to the idea she is in fact bisexual - but then finds out the object of her desire is actually a trans woman - she can just breath a sigh of relief, say ‘great, this changes nothing about my sexuality, I remain a 100% straight woman’?

it just doesn’t seem to me to bear any resemblance to how people actually think and feel about attraction and sexuality.

So on the logic of the majority on this thread, if a previously straight woman chats to a beautiful woman in a bar, finds herself desperately attracted to her, has a huge identity crisis because she’s never been attracted to a woman before, and finds it hard to reconcile herself to the idea she is in fact bisexual - but then finds out the object of her desire is actually a trans woman - she can just breath a sigh of relief, say ‘great, this changes nothing about my sexuality, I remain a 100% straight woman’?

it just doesn’t seem to me to bear any resemblance to how people actually think and feel about attraction and sexuality.

So on the logic of the majority on this thread, if a previously straight woman chats to a beautiful woman in a bar, finds herself desperately attracted to her, has a huge identity crisis because she’s never been attracted to a woman before, and finds it hard to reconcile herself to the idea she is in fact bisexual - but then finds out the object of her desire is actually a trans woman - she can just breath a sigh of relief, say ‘great, this changes nothing about my sexuality, I remain a 100% straight woman’?

it just doesn’t seem to me to bear any resemblance to how people actually think and feel about attraction and sexuality.

@nilsmousehammer What is a 'female smell' exactly?

What is this need to try and wangle those boundaries around until somehow it's possible to crowbar a male into lesbianism? Who is this helping? Why does it matter?
It matters because I'm a lesbian who has just been told by women on mumsnet that I should be excluded from the only community who has ever understood me and given me safety. From when I lost my relationship with my family over 20 years ago for saying I'd never be able to marry a man (since rekindled, not everyone is so fortunate) to having friends to turn to when I was in an abusive relationship with a woman, that community has been my chosen family.

Now, I've been told 'it doesn't matter, just call yourself bisexual, you don't belong any more' simply because I said I wouldn't exclude a well passing, beautiful trans woman from my dating pool.

Well in the words of so many GC mumsnet posters, I'm putting up a wall and saying 'no'. You can't deny the science of attraction to fit into your definitions and gatekeep. Not when it gets so personal.

My last post on this thread, possibly even mumsnet. @MNHQ you are ultimately accountable for this.

@nilsmousehammer What is a 'female smell' exactly?

What is this need to try and wangle those boundaries around until somehow it's possible to crowbar a male into lesbianism? Who is this helping? Why does it matter?
It matters because I'm a lesbian who has just been told by women on mumsnet that I should be excluded from the only community who has ever understood me and given me safety. From when I lost my relationship with my family over 20 years ago for saying I'd never be able to marry a man (since rekindled, not everyone is so fortunate) to having friends to turn to when I was in an abusive relationship with a woman, that community has been my chosen family.

Now, I've been told 'it doesn't matter, just call yourself bisexual, you don't belong any more' simply because I said I wouldn't exclude a well passing, beautiful trans woman from my dating pool.

Well in the words of so many GC mumsnet posters, I'm putting up a wall and saying 'no'. You can't deny the science of attraction to fit into your definitions and gatekeep. Not when it gets so personal.

My last post on this thread, possibly even mumsnet. @MNHQ you are ultimately accountable for this.

I should be excluded from the only community who has ever understood me and given me safety

If your "community" would exclude you for being bisexual, you should take it up with them.

A lesbian space should not be excluding bisexual women with female partners, just as a vegetarian space should not be excluding omnivores eating plant food.

The spaces are set up to allow people to perform the activity - women being with women, or people eating stuff other than meat. They should not be "identity"-based or exclusive because identity is bollocks. But they should have clear rules about what happens in the space to suit the people they're intended for.

If they were to exclude you for trying to take a male partner along, then that seems perfectly reasonable, just as a vegetarian space excluding me for bringing my sausage seems reasonable. (Whether or not I lie about my sausage being plant-based).

There are a squillion non-lesbian and non-vegetarian spaces. Not taking a male or sausage along to your favourite lesbian/vegetarian space is just being a decent person, and letting those spaces be used as intended.

I think it's more 'interesting' that posters are trying to tell an anonymous woman what her sexuality is.

That she's not allowed to call herself a lesbian despite being attracted to women for decades and having ONE relationship with a male born person who presented and passed as female and (I assume from her description) had breasts and a neo-vagina.

Just bonkers.