Stonewall change definition of transphobia - questioning gender identity ok now

Romance! you left out romance, BonfireLady!

For some reason, BoeotianNightmare, Stonewall now defines homosexuality as
a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender
[not sex, NB]
instead of the previous 'sexual orientation'

So far no-one has a clue why. Or what exactly a 'romantic orientation' is.
Watch out for a new version of the Progress flag, with the addition of a heart and a bunch of red roses😄

They could always go back to campaigning for gay rights

I have been feeling the same.

Catching up on the latest comments I think it's that Stonewall has:

1. conceded that not everyone believes that we all have a gender identity
2. doubled down on its repurposing of the following words:

a) woman means anyone who says they are a woman, irrespective of their sex. Ditto for man.
b) gay and lesbian mean someone who is attracted to someone else with the same gender identity, irrespective of their sex

So in other words, they accept that people can disagree with them but they are going to continue to enforce the compelled language anyway.

I guess it's all going to depend on who wants to listen to them - it puts them more on par with a self-appointed preacher on a microphone in the streets telling passers-by how god will save them. Hopefully lawyers will recognise this parallel and will stop bending their interpretation of the law to match a belief that not everyone holds.

Oh dear I'm struggling to understand the headline change here. Could someone explain it on a sentence please? So very tired right now!

@onlytherain That's how I understood it too. Now that detransition is becoming too big to ignore, these groups seem to be trying to include detransitioners under their wing, so they are in fact still part of the rainbow community.

And then in a few years' time when the shit is really hitting the fan, they can claim they were pivotal in fighting for the rights of detransitioners- in much the same way that we hear about TW having been pivotal in fighting for gay rights back in the day.

Everything has to be a sexuality now, doesn't it? The whole aro/ace/demisexual thing always seemed to me to be a way of taking all the nuances of personal relationships, categorising them, and giving them a flag and parade.

I remember when Daria was on TV - this would have been the very early days of online fandoms - and lots of fans shipped Daria and Jane. Had MTV done a show about a lesbian couple in high school 25-plus years ago then it really would have been brave. Nowadays I wonder if it would be harder for them to show two girls with a really close platonic friendship.

Then again, I'm not sure today they could show a lesbian relationship, as opposed to a 'queer' relationship where at least one of the girls thinks she's a boy.

More ridiculous nonsense from Stonewall is not a surprise however I am staggered that they [still] think themselves to be the authority on definitions that have the potential to affect so many lives. The arrogance of Stonewall is off the scale.

I'm thinking of those 'school-girl crush'/hazy floaty slightly eroticised images of young girls.
You know, the kind of silly girlish romantic attraction to members of your own sex that you grow out of. Or not.

'Romantic attraction' reminds me of those fanfics that depict gay male relationships but are obviously written by straight women.

'Tim has had a crush on Brian for six months but has been too shy to do anything about it'

If a gay man had written it, he'd have thought six hours was more realistic.

Re "romantic attraction".

One would need a special new version of 'The Rules', no?

Candlelit dinners, walks in the park/on the beach, icky cards with verses in, roses, jewellery from Pandora/Etsy, yes.

Detailed instructions on touching.

I presume anything overtly sexual is right out.

Is that to say that "gender affirming care experts" are now suddenly experts in supporting people to detransition? Or am I misunderstanding this?

Thank you for finding that definition, useless though it is😄

I'd hate love to be a fly on the wall during first dates - is this romantic? is it contact or interaction? is it asexual? is it platonic? or not platonic but not sexual either? Is that the time? Must dash...

So far the only definition of 'romantic attraction' I have found is from Stonewall Scotland - 'Romantic attraction can be defined as a desire to have romantic contact or interaction with an individual.'

Not hugely helpful.

It seems to be a term associated with defining 'asexual' and 'aromantic'.

My best guess is not platonic but not sexual either. Lord knows what that might look like in real life.

I'm focusing on the new definitions of homosexual and lesbian, which I find just plain odd.

Homosexuals
'have a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender'
First of all, to paraphrase T. Turner, what's romance got to do with it? What is the definition of a 'romantic orientation towards someone'?

I'm trying to work out what nefarious purpose Stonewall could have in defining homosexuality as romantic rather than sexual.. there has to be one, it's Stonewall..

Secondly, the old definition said 'attracted to someone of the same sex or gender', whereas the new one has dropped 'sex' altogether and says
'towards someone of the same gender'.
🔊Nefarious purpose alert again:
I am exclusively attracted to people of the same sex as myself. Not gender, whatever that means. Stonewall may well mean that I should be attracted to 'someone' of any sex, as long as they claim to be of the same 'gender' as me.
This being Stonewall, there's bound to be a subtext.

Again, in their new definition of 'Lesbian', they drop the old clear definition of
'a woman who is attracted to women' for the
'romantic and/or sexual orientation' phrase again.

It also says that 'some non-binary people may also identify with this term' - which is a comment not a definition, so not very helpful.

So Stonewell has introduced a new category of women with a
'romantic [but not necessarily sexual] orientation towards women' .

It arrives just in time to boost sales around Valentine's Day. Watch out for more of those Pandora jewellery ads on telly..

Did you know some people who call themselves asexual do have and enjoy sex, but only with people they’re attracted to or have a connection with?

Wait.. wait… they only have and enjoy sex with people they are attracted to / have a connection with?

I’m sure I’ve heard that motivation somewhere else . Wait…. Nope .. nope, it’s on the tip of my tongue, I just can’t remember where I’ve heard that before..

apologies i've just seen upthread that that they haven't.

Is this, the general change in definition in response to the Forstater case?

If gender critical beliefs are worthy of belief in a democratic society then they cannot be transphobic?

Have they actually changed the definition back then so it is clear it is same sex attracted?

Did you know some people who call themselves asexual do have and enjoy sex, but only with people they’re attracted to or have a connection with?

I had a friend who was a strict vegetarian, apart from the kebabs he'd have after a night out.

All of gender ideology is illogical, but there have been a few threads about asexuality and as a topic it rivals non-binary in incoherence.

Did you know some people who call themselves asexual do have and enjoy sex, but only with people they’re attracted to or have a connection with?

No, it doesn’t make an iota of sense to me either. And it seems it’s too much for even Stonewall to bother with.

Who needs to be aware of asexual people, let alone “celebrate” them?
Mind boggling.

WPATH is not an organisation that has stuck firmly to scientific facts and data, so I assume that figure was firmly lodged in the area of the brain called 'figment of my imagination'

My pride group at work was encouraging us to celebrate asexual awareness day quite recently, I wonder if they've had the updated information.

About 5 years ago, when gender ideology was really at it's peak, I worked in a small, tiny library in a quite rural village. For Pride month the central library decided we should have a big basket of all the sexuality flags on buttons to give out to kids, along with a chart to tell them what the differernt flags meant. The idea was the kids would pick the button which corresponded to their identity.

A few things struck me as interesting:

I never saw a boy even look at the basket.

The girls who were interested were in the 8 to 13 year old age, and all knew a fair bit already about the differernt flags and which one was "theirs".

Almost all were lesbians or asexual.

I could not credit that all of these adults thought it made sense to teach these kids that they should define their immutable sexuality at age 11.