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Original poster

To think that “butch “lesbian identity is being erased.

277 replies

Queenofwands · 23/03/2018 05:00

I was chatting to a taxi driver who said she was a lesbian. As we were talking she said that she was getting pressure from her family to undergo a sex change. She said she was confused because she had previously thought of herself as a tomboy. We talked and it became clear that she felt there was no place for her in society . She looked in her early twenties and to my eyes not even particularly boyish. It made me think has being a gay woman who is not especially girly become conflated with being transgender?

OP posts:
Mydoghatesthebath · 23/03/2018 08:06

Blimey what happened to ‘been busy tonught’ And ‘are you on long’

LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:06

Btw, this thread is getting under my skin.

I don't think I share the MN view of trans identity. I'm not Spartacus. I try pretty hard to avoid trans threads these days.

But just because you don't see this in your life, doesn't mean it's not happening and it doesn't mean butch lesbianism went out in the 90s (btw, nice erasure of working-class lesbian history there - butch lesbianism to a big extent comes out of that and it's a subculture that hasn't half had a kicking).

I sincerely doubt that young trans people are deliberately trying to subvert lesbians with their evil, evil ways (

ZaZathecat · 23/03/2018 08:10

Blimey, what kind of a family pressurises their relative (daughter?) into having massive invasive surgery?!

TinyRick · 23/03/2018 08:13

'Butch lesbians are a 90s fashion'

Could you be more offensive?! Hmm

Stillscreaming · 23/03/2018 08:13

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LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:16

But still, don't you think that thread is part of a related problem?

People still have very rigid views of gender and sexuality.

A young boy who wants to audition for a female lead gets pressure not do to it.

A young woman who presents in a way that some find 'too masculine' gets pressure to change her gender identity.

Both are kinds of social pressure.

And it is utter bullshit to say you know this is made up. How do you know?! You don't.

orangepie · 23/03/2018 08:18

TinyRick

But it was just like leather mustache gay men, head to you local gay bar you won't find many butch women and the ones you see will be in their 40's. Also short hair != butch.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:19

You know, this makes me so angry. Nearly a year ago today, my DD was born and my DP spent days on a hospital ward being badly failed by medics who simply could not understand that she was a vaguely masculine-presenting woman who was having a baby, and that she had a female partner. It was one of the nastiest experiences of my life - I'm not kidding. And it is rooted in this belief that everyone must conform to narrow stereotypes of sexuality and gender.

It is mind-bogglingly arrogant to come on here and simply claim you don't believe other people's experiences as lesbians, just because you don't share them.

lougle · 23/03/2018 08:24

I feel so sad for my DDs. PSHE is an absolute minefield and the world they are growing up in is like a Hall of Mirrors.

-Gone are the days where you can just say 'male' and 'female' or 'boy' and 'girl'.
-Gone are the days, even, when you could just say "Most men love women, and most women love men, but some men love men and some women love women".
-Gone are the days when you just add "Some men feel like they should have been a lady, so they decide to get some help from doctors to become like a lady and live as a lady (and vice versa)."

Now it's "Some people decide that they will change gender according to how they feel on a particular day. Some people will choose to still keep their body the same as their sex, but change their name, and live as the opposite sex. Some people will be attracted to people of the same sex, say they are the opposite sex, but keep their genital organs and say they are 'straight'."

Now it's "people can do what they want, say what they want and it's all ok".

stuckontheM25 · 23/03/2018 08:27

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splendide · 23/03/2018 08:30

As is so often the case LRD has it.

Honestly, this does sound made up though.

I do sort of know what PP meant about 90s butch, there was a very specific look (which I liked!) that’s gone.

Stillscreaming · 23/03/2018 08:33

I'll tell you what's utter bollox, LRD, lesbians experience only being mentioned to bash trans people, feminism only being mentioned to relation to a tiny school of feminist thought and any negative experience anyone has being shoehorned into an anti trans narrative.

Women not conforming to narrow gender stereotype and being rejected or ignored is as awful as it is true but the conflated narrative that now, she would either be begging a GIC to 'cure' her or even being held down to have testosterone forced into her is rubbish.

No one tried to force my lovely, butch missus into transitioning, they tried to force her into being straight because that's what people do but I don't see anyone mentioning that in relation to 'lesbians erasure' because it can't be used to knock another minority group.

StrangeLookingParasite · 23/03/2018 08:35

No there is not and I know more gender fluid people than trans people

This is not your definitive statement to make, and from your other posts, your experience is fairly narrow.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:35
Hmm

I've no interest in bashing trans people, nor in co-opting feminism.

Your partner is very fortunate. But it's fucking rude to presume that just because she's not under pressure (or hasn't mentioned it to you), no pressure exists.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:36

And thanks, splendide.

StrangeLookingParasite · 23/03/2018 08:37

No one tried to force my lovely, butch missus into transitioning, they tried to force her into being straight

And insisting she was trans would be one way of doing this, hence the slightly weird greater acceptance of trans children to some bible-bashing fundamentalists in the US, and in other cultures where being gay is really not OK.
By insisting someone transition, you're creating a 'straight' person.

orangepie · 23/03/2018 08:37

StrangeLookingParasite

I am very active in my local and uni LGBT groups. Their is way more gender fluid youth than trans youth.

orangepie · 23/03/2018 08:39

StrangeLookingParasite

Only religion that prefers trans over gay is Muslim, so unless OP's driver was Muslim I don't think anyone who try force a gay person to transition.

StrangeLookingParasite · 23/03/2018 08:40

I am very active in my local and uni LGBT groups. Their is way more gender fluid youth than trans youth.

And you don't think that's a very narrow experience? Ooookay then. And by that, you're under 30.
Right then.

TinyRick · 23/03/2018 08:40

I do sort of know what PP meant about 90s butch, there was a very specific look (which I liked!) that’s gone

Oh I still see it online. Only their bio now says 'Trans/He/They' etc

LRDtheFeministDragon · 23/03/2018 08:41

I think active, conscious, overt pressure on lesbians to transition is (outside a minority of communities) probably tiny.

But all sorts of pressure aren't overt or conscious. A lot of the pressure my students come under is entirely well-meaning. Their peers genuinely worry they are too scared to come out as trans, or they don't know themselves well enough to admit that the fact they seem butch is obvious evidence that they're trans.

WorraLiberty · 23/03/2018 08:44

I don't think it's made up

No, it's a completely normal conversation to have with a taxi driver.

And to wonder if (based on this one single taxi driver's parents) being a gay woman who is not especially girly, might have become conflated with being transgender...

Also completely normal.

ThisIsTheFirstStep · 23/03/2018 08:49

worra I’ve had all sorts of conversations with taxi drivers, including one about how one of their kids was about to get deported, how one’s brother had been sent to prison for drug smuggling and how one’s missus had run off and left him.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that this could be brought up. Some people are chatty.

Stillscreaming · 23/03/2018 08:52

I do sort of know what PP meant about 90s butch, there was a very specific look (which I liked!) that’s gone.

There are plenty of women still rocking female masculinity just in slightly different trousers but it's not easy for them and it never has been.

The idea that she been very lucky to have people attempt to force her in a dress wearing box, rather than a transitioning box is strange. Why would anyone go to that much trouble? If you're going to buy into the idea that butch women are malleable enough to be hammered into trans men, surely you buy that they could be hammered into a more acceptably feminine gender presentation?

juneau · 23/03/2018 08:55

I'm not surprised that she feels that way. I worry that transvestite men will come under the same pressure and I feel sure that a lot of people who have jumped on the trans bandwagon of late (genuinely trans people were always a tiny, tiny minority previously), are in fact gay, lesbian or transvestite and are either being swept up in this trend for trans, or are under pressure to become part of the movement.