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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:
nursy1 · 23/03/2018 08:59

My stepdaughter is a butch lesbian. I don’t get the bit about why anyone would think a sex change is appropriate? It’s never occurred to us.
I have come across transgender people who thought as they grew up that perhaps they were gay and that was their “problem”. Maybe this is the issue for her?

Missingstreetlife · 23/03/2018 09:01

Think some lesbians&hetero women upset that some trans activists think they should have sex with them whether they want to or not?!
There was a fashion for butch and femme, lipstick lesbians etc. I thought now anyone can wear anything, role play, whatever. No problem with any of that. Can be butch straight woman too.
In some homophobic countries (Iraq I think) gay people encouraged to change gender as a way of normalising sexuality. Deeply reactionary

Purplelife · 23/03/2018 09:04

First dates on Chanel 4 ( blind dates in a London restaurant) the other night had a butch lesbian looking for love with a feminine lesbian. Her date didn’t work out, so she is going to be on the next episode as well.

I thought Ellen was butch whereas her wife Portia is the feminine one.
Nothing to do with the short hair. It’s the way she is always dressed - masculine guy clothing style and trainers. Even at her wedding, she was trying to look more like the groom.

Mmmmmmmchips · 23/03/2018 09:08

Well could it not be said conversely that there seems to be more gay men these days that are not camp and do not outwardly show they are gay

LemonScentedStickyBat · 23/03/2018 09:10

None of us have any evidence of this outside of our own experience. For my part, despite being a woman married to a woman (together 25 years now), I stopped being part of any gay or lesbian scene long ago, but I can tell you that I certainly wondered if I was a trans man back in the 90s before settling on the label bisexual woman. I suspect that if I was 19 now i’d be easily convinced to start the road to transitioning but can never really know.

Coldilox · 23/03/2018 09:16

Lesbian here. Not butch, I went through a semi-butch phase when I first came out but it was half-hearted and I was young and just trying to establish my own identity.
However there are loads of butch lesbians around. No idea what you're talking about. I think there's more visible non-butch lesbians so the stereotype isn't as prevalent, i.e. People don't automatically assume lesbians will be butch.

Also Ellen, butch? She's really not. And she's still very cmvisible, she has one of the highest rated daytime shows in the states and she wins emmys for it pretty much every year.

EleanorXx · 23/03/2018 09:17

Well if that (highly improbable) story is true, her family are ill informed. Being trans isn’t being a feminine boy or masculine girl, it’s your gender identity, there are masculine trans woman and feminine trans men.

crunchymint · 23/03/2018 09:18

Yes lots of lesbians are now transitioning. I know very well two women who have transitioned. Neither were particularly masculine, both had been sexually abused as kids.

TerfsUp · 23/03/2018 09:37

A lesbian friend of mine recently said the same thing, OP.

To quote her, she "mourns the erasure of lesbians, particularly butch lesbians".

SirVixofVixHall · 23/03/2018 09:41

I think you should get this thread moved to feminist chat OP.

Coconutspongexo · 23/03/2018 10:00

Did you tell this taxi driver you’re a counsellor or something?

Why on earth would a taxi driver divulge such personal information to a complete stranger??

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 23/03/2018 10:28

Another who agrees with LRD

Ds1 was called gay and a girl all the way through senior school...no malice just 'bants' Hmm

Now the joke with his boyfriend and his boyfriends friends is that ds1 is 'too straight to be gay'

Child can't win Smile

Dungeondragon15 · 23/03/2018 10:50

I know plenty of "butch" lesbians (DD is lesbian as are many of her friends). I also know a couple of transgender men who both prefer men ie. weren't gay when they were girls. Obviously, other people may have a different experience but seems odd and must be very unusual for a parent to try and persuade their child to change gender unless they are from Thailand or Buddhists perhaps. It also seems odd that a taxi driver would strike up a conversation about their sexuality with a complete stranger. I call bullshit...

GerdaLovesLili · 23/03/2018 11:21

Oh dear gods. Not another trans thread. If you want to be be a butch lesbian be one. No one is going to forcibly come round your house, force you into having GRS and stuff a certificate into your hand declaring you a man. There is room for everyone on this planet.

C8H10N4O2 · 23/03/2018 11:22

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

Where are you getting this drivel from? You might want to so some research outside your apparently tiny little circle.

Nice to chuck in a bit of islaamophobia to add to your lesbophobia.

DN4GeekinDerby · 23/03/2018 11:25

Dipping Some taxi drivers are chatty. Once had one go on and on about an event at a pub we went past that included a stripper. I'm not sure why he thought I would be interested in that or why that was appropriate with my kids in the car.

OP, I think it's a mix in that gay clubs and other spaces have had a significant decline, lesbian spaces are practically gone in all but the biggest cities, having largely been replaced with online dating and meetup/facebook groups which have their own pros and cons and simply fashion moving on so many of the butch fashions before are now used by everyone.

I do think some feel pressured but that's not new. It was there in the '90s for me and I've had people discuss with me about it in the '70s. It just wasn't talked about as much, it was much less public, and I think it was easier then for that to not be one's entire identity - that one could be on T or trying to be male passing and also be a lesbian I think might have been more acceptable (though still controversial) then though I know women who do so now. I don't think it's a mass malicious movement, more that trans is in the public consciousness and people think they're being open and helpful by suggesting it. Sometimes they are and sometimes they're hitting a battered nerve. There is some talk of it in Gender Troubles: The Butches which I think is a pretty good look at modern butches though it is a US documentary and it's not entirely transferable.

Stillscreaming is right in that Twitter and other sites, including here, are not good representation - I've seen some weird stuff online like people trying to argue butches are just trans men who are afraid of surgery which is pretty insulting - but I think really that the issues for many lesbians and bisexual women in being visible and coming together are many much like women from many margenalized groups.

C8H10N4O2 · 23/03/2018 11:25

Why on earth would a taxi driver divulge such personal information to a complete stranger??

No idea if OP conversation was real but I've had taxi drivers, people at bus stops etc spill their life and disasters to me without any actual encouragement. OH tells me I just have a face for it, I suspect I'm not quick enough to close off the conversations.

SpringHen · 23/03/2018 11:27

Why on earth would a taxi driver divulge such personal information to a complete stranger??
You cant get many taxis if you havent been word vomited at much Wink I get about 2 a month and I know about one blokes best friends cancer and another blokes entire cv.

This is about YOUNG people, and "tomboys" and butch girls ARE being erased. Primary schools are teaching that liking "boy stuff" more than "girl stuff" makes people trans.

These young girls are not growing up in a bubble and its BS to say they can do what they want when society is pushing them into a box.

SpringHen · 23/03/2018 11:30

P.s. only yesterday someone whose name I dont know who works in a totally different department told me ALL about her dads health issues as well as some of her own.

In MN land everyone is introverts who only speak to their "inner circle". Outside MN people talk...

DullAndOld · 23/03/2018 11:31

" As we were talking she said that she was getting pressure from her family to undergo a sex change "

course she did...Hmm

MorningsEleven · 23/03/2018 11:32

Primary schools are teaching that liking "boy stuff" more than "girl stuff" makes people trans

What?

orangepie · 23/03/2018 11:37

C8H10N4O2

In Muslim countries they kill you for being gay, they do force gay men to transition or be killed.

Also I am a lesbian

PerfectlyDone · 23/03/2018 11:38

DS1's favourite colour was pink until he started nursery, within 2 weeks he had been 'taught' that 'pink was for girls'.

I truly don't understand why we as a society are not up in fucking arms about this kind of gender stereotyping. So many of the trans people I know in RL (who are NOT TRAs and who just want to get on with their own lives) have difficult backgrounds and have been screwed over one way or another by their upbringing, life experiences and sadly, abuse and/or sexual assault are a common theme.

SpringHen · 23/03/2018 11:44

People are transing bloody toddlers abd reception age kids because they express the "wrong" gender steriotypes.

So instead if teaching them that boys can prefer dolls, girls can prefer cars, yes little girl you can wear your hair short and that little boy can wear his hair long, the entire class is told that X is a girl now because they like long hair and dolls Sad because after all thats what being a girl is all about Sad

RatRolyPoly · 23/03/2018 11:47

DN4GeekinDerby really balanced post I thought, and interesting.

Do they really teach under 4s that pink is for girls? Where are they teaching this? Because it isn't in ds's nursery, or any nursery I've ever heard of!

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