James Kirkup Spectator article:
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/
(extract)
"Anyway the key point is this: some transwomen have a penis and no intention of getting rid of it. Some of those transwomen describe themselves as lesbians, by which they mean they are sexually attracted to women. I make no comment on any of that beyond reporting that this presents a problem for those lesbians who were born female, who say they’re not sexually aroused by people with penises, and who don’t want to have sex with those people. Is that a reasonable position? Is it respectable to state that your sexual preferences and choice of sexual partner depends, at least in part, on the potential partners’ genitalia?
Some transgender women don’t think so. They suggest that female-born lesbians who decline to sleep with transwomen who have a penis are guilty of bigotry or transphobia. Some of them express that argument in very blunt terms. (For more about what some call the “cotton ceiling” that excludes transwomen with penises from sex with lesbians, see this)
Some lesbians feel uncomfortable, to put it mildly, about such arguments. Lucy Masoud, a London firefighter trade unionist, says some transgender people are “bullying lesbians into having intercourse with people they don’t want to…. [I] just need to escape being labelled a transphobe for not wanting to sleep with people who have penises.”
To summarise: lesbians, who say they are sexually attracted to people with female genitals, report that they find themselves being told, sometimes aggressively, that they must include in their range of potential sexual partners people who have male genitals. And if they speak out to challenge such messages, they are told they are being “transphobic” or bigoted or similar.
Now, there are words for a person with a penis who insists that women who say they do not want to touch that penis should in fact touch that penis and who put pressure on women to do. But I won’t use those words here because this isn’t that sort of article. I’ll just say that this sort of behaviour strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn’t go unremarked or unchallenged.... continues
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/