Diva magazine is trans inclusive

[daimbars]

Statement on trans inclusion in a tweet from Diva, the UK's biggest lesbian magazine.
I'm pleased they've made their position clear, and support it.

A lesbian is a female homosexual. A bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman isn't a lesbian.

1) Is lesbian a verb or a noun?

2) How does the verb/noun intersect (if at all) with men?

Sample question for my BTEC in LGBT studies...

Women can also be misogynists

You would know.

Half right...

There are multiple threads on Reddit and other open fora where gay men are complaining about Grindr no longer being focused on gay men and that - to put it bluntly - they are looking for sex with a penis, not a vagina.

I wonder if there is any correlation between the decline of print media and refreshing an ideological stance in order to attract a new and burgeoning audience?

Personally, I prefer After Ellen.

Wow the number of people on here who wish to police who is and is not a lesbian is amazing so telling other woman what they are and are not even when they clearly identify as something is in no way ironic. Having meet a number of woman other the years who identify as lesbians and who are fine with dating trans woman. What give you the right to tell them they are not infact lesbians but are now bi because you say they are.

All to often the line pushed on Mumsnet is that being feminist means being gender critical and refusing to see trans women as women

Do you believe humans can change sex?

It's pretty clear what's going on here. People come onto the thread and make outrageously false or provocative statements designed to elicit a response that will get the responder banned.

As NatLuc says, as long as a trans person is upfront with their potential partner about their trans status why does it matter?

Gay men may be sick of seeing trans men on Grindr but you can hardly control who joins a hookup site. Not everyone is going to float your boat, it's easy enough to scroll past or swipe left.

The same with trans women, just because an individual lesbian does not wish to date a trans women why does that give that individual the right to dictate that trans women should be completely excluded from the lesbian community?

JuzzaL you had better contact Diva and tell them, they seem to have a different opinion.

Continuing with Grindr as an example - there was new guidance published towards the end of last year, about "engaging respectfully". This included advice on not making presumptions about people's genitals and not asking them if they have had any surgical procedures.

This runs counter to the stated desires of many gay men and lesbian women, who are clear that they are sexually attracted to penises and vaginas. It also runs counter to current ideology which says that being homosexual and only attracted to one set of sex organs is discriminatory.

Therefore a hookup site which does not allow its users to establish the physical characteristics of who they are talking to before taking their clothes off, is clearly going to present a problem.

It’s not about policing who is a lesbian or not.

It’s about knowing that words have meanings, and knowing what those meanings are.

So if someone with blonde hair says they have black hair, and I say, no you don’t have black hair, you have blonde hair, I am not policing who has black hair. I know what black is and I know what blonde is and I can see that this person’s hair is not black.

Lesbians are attracted to other adult human females. Trans women do not fall into that category. It is a matter of understanding words and definitions and not thinking we somehow have to alter those definitions because a tiny number of people are unhappy with them.

Well seeing as I'm a lesbian and a feminist I thought it was pretty relevant enoughisenough

I am not a lesbian. I am a straight woman.

I do not need to justify not including women in my ‘potential pool of people I might shag/fancy.’

I exclude women en masse, because I’m straight. That appears fairly logical to me and I’d be surprised and annoyed to be told it’s not.

I expect lesbians to be able to exclude males from their ‘pool of potential people they might shag’ en masse simply because they are male.

No other reason.

No ‘must take it case by case.’

To say a lesbian MUST look at every partner and justify why they don’t want to shag them is the rape culture bit. It’s denying their choice, as lesbians, to shag only women.

It’s the same issue we are facing everywhere isn’t it? NO means NO. Except it doesn’t, it means the start of a negotiation, and if that doesn’t work, being forced.

Lesbian: Female homosexual.

Homosexual: Exclusively attracted to the same sex.

Female: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

Rinse and repeat.

All to often the line pushed on Mumsnet is that being feminist means being gender critical and refusing to see trans women as women and lesbians (if that is their sexual orientation). This is yet more proof that a lot of femists see the world very differently.

Indeed. Damn this biological reality that keeps getting in the way of TRA fantasies.

*JuzzaL

Well seeing as I'm a lesbian and a feminist I thought it was pretty relevant enoughisenough

You don't even know what either of those two things mean.*

Again with the policing? She is both of those things. It might not sit with YOUR definition of feminism and you might not agree with her including transwomen within the lesbian community but that is not her problem.

Bowlofbabelfish - But it is not really like that..

Example of my typical types of communication on dating apps/sites

~you've matched with someone! / You've received a message~

Me: Oh cool! -starts messaging/replying-

Me: Heyy! How are you today?
Girl: Hii! I'm okay thanks, what about you?
Me: Yeah I am okay, listen, this is a total mood killer of a question but I need to ask you, did you see that I am trans?

Scenario 1

Girl: Glad you are well too! Yeah I did see, it doesn't bother me.

Scenario 2

Girl: Oh sorry I didn't see, but it doesn't bother me. Glad you are well though!

Scenario 3

Girl: Oh sorry I didn't see, I don't think that it would work out
Me: Hey that is okay, you don't need to apologise!

Where is the negotiation???

daimbars

"Feminism means equality of the sexes, it's not about excluding anyone."

ROFLMAO.

Has anyone got a copy of "Feminism For Beginners" they could send to dear old Daim?

You might as well say

"Lesbianism is about excluding no-one."

Interesting that my experience of the whole usage of 'identify' was in the context of men who have sex with men, and safer sex campaigns. So, as I recall, at some point the issue was men who had sex with other men, but who didn't identify as either gay (or bi). They were just chaps who had sex with chaps, but, for example, might have had a wife and children as well, and a totally straight heterosexual lifestyle apart from some of their recreational sexual activities.

So, in order to make sure that safer sex material reached this group as well, language had to be found. But note that the line was not erasing or hiding the material reality (males who had sex with other males), but admitting that not everyone used the same words for their lifestyle choices. This isn't the same as current 'identify as' usage, which seeks to obfuscate or ignore the material facts, like the actual sex or genital configuration of participants.

I don't care what someone identifies AS (unless I am asking more social questions about why someone who is homosexual, doesn't call themselves gay or lesbian or whatever), I care about what they are and what they do. The objective versus the subjective.

I do appreciate the linguistic comments made by others, I will admit it hadn't actually occurred to me that calling a relationship between a bisexual woman and a lesbian a lesbian relationship might not necessarily be the best usage. Words matter, reality matters, and opinions may differ...................

DIVA isn't the lesbian equivalent of Big Brother BTW, we are (still) allowed to disagree with the editors of a commercial enterprise as to what our own shared reality as lesbians means, or should mean...............BTW, just looking for some poetry by Judy Grahn, and came across instead 'Metaformia, a journal of menstruation and culture' that she is editor of. And the Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke is still worth reading!

"Feminism means equality of the sexes

No it doesn’t.