'Get the L Out' Statement by the lesbian protesters at Pride London

[R0wantrees]

getthelout.wordpress.com/blog/

Why “Get The L Out” ?
July 5, 2018
Angela C. Wild
Who We Are

Get the L Out is a group of lesbian and feminist individuals and organisations, opposing the increasingly anti-lesbian and misogynistic LGBT movement and the erasure of lesbians

Why We Protest

We believe that lesbian rights are under attack by the trans movement and we encourage lesbians everywhere to leave the LGBT and form their own independent movement, as well as to be vocal and take action against the proposed changes to the GRA.

Get the L Out believes trans politics (with uncritical support from the LGBT movement) does the following:

Promotes the social transition of lesbians, encouraging them to present as straight men thus favouring the pretence of heterosexuality over lesbianism – this is nothing more than a form of conversion therapy.
Promotes the medical transition of lesbians and pushes harmful drugs (untested hormone blockers, Lupron etc.) as well as unnecessary medical practices on perfectly healthy bodies – these are a form of misogynist medical abuse against lesbians.
Promotes the rights of heterosexual males who “identify” as women and lesbians (despite most of them still retaining their male genitals) over the rights of lesbians to choose their sexual partners. This new ‘queer’ LGBT politics thus coerces lesbians to accept the penis as a female organ and promotes heterosexual intercourse between male and female as a form of lesbian sex. This is simply a new facet to rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality." (continues)

freezingsheep

I don't use Twitter so I won't be @ing you

It's interesting to me how much you've pleaded for people not to be mean. It's almost as if you are making a statement that we just are going to pull you apart.

if you want a response, it's rude to just say your point and then bugger off. I am not running after you. If you want to come back I'll debate . Some of your points are interesting, and worth answering

Oh dear @freezingsheep, you've rather naively outed yourself as "the wrong kind of feminist" for Mumsnet.

Here’s why you’re all wrong. I’m not going to stay and debate though. Also I’ve heard you’re all nasty feminists, please don’t be unkind to poor little me, I’m just sticking up for the poor oppressed trans people against the hateful Mumsnet feminists. Aren’t I brave?

Nailed it

freezing sheep

This recent thread is worth reading:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3259650-Lesbian-gets-banned-from-LGBTQ-messaged-board-for-trying-to-talk-about-the-lesbophobia-in-trans-activism

James Kirkup Spectator article,
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/

The Economist has commissioned a series of essays from various perspectives called identities

They are all worth reading and considering.

One of which is written by PIPPA FLEMING & relevent to your questions:
www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/03/the-gender-identity-movement-undermines-lesbians

Society (certainly in this country) gets lesbianism now. Women's rights and gay rights still have a long way to go, but it's been 20 years since Brookside's first pre-watershed lesbian kiss. And there are an increasing number of great TV and film characters to help joe public understand the lesbian experience.

Lesbians don't live in fantasy TV world where they get married and everyone is happy for them and they skip merrily off into the sunset with their six cats though.

I and many of my lesbian friends were harassed by random men on Saturday merely for existing. This is normal for lots of lesbians, especially those who have the audacity to wear a skirt or have long hair while simultaneously being gay.

It's wonderful that people watching TV think they now understand the lesbian experience, but if that's the extent of their frame of reference, they really don't.

Apologies, the series in the Economist is called 'Transgender Identities'

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3295999-The-Economist-Series-of-invited-essays-on-Transgender-Identities-seeks-to-uphold-the-liberal-value-of-open-debate

Sheep, you say feel free to rip me to shreds on here.

You think your incontinent pile of steaming sheep shit is worth my time? Don't flatter yourself.

Dumping on a thread and running off is pretty childish. Do you knock on people's doors and run away too?

So… me again. Seems mumsnet sent me the notifications anyway! Yes I was scared of you. No I shouldn't have run away. No idea if I'm replying to the whole thread or a specific post, so…

It looks like some more people posted while I was writing - apologies if I double-plopped.

I have read the links, @R0wantrees, thanks for taking the time. They make a lot more sense than the original statement. I guess I can see what's being said, and - as I said - I'm not really qualified to comment. But yeah - the podcast I listened to really got me thinking and there just didn't seem to be any representation of that angle so I stuck my oar in. Maybe poorly, maybe in the wrong place, but hey ho.

To all the other comments telling me to bugger off and that I know nothing about the lesbian experience… you're right. But then… would it be fair to say you know nothing about the trans experience either?

Sorry if I'm the wrong kind of feminist. Actually no, not sorry. I'm a bloody brilliant feminist! But a slightly sheepish one.

This HAS gone better than the one and only time I posted on reddit, at least!

freezingsheep
many people new to the wider issues have found this thread useful:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

The trans community is small and trying to get a voice

No, I think the trans community is quite well heard.

At a UK level, the Government Equalities Office conducted its first annual survey of transgender people in 2009 to try to understand their needs. An action plan was published under Teresa May in the Home Office in 2011. It is quite comprehensive, although it tends to assume trans = gender dysphoria. I am fairly sure you could plot a line from this action plan to the current GRA with trans lobby groups meeting along the way with the government. Indeed, the government were reaching out to trans individuals and groups from that action plan onwards. So trans individuals and groups ARE being given a voice and have been for a good number of years. This is right and proper.

What is missing is the impact assessment of changing access to various provisions from sex based criteria to gender-based criteria and from observable biological markers to individual ‘innate’ identities.

What is also apparent is loud and vocal shouting down of female bodied people who question the lack of impact assessment, and the presence of male-bodied people in previously same-sex spaces (or relationship models, for that matter).

The Scottish government website hosts advisory content from Stonewall and Scots Transgender Alliance about trans school children, where there has been no impact assessment done. It is parents who might object to that guidance who are denied a voice.

When trans groups hashtags nodebate, it is not the trans community being denied a voice.

When women ask for risk assessments, ask for same-sex spaces, state that this means female-bodied people only, they are decried as bigoted, and transphobic. So, I really do not believe it is trans people who are struggling to make themselves heard. I hear trans voices loud and clear. I just do not agree with what is being said.

*GRA consultation

'Society (certainly in this country) gets lesbianism now'
hahaha nope

In the same way that 'society' understands Muslims to the extent they can make funny jokes about being hungry during Ramadan, society understands lesbians to the extent that they will ask pretty ones to have a threesome with men, and will hope less conventionally beautiful ones stay at home and don't interrupt their fantasising.

I can't go out with my girlfriend without fearing and at times experiencing violence. And now the 'progressive' community tells me I'm wrong for conceptualising my orientation as sexual rather than based on gender.

Listen to lesbians.
If you don't, I can't see how you're that brilliant a feminist.

You can listen to lesbians without hating anyone, I promise. You can listen and feel ok about being straight yourself. You're not going to hear much while plopping bossy nonsense on threads like this though - why post if you don't want to learn and have your opinion challenged?

To all the other comments telling me to bugger off and that I know nothing about the lesbian experience… you're right. But then… would it be fair to say you know nothing about the trans experience either?

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, it was the arrogance and flippancy of the suggestion that things are fine for lesbians now as there are quite a few on TV that moved me to comment.

I would never say oh, 'I know about the refugee experience because I watched a documentary' to a group of refugees.

It's nothing to do with my views on trans people or anything else - your comment on lesbian issues being largely solved and your evidence being TV just smacked of privilege.

Listen to lesbians.
If you don't, I can't see how you're that brilliant a feminist.

You can listen to lesbians without hating anyone, I promise. You can listen and feel ok about being straight yourself. You're not going to hear much while plopping bossy nonsense on threads like this though - why post if you don't want to learn and have your opinion challenged?

Indeed.

Please don't say cis lesbian

How are lesbians cis?

How is being female and homosexual conforming to societal expectations of womanhood and femininity?

I'm tired and don't have the energy to reply to everything you've said cistern so forgive me.

Your claim that transwomen are not men is something that I suspect I am not allowed to counter on this thread, but I disagree. My previous sentence is not 'anti-trans' but 'pro-female'. I am further than conservative than you can imagine, but this is fact, not fiction.

Cis-women have the privilege of not having to conform to gender stereotyping, whereas if a trans-woman does this, her entire identity is challenged (clearly even within the LGBT community). All I can say on this statement is AAARRGHH, because I'm constrained by politeness and MNHQ from saying what I think most readers would say. Head-fuck time:- so 'cis' women have the privilege of not being confined by gender sterotypes but 'trans' people are? Do you know any females?

Also a) Reminder to you, when you talk about post-hormone therapy, the majority of males who call themselves women including some who claim they are lesbians do not seek any treatment, either hormonal or surgery.

b) your statement that post-hormone therapy 'their anatomy 'behaves' in a similar way to female anatomy? How on earth does a penis on hormone therapy suddenly 'behave' like the complex anatomy of a biological female? Really? Yet again, I would question whether you've been around any biological females?

In fact, there are around just as many trans lesbians as there are cis

In the anime, fantasy, online world maybe.

Wanders off the thread trying to imagine a 'post-hormone therapy penis' behaving like female anatomy!!!

I'm still chortling at the notion lesbians have made it because Beth Jordache slow-smooched another attractive feminine woman on a soap decades ago.

Cistern, you say:

Trans-women (and those who do not identify as male - though I suspect this is more specifically targeting trans-women based on the appalling medical transition comment) are not men. This is unequivocally anti-trans in that it implies transgender individuals are only their 'preferred' gender socially - which is later deemed conservatism and effectively dismisses trans people entirely.

But transwomen are only their preferred gender socially. Human beings can't change sex. Transwomen can take steps to alter their presentation or their body, but they remain male.

I don't understand why you think that knowing people can't change sex "dismisses" trans people. You're there. We see and hear you. We spend time with you. But we won't collude in delusion.

Some top Feminism going on here tonight. I for one feel enriched.

Kudos to those ofyou who have tried to debate cisternpost, was too much word salad 🥗 for me I’m afraid! Why are the arguments put forwards by trans supporters always so complicated?! Is it on purpose I wonder...?

It's against posting guidelines so...