Feminists can disagree with anyone (and themselves) and frequently do.
There's no such thing as a unified feminist consciousness after all, just many individuals with a shared broad idea - that women should be liberated from the stupid stuff in society that consciously or unconsciously puts them lower than men.
The problem here is how you define women and lesbians.
Our position is broadly that:
- Women are the human mortals who are biologically born into a body of the female sex; you can't feel or become female or male, you just are
- Sex isn't ascribed to babies by medics, it's just "there" in some form. Sex cannot be changed.
- Society treats sexes differently. This leads to gender stereotypes, which are societal constructs. Some of them seem to have been born out of historical patterns ("women give birth to babies and keep them alive, better with children and at home; men in fields with livestock, better at science and politics"), some out of preferences ("pink is a boy's colour; now it's a girl's"). Gender is changeable.
- Lesbians, by definition, are women who are attracted to other women. This isn't cruelty at men who wish they were women, but yes it is exclusionary, that's the point. If a lesbian enjoys penises, by definition she's not a lesbian anymore. Still a person who enjoys sex with women, but not lesbian.
- Women who hate the "feeling" of being a woman and want to be a man, will always be women biologically, and probably have been socialised a certain way too. And the same with men vice-versa.
So that's where posters here often come from.
If you believe that womanhood is a sensation or a feeling, and that anyone can be one, it's really difficult for us to have meaningful conversations - because that basic underlying premise determines all the rest of the logical arguments. We say "women" and you think "bigots".
But on that note, it's really hard to know what trans means and I think we sometimes talk at cross-purposes in what we mean there too. What qualifies after all? When do you become trans? Is it the moment of declaration? Social transition? Medical transition?
If you say that "woman is a feeling" then:
- How do you distinguish between someone with agonising gender dysphoria, someone with a kind of fetish, or someone who's jumping on a bandwagon to attention-seek?
- How do you protect vulnerable young people from mislabelling themselves thanks to messages like "if you're not feminine than you're a man" and ending up infertile? (I'm thinking of autistic kids like me especially here, but it's not limited to them).
- How do you assign medical resources to help those desperately asking for it, when others say it's not a medical or mental health issue?
- How do you protect women in general from men who are just out for a good old sexual kick? I've seen posts like "that's not a real transwomen then" in response to cases where men identifying as women have done shitty things; but then what on earth is?
- How do you help actually biologically born women to fight inherent sexism and reach equality, when people born as men can take opportunities like scholarships, sports, refuges, and more - because it validates something inside them?
Sorry, this has turned into an epically long post, and I'm not even sure if you'll bother reading it, but I don't want you to think we're all just random lunatics dead set against transpeople or something @MillyTheKid.
We're against male rights activists who are riding roughshod over all of us in the name of transactivism.