Reading Pride

[JellySlice]

Looks like I'm going with my 15yo and her friends to Pride tomorrow. They are naive rainbow-swallowing trans-allies, and I am a gender-critical liberal (small-L). I am not going to spoil their fun or embarrass dd, I am simply there as their discreet chaperone.

But...

Should I, still discreet, do something...more?

Suggestions...?

I’M A VAGITARIAN

That slogan is total utter blissikins!

Hi Namechanged,

RK baffles me too. They claims that TERF is not a slur, but when you go to their Twitter feed, it's all "fuck Terfs" and so on. Very disingenuous, Neither is there any attempt to engage philosophically with objections: in fact, it appears that merely responding to their paper constitutes "harassment by TERFS" which is triggering their "PTSD." Well, if you are going to make contentious metaphysical claims like "I take it as well-established that transwomen are women. Full stop", then you had better be prepared for people to question them. In addition, it's pretty bad scholarship to merely assert a major claim like that without any defense. I was taken aback to see it appearing in one of the top journals in our profession (I'd be concerned if I saw it in an undergraduate essay, for instance).

Entryism is like a virus. It's about hijacking the reproductive powers of a host cell and giving nothing in return.

Yes.

Every generation thinks they invented whatever it is. I know my generation didn't invent the rainbow flag, but we were the first generation to grow up with it, to truly embrace it and bring it and what it stood for right out of the closet and into the wider world.

And bow it has been hijacked by parasitic viruses.

What Knick said.

I cannot, simply cannot, force myself to be attracted to a male born person: it's a primitive response, and one I should not be made ashamed of having. It is peculiar that gay men do not, in general, seem to be accused of transphobia for not considering transmen as partners. Why might that be? Well, male entitlement to our bodies is surely part of the explanation.

Should I be outraged that Cate Blanchette doesn't want to date me? Is she lesbophobic? Of course not. But it's exactly the same logic. I care that people treat me with respect, and that, as a lesbian, I am not discriminated against legally. But as to whether people are "open" to dating lesbians? Well that's just silly. I have no right to dictate anything and NEITHER DO TRANSWOMEN.

Yup, here's another lesbian who used to go to Pride, who even used to sit on a Stonewall committee back in the day before the T was added. I left after receiving a lecture from the supercilious lesbian queer-theory proselytising academic who headed up the local branch of Stonewall about how my feminism was so old-fashioned and how my objections to T being included were ridiculous.

Pride and related events are so straight these days that a couple of years ago when I was giving out leaflets advertising a lesbian event it was difficult to find any lesbians to give them to. For every dyke who took a leaflet I had a dozen Pride-going women say 'Oh, I'm not a lesbian.' Three or four years ago and I haven't been to one since. When other lesbians try to encourage me to go along I tell them why and I've lost a fair few people I counted as friends that way, though a few are beginning to make their way back having had second thoughts about T.

In my area local area the lesbians are mainly underground these days. We meet, there are groups, there are activities, but it's all done on personal recommendation, which makes it hard for any women new to the area or young women because there's no way of knowing we exist.
I could weep when I think of the thriving, publicly advertised lesbian groups and events that we held in the 90s and noughties. All secret now.

thatdamn So I guess the young women go to the internet, or to Pride; where, as young women are, they are bulldozed by men's opinions..?

Hi Sandunes,

Yes, I have. Some time ago, I was chatting on-line to a, what seemed to me, to be a transvestite (he liked wearing women's clothes but had no desire to change sex as far as I know). We went out for drinks etc, and all was good until the day he sat in my living room and told me I was transphobic for not wanting to date him as he was really "Sarah", and since I'm a lesbian, surely I'm attracted to self-identified women.

Er, no.

Then I encountered it on-line too. It's what made me aware of the whole mess with self-identification after years of considering myself an ally. I have now lost friends for coming out as gender critical (and gained a heap of interesting ones!) and been told to "live and let live." Such comments tend to come from those who have nothing to lose in this debate.

It was the Cotton Ceiling that first alerted me to the monstrous misogyny of extreme transactivism. I'm not a lesbian but I'm very clear about my own sexual orientation and the genitals of my sexual partners are very important to me. I assume the same is true of lesbians. If they didn't care that would make them bisexual.

Sexual orientation is fixed and transition doesn't appear to alter it, though I've read that some MtFs who had been exclusively sexually attracted to women will also have sex with men post-transition, but less because they've become bisexual than because it validates their feminine identity.

Homosexuals are same sex attracted, 404, not same gender. Sexual orientation is recognized and protected by law. A transwoman is of the male sex. Lesbians are people of the female sex who have sex exclusively with other females. Calling yourself a lesbian when you were born male is appropriative and disrespectful.

I'm sure there are women who will have sex with transwomen but they would not, by definition, be lesbians. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual, FFS. But words have meanings and the meaning of lesbian is very clear cut.

More generally, I'd guess there are plenty of women who are happy having a 'queer' relationship with a man who identifies as a woman, in fact you sometimes see it in desperately fashionable couples where both lay claim to minority identities while in old money they're basically a straight couple.

Meant to make the point that as sexual orientation remains the same, and there are far more straight than gay men, it's not surprising that lesbians feel themselves under siege by the number of transwomen who identify as 'lesbian'.

Transition doesn't overcome socialization either, and I know how adding a man to a previously all women group changes the dynamic. Over the years I have read dozens of accounts of how lesbian groups have fallen apart once men who identified as women joined. Not saying that the new arrivals wanted that at all, but that was the result.

A few years back I stopped attending marches for better pay and conditions or defending my pension because I wouldn't match besides people carrying Soviet flags or placards about Israel, most of whom don't work for my department anyway.

Start your own movement, don't hijack mine. If you can't find enough people to march for your own cause maybe it isn't supported as well as you think it is.
This this this!