Why can’t transgender lesbians just date each other?

[Hithere12]

I keep seeing online transgender women so angry a female lesbian doesn’t want to date someone trans, but it begs the question why can’t they just date each other?

If they genuinely believe a trans woman is without question a woman and they are attracted to women then surely this would solve all their problems in terms of finding a partner? They could just date each other? Unless they don’t want to date trans women because they don’t see trans women as real women? Hmm

Okay, I agree and will stick with trans woman as a term.

I have a habit of taking things very literally so the use of 'anyone with a penis' to me means someone with an actual penis, hence my confusion. If I've offended anyone I'm sorry.

and also that men have a right to sex. Which kind of impinges on women's rights to say no directly.

Absolutely, which is nothing new. What is relatively new is this idea of a male lesbian, which used to be just a bad joke. Now the Equalities Office includes males who identify as women in its report on sexual health of lesbian and bisexual women. It's insane.

Joystir

I kind of get what you meant about "lesbians sometimes sleeping with men". I think maybe it was sth that happened more in the past?

My mum only has relationships with women now - she has had two LTRs with women in the past 10 years. She would not now consider having sex with a man.

But she was married to my dad for 20-odd years. She once said that when she was growing up in 1950s Liverpool, in a very decent lower MC suburb, she just didn't know that lesbians were a thing. She knew about gay men - or "poufs" as her parents called them. But she just didn't have a frame of reference for women who had sex with women.

She got married and had children because that's what you did. It was only later in life that she realised that the feelings she had for women were something she had never experienced before with men.

......is that the kind of thing you mean?

A certain LM was asked this and said something like "trans women are women but not for dating purposes".
Nuff said.

If of course, you happen to think lesbians who don’t do penis “don’t really mean it”...

it comes across as a bit offensive to make a blanket statement about 'I wouldn't date anyone with the characteristic xxx'

its fine to not want to sleep with a lesbian who has a penis. But, if you won't sleep with them after they have had SRS, then its obviously transphobic.

It's not offensive or transphobia, it's sexuality.
I am attracted to men with a fully functioning penis. There is no way on this planet I could ever consider dating a transman who either hadn't had surgery or had a metoidioplasty (enlarged clitoris) or phalloplasty (fake penis made from a section of arm). I couldn't ever be turned on my that, I would find it a turn off in the same way as I find any woman's body sexually repellent.

@JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff thank you for putting into words what I've been aware of for some time but have only recently begun to understand - I'm talking about your mother's early experiences.

I had no awareness that lesbianism even existed, just instinct and crushes and terrifying attraction to girls and breathless stolen kisses and fondles. Too soon boys entered the fray and took over. There seemed to be no choice in the matter and I've been married 40 years to a lovely man who knows I am really bisexual and yet if I'd been young today I think I might well have been lesbian.

If I was on my own or end up on my own I would not be attracted to a trans man or trans woman. I know that for sure just as I would not be attracted to anyone, male or female, who was surgically altered in any way, like a boob job or inflated lips or bum, chest or six-pack implants.

I like natural, and am attracted to people who are confident in their own skin, end of.

There’s a massive difference between lesbians who were railroaded into compulsive heterosexuality, like I was, and an out lesbian who chooses to have sex with someone who has, or used to have a penis. The first is societal coercion and the second is bisexuality. And as someone who falls into the first camp, so has experienced sex with both men and women, I can tell you that there’s a million differences, big and small, between having sex with a man and having sex with a woman. Again, anyone who has experienced both and says otherwise, wasn’t paying attention.

So over this idea that 'SRS' and the removal of a penis suddenly makes a male an acceptable possible partner to a woman who is oriented sexually to women.

It betrays complete ignorance of what female genitalia are like and what they are capable of. It does the thing which AWAs supposedly dislike of 'reducing' a woman down to biology by basically saying that as long as there is a hole, this is a woman.

The 'transphobia' on display in rejecting the advances of a post OP male trans person seems to be actually recognizing and valuing women as distinct sexual beings in their own right, not just people with holes to poke.

This is hardly something I will be ashamed of.

Anyone saying that lesbians are transphobic for not wanting sex with male born people, (regardless of dick) is a raging homophobe.

SRS is irrelevant imo.

What’s this “it’s fine not to want to sleep with a lesbian with a penis but if they have SRS...”

NO. That is rape culture. People get to define their own sexuality. They can reject whomever they want.

voice

Good post. And it really struck me: you can say as bluntly as you like, as a straight woman, that you'd find sleeping with another woman repellent, and no one would question that. Yet here we are, women being so careful with our words in talking about not being attracted to someone with a penis because we're homosexual, and carefully justifying why, because even talking about excluding men from our bodies has been framed as so hurtful and offensive to men.

I swear, I think I've peaked and fought out of the foggy depths of this gaslighting and then I find a whole new fog I'm struggling out of. Feck that. I am homosexual and yes, I find penises repellent. Bring on the firewood, be careful I don't hex you.

This may not be popular but to me it is in the same line of only being attracted to black people and being told you must consider dating Dave down the road cause he's been to corfu for 3 weeks and has such an impressive dark tan that he identifies as black now, never mind the thousands of years of cultural experience, DNA and general common sense that tells us that just because Davies skin has darkened it obviously doesn't make him black. Black isn't a costume or feeling (which people seem to understand)

But when it comes to being a woman that's exactly what we are being told. Being a woman is nothing more than a costume a man can put on.

Being attracted to black people is not a sexual orientation. There really is no need to make false comparisons with being attracted to a 'type'. Lesbians don't date males because lesbians date other females. It's that simple.

I had another thought on this. Lesbians don't have the need to consider contraception as of course there is no sperm involved. Surely if they have sex with a transwoman there is the risk of pregnancy and therefore they would need to use contraception (and no doubt condoms are triggering in some way). So yet again, the women have to give up something else and pump themselves full of hormones.

No but that is some people's sexual attraction basis and that's completely valid. The point is you are attracted to who you are and its no one's right to say otherwise.

Also I'm a lesbian so I get it. All too well. I've been told I'm transphobic for saying I wouldn't date a transwomen.

That’s bollocks. Not wanting to date someone because of their skin colour is nothing like not wanting to date someone because they’re the opposite sex to who you’re attracted. Stop equating racism with homosexuality. Honestly, I’m fed up of having to state the bleeding obvious. I’m glad you agree that nobody should feel obliged to shag anyone they don’t want to, and so you should, but this equivalence with racism is just offensive.

Nobody is sexually oriented to a specific race. That's not what orientation is.

Magdalen Berns has a video where she elucidates very clearly the distinction between orientation and preference. Obviously everyone is entitled to their preferences without judgement or censure. But sexual orientation is a characteristic protected by law, it has a clear definition and is fundamentally different to having a 'type'.

NO. That is rape culture. People get to define their own sexuality. They can reject whomever they want.

Obviously agree.

Anything to do with the 'cotton ceiling' is rape culture IMO. Its just vile.

But even if your ‘type’ is not eg Japanese you are just as entitled to not to sleep with anyone who is Japanese, or with a moustache, or who weighs more than 9 stone, or wears hats as you are not to sleep with someone who doesn’t match your sexual orientation. If your type is 8 1/2 stone men, with red hair, big feet, who wears wellies and speaks Flemish then you might be severely limiting your dating pool but you are perfectly entitled to do so with having any accusations ‘phobia’ thrown at you.

I'm not sure that orientation is that clearly defined, TBH. In the law, perhaps, but really, I think most of the terms used are ones that are approximate. People's sexuality and history and experiences are too varied and so often people use the language that describes what they know about themselves most closely or in the way that is most relevant or that fits their current situation best.
Calling people bigoted for their sexual attraction is nasty and stupid, but realistically there are many people who under certain circumstances have had sexual attraction or a relationship to someone not usual for them, and there are people of all sexualities who have sometimes had sexual relationships with a trans person who presents as the sex they are normally attracted to. It just doesn't ring very true to me to tell all such people they are all really bisexuals, whatever they think.

told that rape victims can get over their rapes but a trans woman has to deal with issues around being a trans women forever, etc.

FFS. Why is it only women who can 'get over' things, who are expected to 'get over' things? That really is shit. I hope the woman got some support from somewhere.

Birds that is completely true. I was just speaking to the comparison between fancying a specific type of person and being oriented towards women. I do appreciate the comparison was made to underline that everyone has the right to boundaries, regardless of their attractions, but I do think there's a danger of downplaying lesbian sexual orientation as 'just' another preference in the panoply of things we can take or leave, and I think that is somewhat playing into the hands of those who would like to chip away at the firm, clear boundaries of the lesbians who have very clearly, for a long time and via a long struggle, won the right to say no to men without any qualifying reasoning about preferences at all.

Goosefoot, the term 'lesbian' is clearly defined. It does not mean 'anyone who feels that they are a woman and is attracted to anyone else who feels that they are a woman'.

It is very simply a woman who is exclusively oriented towards her own sex. Often, it involves a lifetime of struggle in a culture that is steeped in countering messages about the reality of that orientation. But that says nothing about the definition of 'lesbian'.