Feminists only claim to care about lesbians in order to justify transphobia

[emerencesometimeshopeful]

Came across this article today. Posted by a friend (ex-friend maybe) who I know would identify with the author.

I fundamentally disagree that the brave new world gives more options than the old one. I'm not even convinced that the numbers of people identifying themselves for statistical purposes as lgbtq+ is useful given the myriad of ways one can identify and fall under stonewall's umbrella.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/lesbians-trans-women-gender-issues-erasure-lgbt-rights-a9005151.html

DarkAtEndOfTunnel

Thank you for taking on board what I'm trying to say.

As an aside, there is an argument to be had that a consensus is in order, (although it's true a consensus isn't always right). But I've never really felt the need for a consensus because when I come across a woman who is a feminist I just feel relief, I recognize her instantly. Happens to me all the time and I just assume it happens this way with other women

The idea that marriage is a form of prostitution only makes sense if you're thinking of the wife being kept by her husband, relying on him for money and having to provide sex on tap in return.

Now I'm not saying marriages like that no longer exist, but they become rarer all the time. Marital rape became illegal in 1992.

When I got married we talked a lot about how we wanted our relationship to be. We examined our experiences and decided to ditch things that had been unhelpful a in our families of origin. We decided that being married meant we only had to work by our own rules - our relationship was noone else's business.

I had a career, he had a job (which he didn't enjoy). As soon as we could afford it he became a house husband. He was much better at that kind of thing than I am. I would never have got my business off the ground without his constant encouragement.

A marriage can be any shape the two of you choose. It's just a formalized committed relationship. I'm assuming that lesbian marriages escape the accusation of prostitution, or is it all marriages?

This is really tiresome. Telling women that marriage is prostitution is offensive and - more importantly - it's not true.

It's always seemed to me that as most women are het then we have a lot of power if we only give our love to men who take the trouble to empathize with us, men who are worth our time. My marriage was based on the importance of truthfulness and shared values.

As a feminist I am concerned about all women. I want us free.

You're not a feminist though, are you sakura? You're a TRA who has come here to derail the thread away from the scumbaggery of Carrie Lyell.

So at last you give an example sakura that makes sense, but taken from a completely different context.

And yes this conversation has derailed this thread.

You're not a feminist though, are you sakura?

Certainly doesn't look like one from where I'm sitting.

*You're not a feminist though, are you sakura?

Certainly doesn't look like one from where I'm sitting.*

Maybe I'm not then.
All I know is that feminism has to mean something, it can't just be anything. If that excludes me from feminism then so be it. I'll just post random opinions

The article ignores that it has been lesbian feminists who have led the charge against trans ideology. Mary Daly and Janice Raymond have already been mentioned, and more recently there have been Sheila Jeffreys, Julia Long, Elizabeth Hungerford (who coined the term "gender critical"). Gallus Mag set up the blog Gender Trender which recorded the assault on women and our rights long before any of this had even touched the mainstream. Years before Mumsnet FWR realised how harmful trans is to women, there were lesbian feminist bloggers creating theory and standing against this new anti-woman ideology.

This woman is yet another idiot, and totally disingenuous.

It doesn't matter if you're a lesbian or straight, almost all women have had the experience of men threatening or harming us with their penises. Of course we stand together against that.

All I know is that feminism has to mean something, it can't just be anything.

So, sakura: please define feminism in your terms.

Telling women that marriage is prostitution is offensive and - more importantly - it's not true

Pisses me right off

And now to be told that because im married i cant think prostitution is wrong

Just as well that i dont pay much attention to some of the opinions on mumsnet...pay too much attention and you’ll probably be driven insane

Back to the op, I'm not hiding transphobia by supporting Lesbian women that don't want to have sex with a female penis. There are Lesbian women that don't face this attempted rape, it's not coercion ffs There are Lesbian women that do face the threat of rape, as has been revealed in a fucking heartbreaking thread on FWR. I will support each and every Female Lesbian with their right make their own choice. Human beings cannot change Sex. I'll never believe that lie
@sakura184
Start your own thread. You can berate bad feminists as much as you like on that. In the meantime DFOD

Feminists only claim to care about lesbians in order to justify transphobia

That is not true for me, but it is true for me that I didn't really think about lesbians until I discovered the whole gender ideology thing going on. And for me that started from a selfish place. I got pregnant and suddenly noticed the really heavy gender divide in our society and began to feel worried for my unborn child. Feminism just wasn't in my life before that. I didn't think about women as a group. I didn't know any lesbians that I'm aware of. Once I found out more about feminism and I met (online) a lot of lesbian feminists, I began to think about women as a group. And that includes lesbian women very much so. And I could not separate feminism from lesbians. The women I probably learned the most about feminism from are lesbian feminists.

I've been musing on the woman who wrote this drivel and other older butch lesbians supporting their trans 'lesbian' sisters. They all come out with "It hasn't happened to me so hasn't happened blah blah blah"

So bearing in mind a trans 'lesbian' is a straight male with what could be considered an obsession with what is stereotypical woman. As a straight male with such an obsession I imagine they are likely to be attracted to women/lesbians that are more stereotypical. Which is a million miles away from the butch lesbian that wrote this drivel so hardly surprising she's not had any issues with the cotton ceiling!

Young lesbians however are having a really shut time and need all the help and support they can get. Even from us less than pure feminists

You know what gives me the irrits? Being a lesbian who ended up married to a man because I bought into a religion that said that vagina must welcome penis, who then found my way out of the religion, began to find peace with my sexuality again, and discovered that there were great swathes of liberal minded people ready to tell me that actually, the religion that told me vagina must accept penis was right all along and that if I disagree, it's because I'm a bigot.

That really fucking annoys me.

That really fucking annoys me

Yeah

I can see how that would be irksome

If you go on threads namalting then you're a blatant anti feminist

I understand this bit. I'm sure you've called me anti- feminist. It doesn't bother me. I have my own views on what affects women and what is important. Given how often I've seen radical feminists say liberal feminists are "anti- feminist" and vice versa "anti- feminist" is pretty meaningless. All it means is "you have said something which doesn't accord with my views of what a feminist should believe"

Probably a gender ally who agrees with feminists on trans issues. Gender allies who aren't feminists should really stick to the trans threads

And you've lost me here.

Start your own thread.You can beratebadfeminists as much as you like on that. In the meantime DFOD

Sorry. I've just written a long response to Sakura. I read the article. I did think that the lesbian daughter of my closest friend and her girlfriend would be likely to agree with it From the , admittedly brief, conversations about trans issues I've had with them I don't think they would recognise the concept of lesbian erasure.

The problem lesbians have is that no one of any influence from Stonewall down is doing anything for lesbians right now.
The only online site that isn't full of tips telling lesbians how to give blowjobs is AfterEllen and they are constantly attacked for prioritising lesbian (and bi women) only content. I agree that some feminists probably don't particularly care about lesbians and are using us as a group as a tool but the majority are not and there are are a significant number of lesbian feminists involved.
Denying there is an issue between lesbians and the males who think their are lesbians is most of the problem and could be easily solved but all the main LGBT+ groups ar running scared or have been taken over by trans activists.

@FloralBunting
Exactly the same here. I spent a long time thinking there was something wrong with me for being so repelled by male bodies and especially penises. My church school upbringing and homophobic family didn't help.
Now, when I come out I am faced with the same homophobia - again there is something wrong with me if I am not attracted to males and their penises.
It is so ridiculous I often struggle to believe it - then I check out a dating app and the latest members of the lesbian online group I am in and it is immediately very real again.

sakura184: Being nice has got us nowhere

Listening to others isn't "being nice". It's trying to understand what they believe. We can't rebut their arguments if we don't listen to them first. We can't expose the cotton ceiling as male sexual entitlement if we don't read what TRAs are saying about coercing access to lesbian women's bodies. We can't expose the lesbian erasure inherent in telling a lesbian that she's attracted to feminine presentation instead of people with female bodies if we don't listen to Rapey Riley J Dennis's godawful videos about "genital preferences".

We have to respond to TRAs' actual arguments, not straw TRAs the.way they misrepresent our views and attack straw radfems. This means we have to listen.

OP: lol at the idea that we don't care about lesbians. At the WPUK meeting I went to, there were LOADS of lesbians in the audience (and the pub afterwards). Many of us ARE lesbians.

1 The coercion by these males is aimed at the younger lesbians who are coming to terms with their sexuality. It is these young women we aim to protect from such corruption of their sexuality by men.

2 UK law provides for men in all their forms to be excluded from toilets designated for females.

Women are asserting their boundaries and will continue so to do.

1. No evidence that this is common but if it is I’ll certainly be calling it out.

1. TW can (legally) use female toilets and you can’t stop them. They’re public toilets, not your toilets. You don’t decide who goes in them. You can go in, do your business, and mind your own business. That’s about it mate.

Aspley there's nothing wrong with you.

I remember the aversion I faced from classmates when I came out as female-attracted (at first I thought I was lesbian, then later on realised I was bi). This was under section 28, so no education nor support about it. I was lucky in that my parents told me that same-sex attraction existed and said they would accept my sibling and me no matter how we turned out.

I'm despairing and utterly horrified that lesbian teens with less-tolerant parents will turn to their Stonewall-briefed school or the LGBT "community" for support and be told that they should accept males as partners if that male identifies as a woman. Don't girls' boundaries matter?

It is IMO absolutely natural for feminists to defend the rights of lesbians to say no to dick, including dicks attached to transwomen. As it is natural for feminists to defend the rights of wives to say no to dick, including their husband's dick if not in the mood and without having to claim a headache. And girl children to have it presumed, always, until they reach adulthood, that they don't want dick. And prostituted women to say no to dick, including the dick of a dodgy punter, without getting beaten up for it.

The common thread here is saying no to male entitlement and yes to female bodily integrity. This applies to anyone born with a vulva, so duh yeah that includes lesbians.

TW can (legally) use female toilets and you can’t stop them.

For customer toilets, it's up to the toilet provider to decide whether to enforce single-sex divisions. Some do (and get lobbied not to by TRAs, what a surprise) like the restaurant recently mentioned on FWR where a teen girl was protected from rape by the staff enforcing toilet sex segregation against her attacker who had followed her into the loos) most rely on an honesty system, and some have explicitly unisex loos.

In the workplace, women are entitled to single-sex or else single-occupant loos by a law called the Workplace (Health Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, look in provision 20 where it talks about men and women having separate "sanitary conveniences". A woman is defined under the Equality Act 2010 as a "female of any age". We know that transwomen with GRCs should normally be treated as women, but there is no legislation that I'm aware of allowing pre-/non-GRC transwomen to use women's workplace loos. IANAL but I don't think you are either, lawyers IME cite the legislation and case law supporting their assertions about what is and isn't legal, and you haven't done that.

I've been musing on the woman who wrote this drivel and other older butch lesbians supporting their trans 'lesbian' sisters. They all come out with "It hasn't happened to me so hasn't happened blah blah blah"

This strikes a chord with me as an ageing heterosexual. Funnily enough men are so nice nowadays, don't follow me down dark alleys, in fact, zero threatening behaviour and I sometimes forget that young women are still being subjected to the same old shit.

This strikes a chord with me as an ageing heterosexual. Funnily enough men are so nice nowadays, don't follow me down dark alleys

For this reason, I can't wait to get old. As I remarked to a colleague on Monday who asked how my weekend had gone, the days elapsed since I was last sexually assaulted in a public space can currently be counted on one hand.