Any other lesbians sick of all the rules we're supposed to follow?

[SapphosRock]

I am a mature lesbian, been out for 20+ years. There seems to be so many rules at the moment for acceptable conduct for lesbians. Anyone else finding it tiresome?

A few years ago it was the lesbian purists who set the rules:

⁃	We should mistrust and not date bisexual women 
⁃	Ideally we should be gold star and should only date other gold star lesbians (those who’ve never slept with a man)

Now the rules have changed:

⁃	We should not date trans women - if we do that makes us bisexual (see above for views on bisexual women) 
⁃	We should not associate with trans women in lesbian circles 
⁃	We should not date or associate with trans men in lesbian circles 
⁃	We must treat non binary identities with scorn 

More recently:

⁃	We should not associate with other lesbians who do not adhere to the above rules 

Obviously we are getting rules from the other side too:

⁃	We must date trans women or else we’re bigots 
⁃	If our partners wish to transition to male we must be fine with it - even though a partner on testosterone with facial hair isn’t what we signed up for
⁃	Some TRAs even suggest we’re probably transgender ourselves rather than lesbians 

We have the ‘Get the L Out’ women telling us we need to disassociate from pride and all the cotton ceiling nonsense from the TRAs.

It appears these rules are starting to cause havoc IRL. See thread below where a lesbian group has shut down over disagreement over these rules:

Lesbian social group under attack
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3760886-Lesbian-social-group-under-attack

Everyone seems to have a strong opinion on how lesbians should behave and if it isn’t exactly to their liking then we’re not doing lesbianism right. A lot of these opinions are from men and straight women

Rather pushing young lesbians to pick a side, I wish they could be encouraged to set their own boundaries and not be pressured into following any of the rules of they don’t want to.

It’s hard enough coming out as a lesbian without being judged or ostracised that you’re not doing it right.

Anyone else finding this or is it just me?!

The more this goes on, the more bad faith I suspect.

Probably worth sharing this again.

Any time an actual lesbian shows up and dares to say anything that isn't the party line, they are attacked.

I'm not sure that suspecting you are posting in bad faith and being "attacked" are the same thing.

Signed. An actual lesbian.

People need to stop saying “attacked” when they mean “disagreed with.”

I don’t think lesbians are expected to treat “nb” women “with scorn,” that seems weird. Of younger lesbians I know of, probably about half are NB or trans guys.

I do agree we should let young lesbians be though.

X post

Will they throw you out of the club if you don't follow the rules?

Damn- me too. (Damn straight women I am).

Also while rereading Saphos - you saying that lesbians tell any woman who has enjoyed sex with a man that they can’t be a lesbian doesn’t sound like any genuine discussion that happened. It sounds like a red herring.

For example I’m straight, I’ve only ever been sexually attracted to men, I’ve only ever had romantic relationships with men, I have never had any personal curiosity about sex with women or fantasised about it. But I have had a three some with a then boy friend and a friend of ours. I didn’t do much with her other than kiss but she was keen to go full on with me and he was keen to watch and I liked that it impressed him (I was a silly teenager at the time) but it got me there just fine. It’s pretty common for sexual organs to respond the way nature created them to, that’s not necessarily anything to do with sexuality, and isn’t even a sign of ‘enjoyment’ on an emotional level or of consent as it’s very very common for males to respond to rape or sexual abuse by climaxing and isn’t unheard of for females either. The analogy given is that our bodies are programmed that way by nature, just like we salivate when we walk past a bakery and smell the fresh bread even if our stomachs are full from just having eaten lunch. Responding this way isn’t a sign we are hungry anymore that our genitals responding to sexual touch is a sign we are attracted to that person. So I think it’s completely reasonable that some women who have only ever been attracted to women but have hidden from those feelings and tried being with men have found that with a man they trust and care about that sex was ok enough to climax, and I’d expect plenty would describe that as ‘enjoying’ it, without looking at the underlying reality that if it had been acceptable socially, personally, and within their family and culture to say from day one they only like women that they never would have tried sex with men. And I think you are using that as a red herring. I very much doubt that any woman turning up to lesbian groups saying ‘I tried it with a man and it was ok I guess but I knew in my gut something just wasn’t right and I had to be honest with myself and acknowledge that I’m a lesbian’ would get turned on by other lesbians if they admitted that the sex with a man was enough to get them off. While loads of lesbians and gay men may not know they are homosexual until later plenty speak out saying they always knew or knew from super young ages, like 4/5, before they even knew about sex. And yes I’m that straight woman who has heard that from plenty of lesbian friends, and my one gay friend said he knew from age 2. Equally plenty of my straight friends say they always knew they were straight long before they knew what sex was (my first memories are being abused so I can’t comment if I knew I was straight without knowing about sex, even if I knew about it in a very different form to how consensual sex works as an adult) so sexuality isn’t some straightforward direct connection to what gets us off in bed. Sexuality is way more about who we love and feel attracted to and sexual response is much more how our bodies are designed to work and what they can become conditioned to respond to (Herman’s truama and recovery has an excerpt from an incest survivor to discusses how she ended up unable to climax unless imagining her fathers face and how through therapy she learned to teach herself to envision a waterfall when masterbating instead to reprogram her responses. I’m guessing anyone who doesn’t have a trauma induced reason behind their bodies respond may easily mistake that for ‘enjoyment’)

I like that i tried a threesome, even if I just did it to try to be cool and sexy to my older more experienced boyfriend, I like it was a drunken teenage fun, which is more than I can say for most of my drunken situations with men as a teen. I never had any inclination to do it again though and it hasn’t changed that I just feel sexually attracted to men. That or a lesbian who has tried to be straight before coming out isn’t some kind of argument to get lesbians to accept sex with transwomen as being part of homosexuality. I think it looks like you are trying to slip in these little red herrings to the argument and either that’s intentional or it’s because the trans ideology lot have been so successful at arguing this and mind fucking you and others into thinking this is a reasonable train of thought rather than seeing it for the gas lighting it is.

Oh, I should say I never believed my gay friend he knew she 2, it was sort of a joke among our group of friends as he was a very stereotypically camp gay guy who dressed up in his mums clothes and make up as a kid, which stood out in a family of lots of matcho Irish catholic farmer boys, so I expect he realised very early on that he was different, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that was being gay. Thanks fuck there was no trans ideology then because he is most definitely male and actually ended up a fair bit more gender conforming than he started out when little, just gay and more feminine than his brothers and wanted to live in a city rather than work on the land.

As an 'actual' lesbian as OP I am a homosexual female attracted to other females. that is the definition of lesbian, any 'grey area' OP is describing are areas that people have constructed because they wish to cling on to a definition that does not describe them to the detriment of the actual lesbian community.

This is the reason that I can never accept transwomen as lesbians, sexuality is SEX based not gender based. A transgender woman who is attracted to other females exclusively is a male born individual attracted to females therefore heterosexual by definition, it really doesn't matter what you identify as, your 'identity' is simply your self perception of yourself, it doesn't shift material reality.

I'm tired of people including other 'actual' lesbians saying that we should accept the expansion of the word lesbian to include every Tom, Dick and Harry just because they 'identify' as such under the guise of 'being nice' this is detrimental to lesbians both in western countries but especially in non-western countries that are still fighting for their rights.

You are only helping narcissists at the detriment of 'actual' lesbians.

What party line am I parroting? I've said that the lesbian community is as broad as any other community.

At one end you have a very few (in my experience) highly ideological and political dykes who may choose not to socialise with or have relationships with bi women, or lead separatist lifestyles. It's their group, they're allowed to set their own boundaries. At the other end of the spectrum you'll find lesbians with no political or ideological affiliation, lesbians who blanch at the idea of being of being feminists, lesbians who seem more at home hanging out with men, lesbians who just want to go to pool parties and drink and have fun, Conservative lesbians, radical leftist lesbians... and on and on.

If you're not comfortable with the boundaries of the groups/ women you're socialising with, SapphosRock, then look for a new group. Those women are entitled to their opinions and boundaries (what you call rules) and your'e entitled to reject them and find lesbians you feel more comfortable with.

And FYI, the social group that came under attack by pro-trans lesbians has divided into two groups which have redefined themselves (one is no trans and the other is trans, queer and non-binary friendly). These aren't rules, they are preferences/ boundaries.

thatdamnwoman thanks for the reply and I'm pleased to hear you reached a resolution with your lesbian groups.

I guess I haven't found my tribe or I've lost my tribe. Used to always consider myself a radical feminist but the last couple of meetings I've been to I've disagreed with the speakers and general sentiment.

Much too old to be part of the gender fluid scene and that doesn't appeal either.

I really enjoy Pride and always love Pride season but there has been a lot of negativity and division the last couple of years with the protests.

So feeling a bit lost I suppose.

GivesNoFox excellent post.

How does Pride's commercial male-and-kink focused set-up with wall-to-wall boy bands fit with your radical feminism?

I don't think people of other sexual orientations get this same pressure or receive the level of vitriol that lesbians do if they don't conform.

2nd rule of misogyny: Women saying no to men is a hate crime.

How does Pride's commercial male-and-kink focused set-up with wall-to-wall boy bands fit with your radical feminism?

It doesn't feature. How gay men choose to behave is of no relevance. As long as no women are being exploited then the men can crack on.

I find it strange that the word lesbian is considered to be so pure and sacred and must not be diluted in any way.

There are men out there who want to have sex with lesbians. These men already think that lesbianism doesn't exclude sexual availability to men. Diluting the word "lesbian" harms lesbians by validating men's sense of sexual entitlement towards them.

I really enjoy Pride and always love Pride season but there has been a lot of negativity and division the last couple of years with the protests.

Before that, were there signs and banners saying “No TERFs”?

I'm probably not your typical FWR poster, but I've been trying to educate myself recently on many of the issues discussed on here - forgive me if I'm not as well versed as most of you. I read about 'rules' a lot, but do most of these really exist outside of the internet stratosphere?

I ask this because I used to have a fairly decent middle management job in a blue chip company and used to have a lot of conceptions of what 'one could say'. Since moving to a sector where I deal with a lot of tradesmen, engineers, and HGV drivers I've found that most of these preconceptions were actually in my head. I hear people say things daily which I previously thought you 'couldn't say' (some definitely offensive and others just frank) and it's opened my eyes to the fact that most it was in my head and in day-to-day life you can get away with a lot.

Admittedly, things are different in other sectors and in the public eye, but who's going to enforce these rules in the real world. Can you not just live your personal life as you see fit and tell anybody who disagrees to kiss your arse - who cares if they think you're transphobic? Many men are genuinely homophobic and pretty much continue as they were. Obviously I'm not talking about the very real threat of self-ID which is another matter.

Social media and work is a minefield but it always had been. Nobody can realistically force you to date a woman with a cock.

I hope that didn't sound like drunksplaining. I just think a lot of the TRAs whose stuff I've read would get a pretty big reality check from a large swathe of the population who are currently blind to all this. I'd be an interested fly on the wall in watching them explain the concept of 'expanding the bandwidth of womanhood' to one of my truck drivers and hear the corresponding response.

DonutMan

Social media and work is a minefield but it always had been. Nobody can realistically force you to date a woman with a cock.

This is an interesting point so let me give you a RL example. Recently the Guardian newspaper set up a blind date with two women Jen and Anna. Here’s the link to the article:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/23/blind-date-jen-anna-glasses-fog-up

It turned out Jen was a trans woman. The Guardian may or not have been aware of this before the date was set up - they claimed Jen hadn’t revealed it to them.

When I first read about Jen being trans I felt really angry for a number of reasons.

⁃	It would have been basic good manners for Jen to reveal she was trans before the date to ensure Anna was comfortable with it 
⁃	If the Guardian knew Jen was trans it was arrogant to assume Anna would be fine with this and not bother to tell her 

To me the Guardian blind date illustrated an assumption by society that lesbians don’t have the right to the same boundaries as other men or women. Would it be automatically assumed a man would be fine to be set up with a trans woman or trans man? No. Would a straight woman automatically be happy to date a trans man with a vagina? No. But lesbians are women and a bit ‘sexually unusual’ so of course they should be accepting and fine with it. The date was published in a national newspaper -that's a lot of pressure to be fine with it.

Well as it turned out Anna was fine with it all. She posted on Twitter how angry she was that she’d been used to advocate for an ideology she found abhorrent. She considered those who questioned Jen and the Guardian transphobic. To her it was a non issue.

This in turn made me feel upset with myself that I had been angry on behalf of Anna when she didn’t want my anger. It also made me feel upset that once again a lesbian had been used as a pawn in a game for people with competing ideologies to score points with one another.

It’s the shit lesbians are having to deal with at the moment. They are not being encouraged to make their own decisions and set their own individual boundaries, their sexuality is becoming public property and very political. From what I can see there is huge pressure on young lesbians at the moment.

From what I can see there is huge pressure on young lesbians at the moment.

Yes, and that’s why so many are trying out ‘transman’ or ‘transmasc non-binary’ to try and opt out of it. Which would be fine if it didn’t come with it’s own set of pressures, pressures that lead to to irreversible medical intervention.

I just think a lot of the TRAs whose stuff I've read would get a pretty big reality check from a large swathe of the population who are currently blind to all this
They do get reality checks, but they choose not to process them. Eg, during the womens marches some TRAs were shocked and horrified by women wearing pink 'pussy ' hats. They were suddenly confronted by the fact that the majority of women don't give a fuck about being 'inclusive', or at least not when we're in big groups of women.Same thing with the 'women are adult human female' posters, and I'm sure there are many other examples.
Instead of analysing why these things happen they just attack through insults such as bigot, Terf, suck my ladydick, etc etc.

Sleight of hand there in your precise wording, that...

"it turned out Anna was fine with it"

...does not tally with...

"once again a lesbian [anna] had been used as a pawn in a game for people with competing ideologies to score points"

..to anyone using the regular definition of "lesbian".

BeyondVotesForFlube by all means challenge the trans women with penises for calling themselves lesbians, but having a go at the female homosexuals for being trans inclusive is part of the problem.

Pmsl.