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?!

I'm old enough to remember Section 28 and my lesbian teacher friends being terrified of losing their jobs if it was discovered they were lesbians. My best friend was a gay man whose family had disowned him. Those were the days when people could refuse to serve you in shops, when people who were HIV+ were treated like lepers and when there wasn't a hope in hell of any kind of legal recognition of relationships. When we marched in the 80s and early 90s it was a serious and risky business and we were marching as a political protest.

I'm bowing out of this conversation: there's something off here and I don't know what it is.

I've just read your post about the dating show, SapphosRock, and I agree it's pretty bad form. Jen may be ok with it (or maybe just saying that to avoid backlash) but it'd be a pretty horrible situation if she hadn't been.

I meant Anna not Jen. Got them the wrong way around....

An easy mistake to make. Or maybe not.