Help please - evidence required lesbians & trans lesbians debate

[midclegs]

I've just been told, in response to a message to a woke friend in NZ about the LGB pulling away from the LBTQ, because lesbians are being erased, is "bullshit". I am talking "bullshit", apparently.

This is a really old 30-yr long friendship. If he doesn't want to be a friend after evidence than fine.
But could you great lot please provide links, evidence to prove otherwise?

Arielle Scarcella has become more and more infuriated by the way lesbians are treated by TRAs. Even though she's very transgender-friendly, she is a strong advocate for lesbians and for women, and has been speaking out courageously on Twitter and on her Youtube channel about this issue.
twitter.com/ArielleScarcell/status/1223031378020904960

If a lesbian woman has a trans partner without a penis, do we demand that she no longer a identifies as lesbian and demand that the biological aspect based on chromosomes alone, externally at least at this point should trump how she feels

Excuse my ignorance, but I've always felt that sexual attraction has nothing to do, as such, with genitals, but with instinctive attraction. That goes far beyond genitals does it not? If, as a female, you are attracted to other females, then you are a lesbian; if you are attracted to males then you are heterosexual, and if you attracted to either sex then you are bisexual.

My rights as a trans person and my rights as a biological homosexual are very much intertwined

Can I ask you what you mean when you say " your rights"?

To suggest that some women are not feeling emboldened in recent years to abuse either gay or transsexual people would be short sighted

Can't imagine many here abusing anyone.......

What in your mind is the distinction between a homosexual male and a transexual male ( who identifies a s a woman)?

Justathought

I know what you are saying and on the face of it I always assume that I only fancy males because I only have relationships with men or more accurately as of late a man. But, my attraction, initially at least is an external one to physical appearance and traits they may display. I find I am also physically attracted to some trans men and in general to a point at that first experience I don't think I can tell a difference between a trans man and a man. By some people's opinion I would therefore be bi-sexual but, I am not attracted to the female form at all so how other than in a relationship based on biology alone can that be so?

Anyway, as I'm not a lesbian (that much is certain), I'll leave it there as the original question is at risk of being derailed with me being the main offender. It's interesting to see the different thoughts though.

Justathought

P.s. The distinction for me personally in this sense is that I know that I don't find 'males' who identify as women aka trans women attractive but i do find men and therefore homosexual men attractive. So far biology has always been a thing but, I wouldn't be confident enough to suggest it always has to be. What a confusing world I live in, at least it's not boring I suppose.

By some people's opinion I would therefore be bi-sexual but, I am not attracted to the female form at all so how other than in a relationship based on biology alone can that be so

When you say you can* be attracted to trans men, but are not attracted to the female form - do you mean to obvious feminine bodily characteristics such as breasts and hips? Is sexual attraction, for you, purely a physical thing then? What is it that you are responding to in those trans men you fancy?

'You are right that the importance of biology appears to be playing less part in what was traditionally viewed as gay relationships.'

According to certain groups, in reality it's important to clearly define gay/ lesbian/ homosexual, as these groups have been horribly oppressed around the world and in some countries continue to be so. It is punishable by death to have gay male sex in some countries. To reframe homosexuality in men as someone who might well have sex with a person with a vagina benefits who exactly? A man who has sex with a person with a vagina in countries where homosexuality is illegal breaks no law.

Language is important in these issues and rewriting it causes real issues.

Of course people can and do identify their sexuality however they want and I understand it's complicated. I worked in HIV prevention in the 90s and things were targeted at men who have sex with men, because not all of the men at risk identifed with gay, or bisexual.

That doesn't change the fact that redefining lesbian as someone who might well do dick, is damaging. And like I say, I assume I don't need to go into why, and all the history and attitudes etc, on fwr.

I can't see gay men being all that keen on cunt tbh either.

Stats, do you think internal gender id means anything to the counties around the world that oppress women/ girls/ gay men and lesbians?

When we get to a utopia where it's all aok I can go along with the changes in language, maybe, because it won't matter.

Right now, these groups are oppressed due to biology and need their words.

From a purely political point of view it is essential that Lesbians & Gays remove themselves from organizations that previously represented their interests but now are committed to transitioning away the Gays and Lesbians.
LGBTQ+ organizations including paraphilias under their transgender self ID umbrella was probably a mistake if they wanted to maintain their coalition.

Sexuality in patriarchy is a v interesting topic but probably for a different thread!

How individuals define themselves is complicated.

But to fight oppression of lesbians and gay men, there need to be words that encompass those groups.

A couple in Iran who both feel like women inside but present as their birth sex are not in the same position as 2 men (I mean men the old fashioned way).

I suppose you could push for laws to recognise gender id rather than sex and then gay couples can pick one to be the opposite

But

A. That won't fly as 99.99% of the world know what male/ female are
And
B. The homophobia has not been addressed, the solution is retrograde

I puzzle over what appears to be an irrational antipathy to being bisexual.

Yeah it's a bit weird.

Bisexual people have had a shit deal from all sides.

And continue to.

Phenogay and Genogay. These are my new and useful words that I am giving to the world.

What really irritates me about a lot of this is that not only is our basic language being rewritten but yet again attitudes, policies, laws that were fought for, so hard, for so long, are being used against us.

You see this time and time again. The dominant class reasserts itself and turns gains on those they were supposed to help.

Excuse my ignorance, but I've always felt that sexual attraction has nothing to do, as such, with genitals, but with instinctive attraction. That goes far beyond genitals does it not? If, as a female, you are attracted to other females, then you are a lesbian; if you are attracted to males then you are heterosexual, and if you attracted to either sex then you are bisexual.

Yes, I think this is true. For the most part people are attracted to a package, usually male or female or sometimes both, though IME the latter isn't always the same phenomena.

As far as trans persons though, I actually don't think they fit into this paradigm of attraction with a category of their own. There is no such thing as a trans orientation, because its not a category of sexual reproduction. And it's not really about some intellectual set of categories based on genital configuration, it's about the very old lizard bits of your brain that intuit who you should mate with.

If someone is attracted to a trans individual, it will be in terms of the way their body and mind reads or interprets the signals they get from that person.

So if a gay man who is exclusively attracted to men on occasion is attracted to a trans man, it's probably because his brain at some pretty basic level is interpreting that person as a man - even if he knows that the trans man actually has a vagina.

I don't think it would be accurate to call that person bi-sexual, and that's not about some sort of problem with bi-sexual people. It's just recognising that when you have a person who has changed their body in such a way as to mimic the other sex, it confuses the picture in terms of how our perception functions, it's not changing the orientation or revealing something new about it. (And in a lot of cases I think what actually happens is that confusion creates a situation where many people won't be attracted to the trans person because there are mixed signals about whether the are male or female.)

This could potentially create a situation where, for example, a gay man had a heterosexual relationship. But honestly, it's not like human sexuality hasn't always been a little inscrutable and prone to weirdness.

That is Humpty Dumpty language rules. Sexual orientation is based on sex. In your example the male is in a sexual relationship with a females. We call that a heterosexual relationship, unless as in your example the male was Gay and is now Bisexual by virtue of having sexual attraction and relationships with both males and females.

Again, the antipathy toward acknowledging bisexuality mystifies me.

I emailed GALOP last year and asked if they knew of any female only lesbian/bi groups or clubs. They said no, they also told me transwomen are women. But sure, there's no issue! :bangheadoffwall: