Male-attracted lesbian better than being bi?

[anotherhumanfemale]

I've been trying to figure out why there are lesbians who are attracted to trans women. I have come across quite a lot of dislike from certain corners of the lesbian community to women who are bi ("disgusting", "contaminated", "dirty" are some words I've seen and I have a female bi friend who has been told this to her face by a woman who had been previously chatting her up thinking she was a lesbian).

I'm now wondering whether being a lesbian who is attracted to a trans woman, if admitting this person is male would be too much a challenge to your own identity. If you believe being bi is akin to the words above, then you surely couldn't admit to yourself or others that you were not lesbian.

I'm not suggesting all lesbians think that way about bi women - NALALT ;) - but do wonder if this plays a part. Far better to be a deluded lesbian than a contaminated, dirty one that women don't want to date?

Wondering if anybody has thoughts or more clarity on this. I'm not intending to be offensive, in case someone takes offence at some of this. I'm also bi and in some online lesbian groups (silently) so I could be way off, but after a while of seeing these things written and defended if/when challenged, it's made me wonder.

Oh yes, Dennis with the old 'take your time to heal and work through your trauma at your own pace' schtick, clearly implying that disclosing sexual trauma is necessary and the only reason allowed to, temporarily at least, say no to male bodied people.

Lesbian here, I have never heard any gay woman talk about bi women like that. I do know some gay women who would prefer a lesbian over a bi woman ( in theory) but like most people gay women fall in love with the person not the label. When I was younger I would definitely have preferred ( I. Theory) to date a lesbian over bi but I did fall in love with a bi girl and had a relationship with her and I also had a few flings with straight women too...
As for the, why do some lesbians date trans women - it’s because they fall for the person not the label and accept the trans woman as a woman. Trans people are much more accepted by the rest of the LGB community than they are here in Mumsnet. I don’t think someone dating a trans woman would be so hung up on what they should call themselves now and you’d probably find that a lesbian open to dating a trans woman would also have been open to dating a bi woman and not have that prejudice that your friend seems to have come across where bi women are somehow considered ‘dirty’.
Back in the day bisexual women were treated slightly suspiciously in my lesbian circle because of the fact they could ‘pass’ as straight when with a man and avoid the homophobic abuse and prejudice that we lesbians encountered all year round. But when I had a bi girlfriend I realised that it really wasn’t her fault if she got less hassle holding hands with a guy than with a woman. We broke up when she wouldn’t let me met her family after a year together - her next boyfriend was at her sisters wedding as a plus one within a month of them getting together.

I read here in MN the outrage about lesbians being forced and told they have to sleep with trans women. And I’ve said before - this just IS NOT true. I do t care what anyone shouts about on Twitter, in RL no-one is making us lesbians sleep with anyone we don’t want to, and that includes trans women. We’re A lot less obsessed with what trans women have in their knickers too than some people on these boards.

@IheartJKR

Well really, I think it comes down to the fact that women are relegated to the bottom of the pile and if you’re a lesbian then...you are at the very bottom of the bottom pile because you don’t centre men. But if you are inclusive and sleep with trans women then you’ll get approval and be less likely to be threatened and harassed and ultimately excluded from your community.

So, they may be regarded as ‘special’. I’d call it coercion.

I agree @IheartJKR

@newsyoucanuse

I read here in MN the outrage about lesbians being forced and told they have to sleep with trans women. And I’ve said before - this just IS NOT true. I do t care what anyone shouts about on Twitter, in RL no-one is making us lesbians sleep with anyone we don’t want to, and that includes trans women. We’re A lot less obsessed with what trans women have in their knickers too than some people on these boards.

no-one is making us lesbians sleep with anyone we don’t want to, and that includes trans women

Well I'd hope so, because that would be rape, wouldn't it?

We’re A lot less obsessed with what trans women have in their knickers too than some people on these boards.

Yes....because biological reality means nothing, does it? Honestly, you might as well have gone the whole hog and called us hysterical.

newsyoucanuse one week ago I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you and truly believed the obsession with lesbians being pressured to sleep with trans women was all here on mumsnet.

Having seen a couple of trans women in my local lesbian group call women 'trash bags' for not dating them, as well as the only safe LGBTQI I know being overrun with a TRA agenda I'm now feeling a little jaded.

Never can quite get over the simultaneous claim that coercion to accept TW as lesbians doesn't happen to lesbians and the accusation that if a lesbian is a lesbian she's obsessed with what's in a TW's pants.

I’m a lesbian, have been in a long term relationship for the past five years, and things have obviously changed since then, but my lesbian friends who are still “on the scene” tell me they’ve never had any pressure to sleep with trans people. The only pressure they have to sleep with anyone is from heterosexual men and their bisexual partners (which was the same experience I had). Not saying it doesn’t happen, but I really don’t think in real life it’s as prolific as people are assuming based on what they see online.

As for why are women saying they’re lesbian when they sleep with trans women, well personally, if someone has a male body and you’re attracted to that then you’re not a lesbian imo, however, if they’re post op and they appear female, then I wouldn’t say a women is not a lesbian for being attracted to them. Apparently with some post op trans women their long term partners can’t even tell they are biologically male (Nikki tutorials for example), so I don’t think that has much bearing on your sexual preferences if you didn’t even know they weren’t a woman without them telling you.

The major bug bear for me at the moment is people saying gay is an umbrella term for anyone who is not “cis het” and the rebranding of lesbian and gay to become “queer” which covers a wide variety of “gender identities” and not just sexuality. I do feel like this is largely due a number of mostly young people who want to feel a part of an oppressed group when they actually face no oppression, and it gives them some kind of platform to talk about our issues (which don’t affect them anyway). I would prefer to do away with the term queer entirely, as the last thing any lesbian needs is people assuming if she just “tried harder” or wasn’t so “bigoted” she could be attracted to and have sexual relations with men, I thought we had moved past this by now, but with all this “rebranding” I can see us heading back to those times.

I do t care what anyone shouts about on Twitter, in RL no-one is making us lesbians sleep with anyone we don’t want to

I've never been mugged, nor been present to see anyone being mugged, so it's never personally hit my reality.

Would that suggest mugging doesn't actually exist and is just a silly rumour to scare people? Or would that suggest that things happen to other people that I've been lucky enough not to experience personally?

I could re quote your whole post, Elsie some really interesting points there.

This is the problem for the original indigenous group when their term is appropriated and 'rebranded' for the personal use of those who like the identity or the implications or what using that term offers them. You see their point. But the appropriation distorts and damages the term for those who originally had and needed it.

So cool to be queer is now leaking over into 'and it's not actually acceptable to be homosexual'.

I've never been pressured to sleep with a transwoman (except rapist number 2, obviously) but I've heard plenty of lesbian women say they have. And I'm not in the habit of disbelieving women when they say they've been pressured for sex. Just because not every lesbian has experienced it doesn't mean it never happens.

'it's not actually acceptable to be homosexual '

We know how the exchange goes:

Rebrand lesbian/gay/queer/whatever to be inclusive and kind
Accommodating women say "Why not let them have this word? It's just a word."
Us: "So what word are we using for same-sex attracted female humans?"
TRAs: "How about bigot?"
Cue lengthy argument about how anyone advocating for a word that means 'not attracted to your dick' is a genocidal fuckhead.

IME there are a lot of bisexual women who leave the community and closet that part of their sexual attraction, marry men, etc. Because of comments about 'Katy Perry' types and not being lesbian enough. I have been victim to it and I am not alone. It does happen. I am sure there are lesbians who are attracted to men some of the time. But again, they closet this part of themselves for belonging. I'm not really sure how this plays out with the trans community now and the gender fluid, queer etc. But I think lesbians mostly do this to protect themselves and their community. They don't want to be a circus attraction, basically. They mostly want to find fulfilling relationships with other lesbians. I think there is an idea of some people being more lesbian than others.

I imagine that because TWAW, lesbians who are actually on the bisexuality spectrum, feel more able to explore the male attracted part of their sexuality whilst it's still a female space. But that a lot of the lesbians will also be gender critical as with women across the board. I mean, their are certainly gender critical trans women because no community ever agrees on everything, just not Many who are willing to be vocal about it.

IME there are a lot of bisexual women who leave the community and closet that part of their sexual attraction, marry men, etc.

Yes, this is the reason many lesbians are reluctant to date bisexual women, as many (not all) do eventually settle down with men because it’s an “easier life”. It’s certainly been my experience with the bisexual women I have known and dated, the vast majority were also closeted with no intention of ever coming out. Dating women seemed to be about curiosity and about sex, whereas, dating men was about settling down and love.

People like to accuse lesbians of being bigoted for having a preference for lesbians over bi women (and I’m sure some lesbians are bigoted), however, in my experience it’s almost always due to very negative experiences, often multiple, and a deep insecurity about men being able to offer something we can’t (biological children, an easier life etc).

@newsyoucanuse

I read here in MN the outrage about lesbians being forced and told they have to sleep with trans women. And I’ve said before - this just IS NOT true. I do t care what anyone shouts about on Twitter, in RL no-one is making us lesbians sleep with anyone we don’t want to, and that includes trans women. We’re A lot less obsessed with what trans women have in their knickers too than some people on these boards.

This may be true of your lesbian social circle, News, and of course no lesbian is forced — if she is it's rape. But two FB groups I lurk on have welcomed transwomen and have attracted growing numbers of TWs. You can see the way they work quite clearly. They avoid the older, butcher, more outspoken women but when one of the quieter and less confident ones is having a bad day and asks for a hand-hold or splits up with a girlfriend and is suffering, they're on her like flies offering a shoulder to cry on and sympathising and saying they'll pm her and arrange to meet up. They're looking for persuadable, confusable women.

The lesbian circles I'm actively involved with are GC and don't admit TWs. We have increasing numbers of women who previously called us terfs asking to join as the penny drops. We're not obsessed with what anyone has in their pants. We just know we're exclusively attracted to women and don't want to get involved in validating any male fantasies, so you have to be vouched for before you can get involved.

OP, sounds like you want simultaneous relationships with men and women. Probably best to look for another bi women, I can't imagine many lesbians wanting to get involved.

IME there are a lot of bisexual women who leave the community and closet that part of their sexual attraction, marry men, etc.

We leave the community, but the community also leaves us. When I started a relationship with a man after being a lesbian for 10 years, at least half of my lesbian "friends" stopped speaking to me. It was incredibly painful and I didn't ever want a rerun of that, so I never actively sought out relationships with women again.

The main issue I've noticed is lesbians worrying a bisexual woman would leave them for a man

When this issue was discussed in our campus women's group about a zillion years ago the main theme was that bisexual women were not 'real' lesbians and could more easily 'pass' as heteronormative. There was also a feeling that maybe some were just trying to be fashionable, and didn't really fancy women at all. But, as said, that was a zillion years ago - and so a very different climate.

I do recall that a draft of what was to become 'Male Lesbians and the Female Body' as published in Hypatia (Zita 1992) had just been circulated though (in hard copy - someone broght it back from a conference I think) so things were about to change. That was my first real sense that this was an issue.

Here's the publicly available abstract -

"This essay explores the criteria for lesbian identity attribution through the case study of “male lesbians”: biological males who claim to be lesbians. I analyze such sexlgender identity attribution through the lens of postmodernism, which provides a workable theoretical framework for “male lesbian” identities. My conclusions explore the historicity and cultural constructedness of the body's sexlgender identities, revealing the limitations of both “the postmodemized body” and “the essentialized modernist body.”

I didn't really understand it then and I don't now.

I do recall a sense of excitement though - as if this new philosophy might somehow release all women from bodily shackles :)

Tabby, are you saying you dumped half of your lesbian friends because the other half of them didn't want to keep up with you?

Oh, and forgot to add, Tabby, that there are lots of older women who were attracted to women when young but made the decision to settle with a man for an easier life and kids and then, post divorce settlement and children having flown the nest, turn up in lesbian groups — but want to keep it a secret from the straight part of their life. I've never thought much about it and certainly not seen any antagonism shown them, but as one of those lesbians who's never been in a long-term relationship with a man and never had children and has suffered the stigma of being lesbian all my life perhaps it's not surprising that those women aren't among my close friends. We don't appear to have a lot in common.

@Shedbuilder I owe you an apology as I have previously insisted on another thread that TW in lesbian groups are causing no issues and there is no harm including them.

I also insisted there were plenty of lesbian groups that didn't centre TW. I was wrong.

two FB groups I lurk on have welcomed transwomen and have attracted growing numbers of TWs. You can see the way they work quite clearly. They avoid the older, butcher, more outspoken women but when one of the quieter and less confident ones is having a bad day and asks for a hand-hold or splits up with a girlfriend and is suffering, they're on her like flies offering a shoulder to cry on and sympathising and saying they'll pm her and arrange to meet up.

Yup I've noticed this too. And now every other post seems to be from a TRA pushing trans activism or slagging off terfs.

Shed
OP, sounds like you want simultaneous relationships with men and women. Probably best to look for another bi women, I can't imagine many lesbians wanting to get involved
I'm not looking for relationships with anybody, let alone simultaneously! I'm totally fed up of relationships and want to be free of responsibilities for a long time. I am, however, enjoying the fact that women are sexually attractive to me. I'm more sexually attracted to them than men, so life looks less grey than before, because I enjoy more of what I see!

I'd never thought that people (male or female but I guess especially so female) would be attracted to performative femininity. The idea that some women would be attracted to the femininity (which is usually performative) displayed by men who feel female/feminine is one I'd never thought of. For me performative femininity is something designed to attract a certain type of male gaze. People are so multifaceted that of course some lesbians could be attracted to that, now that I think about it.

Tabby, are you saying you dumped half of your lesbian friends because the other half of them didn't want to keep up with you?

No, but I was unable to go out in any group activities any more because of the people who wouldn't see me, so in the end most friendships dwindled, though I still have a couple. The man I was with ended up being really sexually abusive to me, but because I'd lost my friendship group and it seemed like I made a big sacrifice I stayed with him longer than I should have done and had a breakdown afterwards and struggled to go out at all for a while.

Sapphos, thank you for that. I'm not surprised but I suppose I'd hoped that in your neck of the woods things might be different — so I'm sad to hear your news.

If you frequent lesbian groups you'll know that there's quite a lot of mental healthy stuff going on (we can debate why another time) and I and some of the other older GC women I know are very worried by things we see and by the fact that we aren't able to protect vulnerable women. Even more troubling is the fact that some of the troubled and vulnerable women disappear from the groups once the transwomen have become involved with them. Whether they are persuaded into controlling relationships by men who don't want them communicating with their friends, or whether it's because something happens to make them want to back away from the group I don't know but I fear for them.

The good news is that one group that offered a warm welcome to transwomen has been overwhelmed by them and the novelty has worn off for a lot of the lesbian women. Even women for whom feminism is a dirty word are beginning to realise that there's something wrong going on. Eventually the trans-friendly groups will fizzle out. It's just very sad to think of all the damage that's been done in the meantime.

OP, sorry, there was something you said about wanting relationships with men and women I read as you wanting simultaneous involvement. That seemed quite a tall order to me!