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.

A male attracted lesbian is an oxymoron.

anotheradulthumanfemale and of course, that means some people are actively turned off by performative femininity. Such people aren't going to be attracted to transwomen however they identify!

That sounds awful, Tabby. I'm not particularly doctrinaire about these things (though I suppose I am when it comes to being gender critical: I'm really not interested in spending much time with non gender critical lesbians) but I know some women are.

Thanks Shed, I understood the reasons for it in many ways, my feminist politics have never changed, but it was personally horrible.

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.‘

Ah, the old ‘predatory butch lesbian’ stereotype had been replaced by the ‘predatory trans woman’ then instead.Got it. Thanks for the warning.
In the meantime, In the actual LGBT+ trans women in TL aren’t trying to force lesbians into anything.
I don’t recognise the TW I read about on MN as anything close to the TW I see in real life.

Odd, that, give the posters on MN are also out there living real lives.

I'm an older butch lesbian, young Banyantree, and I'll describe myself as I like. I'm not predatory and I'm not aware of the stereotype your refer to — which I presume is popular trope among homophobes and those who aren't keen on older, outspoken, confident women who know their own minds and say what they think.

I also eschew the LGBT+ takeover and used LGB and T. Because they are different and separate and no one in the LGB community was asked whether they wanted to be tagged with the other letters of the alphabet.

I'm another old bones. I've known a lot of older butch lesbians, they were largely who were most kind to me as a youngster first going along to local groups. I haven't run into that stereotype either, although that obviously doesn't mean it doesn't exist: my personal experience doesn't dictate everyone's reality. I've never heard yet though of a group going underground and no longer able to advertise themselves or meet openly or welcome strangers because of the need to avoid older butch lesbians. I do know a number of lesbian and of other women's groups including health support ones specific to female only conditions that have been forced to do this because their initial attempts to welcome male people who wanted to join ended in the group becoming untenable for the women and the purpose the group was originally formed for.

In some of those cases the entry was openly hostile because of a desire to refocus and correct the group to a political version the new members thought more inclusive, by which they meant less hostile to male people and self identification. In others, it was simply what female people tend to experience in mixed sex spaces: that the amount of talking time, the agenda, the perspective, tends to become dominated by male people to the detriment of female people being able to be and do as they can in a female only space. Issues about pressure to date and to adapt definitions of personal orientation were involved.

@TabbyStar

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.

I'll pick this as one of many posts about lesbians who are attracted to men and male bodies. Lesbians are not attracted to men. There are bisexual women who appropriate the term lesbian but they are not lesbians.

Presuming you entered a relationship with a man because you were attracted to him, you weren't "being a lesbian" for 10 years - you were a bisexual woman in a relationship with a woman and/or hanging out in the LGB community. I accept a small minority of women may believe they are lesbians when they are younger and then realise they are actually bisexual but there are a hell of a lot of bisexual women appropriating and queering our language - and I find it even more frustrating when it is ones who are adamantly opposed to males identifying as women. A bisexual women identifying as a lesbian is an absolute red line for me - If I found out a supposed lesbian was actually a bisexual woman appropriating the term, I would want nothing more to do with her - not due to biphobia but because of the dishonesty and the appropriation.

If I found out a supposed lesbian was actually a bisexual woman appropriating the term, I would want nothing more to do with her - not due to biphobia but because of the dishonesty and the appropriation.

That seems pretty harsh, particularly as I've posted about how distressing it was for me. I came out as a lesbian as a teenager after an abusive childhood and had no relationships with men for 11 years. I don't think that sexuality is that you are one thing definitely and certainly for your whole life, certainly not when you are younger and trying to work out who you are. It was also the 80s LGB didn't exist then, it was very firmly just l&g. There was a strong (in my social circles) political lesbian movement - that's not what I was, my desire was genuine - but there were lesbians who were encouraging women of all sexualities to not have relationships with men and to identify as lesbians.

And I see parallels in what happened to me in the trans thing, you're young, exploring your identity, not sure what you are, but encouraged by other members of that community, you feel as though you're at home and belong and it's great for a while, but then something makes you think hang on a minute, this isn't right for me, it's not all I am, there's something else, but now nearly all your friends are in that community and you know you'll be rejected by many of them if you express doubts, but don't feel people on the "outside" understand you either. It's a lonely place to be. At least now there is detransitioner support for women who want to change their mind in the trans situation, and things aren't so polarised in society now around sexuality as in the early 90s.

I have both male and female "parts" and do not currently identify with any gender. I was raised as a boy, because I had a penis. Then I started menstruating and all hell broke loose. I am a biological mother, but could also be a biological father. I am attracted to any gender, and I identify as pansexual when pressed to use a label. I get rejected by people of all genders if they do not get to know me well before they find out. I often have a difficult time not feeling like a novelty. All this bickering between lesbians and bisexual women tires me out. And, don't get me started on TERFS because I have no idea what friggin' toilet they want me to use. Why can't everyone just be who they are and leave others to do the same? Behaviors that are unacceptable can still be criminalized, but not people's identities.

Tabby it looks like you're having bisexuality retroactively applied to you. During those eleven years, you weren't sexually attracted to men, you didn't want to have sex with men? Then how can you be said to have been bisexual then?

I can see NonMum's point too, but I think the underlying point of disagreement is the orthodoxy surrounding sexual orientation ie everyone's born with a predetermined one that just might take a while to figure out. I can see a striking parallel with the gender identity concept there, actually. And the common underlying feature behind both orthodoxies is they're tailored around the experience of males raised under patriarchy.

We really do need a word that just means "does not want to have sex with men".

We really do need a word that just means "does not want to have sex with men"

Well, this is my point about not getting snotty about so called political lesbians and being naturally same sex oriented. I actually don't care how you got there, there is no orthopraxy of lesbian journey. In fact, as much as I can honestly say my sexual orientation has naturally been oriented towards women for as long as my sexuality has been present and mature, I find the 'born this way' slogan rather unhelpful, as there's an implication that it's an excuse. Like, I can't help who I am, as though I would obviously be straight if I could, which puts being lesbian as a second tier reality.

Well, fuck that. Being sexually oriented towards women is wonderful, I am actually lucky to have that attraction innately, and I will not begrudge any other woman who wants to be like me, even if she didn't start out that way.

We really do need a word that just means "does not want to have sex with men".

There is already a term for bi women who only want to have relationships with other women - febfem (female exclusive bisexual female).

I get the impression 'born this way' was introduced as a defensive mechanism. Because of someone's been gay since conception then there's no way they can be a) blamed for it or b) justifiably punished for it. Effective way of getting the public onside, as we've seen repeated in the trans wossname.

On a personal level I don't like it, because I was not 'born this way'; as a victim of sustained sexual abuse from a young age I'm acutely and painfully aware of my experiences having informed my sexual and behavioural responses, at the same time as having been subjected to the same societal g-wording into heterosexual behaviour as every other woman.

But as I said, I see NonMum's point too. She doesn't want to become a subset of her own class, to have 'lesbian' split into bio-lesbian and political-lesbian. I'd feel hypocritical if I ignored that, given my stance on what's being done to the word 'woman' these days.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand the born this way narrative and the reasons for it. I am just minded to push back a bit now. I don't need to justify or explain my lesbianism. I want to celebrate it.

(Yes, I'm aware of my vaguely sickening aged convert energy)

Hi OP. I'm a lesbian. I personally am attracted to the female sex, aka homosexual, and that means I wouldn't date someone who was born male, no matter how they identify.

No one in my lesbian friend group would either, only the bisexuals aren't bothered now that I think about it. So I don't know who you are speaking to, but this is certainly not my experience.

Could someone please explain what the OP is asking in a different way? I simply don't understand the question at all.

No, I don't mean a word for bisexual women who choose not to date men. I mean a word that applies to women who don't want to have sex with men regardless of how each of us got there. A word that means "Not interested in sex with men" that doesn't carry the connotation of "never had any interest, sexual or otherwise, in relationships with men."

I think what I'm getting at here is a label that doesn't rely on the 'born this way' narrative but rather describes where an individual woman is now.

Thatbliddywoman OP is wondering about wtf is going on with women who define themselves as lesbian (ie female exclusively attracted to females) who have relationships with male people. Because it's a bit contradictory.

Some would say it's because they were always actually bisexual but just didn't realise it (born this way narrative). Others would invoke the fluid sexuality narrative. I think the fact we ignore the issue of repulsion in our orientation labels is largely to blame for the widespread confusion in the face of this contradiction.

Well, this is my point about not getting snotty about so called political lesbians and being naturally same sex oriented

But you'd get snotty about people who were born male, grew up and lived as boys and men identifying as women?

A woman who has grown up attracted to men has a completely different experience of life to those of us growing up and living as lesbians - The ones being bullied, ostracised and treated as lesser and not real women by her group. She will not share or understand what that is like (nor us her experiences) and she will have spent her life thinking she is better than us. That does not go away just because you "identify as a lesbian" - Feeling entitled to identify into someone else's reality because it suits and serves you without regard for or understanding of the group you are identifying into and how that affects them is proof in itself of a disregard for that group - seeing them as a thing to serve your interests.

I know many political lesbians have had difficult experiences with men and understand why, if they are bisexual, they would want to date women but that does not justify co-opting someone else's language. There are so many parallels with the trans stuff and it's even more frustrating that they feel passionately about one while being so blind about the other.

In both cases, the lower status category is the one with the blurry lines, the receptacle for anything. Men and women/'non-men'. Straight, bisexual and lesbian/whatever. I know feminists who have been in monogamous relationships with men for years and never ceased to go on about being bisexual (which is fine - they are still bisexual - regardless of their relationship) but the minute they date a woman they "become a lesbian" - and loads more who are still with their "Nige" but say when he dies they are going to "become a lesbian". Why do the words heterosexual and bisexual have meaning but lesbian is just the open-to-whoever-no-real-meaning category (on both the queer side and rad fem sides)?

I honestly wouldn't have realised how much this mattered until I (for a while) got involved in radical feminism and, despite how supposedly pro-lesbian and full of lesbians they were, found them completely ignorant about a lot of issues lesbians face and only really interested if it suited their agenda. I also encountered lesbophobia against homosexual/actual lesbians - but because they identify as lesbians as well you can't challenge it.

I have also read accounts from lesbian separatist communities from the 70s or 80s where everyone identified as a lesbian but some lesbians were more equal than others (ie there was a hierarchy with actual lesbians at the bottom) - but, again, how do you address that if you don't have the words and addressing what it is going on invalidates someone's identity?

TyroSaysMeow thank you
I don't think I'm a dullard or such but I couldn't get my head around that!

Okay. I really don't know. Im a lesbian. I don't know of anyone who's in a relationship with a man but presenting as a lesbian.

If someone is bisexual they're bisexual (although I appreciate there is some erasure around bisexuality). I will read the rest of the thread now I know what we're all talking about :)

But you'd get snotty about people who were born male, grew up and lived as boys and men identifying as women?

Yes. 100%. Because they're not any kind of lesbian, innate or chosen. I love how I talk about women not having a hierarchy, and about celebrating being a woman sexually oriented solely to other women, and I'm getting shit for not including men in my perspective.

Please, continue to underline that the TWAW narrative is detrimental to lesbians. I knew it already, but the demonstrations are always helpful.

Oh JEEESUS life is too short!
Just sleep with who you fancy & disregard people who say rude/hurtful things about that. They are dicks 🤷🏻‍♀️