Interesting reading - what do you make of this?

[NiceGerbil]

Hello

The Pullman thread sent me down a Twitter rabbit hole that stalled when I got to this

mobile.twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1411387723034902531

Some extracts from their book are there- have a read (not sure how to put the text here!).

I found the extracts totally fascinating. If I knew nothing about this topic, I'd think well. IMO clear, succinct. Persuasive in the confidence of the points/ arguments.

Thing is it's... I suppose maybe true for an American USA context for the religious right who I would imagine fit what's written more or less.

Of course it's referring to all women who think sex is a thing that matters.

Would love to discuss if anyone wants?

(Unless of course suggestions what you mean by “gatekeeping” the term lesbian is saying by definition men can’t be one?

Perhaps that is what you mean.)

'class privileged' women are concerned about others demanding their share of economic privilege.

But rights are not a pie, right?

Her arguments are insane and easily disprovable. We know, just to take one example, that black women are disproportionately affected b trans demands - because (in the US in particular) black women are more likely to be in prison, sport is more likely to be a route of poverty for black women than for white women, some groups of black women are more likely to follow a religion that requires strict segregation of the sexes etc.

The more I think about this kind of Phipps stuff, the more I wonder if we as women ought to be saying we find this kind of material offensive and discriminatory, and calling for no-platforming etc.

At the moment all the media press around free speech is about GC women being silenced. You bet the Bros of the ideological left would be right on to free speech and how no one should be no platformed if it was this kind of stuff. Owen Jones would be right up there denouncing cancel culture if suddenly the right to go about spouting this specious rubbish was in question.

I'm sorry but anyone who thinks only white women understand how biological sex works and how sex work can be harmful to rhe sex worker loses my interest immediately.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

It’s not in GC feminism that the term lesbian gets policed, though: instead that’s actually a major feature of liberal feminism, which is where how people “identify” is a recurring obsession. I use a lot of youth social media, and it’s very much the genderist obsession with putting labels on people and then policing how they are “allowed” to identify. On discord and tumblr there is a “lesbian checklist” circulating where girls are told this will tell them whether they are lesbian, queer, asexual, pansexual, bisexual, blah blah blah - and there’s a lot of obsession about “true” lesbianism vs “comphet” (a term egregiously misused once extracted from second wave lesbian feminist Adrienne Rick’s original article, which is a generous and expansive understanding of a “lesbian continuum” of social relations between women).

Second wave and GC understanding of female sexuality is much more complex and expansionary than third wave and gender-ideological understandings of it.

In fact current genderism is almost incapable of understanding sexuality as more free-floating and choice-based, despite wanting to think of gender as such. It’s revived the dead inversion theory of the early twentieth century as an essential part of gender theory - an incredibly limiting and essentialist understanding of sexuality. This is one of the reasons why it’s the young people desperate to attach labels to themselves who are policing terms like “lesbian”; and not us older GC types who keep banging on about fluidity.

Well, my comment was really relating to the text in the first link in this thread, which noted the gatekeeping of the word lesbian by some strands of feminism. I'd have to agree that this happens - I've seen it on these boards.

I don't doubt at all the additional 'uncool' factor that exists; I don't know that I would describe this as gatekeeping or policing in the same way however, it's more of a fashion, peer pressure trend to identify with the label du jour.

Well, my comment was really relating to the text in the first link in this thread, which noted the gatekeeping of the word lesbian by some strands of feminism. I'd have to agree that this happens - I've seen it on these boards.

So in what way gatekeeping on these boards? Can you be specific? Can you point to any places where GC women are saying you can only be a lesbian if you have only ever had sex with women, or can’t be a lesbian for some other reason? Or as I asked before, do you just mean by gatekeeping, saying that men can’t by definition be lesbians?

It’s the lib feminists that I largely see policing identities and terms and complaining on tumblr that they don’t want bisexual women identifying as lesbians or whatever: not GC feminists. Aside from the one very large GC statement that men can’t be lesbians. Which is hardly gatekeeping: it’s just defining the basic premise of the term, without which it’s quite literally meaningless.

Can you point to a GC feminist writer or philosopher who “gatekeeps” lesbianism? Some texts?

It's not just lesbian it's about gatekeeping the word woman as well.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

Well, my comment was really relating to the text in the first link in this thread, which noted the gatekeeping of the word lesbian by some strands of feminism. I'd have to agree that this happens - I've seen it on these boards.

So in what way gatekeeping on these boards? Can you be specific? Can you point to any places where GC women are saying you can only be a lesbian if you have only ever had sex with women, or can’t be a lesbian for some other reason? Or as I asked before, do you just mean by gatekeeping, saying that men can’t by definition be lesbians?

It’s the lib feminists that I largely see policing identities and terms and complaining on tumblr that they don’t want bisexual women identifying as lesbians or whatever: not GC feminists. Aside from the one very large GC statement that men can’t be lesbians. Which is hardly gatekeeping: it’s just defining the basic premise of the term, without which it’s quite literally meaningless.

Can you point to a GC feminist writer or philosopher who “gatekeeps” lesbianism? Some texts?

I'm really not going to spend my time trawling through thousands of posts to try to find the ones I'm recalling, but yes there was certainty from some quarters that lesbian-identifying women who had previously slept with men were not entitled to use the term lesbian, whatever their present status, and should properly identify as bisexual.

But as it happens I would also include efforts to stop trans women identifying as lesbians as gatekeeping as well. To a lot of people this is perfectly reasonable and logical but I personally still view it as gatekeeping and an unnecessary attempt to police the category.

I view this from a perspective that the fear the descriptor is going to become meaningless or that lesbian spaces are going to be over-run by male genitalia, is misplaced.

I vehemently disagree with what appears to have become accepted truth within GC feminism that trans lesbians expect sex from other lesbians - or are any more likely to be aggressive than any other lesbians present. I'm out in these spaces every weekend, I'm part of a group with several hundred members (a group which accepts anyone who chooses to identify as lesbian) and I see and hear nothing of the sort.

And reading that Alison Phipps text and the parallels made did make sense to me - it is reminiscent of the hysterical language used to demonise black men not so very long ago -' they're going to rape the white women' - that seems to be very similar to what is happening here on these boards at the moment, to demonize and discredit trans lesbians - 'they're demanding sex from other lesbians!' Just. No. It's not happening. It's a fear mindset at work. No matter what anecdotes and myths are being promogulated - I think a lot of people on these boards do not have first hand experience and are working from hearsay and second hand, unreliable sources, and this is contributing to the demonization of already vulnerable individuals.

You don't need to be at the top of the social hierarchy to bully another level down.

suggestions my experience is the total opposite of yours. Most GC women I know are straight, bi, lesbian, but often women who came out as lesbian after marriages or relationships with men - I hear nothing IRL that “polices” whether lesbians have to have a specific pedigree (whereas I do see that constantly among libfems and young people online). Many of the original GC lesbian feminist theorists started off married to men!

Aha but as you deal with that very quickly, and move on to, “as it happens”, much longer points about efforts to stop trans women identifying as lesbians as gatekeeping as well. To a lot of people this is perfectly reasonable and logical but I personally still view it as gatekeeping and an unnecessary attempt to police the category.

— I see that this is actually the kind of “gatekeeping” you mean.

Do lesbians, a word which means a woman sexually attracted to women, ever have penises?

I’m guessing you say yes, and that saying no is “gatekeeping”. Whereas I say it’s nonsensical. It’s like saying some reptiles are mammals if they identify as such and it’s “gatekeeping” the term to say that’s nonsense.

So you and I are never going to agree. I think your position is nonsensical and specious; and you think mine is terribly mean because it hurts the feelings of men who wish they weren’t men.

When you say that you think a lot of people in these boards don’t have actual experience, I think you are the person gatekeeping others’ experiences and voices: - no matter, because we all know that gender ideologues complain about how some people’s experiences should be “validated” and respected, whilst simultaneously invalidating others’. How old are you? Have you seen what’s happened to lesbian dating for middle-aged lesbian women? Have you seen the daily threats and abuse posted to women on social media who dare not to agree with the trans orthodoxy? Women generally aren’t hysterically saying “oh they are going to rape us.” Women are saying “I assert my right to have sex with only people I choose”. And that - which should be a basic right for anyone - is being portrayed as hysteria? We all know why both men and women like to portray women’s concerns around sexual autonomy as “hysterical”, and it ain’t to support women.

In any case, the idea that women are being “hysterical” when literally all over social media TRAs are threatening women with violence and rape is incredulous. Are the threats of pipe bombs, machetes, “I punch/kill terfs”, “die terf scum”, being hit, threatened, doxxed or reported to the police for wrongthink etc. all just charming little metaphors that we are silly billies for taking for real threats of violence?

Seems to me that this Phipps rubbish you’ve bought II to wants to claim that women are evil and oppressive beings and that their opinions are literally “violence”, but that also women are hysterical, and when constant threats are made against them they are silly because these are somehow not actual violence, and they are making it all up that trans women are somehow a threat.

Tails I win heads you lose. It’s DARVO. And you must know it is.

'I view this from a perspective that the fear the descriptor is going to become meaningless or that lesbian spaces are going to be over-run by male genitalia, is misplaced.'

Loads of commentary about the impact on online dating for lesbians. And RL lesbian groups, Facebook groups etc.

You saying it won't happen when it already has... Why claim it?

“Demonising” = pointing to government stats on male sex offenders self identifying into women’s prisons.

Bad feminists! Punching down at rapists. Oh my aching sides.

I'm really not going to spend my time trawling through thousands of posts to try to find the ones I'm recalling, but yes there was certainty from some quarters that lesbian-identifying women who had previously slept with men were not entitled to use the term lesbian, whatever their present status, and should properly identify as bisexual

I have been told this about my own life. I haven't seen it frequently, but I've definitely seen it once.

I don't agree that men can be lesbians though, it's not right to take away people's ability to define themselves. Find a new word.

It's not in the main women who classify lesbians, 'gold star' being the highest prize of all for certain new lesbians, naturally..

When anyone thinks, now which sex is well known for judging women on their sexual preferences and past etc? Which sex imposes strict strict control on women in places to ensure they can only have sex with who they are supposed to? Why does FGM happen...???

But yes it's women who judge most on these things.

Darvo innit. Always.

IIRC the phrase "gold star lesbian" was coined by the US show The L Word in the 2000s (which I never saw much of as it didn't really air over here, so it wasn't much of a UK thing). I never hear actual real lesbians use it, and it's nothing to do with GC feminism or second wave feminism. Its very much a product of the third wave/liberal feminism of the post-90s.

But honestly, all this obsession with labels and identities is nothing to do with original second-wave /GC feminists at all -- they were not at all interested in "identity" or "identifying". Unfortunately, quite a lot of today's young people have very little idea of the history of feminism or sexuality.

I had to explain this to a young woman recently who was getting very worked up about how the term "pansexual" had "recently been invented as a biphobic term to exclude transfolk and spread biphobia." I explained that it was not a new term and had been around for decades; moreover that it was a bit of a joke term when I was young.

This absolutely could not sway her from her belief that it had been invented recently on TikTok in order to be specifically anti-trans and anti-bisexual. She had no actual evidence for this, mind you, and had looked it up in no dictionary or anything. She'd just heard this on TikTok and that meant of course it was true.

In cultural studies you used to have to read a lot of social and cultural history, so that you could understand that the way that people understood their sexuality and social selfhood has changed dramatically over time. There is excellent work done on this from the 1960s onwards that is very detailed, especially in the history of science and sexuality and terms in use around sex, gender and sexuality.

Now you just get some kids saying on social media "oh trans folk have always been around" and young people swallow it up with no context or question. It's really difficult to get them to engage with the fact that their assumptions are wrong, because you basically have to teach them to read history from the ground up because they are so unused to dealing with actual historical sources and data and reading actual books compared to just goggling at video of someone's totally uninformed "opinion".

I asked one of my lesbian friends about the 'gold star' and she said it's very much a thing in her circles.

How old is she Beamur? I am LB and never hear of it! I guess all my lesbian friends are just too old and interested in their cats and plants these days (I’m 42 😂🤦‍♀️)

I've seen men discussing it in the past on... Forget what. A link on here.

It's very much penis male centric. The idea that for women having been penetrated with a penis is somehow important. The usual male definition of sex meaning penetrated with a cock. All that heteronornative phallocentric perspective.

Why would lesbians see it as a 'thing', why, in what context?

The massive importance based on having been penetrated with a penis is rife in religion, laws about and attitudes to gay men, loads of religion, what sex means, the value a woman has to men and how they judge her, and massive oppression of a range of types many of which are just hideous.

I mean sure maybe it's a thing. It wasn't when I was younger.

What sort of context? Genuinely interested. Can't imagine it.

Oh have you met Alexa? She's gorgeous.
Yes! Is she gold star do you think?
No idea....

??

This is the worst drivel I've read since I skimmed a paragraph of 50 Shades of Grey in a thrift store a couple of years ago. It's basically a list of all the bad things in the history of the world, and then saying "reactionary feminists" are responsible for all of them. Think Nazi anti-semitic propaganda with radfeminism replacing Judaism. They'll "find" The Protocols of the Elders of Radical Feminism next and claim we've been plotting it all since the Middle Ages.

@irresistibleoverwhelm
She's early 40's

She must mix with a very different kind of lesbian to me - I don’t ever ask my friends who they’ve slept with!!

(Another person who has read neither the linked Americana nor even all the comments, but is going to comment anyway. Can't stop myself.)

I agree with you, NiceGerbil. What ties it all together is that I'm going to shout WOMEN COUNT FOR NOTHING.

None of what they say makes sense unless women don't really exist as humans.

Transpose what they say to the level of consideration normally reserved for, I don't know, cattle / future beef. The discussion is all from the human point of view. The kinder people don't want the animals to suffer unnecessarily. But other than that there's no sense that future beef has thoughts or feelings worth considering. (And in the case of actual cattle, possibly they're so in-the-moment that they indeed don't.)

That same inability that the women they're talking about could have their own priorities, and that they could matter, is inconceivable. You can see them, not conceiving of it at all.

You're right. That's what we're up against. The most boggling thing being that there are plenty of women talking like that. Of course, we're the ones who say everyone stews in patriarchy and misogyny, but it's still amazing, at least to me, to watch it in such obvious action.

Nicegerbil, do you think that Phipps's screed is convincing to normies? By which I mean neither radfems nor those who have adopted the libfem twaw position?

I think that

It will be read by those with a serious interest.

The ideas will be picked up and converted into soundbites/ statements of 'fact', more straightforward points and will propagate out. Get picked up and pushed out.

As ever women will think WTF and waste hours arguing in good faith why it's wrong, that they're not the things stated.

Those who have gone along with this and are in boiling frog situation will nod and agree because it justifies the position they've dug themselves into so deep there's no way out.

And bingo BBC articles etc will adopt eg the term reactionary feminism, ask women if they agree with eugenics or etc with a straight face.

Job done.

It's gone this way so far.

Transgender people want to 'live as' their gender
TWAW
Anything to do with female biology is exclusionary and must be reworded
TW are literally women
Women has always meant social role. Sex is complex and irrelevant
Those who Identify as female
Little girls should be fine being naked with penises about the place

....

Boiling frog.

We are in dangerous territory when you see the whole scope, the end game.

And never forget loads of people just don't like women. Need to be put back in their box.

That's what I think.