What's the problem with FiLiA?

[RhymesWithOrange]

On another thread a few posters referred to "the FiLiA debacle". Without wanting to poke at the wounds in the current feminist movement, can someone tell me what's gone on?

Could you explain the references to EDI vampires then , I don’t get it

Relevant link upthread.

Belstaffie has tweeted more in recent days about political lesbianism.

To paraphrase - a lesbian is a same sex attracted women, no further explanation needed.

If we agree that a TW is not a woman and we object to the appropriation of womanhood, how can we agree that a political lesbian isn't equally an appropriation of lesbianism?

Language is very important.

I first came by the term political lesbian in the 80's and didn't question it then. But by god we've all realised how important definitions are in the last few years.

I don't do twitter or understand how to link things from there to here but if someone else can will you please do?

To add to my post - it seems to me that many women identifying as political lesbians are in fact heterosexual or bi, but not lesbian. An Important difference.

Is it still a thing? If so, I agree, best the phenomenon has a new name.

Maybe something like ‘ManFree’ the way ‘ChildFree’ is used by people who actively choose not to become parents?

It's a term that seems to have been used in a lot of different ways though.

I can't get very exercised about it, and I'm usually quite grumpy about language.

But would assume someone using it was a feminist who was open to relationships with women and had decided not to have relationships with men.
They might be bisexual but if they're not pursuing relationships with men, I don't see how it is that harmful.

Saying you're a lesbian out of solidarity but actually you're married to a man - that would be annoying.
I havent seen that though.
Not in the last couple of decades anyway.

I think a line of thought that goes 'you can't help being a lesbian - you're born that way and it doesn't have a political impact on society or on your life course' isn't in line with radical feminist ideas.
So if you're a radical feminist, I can see you exploring more ideas like compulsory heterosexuality.

Julie Bindel calls herself a political lesbian and has only ever been interested in women.

If someone has made a choice not to date men but only women due to their political commitments, they are still bisexual. It's grossly offensive to perpetuate the language of "choice" and contributes to the harm many lesbians still face. My sexuality does not require justification: it's simply an intrinsic part of me in something like the way I have brown eyes.

Belstaffie is exactly right on this. We don't need to single anyone out or make it personal, but we, as lesbians, do get to draw boundaries. If you're not exclusively same-sex attracted, then you're not a lesbian and no amount of theorising about politics changes that.

I kept my views on this private for a long time because I did not want the battle, but having seen how some of my lesbian friends and groups are being pushed out of their own movement by people colonising our sexuality, it's time to speak and defend who we are.

Julie Bindel has only ever been interested in women and calls herself a political lesbian.

Yes - this is where I land too. It's intrinsic AND I'd choose it. I'm not keen on the 'we can't help it' justification (which should not be necessary).

As a grouping I'm happy to share the term lesbian with women who attribute their lesbianism to their politics. At a personal level, in my own sexual relationships, I guess I want some sort of reassurance about the sexual aspect of my lover's orientation - but that's never been an issue that's arisen for me. I wonder if it's one source of discomfort around political lesbianism though.

I'm bi, but if my current relationship with a man doesn't work out for some reason, I'm not sure if I'd be with another one. Can't really unsee the things radical feminism has opened my eyes to. But that doesn't make me a lesbian, even a political one, and I think the language there's become important since the time that label's been thought up; it invites myself into conversation about the lesbian experience when there are now so many not-lesbians, including spicy straights using "queer" as a battering ram, that it feels they hardly have a scrap of their own identity, culture, and community to hold onto for themselves, and it's become so normalized that they're being attacked for that like they're the oppressors.

I wonder if any of the women here who are having, or might have in the future, a relationship with a man, would stop to think for a moment how their 'I think I'll choose to be a lesbian' attitude might seem to those of us who are totally female attracted. Does it not make you stop and wonder whether you don't sound rather like trans people? Born with a sexual attraction to men but identifying another way and fuck what the lesbians think, you're going to join them?

Developing on this:
I kept my views on this private for a long time because I did not want the battle, but having seen how some of my lesbian friends and groups are being pushed out of their own movement by people colonising our sexuality, it's time to speak and defend who we are.

In the old days many, perhaps most, of the women protesting about transwomen and GI were lesbians, because lesbians were probably the first group to be affected. Not long after the GRA was brought in in 2004 we started to get a number of clearly male individuals attempting to attend lesbian events, or to shut down women's events that excluded TWs.

So we've been fighting this for years. We've been writing letters and attending council meetings and protesting locally for more than a decade. We know where our local politicians and councils stand. We know the territory and the history. Thanks in no small part to Mumsnet links we knew much of what Helen Joyce included in Trans before she discovered GI and wrote the book. I'm not knocking Helen, she changed the game, but we had been on this for years.

Many of the early groups that started pushing back were mainly or sometimes wholly lesbian, because for years many straight women were unaware of what was going on. What's happening now in my terf groups is that we are being colonised by women who until fairly recently were on the other side of the argument. Some of them come with particular specialist concerns (education or the workings of the local council) and bring expertise and inside knowledge. But there are others who are banking on the wheel turning in the next few years and creating opportunities for those with GC credentials. So they either set up their own groups and then rely on the knowledge of people who've been involved in the GC movement for years to join and support them, or they join existing groups and then use sharp elbows to establish themselves as leaders or spokeswoman. Some of them bring with them homophobia and ageism. Older lesbians who've been protesting for years are being pushed out with the tacit message that us old dykes can stand down now, the straight female cavalry have arrived and will take this issue on.

I'm really glad that Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock have launched the Lesbian Project and gobsmacked to see that today the Guardian has published an article by Stock on the subject:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/12/i-came-out-late-only-to-findlesbians-slipped-back-of-queue

That is interesting @purplevipersgrass , I relate to some of what you are saying. Unfortunately I agree that there can be indirect homophobia in GC circles.

Lesbians who have children referred to as 'entitled' and compared with gay men who use surrogates.

I listened to Kathleen Stock on Coleman Hughes’ podcast yesterday (YouTube episode released 3 weeks ago) - Hughes has been one of my go to sources for a calm, rational take on race related issues in the US for a while now but he has largely stayed away from trans related conversations - he broke cover on that with Helen Joyce when her book was released in 2021 and since then the topic comes up here and there in his other podcasts but nothing much in depth.

The episode with Stock is really great - they share a background interest in philosophy and Hughes own interest in woke culture stems from studying in a similar university environment to the one Stock taught in.

While the Joyce episode was a great overview on trans as a concept, Stock gets to really drive home how lesbians are particularly effected. At the end she mentions a work project she isn’t yet able to announce so I’m now thinking it must be The Lesbian Project.

(coming back with the link because MN has once again started wiping my unfinished posts if I go off to another browser tab)

Lesbian friends from the SE have had their GC group taken over by a straight woman who until lockdown was ardently pro trans. She's a businesswoman. As well as taking over a pre-existing group and picking fights with the lesbians who'd been organising it for years in order to oust them, she has bought GC-sounding domain names and is in the process of setting up websites that will offer LGB-only and feminist/ women's rights training and educational resources. She has talked about how people in Stonewall and Pride make a living out of offering training and she's positioning herself for when things move on. She's subtly but openly homophobic and not interested in what the lesbians in the group think. For her this is a business opportunity. It happened to Stonewall, which needed to monetise itself after achieving its aim, it happened to Pride and it will happen to GC groups if we allow it.

I’ve not looked at all the comments but those I have read are excellent and very supportive. Here’s a sample:

re: definition of lesbian - I’m not one, I’m so straight I’ve had three husbands so far 😆 but like Stock I passionately believe that women need a word that means ‘adult human female’ and a word that means ‘adult human male’ because just female/male alone says nothing about species or life stage.
It’s thus not hard to expand that idea to understanding that lesbians need a word that exclusively means ‘female (monosexual) homosexual’ and women who come to same sex relationships via a different route can have different words (and still be included in wider sapphic/wlw culture, community & events).

I fully support lesbians who choose to exclusively focus on other lesbians, whether that be in their personal relationships or their political ones - if my daughters (or possible future grand daughters) or nieces (or possible future great nieces) grow up to find themselves to be exclusively same sex attracted then damn right I would like there to be a thriving community and associated political representation already out there waiting for them.

(… but please, please do consider inviting us supportive straights to your discos occasionally 🙏😬😂)

yet another of your bizarre twisted interpretations.

’No one is entitled to children’ in the context of a debate about Big Fertility refers to EVERY SINGLE HUMAN, including straight women!
it’s not a mealy mouthed way to secretly denigrate lesbians.

’No one is entitled to children’ in the context of a debate about Big Fertility refers to EVERY SINGLE HUMAN, including straight women!

it’s not a mealy mouthed way to secretly denigrate lesbians.

But I read those posts and laid off FWR for a while because I was so dismayed at the message coming loud and clear from some posters that homosexual people shouldn't have children, full stop.

That was the accusation made by Sappho, yes, using a screenshot designed to misrepresent an anti big fertility point.

The thread that followed eventually became a pretty good discussion about the ethics of Big Fertility and included many contributions from lesbians, including some very insightful stuff about how fertility clinics specifically exploit lesbians by convincing them to go for IVF (and part paying via coerced egg sharing) rather than going for the cheaper and less physically gruelling option of IUI.

Lesbians are often seen by clinics as particularly appealing mark to coercive into egg sharing as they are far more likely to have healthy reproductive systems and be attending the clinic for social reasons (donor sperm) than straight women, who are usually there because they have a physical reason for their failure to conceive (although some lesbians are there for that reason too).

All of this was pointed out by a lesbian Mumsnetter towards the end of the thread.

The thread was was a wild ride for sure, but an enlightening one by the end.

(apologies for tangent!)

People do know that Kathleen Stock came out later in life, at round 40?

www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,kathleen-stock-i-wont-be-bullied-into-submission-18395

So she was either heterosexual or bi before. Do people think that makes her less of a lesbian now?

I feel dismayed too. Especially when it is straight women ganging up on lesbians. It made me realise that lots of GC women are not lesbian allies.

The brutal truth is I think some GC women are homophobic.

Lesbians were useful to these GC women when they wanted to highlight the cotton ceiling and the infiltration of lesbian groups.

When it comes to lesbians having equal rights with straight women (yes using the example of getting fertility treatment on the NHS) it becomes a very different story.

Hi Sappho. Yes, I think you are talking about me. I think you are massively entitled.

Anyone fertile who feels entitled to use State funded services intended for infertile people is massively entitled in my opinion.

Furthermore, anyone, who is quite capable of making a private arrangement with a man to father her children, but thinks the State should give her access to services meant for infertile men, so she doesn’t have to face any problems of potential STDs or negotiating with a man over custody of the child, issues around the CSA, or anything else which are completely standard risks for mothers, is massively entitled in my opinion.

Any parent who believes their child’s birth certificate is simply provided for the parents’ benefit and not an identity document belonging to the child for their whole life beyond childhood, is massively entitled, in my opinion.

I believe you subscribe to all three, as part of your ‘equal fertility rights’ yes?

I think you are a spoilt brat Sappho.