"Lesbians being anti-trans is a lesbophobic trope"

[MerlinsLostMarbles]

https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/lesbians-are-not-anti-trans/

I think this helps give another viewpoint to the "gay people are anti-trans" trope that is often used by the LGB-Alliance and Julie Bindel etc.

Lesbians often have to put up with harmful stereotypes that may deter them from coming out, and in recent years the "lesbians are anti-trans" is another stereotype on top of the existing ones.

Nancy’s statement is typically illogical. Disabled people have sexualities and sexual orientations. Disabled females are still female and may be lesbian, straight or bi. Disabled females are female regardless of talents, personalities, hobbies, haircuts and ways of dressing. Black people still have sexualities and sexual orientations. Black females are still female and may be lesbian, straight, or bi, regardless of their talents, personalities, hobbies, haircuts and ways of dressing. Desiring a sexual/romantic relationship with someone in a biological sex class means that the sex of bodies and genitals matter.
And btw, many of us who are older lesbians have had genuinely nice trans friends for decades. We have coexisted peacefully, have close friendships even today. They understand that sexual boundaries are not transphobia. Not once have they coerced women to sleep with them, claiming that they have “lady-dicks” or their penis is a female organ and therefore has a “different mouthfeel”. (And in fact are appalled by the current TRA rhetoric).

Are you both going around with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears singing “La La La”?

If a woman likes women and also female presenting males then bisexual fits. What with female presenting males being male. And female and male being the two sexes, hence the bi terminology.

It's not difficult.

Well, quite.
I guess I was hoping to highlight that the clash of rights between exclusively same sex attracted women (to organise a lesbian only community event) and trans women (to be treated as women in all public life) has for two decades now been decided in trans womens' favour in Australia. But perhaps "trans activism" would be a better phrase, because the word "rights" implies legitimacy.

My main point was the /twenty year old/ article, which uses all the same arguments @MerlinsLostMarbles and co. beat lesbians over the head with, exsplaining how to lesbian properly.
Bloody hell, fellas. Twenty years not long enough? Give it a rest.

I think you make some very reasonable points, and this is a much more intelligent and nuanced version of the vegetarian analogy than I’ve seen before.

@aseriesofstillimages thank you - it's very nice when these threads result in developing a better understanding between two points of view. I have also found this thread useful for developing a better understanding of viewpoint that I don't share, but talking and clarifying and explaining has been very positive here.

I agree, the reason I hang around this forum is the occasion constructive exchange like this, though sadly I don’t find they come along very often

Definitely a constructive exchange of views. It's a bumpy ride but that's because views on this differ significantly.

That vegetarian/pescatarian analogy was absolutely genius - it's respectful all round whilst also making the boundaries clear, at the point when that clarity is important. It's when that boundary is changed unconsciously that the wilful misinterpretion and repurposing of a word can happen without consensus. When that shift happens, it displays a complete lack of respect to anyone who was happy with the word in its original sense and pushes them in to a situation where they need to effectively claim it back, in order to reinstate the boundaries.

It also describes how to identify any "forced teaming" i.e. where two groups of people have been clumped together to make a point, without the differences between the groups being acknowledged (where those differences are important). This is something that is seen on both sides of the debate IMO. I'll get shot for saying this but I have also seen it here on this board, to falsely team different groups of people within the trans community when making points (that I agree with) about important boundaries relating to women's spsces.

I have bookmarked it and will be borrowing it.

So now women are being called bigots for wanting to date other women. What a time to be alive.

Is that in response to my comment above? If so, I've definitely not explained myself well 😬

My impression @BonfireLady is that it was a response to the original post without having read the whole thread.

Phew! I'm well aware that some of the things that I say are not necessarily in line with others' views, even where we share the same views on gender identity belief.
It's highly likely that there will be occasions where I articulate my thoughts spectacularly badly. I've been accidentally misunderstood before (I totally understand why) but only on a relatively nuanced points. I thought this might have been that total fail moment 😬

If I've ever done so, I'd much rather be pulled up on it so that I can have another attempt.

Yeah I think that the nuance is helpful and important.

My response was meant to be in relation to lesbians (very understandably) not wanting to date a ‘woman’ with a penis. Did I read the room wrong (wouldn’t be the first time for me 😂)

No, all good. It came just below my comment so I thought I'd accidentally said the exact opposite of what I meant 😂

I wonder if anyone has ever asked Keir Starmer if he would (hypothetically, he's married) date a "woman" with a penis. His assertion that 99.9% of women don't have one is a relatively comfortable place for him to be if his estimated 0.1% are also not trying to date him. But what if he was on a dating app and suddenly this "0.1%" were there, and they made up a significant number of all the people who were interested in him. Would he politely refuse? On what grounds? Would he make it simpler by stating on his profile that he wanted to date biological women only. This is what Lucy Masoud (have I got the name right?) said on her dating app profile and she got excluded for transphobia and then harassed.
Someone should ask him.

@BonfireLady yes this is the key point. Whilst about 10% of women are lesbians, I would guess from an unscientific survey of my social circle that a good 90% of lesbians are, at any given time, either already coupled-up or for some other reason not seeking a partner at any given time. So approximately 1% of the whole female population are lesbians who are currently actively seeking a partner.

The census actually found 0.5% of people are trans (though obviously this data is somewhat flawed). I don't know if general figures for sexuality apply in the trans-identifying population but if they do that would suggest that 0.5% x 90% of transwomen are sexually attracted to females. So that's 0.45% of the whole male population who are transwomen seeking relationships with women. Obviously not all of those are on dating sites targeting lesbians - some will be respectful of boundaries or in a relationship with a bi or heterosexual woman, but still the ratio is going to be that if a site or social situation doesn't have any gatekeeping around a quarter of the "women" seeking to link up with women are going to be male. If then 50% of the actual female lesbians self-exclude from those sites and restrict their dating pool to friends-of-friends then the number of transwomen out there looking for a "lesbian" relationship will actually start to outnumber the women. And if the transwomen don't link up with each other (which they tend not to) that means that all females on those sites are going to get more requests and contacts from males than from females. And it's not fun.

A lot of these statistics are guesses. It would be good to have actual figures but doing the research to find the correct numbers would be deemed transphobic and forbidden.

I think that they're good guesses though Coozud I saw a breakdown - but the situation is changing so rapidly that these could already be out of date

(Can only use sex based terms here to speak coherently)
Transwomen who are Gay men (and therefore either unlikely to be on a lesbian dating app or would be exclusively interested in other TW) 20%
Transwomen who are sexually interested in men and women (& therefore likely to include other transwomen in their dating pool) 20%
Transwomen who are exclusively interested in dating women 60%

At one stage it was roughly 50 / 50 and I think a big proportion of the general population still think of them as being all gay men who are sleeping with each other.

Lesbian is taken.
It's reserved for bio women who love bio women.

Everyone else with a gender identity and a variety of same-sex and opposite sex tastes is QUEER. That was the whole point of the term to include those who didn't fit into the Gay and Lesbian categories.

So you can fuck right off.
says this Lesbian

How does anyone else saying tbeyre a lesbian make you any less of one?
You presumably know yourself.

A «trope»… like on TV…

It’s true some of the younger lesbians I know are gung ho for inclusivity, but do seem uninterested in dating transwomen and constantly bemoan the death of lesbian bars and wish they’d come of age in the 90s. I hold my tongue. And the younger lot are definitely not all coupled up, they’re looking for love deprived of a same sex space in which to do so and it’s bloody hard.

You presumably know yourself.

How?

This illustrates the problem, via Ovarit yesterday:

And if you're not currently being offered mussels/helping to decide the menu at a veggie restaurant

Unfortunately a lot of these occasional meat/fish eaters (and I don't really see mussels as any different to a rare steak) do take it upon themselves to decide the menu at vegetarian restaurants, so I fully understand why some vegetarians want them to choose a different word.

My friend's 22yo daughter is same-sex attracted, basically what I'd call in old money a lesbian. Or in modern terms a cis-female lesbian.
She's they/themming it, very much online-oriented and everybody she knows is some kind of special queer person.
She's thinking about getting a double mastectomy. Thankfully it's out of her price range. I think she's a brilliant young woman, who has had and is having a lot of mental health difficulties. I'm hoping that she doesn't go down that pathway, but in the end she's a grown adult and it's her body, her call.
As her friend (we are friends in our own right, despite the age gap and that I'm friends with her mother), all I can do is support her in body acceptance and the best health in mind/body for the future.

This lesbian disagrees.

I only saw this thread for the first time today. Which was interesting because I watched the Westminster Hall debate yesterday, and was struck by how the most powerful speeches and interventions came from lesbians.

So I did some research - there are 15 women in the House of Commons listed as being lesbian, bi or (in the case of Layla Moran) pansexual.

Six of them spoke yesterday - five of them opposed changing the Equality Act. Joanna Cherry was the only lesbian or bi woman to support changing the Act.

I got to wondering whether she was speaking for a silent majority of lesbian and bi MPs. Turns out no, she wasn't. Of the 9 gay and bi women MPs who didn't speak, all of them are on the record as supporting the rights of trans people to access healthcare, access spaces in line with their gender identity. This ranges from those who have been powerfully vocal, like Mhairi Black, through to others who have contributed through twitter etc (like Dehenna Davison's support for self-ID and banning conversion therapy).

The myth that is peddled on here - that lesbians are crying out to limit trans women's rights to access women's spaces, groups etc is just nonsense. I know this anecdotally from my own circle - a pretty big group of lesbians and (a smaller number of) bi women - most of us in our thirties and forties. But it is interesting to have a cohort of women whose views are on the record, and discover that 93% of gay, bi and pan women MPs share very similar views to me and my friends about trans rights.

That's not research!