How the LGBT movement, being overtly & covertly a gay male movement set the stage for transgenderism: WDI Webinar

[POWNewcastleEastWallsend]

I found this fascinating!

How the LGBT movement, being overtly & covertly a gay male movement set the stage for transgenderism
22 Nov 2025 - Karla Mantilla

The video description tells about the presenter but does not summarise the content:

"Karla Mantilla is a longtime feminist who cut her teeth on feminist activism and theory as a collective member of off our backs newsjournal. She taught sociology, research methods, and statistics at a variety of colleges and universities in the Washington, DC, and surrounding area. She worked for nearly 18 years as the managing editor of an academic women’s studies journal. Throughout her tenure there, she witnessed the field of academic women’s studies devolve into something unrecognizable as feminism to her."

I have attached screenshots of some of the slides from the first half of the presentation to give a flavour. Well worth a watch IMHO.

Text of the five slides that are attached (as that is the max allowed) plus text of a sixth slide as a bonus (because I wrongly thought I could upload six images!).

(Mumsnet has removed the indentations that make better sense of the slides)

How did lesbian and gay rights morph into transgender ideology?

• Decline of feminism in academia and activist circles and ensuing backlash.
• Lesbian feminist thinking/activism turned toward gay activism.
• Lesbians often identify more with being gay than with being women.
• More allied with gay rights than women's rights.
• Gay rights has been coopted by gay male ideology.

Gay Male Ideology

1. Gender/sex-role nonconformity is irrelevant to being gay.
2. Gay liberation is seen as synonymous with sexual libertarianism.
3. Inclusion is a paramount value/goal of gay rights.

1. Gender nonconformity is seen irrelevant to being gay.

• Gay people are portrayed as just the same as heterosexuals; just different sexual orientation
• Idea is that being gay does not involve resistance to sexist, heteronormative sex roles.
• Being gay is seen as not correlated with gender nonconformity.
• It's empirically obvious that many gay people are gender nonconforming.

Feminist analysis of gender nonconformity is suppressed.

• Gender nonconformity is resistance to gender roles, which is foundational to feminism.
• Potential feminist consciousness arising from gay identity is suppressed.
• Transgender ideology is an attempt to make sense of gender nonconformity without feminism.
• The gay rights movement has disavowed gender nonconformity.
• Being "transgender" or "nonbinary" are now code words for gender nonconformity.

Not all gender nonconformity is liberatory.

• Not all gender nonconformity is about liberation; some is regressive.
• Without a political analysis, there is no way to discern what is liberating and what is regressive.
• Some gender nonconformity is good: women taking power back from men; men rejecting imperative to be strong, stoic, invulnerable.
• Hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity evoke negative aspects of sex stereotypes:
• Being an object, helpless, passive, subordinate, defenseless
• Being tough, unfeeling, aggressive, violent, objectifying others

2. Gay liberation has become synony with sexual libertarianism.

• Gay men are still men and hold attitudes of male domination.
• Men are socialized to disassociate sex/sexuality from emotions and feelings, both straight and gay men.
• Part of masculinity is being "strong" and invulnerable.
• Cultivation and celebration of sex detached from emotions/intimacy/connection.
• Right to sexual pleasure without concern for the well-being of others.
• No acknowledgment of sexual harm since sex is seen as detached from emotions/humanity.

This isn't really new. Has been known for years.

Gay Liberation was always male dominated, but once queer politics to hold and it became "Pride", what had been a small group of exhibtionist genderist started to dominate so that marches etc. were just an opportunity to dispaly fetishes, the lesbians who were always a minority moved away.

ie Gay Liberation would for instance have marches where those taking part would come in their every day clothes to show that the police, the NHS, and so on had members who were homosexual or lesbian.

ie just ordinary every day people whose sexual preferences were same sex attracted. That was its political function.

Now Pride is all about being special and different, and feeling entitled to "challenge the norm".

ie just part of the trend since universities where infiltrated by queer entryists back in 70s and 80s.

The same trend that has seen the concept of women only as the basis for organising has not only been challeged but widely accepted.

It really shocks me that lesbians haven't made the choice to dedicate their lives to academic feminist theory when it sounds this much fun.

About the same amount of shock that I have when the working classes inexplicably prefer holidays in sunny Spain to engaging with academic Marxist theory.

How very dare they.

Highly recommend the WDI Radical Feminist webinars. Lots of really interesting talks on all sorts of books, and a great sense of sisterhood during the webinar on Sunday morning - the Chat is alive!!! And Jo Brew is an amazing host & organiser.

Does Queer Theory sound more fun?

What the speaker suggests is not that lesbians became bored with academic feminism but that they were no longer being funded to study and teach it, ie. when "Women's Studies" morphed into "Gender Studies":

• Decline of feminism in academia and activist circles and ensuing backlash.
• Lesbian feminist thinking/activism turned toward gay activism.

Any sort of activism sounds more fun than academia but the other point being made is that feminist activism was abandoned in favour of gay activism, in line with the shift of focus in academia.

(Thread resurrected because it popped up in my Notifications when someone Liked the OP.)