The Collapse of the Lesbian Community and Why You Should Resist It
This blog post is somewhat edited from the below video:
So this is going to be about the collapse of the lesbian community that has happened in the last ten years or so. There are communities of lesbians hanging out together. But the concept of a cohesive, supportive community that promotes lesbian pride, with cohesive social and political goals, with women’s bookstores, lesbian bars, pink ghettos, and women’s gatherings, has petty much imploded for the younger generation. And I wanted to talk about this not to be patronizing or impart any wisdom. I just wanted to give a perspective from someone who lived between the lesbian feminist generation and this generation where a lot of things have changed.
And this isn’t just my opinion, but the opinion of some young lesbians, many of whom I have talked to online. And they say they don’t feel like there is really a supportive community for them. Mostly, what I want to talk about is some of the queering of all lesbian spaces, the impact of trans politics on the lesbian, and of far-left social justice politics.
About Me
First, about me…I don’t actually identify as a lesbian. I would be more than happy to because I am only really interested in dating and having sex with women. And I have been with the same woman (a lesbian) for almost two decades, and I am very happy with and proud of that. But technically, I don’t have zero attraction to males. So homoflexible, in theory, not in practice. There are no Prince Charmings in my future. And women, in general, are just my priority. It’s not political, its just where my heart is, and I don’t have a fluid sexuality.
But you don’t have to be a gold star lesbian to witness and be concerned about what is going in the lesbian community right now. Some of the best comments I have heard around this are have come from heterosexual feminists, some of whom are more concerned about the environment young lesbians are coming up in than a lot of lesbians, unfortunately. So I feel like it is acceptable for me to give my take on this regardless of how I identify.
Making All Lesbian Spaces Queer Spaces
Dan Savage, a gay man and editor and advice columnist, made a comment about the fact that there are more bisexuals then gay people and most bisexuals are in the closet. And if they don’t like how gay people treat them, they can come out and just “kick us out.” This hasn’t actually happened to gay men, who have a strong nightlife culture and are more numerous than lesbians by around 30%. But this is what has happened to lesbians. Since society is so much more permissive about homosexuality now, every heteroflexible woman is on every lesbian social media site now. Women’s spaces aren’t all about women who necessarily prioritize women in their lives anymore.
I have actually read more about cock on websites for lesbians than on heterosexual oriented sites like XOjane or XXChromosomes. These mixed spaces would not be a problem if lesbians had other quality places to go that catered only to them, but they don’t. So this is creating conflict.
The worst part of it is that if lesbians want to have their own spaces, bisexual women and trans women scream “bigot” at them. And I’m not attacking bisexual women. I just don’t think they understand why some lesbians need a complete break from the dominant heterosexual culture. Bisexual women can relate to movies and TV and romantic comedies that all involve men. Lesbians don’t have that option and, at times, want places where all the focus is on homosexuality. So I think there is a lot of unfortunate resentment that happens around that issue.
And I don’t know how to solve the problem of all the bisexual/lesbian drama that goes on. But I can tell you here is what won’t solve that problem, running a really positive review of a movie universally panned as shitty by everyone else about a lesbian that dumps here lesbian life to be with a man. Which is what AfterEllen does. And I just don’t think women’s websites are really the place to remind lesbians that the world revolves around heterosexual men and their dicks. And sure they do this to be “inclusive” because they are an inclusive space. But they also do this to intentionally troll their lesbian readership, create drama, and get clicks. But this doesn’t help bi/lesbian relations or support lesbian identity
Another example of things that don’t help is when Autostraddle ran an article about bisexual women in relationships with men that got tons of comments. Way more than usual, demonstrating how much bisexuals outnumber lesbians and how many more bisexuals are in relationships with men than women. Comments were from women who had ID’d as lesbians but were with a man now. There was a bisexual that dumped her girlfriend for a man. But the best comment was from an actual man finger wagging at lesbians about how mean they are to bisexual women.
Based on what I have read about lesbian feminism from the 70’s and 80’s and even on how things were in the 90s…would any lesbians have let a man in any of their spaces to dictate to them about how lesbians should feel about the complexity of bisexual-lesbian dynamics. FUCK NO. So THAT’S something that has really changed. That is not something that would have happened in the past.
I understand most bisexuals wind up with men, most prefer men, and even if they prefer women, there are way more straight men than bisexual or lesbian women to date, so that they are likely to wind up with one. But 1/3 of the women I know in happy long-term same-sex relationships are bisexual. Some of them have very interesting life stories. Wouldn’t running stories about that do more to improve things than the articles they run that are often intended to create controversy and sometimes make lesbians feel shittier when they left (and probably bisexuals too) than when they arrived. And everything I am saying applies to bisexual women as well. They deserve to have quality websites where their identity is supported, and they can be free to have discussions without lesbians judging them.
I don’t want to completely trash editors of queer women’s magazines. Keeping lesbians and bisexuals happy is a horrible, thankless job. There is such lack of good representation for all minorities, black people feel this way, Asian people feel this way. There so little good minority representation that people get very angry if they feel it isn’t just right. And there is no money in lesbianism. Unless it’s lesbian porn, which is fake. So these sites barely get by. In fact, AfterEllen just went under which is no surprise to me. So I’m not just trying to judge and be self-righteous about the things I don’t like about these sites. And these mixed sites would be fine if lesbians had other alternatives. And bisexuals need and deserve alternatives as well. There just isn’t enough money or power there to support everyone.
Another example of the suck-ness that happens on women’s websites is the debacle about the movie Sausage Party that happened on Autostraddle. They wound up having to apologize for an un-politically correct movie review about an un-politically correct movie, which got them into quite a bit of trouble with their readers.
I want to personally apologize to every reader who was hurt by the Sausage Party review. I failed you as a senior editor of this website and I failed you as an ally. ”
“After we published the review, we heard from Latinx readers who believe the portrayal of Salma Hayek’s taco was racist and that it reinforced harmful stereotypes. We heard from readers who were upset that we labeled the taco a lesbian when it seems more likely that she was bisexual. We heard from readers who questioned the consent of the sexual encounter between the taco and the hot dog bun. We heard from readers who found the taco to be a damaging portrayal of a predatory queer woman.
This makes me want to shoot myself in the head. My wife is of Polish descent, and if I told her I was going to hit that Pollack pierogi when she gets home, she would laugh her ass off. And I love her for that. There is nothing of quality out there for lesbian youth or any other LGBT youth, really.
Disclaimer on Trans Critical Comments
I am going to say some critical things about some aspects of trans activism. I support everyone's right to live as they choose as long as they don’t hurt others or infringe on others' rights. Everyone needs to be protected against employment and housing discrimination. Accepting people improves their mental health, and no one should be mistreated because they are different from the norm. And I don’t think trans people are a monolithic community. Some of my criticism of what is coming out of trans activism is taken from what some trans people actually say, not just my own opinions and observations.
So I just want to deflect some bullshit accusations of transphobia right off the bat. I am saying these things because they are necessary, not because I enjoy dissing anyone from a vulnerable minority group. And I am saying them as someone who was probably the most hard-core trans supporter you could find who never foresaw any conflicts unlike some other women smarter than I am did, which I have to give them credit for.
I stopped giving money to AIDS organizations in the late nineties because after 15 years into a horrific epidemic, many of them were still going around screwing each other without condoms, condoms you can get at any Seven Eleven or gas station on any corner in America. Because I was critical of this doesn’t mean I hate gay men. I love a lot of things about gay men. But I reserve the right to criticize what anybody does in the queer community or otherwise if I can back up that criticism with examples that make sense. I would do that with myself or lesbians or bisexuals as well.
Lesbians (and Bisexual Women) Being Guilted for Their Sexuality
One of the first trans-critical blog post I wrote months ago was called “Queer Culture is Normalizing Shaming People for their Sexuality.” On the Cotton Ceiling mentality. The Cotton Ceiling was an event at Planned Parenthood of all places, where trans women gathered to talk about how to overcome lesbian’s general lack of interest in them. People like to minimize this whole event. And I would love to go along with the idea that this wasn’t really a big deal, but the workshop was mild compared to the blatant, ongoing, online harassment of mostly lesbians youth, who are called vagina fetishists, bigots, superficial, akin to racists, dysfunctional, and transmisogynists for not considering dating trans women or for not going out of their way to constantly validate trans women’s feelings and to validate trans women’s penises as female.
I am not accusing the whole trans community of this by any means. I think pansexuality is a great identity. But this issue is bigger than just a few Internet trolls. Julia Serano, the main MTF leader of the trans movement, does this. Molly Parker, another trans rights activist, does this. Jos Truitt, who writes for Feministing, does this. So if you are trans or an ally and you object to me making a big deal about this, talk to the leaders of your movement and talk to the liberal websites like Slate Magazine, Buzzfeed, the Daily Beast that promote these guilt trip articles. Because I will be happy to stop talking about this when it stops. When I think it is getting better, I see it crop up again.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from Raquel Will on Buzzfeed,
When I hear that someone doesn’t want to have sex with a trans woman because of her penis — say, a lesbian who wants to maintain her gold star status or a straight man who insists he isn’t “gay” — I hear assumptions about how that sex would play out….When it comes to queer women’s culture, in particular, many lesbians misguidedly deal with trauma from the patriarchy by attacking essentialist notions of manhood. But the penis is not an essential element of manhood — it can beautifully and comfortably coexist with womanhood in one body.
First of all, this quote is patronizing as fuck. And 2nd of all, what is it with the obsession trans women (and bisexuals) have with lesbians and the term “gold star.” Sure, there are jerks that act superior for whatever reason, but I have never experienced this supposed rampant problem of lesbians lording their power over everyone in the queer community with their gold star status. Mostly, it’s just used as kind of a jokey thing, or maybe someone is happy with how secure they have always been in their identity. What is up with this, I see it all the time.
Some trans people and allies (and it’s the allies, often pansexuals, that are some of the worst perpetrators of this) try to conflate lesbians lack interest in trans women with bigotry and racism. Believing you are racially superior to someone has absolutely nothing to do with enjoying pussy the way that God created it. But that’s precisely the type of emotionally manipulative argument these people will use. These people aren’t much different from Jimmy Swaggert or Pat Robertson. Instead of idealizing the idea of one man/one woman bound together in God’s holy matrimony, these people worship queer theory and Judith Butler and believe you should as well.
Bisexual youth have tons of pressure to identify as pan least they be viewed as a bigot as well as if they don’t have the right to not be into someone with gender dysphoria. So this is not healthy for them either.
One example of this causing problems in the real world was when Lily Cade, a lesbian porn star, was minding her own business on Twitter, doing her thing, and she became the victim of a Twitter harassment campaign. Because she didn’t want to have sex with trans women in her porn and didn’t want to feature them in her all-girl porn. They also attacked her for using the term gold star, a term lesbians have been using freely for years. One of them threatened to bring an employment discrimination lawsuit. Usually, the way these situations go down is that a woman is pressured and if she reacts by saying this is “rapey,” a term everybody uses (and overuses), they then clutch their pearls and cry that you are calling them rapists. And it’s all manipulative bullshit.
So what happened to her after this exchange? Did feminists affirm her right to define her sexuality as she likes, or run her business how she likes, or use the term gold star if she wants to identify as one? NO! They put her on Block Bot; a blocklist used to block cruel Twitter trolls. They also blamed her for this incident on Ravishly.com, some crap feminist website. So that’s how the lesbian community can expect to be treated by some heterosexual and bisexual feminists. Am I being mean to trans people by saying things that may hurt their feelings? Am I being cruel and uncompassionate by not having more sympathy for their pain around being rejected and their loneliness? Trans people are not the only queers to experience loneliness and rejection. My first couple of experiences were pretty awful. The first one was with a fake lesbian who really just wanted someone to do PDA in order to get attention back in the ’90s when being a lesbian was considered edgy. So I got “chased,” I guess. If you think some dyke stuck in Nebraska (and that’s what they call you there, “a dyke”), taking care of her aging mom is getting tons of that hot girl on girl action, you are probably wrong. Not all lesbians are running around P-Town, making it to Dinah Shore very year. But they don’t tend to take this kind of attitude with people.
Lesbians also get attacked for not wanting to date bisexuals. That’s a completely different topic and a whole other video. There are bigoted reasons lesbians don’t date bisexuals. Some lesbians hate bisexual women’s guts. That’s bigoted. But maybe it’s just a turn off thinking about having a partner that is attracted to men or some feel it would be worse to get left for a man, so it’s out of their comfort zone. I don’t see a problem with that. So lesbian pussies are an affirmative action program designed to validate the identities of the other letters of the LGBT alphabet is a concept I am pretty down on, and I never saw anything thing like this when I was younger, not at this level.
Transing Youth/FTMs
Another effect of trans politics on the lesbian community I want to talk about is the numbers of same-sex attracted females transitioning to become trans men. This was really rare even though these procedures were available to them 25 years ago but starting to become more common moving into this century. Some butches and some lesbian feminists have been really concerned about this for years. This wasn’t really on my radar. I had no one close to me transition, and I didn’t see women struggling with horrible gender dysphoria. And I was around a lot of really masculine women. They were all about feminism and butch pride.
I don’t think it's a positive thing for anyone one for any reason to go under the knife because they dislike their body or even to alter it medically for aesthetic reasons. Everything should be done to create a culture that is accepting of people just the way they were born, so no one is transitioning because of sex-role stereotypes or internalized homophobia..
But adults have a right to their path in life. There are many trans people that say transition is exactly what they want and say they are very happy with that choice. And I would never presume to know what’s best for anyone or patronize them by thinking I know better.
But I have to say that lesbians and me, who is very gay leaning, have a right to our experiences and reactions. And looking at this from the perspective of an older person, I have to say that as an older person seeing this, it really kind of fucks with your head to think that you were in this community that was really woman-centered and proud to buck stereotypes and look around and see that what a third of your community really wanted was mastectomies and testosterone injections. Yes, it fucks with your head.
But it’s not really ok to express any of that because it isn’t being supportive of other’s identities. And you constantly have to validate other people’s identities, especially if you are a lesbian. There aren’t a lot of places where a butch lesbian can go to talk about experiencing feeling lonely or isolated, watching her friends transition. That doesn’t really exist for lesbians.
The other issue with the trans movement I want to talk about is the large increases in children and teens being diagnosed as transgender. Many people with childhood dysphoria grow up to be gay or lesbian (or bi), not trans. They are socially transitioning 5-year-olds now, giving them puberty blockers at 11, and cross-sex hormones at 12 years old. A teen can get a double mastectomy in Oregon at 15 years old. And in particular, there have been huge increases in female teenagers wanting to transition relative to males, which is odd. Any time statistics rapidly shift like that for any condition, it’s treated as something to be concerned about and something that needs research. But female young adults and teens lining up for double mastectomies in record numbers is being lauded and cheered on as great social progress by the entire liberal establishment.
But there are in fact, older women in our community (and gay men as well) who say they did experience intense dysphoria as young people. But they eventually came to accept themselves. And they feel that their lives have value. And now they feel their experiences are going to be completely eradicated.
And nothing exemplifies the reasons why I care about this more than the stories of detransitioners I have been reading, some pediatric transitioners, some older women. These stories are about how transition didn’t work for them and how they have been harmed by it. And I’m not a crier, but I’m not gonna lie, some stories make me ball. Because it’s the exact opposite of the goals of all the women who were my mentors had- lesbians, who worked for women’s rights, in anti-violence projects, whose generation was all about body positivity, sex positivity, and being a female with self-esteem whether you were feminine or masculine. And seeing all of that idealism crash and burn in the cases of these women who came to realize transition was a mistake… I just can’t take it. It’s hard to watch.
What some of these detransitioners say contradicts what I didn’t want to believe. I wanted to believe that all of these transitioners have a biological condition where their brains are hard-wired to feel male. I still actually believe that may be the case for a lot of trans people. But some have talked about transitioning for messed up reasons around female body hatred that is so common in females, male supremacy, and internalized homophobia. Again, other lesbians have been talking about this for years.
This caused me to reflect some of the messed up things I did for the same reasons around my sexual orientations. I started realizing I wanted to be with women when I was 21. And I knew for certain there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to wind up with a man. But I hooked up with more guys after I knew that and hated every minute of it. And it was really unethical because they were all nice guys that treated women well and wanted nice relationships. And I did that because I wanted societal validation and male validation and I didn’t want to feel like I was some dyke that couldn’t get a guy anyway. I don’t know why I cared so much about what others thought or had such low self-esteem around it.
When I was a kid I wasn’t dysphoric (In terms of DSM criteria- I was jealous of males, I didn’t so much feel an urge to transition to be one). Many women that like to have sex with other women feel that way to one extent of the other. Boys were strong, and they were heroes that could save the day. I always wanted to be able to save the day. And just as I started to grow out of that tomboyishness and hit puberty, I became really fascinated and obsessed with sex. I would read all of my parent’s psychology books on the topic. And back then, even in books from the 1970s, you would hear about the Freudian theory of how women all have penis envy. As if this had nothing to do with how horribly women were treated in Freud’s time. So, I thought if women had penis envy, there must be some really valid reasons why, because penises must be better, and being a man must be better. This really affected my self-esteem around my gender. I didn’t have gender identity disorder, but I was actually very depressed over being an "inferior" female with apparently inferior genitalia when I was in my tween years.
And I didn’t know I would grow up to have this amazing female centered sex life, with a female partner that can get off multiple times (extremely rare to find a dick that can do that). But I didn’t know that when I was 13.
So, I don’t want to turn this into a therapy session. My point is, it was naive to believe that some women don’t transition for fucked up reasons, even if it is a small minority. That even this generation isn’t shielded from the pressures to fit in as a beautiful, heterosexual woman.
One thing about the increase of all of the young females wanting to transition I find disturbing is the LGBT press and women’s press refusing to publish any concerns about transing youth. Huge increases of mostly homosexual, and now more bisexual and heterosexual females, wanting to transition in just a few years and no one thinks this is news?
Genderqueer & Non-Binary
Another issue around I’d like to talk about is looking at some aspects of the trans/genderqueer/non-binary movement. I have to say some of it is having a negative effect on young people, especially teenage girls. The movement now is rife with Rachael Dolezals, fetishists, special snowflakes, and people desperate for attention. And this really isn’t good for the legitimate trans movement. And I’m saying that because that’s what some trans people say as well. It’s not just my own opinions and observations. And it has gotten to the point that if you aren’t 100% supportive of the idea that this lesbian should head up your lesbian support group, you are a transphobic Nazi. So this is the reality of where the trans movement is.
I believe the trans/genderqueer movement is also promoting sexist stereotypes women have worked for decades to get society to let go of. Trans propaganda if full of images of boys in baseball hats and little girls in pink bows. And the worst of it is that it really seems to be exacerbating gender dysphoria in female young adults and teenagers. Even straight girls don’t want to identify as women anymore.
It’s almost as if this movement is encouraging girls and young women to hate their bodies and their femaleness. When I read these blogs and watch these YouTube videos, I’m not seeing a lot of mental health there or a movement that is truly liberating people in any meaningful way.
The perfect example I can give that sums this up is a comment on a genderqueer article I read on a “hip” site for women (a mainstream site, not a lesbian site). This female said “they” would have just identified as a butch lesbian 20 years ago but they are non-binary. In another one of her comments, they mentioned that they stand in front of bathrooms experiencing an intense internal struggle over which bathroom to use. Now, this isn’t a butch woman afraid of being hassled for looking male in a women’s bathroom. That’s a totally understandable fear. Butch lesbians have gotten side-eyed in women’s bathrooms in the past, and they will continue to get side-eyed in women’s bathrooms regardless of transgender bathroom rights bills.
I am sorry, but if you are having major a existential crises every time you use the bathroom, you just need to pick a bathroom and then go about your day and earn money, take up spanish lessons, exercise, walk your overweight dog, donate blood, wank off, or watch the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” with a pint of Haagen Dazs because nothing is a bigger waste of time and energy then that. I tried to be open-minded about the whole genderqueer/ non-binary movement, but I don’t think this is the kind of culture that should be encouraged.
I’ve experienced autoandrophilia, I like lingerie. My wife has been riding dirt bikes since the age of 10, walks like a drill sergeant and is wearing toenail polish right as we speak, Pensacola pearl red, to bring out the Southern Belle in you. Non-binary and genderqueer are great as adjectives; they are concepts that can push boundaries and be expressed artistically as the rock stars of the 70’s like David Bowie and Patti Smith did. But when you use these terms as nouns that you demand everyone go out of their way to constantly acknowledge, this has crossed over into self-absorbed egoism. And you can’t identify out of being female. Ask women living in the Middle East.
“But two-spirited or 3rd gender people have always existed in other societies” you say. Well yes. But these are traditional societies where gender stereotypes, gender norms, and gender roles have been rigidly enforced. In those societies, women gathered, and men hunted. Men ran governments, and women took care of the house. We don’t need to define people based on these concepts anymore in our modern world. I think a much more progressive approach is to realize that there are males and females that tend to have certain dominant behaviors, but there is tons of overlap and that we are all just human. You can have a femme male and macho female. It unifies the sexes. I think that’s much more liberating than having 50 gender identities on a dating app. No?
So genderqueer movement, I tried to be open-minded. But I don’t see any actual social progress being created here. The gay and lesbian movement was about love and sexual liberation. Your movement really is something completely different from any other social movement that has existed in the past.
I won’t go on with the numerous other examples of the unhealthy self-obsessed, identity obsessed, label obsessed, body hatred obsessed, sex stereotype enforcing, anti-women, anti-girl movement, but school systems now have to cope with this. There was an example of a teenage girl, who looked like a teenage girl, who created major drama for a school when she used a boy’s bathroom and got teased by the boys. This was after she was offered a faculty bathroom to use. But that wasn’t good enough for her. And why can’t the school system tell this little narcissistic attention seeker to “cut it out.” Because they are too terrified our very own LGBT rights organizations will swoop screeching “transphobic bigots.” I don’t want to be associated with that and a lot of other LGB people don’t want to either, making it impossible for school administrators to do their jobs.
The best person to listen to on this topic is Yorick on YouTube. He is a trans man, I love him. He talks about how damaging the transtrenders are to trans people with serious gender dysphoria who need to be helped and need to be taken seriously. So if you want to hear about this from the perspective of a trans person who is more conservative, I recommend you listen to his videos. Trigger warning, he swears, and he is harsh.
Far Left Social Justice Politics
There is a lot of censorship happening on college campuses and a lot of LGBT youth are heavily involved in this, unfortunately. There has been much discussion in the culture about the complete breakdown of the ability of people to have discussions about anything controversial. Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel have been no-platformed for saying trans critical things. Milo Yiannopoulos says trans and feminist-critical things and has been no-platformed. Bill Marr was protested at UC Berkeley because he criticizes the misogyny and homophobia of Islam as he does with Christianity as well.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, talks a lot about the crippling safe space movement and how it is infantilizing college campuses and American culture in general. Britain seems to be just as bad. Jonathan Haidt got dragged through an inane, waste of time episode because a lesbian had a tantrum over a comment a research subject in a video made when they stated homosexuality was “gross.” Something that was perfectly fine to present in the interest of research.
The worst example of “queers” participating in censorship was the attempted censorship of Maryam Namazie, a feminist thinker who speaks out against the abuse of women and gay people under Islam (wrote about it).
I am going to be blunt here. If you are a lesbian or bisexual woman that attacks a feminist thinker that is literally risking getting murdered by a Jihadi for speaking up for women’s’ and gay rights, you are too fucking stupid to have inherited the human rights and sexual freedom you have that have been given to by women (a lot of whom were lesbian or bisexual) who put their asses on the line in the suffragette movement, in the women’s movement of the 60’s, and the lesbian feminist movement of the 70’s. And if you believe that all that can’t be taken away from you look at places like Iran that actually got worse for women over time, due to religious extremism. And read The Handmaids Tale because that book describes pretty much how society has functioned for women for thousands of years.
I used to be filled with rage about all of the homophobia in society and being forced to hear things I didn’t want to hear. I came out during a time where every right-wing Christian was on the radio saying gay people were child molesters hell-bent on destroying the family. I’ve lost it over identity politics myself. But if some homophobe came to a campus trying to give a speech about how kids raised by gay parents don’t do well I would welcome that. Because I have read 25 years worth of sociological studies that overwhelmingly show otherwise. I would rather confront my enemies in public rather than cower out of fear of being triggered. And sometimes your enemies might actually have something critical to say about you that you need to hear. And you should be open to that.
Conclusion
So what to do about all this? Now there are actually lesbians that are afraid to identify as lesbians. I have seen several of them actually say that. I just saw this reinforced on some crappy queer site just recently. Asking the question “Is lesbian relevant” and “isn’t it exclusive to identify as one.” This is anti-lesbian, anti-homosexuality garbage. And it never gets called out on these women’s websites. I don’t get how 40-year-old editors of these women’s websites can watch 18-year-old baby dykes getting called bitches on Tumblr and not say anything. I don’t get it. That’s not me. But when things are that way I think there is a problem.
When the most well written, compelling, socially relevant blog posts in your community would not stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting published on a queer site because it’s written by a detransitioner, I don’t think that’s a good thing.
When extremely important issue in your community are being ignored in favor of talking about the racism and biphobia of animated taco vagina euphemisms, shits really jumped the rails.
When lesbians are terrified of being branded transphobic and biphobic bigots just because they want to have their own little space on a messageboard where they don’t have to constantly bow to the alter of queer theory, that’s actually oppression. It’s not getting a fire hose turned on you level oppression, but it’s a type of oppression nonetheless.
When your own scant few websites make you feel shittier when you left there then when you arrived, I’m not seeing this as a positive cultural development. And that’s not how it used to be. These bookstores and lesbian magazine, they used to have your back. You felt like they were there to support a sense of community and support. And that’s gone.
So What Kinds of Things Could Make The Culture Healthier?
I don’t know the answer to that, but if any young lesbians happen to see this, I just wanted to let you know that lesbians were once a proud people who gave no fucks. And I think it would be healthy to start bringing some of that attitude back. And that can be done in a way that isn’t hateful or extremist, but that acknowledges that you deserve to have a time and place to prioritize your selves and your own issues and not everyone else’s because they are not always compatible. Lesbians need support around fertility treatment issues. Gay men still have HIV being transmitted in their community. Bisexual women are suffering a lot of violence at the hands of men. Trans people have their own issues. All of these issues are not the same. We need to stop pretending queer is taking care of everyone because it’s not.
I would like to see a backlash to some of the things I have been talking about and to the anti-lesbianism of the “queer” community. I think a movement that is really pro-woman, pro-lesbian, pro-body acceptance, and pro-gender acceptance would be a good thing. Because it’s getting to the point where it seems there is some pressure on women to transition. And it seems that more gender nonconforming females hate their bodies than ever. If people want to ID as queer because they don’t want to have to put parameters on their sexuality, I think that is fine. But when there is pressure put on lesbians (and some of them say they feel that there is) to identify as queer because it’s more inclusive, that needs to be resisted.
I think, to be honest, your entire generation is being completely mindfucked into believing that you don’t have a right to these things.
Maybe some rich lesbians should start pulling lesbian money out of these LGBT orgs and support the lesbian community more directly. And go back to advocating and supporting their own things like they use to have to do in the 70’s when they didn’t have access to any media. An actual quality women’s website that doesn’t troll you and tries to solve problems would be welcome I’m sure. It would have to be funded as a non-profit organization, which is something I am trying to figure out how to do. I would even be willing to financially support a lesbian only websites that would exclude someone like me as long as they were contributing something positive for the community.
Bisexual issues don’t really get addressed by LGBT orgs either. They have a right to prioritize their issues too because LGBT orgs don’t. Everything I am saying here I believe should be true for bisexuals and trans people, so they have positive environments to be in.
There are definitely pockets of cool things happening, I have seen some really intelligent lesbian bloggers who I hope will continue to advocate for their own community and rights. It would just be nice to see more quality places to go for younger people.
And despite all of the wonderful gay rights gains and same-sex marriage getting passed, you shouldn’t forget that you are still a vulnerable minority. And there other issues are coming, like designer babies, that could erase all queer people. To be honest, the lesbian community is way too diluted into the whole LGBT queer community on one side and too assimilated into mainstream society on the other. And it is very important to maintain some community-minded spaces and to maintain politically-minded spaces to make sure that you have your own back and are taking care of each other. So don’t allow yourself to be brainwashed into believing otherwise.