Tag Archives: Gay Lesbian and Bisexual

Lesbians Are Under Attack

This is a piece I wrote for the upcoming anthology: Spinning and Weaving: Contemporary Radical Feminist Theory

 

Lesbians are under attack. Some of the attacks are coming from the usual places: heterosexual women throwing us under the bus, ignoring our contributions to feminism, and ignoring their own privilege[i]; bisexual women appropriating our lives and culture by claiming to be lesbians or worse, “bisexual lesbians” (context: there is no such thing – it’s a lesbophobic concept)[ii]; and of course, men beating, raping, and killing us in the most grotesque ways possible. Oh, we experience violence from heterosexual and bisexual women as well,[iii] but not to the degree, the depth, the depravity of men.[iv] We lesbians have been dealing with the aforementioned for centuries. We’re used to it. We expect it. It’s part of what makes us such strong women, sisters, and friends. But there is another group of people attacking, both verbally and physically, lesbians and lesbianism today: transgender activists and their allies.

I saw a joke on Twitter the other day. It said that “the homophobia is coming from inside the community,” humorously referencing the tag line of an old horror movie, A Stranger Calls, where the police trace phone calls coming into the house to terrorize a woman and the police tell her, “the calls are coming from inside the house!” It’s terrifying because we are supposed to feel safe in our own homes. Surrounded by our things, our family, our pets, and behind locked doors, we all feel safe inside our own homes. Lesbians have never had that safety inside of the LGBT community. We were on the front lines of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, taking care of our gay brothers, marching with them to bring attention to the crisis, etc.[v] But those deeds were never reciprocated. Most gay men don’t really care about lesbians or women in general and some are downright misogynistic. For decades, they took most of the LGBT resources and used those resources on themselves, not bothering to address anything to do with their lesbian sisters.

But, as bad as all of that seems, nothing prepared us for what came next: transgenderism. The vast majority of trans women are heterosexual: straight men claiming to be lesbians[vi]; and a good number of trans men are straight women claiming to be gay men. Almost all of them are homophobic to one degree or another, hence “the homophobia is coming from inside the community.” For the past few decades, heterosexuals have been encroaching on LGB spaces, lives, and culture. They go to our bars, they take over our Gay Pride events, and pretty much the only people calling themselves “queer” these days are heterosexuals, in an attempt to be cool and edgy.[vii]

There’s another reason for that phrase about homophobia coming from inside the community: young lesbians (and gay men, but I am focusing on lesbians for this essay) are transitioning due to homophobia – their own internalized homophobia and/or the homophobia they face from family, friends, their church, and/or their government. That homophobia pushes young lesbians into transitioning so they don’t have to be homosexuals, they can be “men” loving women, aka, “straight.”[viii] This makes transgenderism the new gay conversion therapy for young lesbians (and young gay men).[ix] The young lesbians of today feel lost and without community. That is, until they start searching online and find the transgender community, made up of mostly men claiming to be women, most of whom call themselves lesbians. They drill the transgender ideology into young lesbians’ heads, convincing them that they are attracted to other women because they are, in fact, not women at all, but are really men, trans guys. Transgender activists convince young lesbians that they are not homosexual, but they are actually straight men interested in women. Because so many people are in their ears about transitioning, these young lesbians take testosterone, bind their breasts, causing permanent damage – or worse: have radical mastectomies – and start living “as men.”[x] As I stated earlier, these young lesbians are then preyed upon by men calling themselves lesbians. You can see this happening everywhere; even the media supports this by publishing essays about how lesbians have sex and focusing almost entirely on PIV (penis in vagina) sex and how to have sex with trans lesbians who still have their penises, because almost all of them keep and use their penises.[xi]

Young lesbians are also being coerced into having sex with trans women (men), lest they be labeled “transphobic” and shunned from the community they so need, especially at a young age.[xii] Of course, this isn’t just happening to young lesbians. Lesbians the world over are being called bigots for not wanting to date and sleep with males calling themselves lesbians.[xiii] Transgender activists call this the “cotton ceiling” (its counterpart for gay men being the “boxer ceiling”) and it describes what trans women feel they are entitled to and how they should go about getting: what is on the other side of our cotton underwear.[xiv] I mean, that’s exactly what it is: male privilege and entitlement to women’s bodies. Men the world over tend to get violent when women say “no” to them and they can lash out in myriad ways: beating, raping, throwing acid, killing, etc., the women who say “no” to them;[xv] and since studies prove that trans women commit violent crimes (rape, murder, etc.) at the same rate as other men,[xvi] lesbians have to endure not just being shunned and name called, but also the possibility of violence and rape from men claiming to be women who feel entitled to our bodies when we say “no.”

The transgender lobby is very, very powerful.[xvii] They have lots of money and backing by the left who have taken “politically correctness” to a whole new level. Laws and languages are changed in the name of “inclusivity” – including everyone but women. Women become things – objectified and dehumanized by being called misogynistic terms such as “menstruators,” “uterus havers,” and “bleeders” instead of women.[xviii] Lesbians of color are attacked for the same reasons, but also when talking about the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) that they have endured because transgender activists and their allies object to the use of “female” in FGM. Lesbians of color are even accused of lying about their FGM.[xix] Women who dare to stand up and be heard when it comes to our bodies, our lives, our language, and basic biology are not just called “transphobic,” we are harassed both on and offline, we get rape and death threats, we are doxxed, our employers are contacted in an attempt to get us fired (which happens all too often to women), and we are no-platformed from speaking and performing in venues from public libraries to universities – the very places where ideas are supposed to be exchanged, challenged, and debated.[xx] We have to hide behind pseudonyms online and keep our online groups private, vetting each person requesting to join so that we are not infiltrated by transgender activists and/or their allies wishing to attack or out us; and we have to keep our offline meeting places secret, sending out emails at the last minute with their locations so that transgender activists and their allies don’t show up to harass and attack the women attending the secret event. This all isn’t just happening to lesbians, but lesbians are taking the brunt of it.

For us older lesbians, this is both heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time because we remember what it was like to be young lesbians (in my case, a “baby dyke”) trying to navigate in a world that hates us because we have no need or use for men or sometimes, femininity itself. We remember the lesbian book stores, the stores where we got our Gay Pride gear, going to Gay Pride to get even more gear, riding with the Dykes on Bikes in Gay Pride parades, visiting with and meeting each other at Gay Pride festivals and even festivals like the Michigan Women’s Music Festival (MichFest) held each August for 40 years, until its closing in 2015. We remember lesbian bars where we would hang out on the weekends or after softball games in lesbian leagues, where we could meet, dance with, and pick each other up in relative safety. We remember all of this and are deeply saddened that these things are not available for today’s young lesbians. We all want so badly to be there for young lesbians as friends and mentors, to help them navigate a world that hates them, to help them to love themselves and their bodies, to convince them that hormones and radical surgeries are not needed, that they don’t have to transition, and that they can be out and proud women and lesbians. So we write blogs, make videos, take to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Tumblr in an effort to be visible and to try to find young lesbians. We create groups on Facebook specifically for lesbians and hope that they can find us. We are doing everything we can to find our young sisters and to help them find a community of lesbians, not a community of homophobes and lesbophobes who only want to use them for their bodies and as fodder for the transgender ideology movement.

But it’s hard. So many young women are being brainwashed into believing the transgender narrative and rejecting us older lesbians as transphobic, bigots, and TERFs, which is an acronym created by a straight woman[xxi] and it stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, but has now been characterized by courts and other organizations as a slur to silence women who understand biology and know that one’s sex is immutable.[xxii] This slur is sometimes used on men and even transsexual males who understand that they are men and not women, but overwhelmingly, TERF is directed at women, most especially lesbians. See, transgender activists and their allies don’t want us talking to young lesbians. They know that their smoke and mirrors of misogyny and lesbophobia gets blown away when young lesbians actually talk to the older generations and realize that they have been sold a bridge to nowhere. That’s why they no-platform, doxx, and threaten women and lesbians: to keep us silent. Because they know if they let us speak, more women and lesbians will follow and our movement against their hate will grow as their movement crumbles.

Now, thanks to women like J.K. Rowling, who came out in support of women a short time ago and has been battling a sustained attack on Twitter and in the media by transgender activists and their allies who have been threatening and harassing her,[xxiii] every day people who never knew this battle was going on are starting to see with their own eyes the madness that women, especially lesbians have been dealing with for decades. People are seeing how transgender activists operate: threatening women, “canceling” women, calling women names, heaping all manner of misogyny and hate onto women who know that the transgender movement is based on misogyny and homophobia. More women are becoming gender critical, gender abolitionists, and even radical feminists than ever before because they can see that what transgender activists are doing to Rowling and other women is wrong on so many levels. I’ve seen women and even lesbians subjugating themselves to men who call themselves women and lesbians. It is maddening because I can see that they want to be good people and that they think they are doing the right things, but they are merely throwing other women and lesbians under the bus in order to gain male approval. My hope, though, is that now that this issue is becoming more mainstream and more and more women & lesbians are waking up to the misogyny it takes to call women “menstruators,” etc., we will start to see a change for the better.

My hope is to be able to give these women whose eyes are opened to the misogyny of the transgender movement a soft place to land so that they can start to undo their conditioning and start centering women instead of men. So, I will keep writing, keep running lesbian and radical feminist groups on Facebook, still tweet about lesbians and the hatred, lesbophobia, and  misogyny we face on a daily basis. All of this so that other women, but especially lesbians can see that it is possible to be ok in your own body, it is ok to love other women, it is ok to exclude men from our spaces and our beds. Because the only way we are going to be able to defeat the misogynistic homophobes in the transgender movement is if we all stick together and center women. Women are powerful. Lesbians are powerful. Together, we can defeat transgender activists, come out of hiding, meet whenever and however we want, and show the world that we not only don’t need men, but we can exist happily without them because we have our sisterhood.

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[i] Giang, Vivian “Stop Throwing Hairy Lesbian Feminists Under The Bus.” FEM News Magazine 2015, https://femmagazine.com/stop-throwing-hairy-lesbian-feminists-under-the-bus/; Czyzselska, Jane. “Lesbophobia Is Homophobia With A Side-Order Of Sexism.” The Guardian 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/lesbophobia-homophobia-side-order-sexism.

[ii] Valens, Ana. “The Phrase ‘Bisexual Lesbian’ Is Perfectly Valid.” @acvalens 2019, https://twitter.com/acvalens/status/1152601292717641728?s=20; Lana_003. “Top Definition of ‘Bisexual Lesbian.’” Urban Dictionary 2020, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bisexual%20Lesbian.

[iii] Newberry, Laura. “Two Women Face Civil Rights Violations After Allegedly Attacking Lesbian Couple at Six Flags New England.” Advance Local Media 2015/2019, https://www.masslive.com/news/2015/07/women_facing_civil_rights_viol.html.

[iv] Listening2Lesbians, https://listening2lesbians.com/.

[v] Taylor, Jeff. “Watch Lesbian Activists Talk About Their Work During the AIDS Epidemic.” Logo-NewNowNext 2018, http://www.newnownext.com/lesbians-hiv-aids-epidemic-round-table/08/2018/.

[vi] “Transgender Sexuality.” Wikipedia 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_sexuality.

[vii] Levin, Sam T. “Too Straight, White, And Corporate; Why Some Queer People Are Skipping SF Pride.” The Guardian 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/25/san-francisco-gay-pride-corporate-orlando-shooting.

[viii] “Lesbian Erasure.” Wikipedia 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_erasure.

[ix] Gender Heretic. “BBC Newsnight: Gay, Lesbian Kids Pushed To Transition.” BBC Newsnight via GenderHeretics.substack.com 2020, https://genderheretics.substack.com/p/bbc-newsnight-gay-lesbian-kids-pushed.

[x] Doward, Jamie. “Politicized Trans Groups Put Children At Risk, Expert Says.” The Guardian 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/27/trans-lobby-pressure-pushing-young-people-to-transition.

[xi] Ferguson, Sian. “How Do Lesbians Have Sex? 28 Things to Know Before Your First Time.” Healthline 2020, https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sex/how-do-lesbians-have-sex.

[xii] Robertson, Julia Diana. “Anonymous Letter By A Terrified Lesbian.” The Velvet Chronicle 2019, https://thevelvetchronicle.com/anonymous-letter-from-a-terrified-lesbian-thoughtcrime/; Anonymous. “Get The L Out: Shame Receipts.” Lesbian Rights Alliance, Aotearoa 2020, https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/.

[xiii] Anonymous. “Lesbophobia – Violence Against Lesbians Online.” Google Drive 2020, https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/13vfYxPdJ-HeeLfk_EDg9fR9lUx2NFWpd?fbclid=IwAR2tYUzwEU6C7_GPY5PbpgefGJ0zsDbPzBvSlN8q6oDb7gnkMUaMyVyTlkE.

[xiv] Girl Dick. “The Cotton Ceiling And The Cultural War On Lesbians And Women.” https://medium.com/@mirandayardley/girl-dick-the-cotton-ceiling-and-the-cultural-war-on-lesbians-and-women-c323b4789368; Anonymous. “Get The L Out.” Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa 2020, https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/; Wild, Angela C. “Lesbians At Ground Zero: How Transgenderism Is Conquering The Lesbian Body.” Get The L Out UK Report 2019, http://www.gettheloutuk.com/attachments/lesbiansatgroundzero.pdf.

[xv] When Women Refuse, https://whenwomenrefuse.tumblr.com/.

[xvi] Dhejne, Cecilia; Lichtenstein, Paul; Bowman, Markus; Johansson, Anna L.V.; Langstrom, Niklas; and Landen, Mikael. “Long Term Follow-up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden.” Edited by James Scott. The National Center for Biotechnology 2011, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/.

[xvii]  Williams, Joanna. “How Trans Ideology Took Over.” Spiked 2020, https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/19/how-trans-ideology-took-over/; Bindel, Julie. “International Women’s Day Has Been Hijacked By Trans Activists.” The Telegraph 2020, https://www.peaktrans.org/international-womens-day-has-been-hijacked-by-trans-activists-julie-bindel-in-the-telegraph-06-03-20/.

[xviii] Berger, Miriam. “A Guide To How Gender Neutral Language Is Developing Around The World.” The Washington Post 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/12/15/guide-how-gender-neutral-language-is-developing-around-world/; Sole, Elise. “People Are Angry Over This Safe Sex Guide Which Calls A Vagina A ‘Front Hole.’” Yahoo Lifestyle 2018, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-angry-safe-sex-guide-calls-vagina-front-hole-012527170.html; Murphy, Meghan. “Are We Women Or Are We Menstruators?” Feminist Current 2016, https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/09/07/are-we-women-or-are-we-menstruators/.

[xix] Cornel, Jana. “Thread On FGM Harassment.” @RadFemJana 2019, https://twitter.com/RadfemJana/status/1206052001399873536?s=20.

[xx] Anonymous. “Object’s Doxxing Dossier.” ObjectNow.org 2019, https://objectnow.org/objects-doxxing-dossier/; Forester, Maya. “I Lost My Job For Speaking Up About Women’s Rights.” Medium 2019, https://medium.com/@MForstater/i-lost-my-job-for-speaking-up-about-womens-rights-2af2186ae84; Pettersen, Thistle. “Thistle Pettersen: How I Became The Most Hated Folk Singer in Madison.” UncommonGroundMedia.com 2019,

https://uncommongroundmedia.com/thistle-pettersen-how-i-became-the-most-hated-folk-singer-in-madison/.

[xxi] Smythe, Viv. “I’m Credited With Having Coined The Acronym TERF, Here’s How It Happened.” The Guardian 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-credited-with-having-coined-the-acronym-terf-heres-how-it-happened.

[xxii] Jaspert, Bea. “Twitter Thread On TERF Being A Slur.” @HogoTheForsaken 2019, https://twitter.com/hogotheforsaken/status/1158355043667664896?s=09.

[xxiii] Rowling, J.K. “Tweet About Menstruation.” @jk_rowling 2020, https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?s=19; Rowling, J.K. “Tweets About Biological Sex.” @jk_rowling 2020, https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952; Rowling, J.K. “J.K. Rowling Writes About Her Reasons For Speaking Out On Sex And Gender Issues.” JKRowling.com 2020, https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/; Tausz, Ramona. “J.K. Rowling Stands Up For Feminism Against Trans Extremism.” New York Post 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/j-k-rowling-stands-up-for-feminism-against-trans-extremism/; Boodleoops. “J.K. Rowling And The Trans Activists: A Story In Screenshots.” Medium 2020, http://archive.is/DGKqt.

 

The Systematic Erasure of Lesbians

I know that I am not the only Lesbian who is not just sick and tired of our erasure, but so enraged by it, I can barely sit here and write this. Just thinking about all of the ways we are being appropriated AND erased makes me want to fucking scream!

I keep reading in my various Facebook groups about how surprised women are that even though the L in LGBT is first, we are actually considered last and we have to adjust the most to what the GBT want. This isn’t shocking. I mean, gay men (as a class, don’t individualize this) don’t really like lesbians and they tend to run over us and do what they want without considering our thoughts, ideas, or feelings. Just look at a “gay magazine” and you will see that almost all of the people running and participating in that magazine are men. Go to any LGBT event and you will see the same.

Add to that the fact that “queer” no longer belongs to LGB people, it belong to heterosexuals who consider themselves quirky, different, maybe even deviants (a common stereotype for homosexuals). I’ve seen heterosexual couples claim to be non-binary and therefore queer. I’ve seen gender non-conforming men who wear makeup and dresses call themselves queer, instead of the obvious: cross-dressers. I’ve seen women who sometimes kiss their friends in order to make their boyfriends happy and horny call themselves queer. Queer used to be synonymous with homosexual, but after decades of torture and abuse under that term when it was a slur and decades when homosexuals re-claimed the word to take away its power, now the word has been taken away from us as straight people use it to seem cool and edgy. It’s fucking ridiculous.

Also, consider this: out of all of the financial resources obtained by the LGB(T)+ last year, only 2% were used for Lesbians. 2-fucking-%. Lesbians have “taken care of,” marched for, and stood by gay men for decades and this is how they repay our loyalty to the LGB? We have almost zero consideration and representation in gay organizations, publications, medical centers, etc. If gay men are not the ones that are taking over homosexual organizations, then you can bet that heterosexual men who call themselves women and therefore Lesbians are.

The onslaught of TIMs (trans identified males or trans “women”) telling us Lesbians that if we do not sleep with them and their penises (which almost all of them retain by the way, there aren’t a ton of surgeries going on out there), then that means we are bigots or transphobic or the slur, “TERF” (this is known as the “cotton ceiling”). It isn’t enough that these men continue to appropriate our language, our culture, and our lives. No, they are erasing Lesbians by calling themselves and their (bisexual or heterosexual female) girlfriends and wives Lesbians. These are heterosexual men, claiming to not only be women, but also Lesbians. They take up Lesbian spaces and use Lesbian resources. I was invited to a dance this past weekend and I couldn’t attend because of a snow storm that hit central Illinois. Not only was there a TIM in attendance, he was actually filming the whole room with his phone camera (probably in order to try to doxx the women – the Lesbians – there).

See, that’s the transgender stuff the mainstream doesn’t get to see. Most people in the mainstream don’t even know what the “cotton ceiling” is. They also have no idea how few TIMs actually have the surgeries for their penises to be inverted and turned into something that Frankenstein might call a vagina. Not that the surgeries could actually make a man into a woman, but in the PC world of liberal feminism, even if they do not have the surgeries, they are still considered (not seen as, considered) women, because feels, and can therefore call themselves Lesbians.

I’ve written about this before in Another Sister Lost to the Madness, but it breaks my heart how many young butch Lesbians we are losing to the trans cult as adult male transgenders (TIMs) talk our young sisters into believing that they are men because they appear masculine or they like to rebuild cars or they are not nurturing and do not want to have kids. Whatever the reason these men are talking young lesbians into transitioning and believing themselves to be men. Many are de-transitioning, but too many of them are buying what the TIMs are selling.

This are also, of course, older Lesbians who mistakenly think they are men and transition later in life. A lot of these butches are deluded into thinking they are men by heterosexual women posing as femme Lesbians who do not want to date men. Well, they do not wish to date Lesbians either, but if their girlfriend is called a boyfriend and if that boyfriend thinks and behaves as a male sexually, then those “femme Lesbians” get the best of both worlds without having to actually be Lesbians; because once they partner with a TIF – trans identified female or trans “man,” they can call themselves straight again, like magic.

See, transgenders like to build themselves as being non gender-conforming or non-binary. They claim to be bucking gender and all of the sexist stereotypes that it comprises. The opposite is the truth here. Transgenders adhere very strictly to the sexist stereotypes that make up gender. They believe strongly that if a boy likes pink, Barbie dolls, and dresses, then he must be a girl; and that if a girl likes blue, trucks, and “boy” haircuts and clothes, then they must be a boy. Somehow, over the course of a couple of decades (since the free flowing 70s), this society has become entrenched in rigid, sexist norms for girls/women and boys/men. If anyone deviates from those rigid norms, then they are considered to be the opposite sex.

This is especially true if one believes that one or one’s child is a homosexual. Transitioning is the new gay conversion therapy. Parents would much rather have a child pretending to be the opposite sex than a homosexual child. Hell, even in some countries, it is illegal to be gay but perfectly legal to be transgender. It doesn’t even seem to bother these parents that they are pumping their kids full of poisons, in the form of puberty blockers, and later hormones of the opposite sex. As long as their kid isn’t gay….

These are just two facets that comprise the erasure of Lesbians, not just in the US, but worldwide. Don’t forget about heterosexual women and men. I touched a little on how heterosexuals have appropriated Lesbian and gay culture and how they have erased us from the new meaning of the word queer. But they erase us in other ways as well. Take heterosexual (I include bisexual women here as well) women, for instance. Heterosexual women, even – or especially – in radical feminist groups on Facebook, are notorious for not just being bad allies, but down right hating Lesbians and wanting nothing to do with us.

It happens a lot on Facebook, this Lesbophobia from heterosexual women, even radical feminists. It’s especially bothersome to be coming from radical feminists because we are all supposed to be sisters fighting together for the liberation of all women, but Lesbians are so underrepresented in that arena as well. Even though Lesbians have played integral parts, throughout history, in helping women to move forward in a world that would hold us back, we are still considered by most heterosexual women to be the man-hating Lavender Menace. We are threatening to heterosexual women because we don’t need men in or out of the bedroom. A lot of Lesbians, me included, are even separatists. Even in societies where that is near impossible, Lesbians try to carve out space just for women and Lesbians and do their best to avoid contact with men. This, too, is somehow threatening to heterosexual women, as they accuse us of hating and excluding their Nigels and Nigel Jrs. from events that should be female only. We are accused of hating the “nice guys,” the ones who are feminist allies, even though that is so rare, it is laughable to even suggest it. It is these lesbophobic women who try to erase Lesbians from radical feminism, for it is these women who are still centering men.

Speaking of men: of course heterosexual men want to fuck feminine looking Lesbians and beat, rape, &/or kill gender non-conforming or butch Lesbians, like me. Those men that don’t call themselves women and Lesbians, that is, they are a different threat. But it is not just butch Lesbians that heterosexual men was to suffer and die. So many Lesbians each year are dying by the hands of men, some of these men are even family members. Male violence against Lesbians is a real and horrific thing. They want to erase us for one simple reason: we do not need or want them in our lives.

Lesbian erasure is ramping up all over the world. Lesbians everywhere are in real physical danger from men, they are not always supported by heterosexual women, they are talked into thinking they are men, their lives and culture are appropriated, and they are forced into having sex with men claiming to be women and Lesbians. Something drastic needs to happen to stop all of this.

Lesbians like me are trying to make ourselves more visible to Lesbians who think that transitioning is what they are supposed to do. Showing them that there are many types of women and that all of us *are* women, no matter what we do or what we wear. That we can accept our bodies and live happy, healthy lives. We are also making ourselves know in radical feminist circles, trying to show our straight sisters that while we don’t need or want men around us, we are still right there, side-by-side, fighting with and for them. We are trying to make atrocities against Lesbians more visible, since the mainstream and even LGB press do not care to cover our murders. We are especially trying to talk more about Lesbian erasure so that more Lesbians can hear us and come forward to help, not just to stop the erasure of us, but to reverse it and bring Lesbians to the forefront. Showing society that it doesn’t need to fear us, that it can and should, once and for all, embrace and celebrate Lesbians everywhere.

 

#TransgenderAlternativeFacts Surrounding Stonewall & The LGB Riots

Hello and Happy GAY Pride my sisters!! 

Let’s talk about Stonewall, shall we? The bar in New York that sparked the LGB Civil Rights Movement!

I saw this in my Tumblr feed this afternoon and it made my blood boil a bit because we lesbians have been fighting the re-written HIStory for several years now.

Ugh – Transgenders continuing the lie that they were the ones who started the riots at Stonewall, kicking off the Gay Liberation and LGB civil rights movement, when it was actually a butch lesbian woman (Stormé DeLarverie)* & a drag queen (Sylvia Rivera)**. Hell, you could almost say that the butch dyke started the whole thing because as she was being abused by the police & started fighting back, she engaged the crowd by asking if anyone was going to do anything. That’s when the crowd got into it with the police and a revolution started. In Rivera’s own words (interview below), he talks about it all happening around him; not that he started it all.

We have to keep fighting against these lies or a whole new generation will believe them & pass them on, forgetting the actual truth, the actual history!!  

*Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was a butchlesbian whose purported scuffle with police, many eyewitnesses recount, was the defining moment that incited the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action.[1] She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father.[2][3] She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who graced the stages of the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall.[1] She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the “guardian of lesbians in the Village.”[3]

She is known as “the Rosa Parks of the gay community.”[1][4][5][6][7][8][a]

Read more here: Stormé DeLarverie on Wikipedia 

**Silvia Rivera: “The early 60s was not a good time for drag queens, effeminate boys or boys that wore makeup like we did. Back then we were beat up by the police, by everybody. I didn’t really come out as a drag queen until the late 60s.When drag queens were arrested, what degradation there was. I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn’t even in full drag. I was walking down the street and the cops just snatched me.”

Read more of his interview here: Silvia Rivera interview 

 

See, here’s the thing: transgenders want everyone to believe that the Gay Liberation and the LGB Civil Rights Movement was started by them and that we owe them our thanks. They have been peddling this lie for almost a decade and some – mostly youth, other transgenders, and libfem handmaidens – actually believe these #TransgenderAlternativeFacts. We have to deal with this every single year and it is tiresome; but as I said, we have to keep fighting, keep telling the truth, keep reminding everyone that is was not transgenders at Stonewall, it was a butch dyke and a drag queen.

Share this information with the lesbian & gay youth, the straight people, and even the transgenders that you know. Spread the word so that these #TransgenderAlternativeFacts can become the memory, instead of the actual truth!

 

The Real Goal of Male Transgenders or Trans “Women”

Here’s the thing. The real goal of male transgenders, or trans “women,” if you will is not to be or become women, it is not to be safe from other men, it is not to join women in the fight against the patriarchy. It is simply: to control women.

I was approached on Twitter the other day (accosted really, since he bombarded my feed with tweets even after it was clear I had him blocked) by a male transgender who, after reading my post about the term “TERF” being a slur, had nothing to say about the term “TERF” nor had he any remorse for using a word that a woman (actually, women, plural) was telling him was a slur. He also stated quite emphatically that men were not the problem; because in my post, I mentioned how women feeling safe was a main issue of wanting to have our own spaces and when I mentioned how some male transgenders argue for the same safe spaces, I said that they should create their own spaces because men were their problem as much as ours and we should not bear the brunt of their needs for safe spaces by losing our own.

No, this man was not concerned about using a slur or especially about no longer using it (a perusal of his Twitter after blocking him showed me that he continued to use it as a slur), nor was he concerned about safety from men. His main and, well, only concern was that women see him as a woman. That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Male transgenders don’t want to change the violent ways of men, especially since so many male transgenders are, themselves, violent men. They don’t want protection from said violent men and they of course would never advocate for women to be safe from violent men. No what they want, what they have always wanted is to control women, to make us call them by the names and pronouns that they choose while they force us to be called the names that we do not choose (read: they are hypocrites). These men want to force lesbians to have sex with them by shaming us into accepting the penis as a female body part and that we are bigots if we do not fuck them. These men want to force us to give up our personal and private spaces so that they can have them instead; not for their own safety, but simply because they want them. These men want to force women to see them as women even though our own common sense, science, and biology, hell our own eyes tell us differently. The goal of these men has not been to be safe from violence and share spaces under that common need, it is and always has been to control women. Period.

Here’s the thing, dear reader: if these male transgenders really believed they were women, they would not need confirmation from women. They would not need confirmation from anyone because they would know they are women. Does it piss me off when people see me as a man and don’t see the woman that I am? Of course! It makes me feel invisible as a woman. But I am still a woman, regardless of what others see. Their inability to see that at first glance does not negate the fact that I am a woman. I do not need other people to confirm that fact for me.

Another thing: I am a woman who is very woman-centric; and no, I do not believe that is because I am a lesbian, as I think any woman can be woman centric, regardless of her sexual and/or intimate partners. By woman-centric, I mean I put women first. I advocate for female causes, I donate to women’s shelters, I fight for women’s rights to have women-only spaces, etc. I even buy books by women authors, try to shop at women owned businesses when I can, and even hired a woman when I need to get things done on my property. You don’t see this with male transgenders. They are all still male centric. Even their name for us, “TERF,” is male centric because is supposes that we are centering our wanting to be around other females as an anti-trans thing. The very term is flawed not just because it is a slur used to silence women and not just because not all of us are radical feminists. No, this term is flawed for the very simple reason that it centers us around transgenders when we are not. We are women-centered.

But we all know that male transgenders were born male, socialized as male, and have male privilege, whether external (recognized as male by society), internal (the feelings of privilege they hold), or both. When I say they are male-centric, I mean that they center everything on being male. They come at women instead of to women, they try to dominate women, conversations, and situations, they don’t respect women, female causes or issues, and they could care less about women’s rights.

We even see this kind of behavior and worse from some of the men who have had surgeries to create some sort of facsimile of a woman out of their bodies. They still need outside confirmation. They still act like the men they were socialized to be from birth. They still treat women the same. Look at Janet Mock. Here is a man who is held up as the ideal trans “woman,” who other male transgenders consider the end of the rainbow, where they want to be themselves, who, we all assume, had the surgeries to make him into a Frankenstein-esque version of a woman; but he is still a sexist, misogynistic asshole who clearly has no respect for and, in fact, hates women. That is the man he was socialized to become and a few hormones and surgeries didn’t take those misogynistic feelings away, nor did they change how badly he treats women.

So here’s what I don’t understand, dear reader. Why do women keep falling for this? I mean, intellectually I can understand that women are socialized, conditioned to believe that men are more important, their opinions, wants, needs, etc. matter more than our own. But I still have a hard time grasping how so many women can be so blind to what these men are really doing. In my opinion, it isn’t that they can’t see it, but that they won’t see it. They refuse to see it because they are so conditioned and socialized to clear the way for men that they refuse to see what these men are really doing: trying to control women from the inside.

We saw the same kinds of things in the LGB movement for years and years: lesbians standing up with gay men for male causes, but when it came time to step up for women’s causes, there were no gay men to be seen. Even though we were lesbians and therefore had no need for men in our lives, we were still women and therefore socialized to put men and men’s needs first and foremost.

I do have hope though. I mean, more lesbians have opened their eyes over the years to see that the gay rights movement has actually been the gay male rights movement, so I have hope that more and more women will open their eyes and see that these men are not and cannot become women. These are men still trying to control, dominate, harass, and violate women. They are just doing it under the disguise of “being” women.

Let’s Talk About Lesbophobia

The word is considered a joke by many and is never really taken seriously. Why? Because (a) it concerns women and (b) it concerns women who have no need or desire for men, or their penises. I see a lot of people throw around words like bigot, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia. Sometimes these words are being used correctly and there is some hatred going on where the words are being used. But most of the time, these words are being used as a silencing tactic to keep some women from speaking critically about things like transgenderism, the patriarchy, rape culture, misogyny, etc. Moreover, lesbophobia is rarely used and when it is, it is never taken seriously. So let’s talk about it for a minute because as much as men (including male transgenders) try to dismiss it and laugh it off, this is a real thing and it is silencing, harming, and even killing lesbians.

The responses to my post, “Another Sister Lost to the Madness” have been interesting for a variety of reasons. First, I need to make note that a LOT of misconceptions about me and my writing have surfaced; and while they didn’t start with this particular post, seeing the discussions and claims surrounding me and my intentions with this specific post are at the forefront of my mind tonight. I have seen people misread what I say, misrepresent what I write, and even claim that I am someone they know under another name. I will address these things in another post because, while they are important to discuss, what I discovered as I started writing this is that I have something else to talk about first.

I have noticed that with all of the comments, complaints, and down right trolling over my “Another Sister Lost to the Madness” post, for once, not ONE male transgender has commented, been upset about, or otherwise had any kind of reaction to one of my posts. Interesting, yes? This is important to notice and call out because it says something to me and it should say a lot to women everywhere, including those who wish to transition into some facsimile of a “man.” These men don’t care one iota about women, women’s rights, women’s needs, etc. Since that post was about female transgenders and not male transgenders, the men didn’t  so much as peep about it, because they are narcissists who only care about themselves and their needs, which means, sisters, that THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT WOMEN.

You should note that when I make a post about male transgenders, women come out to support them; straight women, bisexual women, female transgenders, even some misguided lesbians, all kinds of women come out in support of these poor, helpless men who just want to live their lives as “women.” Women support these men. Women stand up for these men. Women fight for these men. But when a post pops up that doesn’t directly concern them and instead focuses on female transgenders, where are the men? Oh yeah. They are over there –> trying to figure out how to make the “cotton ceiling” sound like a good thing so lesbians will finally have hot “lesbian” sex with them without pointing out how the whole idea just adds to the rape culture of our society that women have to deal with every single day.

The same thing happens in the gay community. Lesbians have gone out of our way to be supportive of, stand up with, and fight for our gay brothers. We were there at the Stonewall Riots. We were there during all of the AIDS walks and AIDS awareness projects. We have been there with them, side-by-side through every crisis, every equal rights march, every bashing, every death. But we and our wants, needs, rights, etc. are often ignored by gay men. If it’s not about them and their lives (read: penises), they don’t want to hear about it, much less be bothered to stand with us and fight for it.

When the world at large says the word, “gay,” they are almost always talking about men. When the media talks about gay slurs, you never hear them talking about the words “dyke” or “bulldyke,” only about the words “fag” or “faggot.” Whenever discussing gay rights, it is almost always about men, unless of course, they can parade an old lesbian couple around for the “cuteness” manipulation effect. When you read a gay magazine, there is almost always nothing about lesbians in it, unless it is making fun of us. Hell, when you check the inside cover to see who works at the magazine, the list is almost, if not all male, so is it any wonder they have no clue what it is like to be a lesbian today?

Unless it directly affects them and their lives (penises), men couldn’t care less about not just women, but especially lesbians. So it wasn’t really a shock for me to open up my email and see comment after comment made by “male identified butches” and female transgenders who were unhappy with (and mostly misreading) my post. By the way, as a side note, I even got some mail about trans butches. There is no such thing. You’re either trans or you’re butch but you don’t get to be both. Pick one and move on with your life and stop co-opting another person’s identity.

But does any of the above clue you in, dear sister readers? Do you ever wonder where the men are when it is time to discuss rape and rape culture (and note here that I am talking about men in the plural, as in the men of this male-dominated society; not one specific man)? Do you ever wonder where the men are when a lesbian or lesbian couple are bashed, raped, even killed? Do you ever wonder why popular culture focuses so heavily on gay men and if they decide to focus on a lesbian, she needs to be feminized so she doesn’t offend the male viewers? Do you ever notice that the gay magazines rarely cover anything relevant to you? Or how about the gay bars; ever wonder why they are so heavy with gay men and their hags and never really care about whether or not the lesbians even show up to have a drink there?

If you have never wondered about any of the above, I challenge you to do so now. Think about it. Think about all of the times lesbians have been pushed aside in this society as an anomaly or as women who just need a good man or some “good dick” to become better or “real” women. Think about all the slurs we endure day-in and day-out that no one even bats an eye at because they are so accepted. Think about all the times one of our sisters is bashed, raped, and/or killed and it barely makes a blip on the gay media, let alone the main stream media. Think about all the times your opinions and ideas are dismissed by both the gay and straight communities, only for you to find out later when a man or straight person has the same idea, and it is applauded.

While we are at it, we could be discussing why some of those angry female transgenders aren’t thinking about how dismissed they are. We keep hearing about male transgenders getting caught, literally, with their pants down in women’s restrooms, dressing rooms, showers, etc., and all anyone seems to care about are the poor men who just want to use the lady’s restroom and damn the women who don’t want to be in a close, private space, in the nude, with a naked man. But what about all of the female transgenders who get booted out of the male restrooms or worse, get the shit kicked out of them for daring to both look masculine and be in the men’s restroom? You don’t hear about female transgenders demanding to have their naked bodies in the men’s dressing room or shower with other men because hell, they are just one of the guys. True, this has more to do with male privilege than lesbophobia, it has to do with men feeling like they own every single space and are entitled to everything they can see; but it is all rooted in the same pile of bullshit: the patriarchy.

It all boils down to this: we lesbians are dismissed, we are ignored, we are laughed at and not taken seriously, we are even bashed, raped, and killed. Why? Because we all dare to be women who do not need or want men or their penises and that, sisters, is one of the most dangerous ways to live.

It’s time for women to start standing up for women.

Lesbians, Dykes, and Butches: The Real Gender Non-Conformists

Let’s talk about public bathrooms. And airport security. And dressing rooms. And all of the other places that lesbians who don’t conform to the patriarchy’s ideal of what a woman should look like go where we are incorrectly identified as not being women. Places where we are accosted, detained, assaulted, barred from entering, humiliated, mocked, abused, beaten, and even raped; all because we dare to thumb our noses at the binary and proudly remain the women that we are, the women we choose to be, regardless of what the patriarchy demands.

You can even include all of those places where we go for doctor’s appointments, job interviews, etc. Places where our name is called and when we respond, the person calling our name is confused and unable to reconcile the woman’s name on their form with the person in front of them because of how the patriarchy conditions all of us to view women.

A lot of lesbians, dykes, and especially butches don’t fit that perception. We never have. We have always done woman in our own way without a care in the world about how society sees us, while refusing to change who we are when society tries to change us through shame and violence.

We all have the stories, you know the ones. I am walking towards the woman’s bathroom when an older woman walks out the door and then stands there, trying to keep me from entering while telling me this is the ladies restroom, as if I cannot read or see the small female figure in a skirt on the door. Or the times, so many times, I lost count of when I am finishing up in the woman’s restroom, washing my hands when a woman opens the door, looks at me, pauses, looks at the sign on the door, looks at me again, and then just stands there frozen. Or even those times when they don’t stand frozen, but feign confusion asking if this is the ladies room.

We butches, as well as non-conforming dykes and lesbians, we all have stories like these, with varying degrees of danger and humiliation. I have butch friends who flat out refuse to use the woman’s restroom unless a femme friend or lover accompanies them to keep the stares, and the violence, to a minimum. Other butch friends won’t go to the woman’s restroom, no matter what, because they have dealt with such humiliation and violence before that to even consider using a woman’s public bathroom gives them an anxiety attack.

There are other stories, of course: being denied entry into the woman’s dressing room at a clothing store, the stares and murmurs, and even some women moving to another area, while we are changing in a woman’s dressing room at the YMCA, having to go through airport security more than once or, worse, being detained because the people at security look at us and see: men.

These stories go on and on and on for all of us, so it really wasn’t a shock to see news reports online of a woman, Susan Ho, who was using the woman’s restroom at a casino where she was entered in a bowling tournament, only to be unlawfully detained and assaulted when she tried to exit the bathroom and was accused of being a man in the woman’s restroom. At one point, the people detaining her even went so far as to discuss the possibility of removing Susan’s shirt to see if she was actually a woman, as she said. Read the full article here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/10/08/61853.htm

I say I am not shocked when I see this sort of thing in the news, but it doesn’t make reading about it any less disheartening. As I said before, some lesbians and dykes and especially we butches don’t fit the patriarchal view of what women “should” look like.  When people see me in my jeans, t-shirt, and hat, they make a snap judgment and see what their conditioning tells them to see: a man.

See, we are the real gender non-conformists. I know that transgenders and their apologists and allies love to make the false claim that trans men and trans woman are gender non-conformists, but that is all smoke and mirrors to hide what is actually happening. Trans people are the very opposite of gender non-conformists. They do everything they possibly can to completely and utterly conform to the binary.

Look at trans men. When on T, what is the first thing trans men do? Go out of their way to grow facial hair because, to them, facial hair is one of the biggest defining factors of maleness, of being men. Forget the fact that there are women out there who have no choice but to shave their faces because for one medical reason or another (this differs woman to woman), they have facial hair.

Then look at trans women. They are one hundred percent about presentation; and that presentation is driven by male desire, by the patriarchy, by what they, as men, find attractive in women. They must dress and act in extremes with the long hair, tons of make up, and dresses all the time because when men think about women, this is how they see women in their minds’ eyes: as a completely vamped up, stylized version of woman.

Both trans men and trans women go out of their way to be as “manly” or as “womanly” (respectively) as they can be because that is what the patriarchy, what the binary demands. Pick one or the other, the patriarchy says. If you wear men’s clothing, you must be a man; and if you wear women’s clothing, you must be a woman. If you are going to be a man or a woman, make sure to be the most über man or woman you can be so that we are positive that that is what you are. It is this same line of thinking that has parents turning tomboys into little trans men and feminine boys into little trans women. In the parents’ eyes, they are doing their child a favor but what they are really doing is forcing their child into the binary box.

Butches, as well as non-conforming lesbians and dykes on the other hand, are who they are while still being women, the patriarchy be damned. Instead of conforming, we, literally, stand out and are the most visible women in the lesbian community. We take a lot of heat for that, yes, but we love our bodies, we love being women, and we are not going to “transition” into some variation of men simply to please the patriarchal binary system.

Transgenderism is, at its very core, conformity. That is the number one goal of transgenderism: conforming to the binary. Butches and non-conforming dykes and lesbians want the very opposite.

Transgenders try to co-opt our words by claiming to be women and even lesbians. They try to co-opt our spaces by forcing their way into women’s restrooms, dressing rooms, and other woman-only spaces. They try to control our bodies by shaming us into having sex with them or else be labeled bigots and transphobes. They even try to steal our histories by turning women like Teena Brandon into a trans man, by claiming the butch and drag queen who started the Stonewall riots were actually a trans man and trans woman, etc.

They do all of this under the guise that they are gender non-conformists, when the truth of the matter is simply this: if trans people were truly non-conformists, there would be no transgenderism. Women would be women and men would be men, regardless of how they dressed or acted; and there would be no back lash, no mocking or shaming, no violence toward them, towards all of us, for being who we are.

No, the true non-conformists are butches, lesbians, and dykes. A professor once told me in college, “You are a genderfuck.” He was right; and I am damn proud of it.

 

“Lesbians” Who Aren’t Really Lesbians At All

I saw this blog the other day with a video in it that had women who identify as lesbians saying they have sex with men, but still consider themselves lesbians. I really thought that was the stupidest thing I have seen on these interwebs for a very long time until I saw the corresponding Facebook post linking the video and read the comments from all of the, well, I was going to say LGBT and queer folks, but I have a sneaky suspicion that there were a few straight folks in there chiming in as well.

This has to be one of the most insane notions to hit the LGB community and we all know exactly where it’s really coming from here: men. The patriarchy.

Men have been trying to break in to the lesbian communities ever since there have been men and women who don’t want them. Porn, movies, and TV shows have been built around the premise that all lesbians really need is some good dick, that all lesbians secretly really want dick, but they can’t get it, etc. It’s a notion built by men who cannot even fathom for one second that women could live, love, and have sex without them.

Several of the comments talked about how sex is fluid and all labels suck. Have you ever noticed how people who say they hate labels actually have 10,000 labels to describe themselves? And sexuality is fluid? Come on! Bisexuals have been saying that for years; no one bought it then and no one is buying it now. Sexual fluidity is a myth. It’s something people say when they want to be cool or edgy or are so confused about what they want, they can’t land on any one thing.

And labels only “suck” to those who want to fit into one label but can’t so they either grab a whole bunch of other labels, they try to dismantle the label they want and can’t fit into, or they cry about how bad labels are in the hopes that no one will notice they are trying to cram themselves into something that just doesn’t fit. If they can’t have that label, then no one should have it. It’s the logic of a 3 year old child.

It all really comes down to men. Since the patriarchy can’t seem to change lesbians and since we are becoming more mainstream with more acceptance, the only thing left is to destroy our ID from the inside out by having women who are actually bisexual claim to be lesbians and to have straight men pretend to be women and then pretend to be lesbians on top of that.

It’s the same line of thinking that created the “cotton ceiling,” which calls any lesbian who refuses to have sex with a male claiming to be a woman a bigot because lesbians don’t want to have intimate and sexual relations with men.

That’s what this really boils down to: lesbians are women who have intimate emotional and sexual relationships with other women. Men did not, do not, and will not ever fit into that equation. The thing that most trans and trans apologists get confused about is this isn’t just about genitals, this is about two women connecting in an emotional, sexual, and spiritual way that not only doesn’t include or even require men, men couldn’t even grasp the concept.

To men, it IS all about genitals and about who is having sex with whom. That’s why when trans women started screaming about the “cotton ceiling” and how lesbians who won’t sleep with them and their penises are bigots, all they cared about was the act of fucking. It wasn’t about love, emotions, feelings, etc., just about who we will and will not fuck.

The women in the video and a few of the comments even mentioned how lesbians can be women who love other women but still have sex with men because sex doesn’t matter. This comes back to the male notion that everything is based on sexual intercourse and nothing else. Saying something like the above is akin to cheating on your partner and saying that you didn’t care about the person at all, it was just sex. Well, that’s still cheating and having sex with men still makes you either bisexual or straight.

One woman even phrased bisexuality as being a person who loves both sexes equally and since these women loved women more than men, then they were lesbians. As if there is some sort of scale that measures how much you love one or the other sex or something.

Women who love and have relationships and sex with men are straight. Women who love and have relationships and sex with women are lesbians. Women who love and have relationships and sex with both sexes are bisexuals. Period. End of story. Exit stage left. Close the curtains. Queue the fat lady. The end.

Butch Visibility in a Man’s World

I was doing a very normal thing this morning: taking out my trash. I was casually dressed in sweats, a t-shirt because I was outside getting a few things done; and a ball cap because it was sunny outside. As I get to the trash can at the end of my driveway, a truck pulls up and a guy yells out, “Hey Buddy!” I told him I wasn’t his buddy and asked him what he wanted. He got upset, mumbled something about how he wanted to ask me something and that he didn’t know what he did to me but whatever. I ignored him and went back into my house.

Was I a little harsh? Maybe. A lot of people, and I mean a LOT of people judge me based on my clothing, how I walk and stand, how short my hair is, my ball cap, etc and they conclude within 2 seconds of seeing me that I am a man. I won’t lie, it is upsetting for us butches to be mistaken for men like that. It makes us feel invisible and it discounts the fact that we are women, which is something we still are no matter what we do or wear and we are proud of this fact. We are absolutely nothing like men, so to be mistaken for men shows us that the world did and does see us in the black and white of the patriarchal binary system.

Do you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t threaten to kill him or threaten him with rape for his mistake. I said a few words and wasn’t a polite timid woman apologizing to him for HIS mistake, but I didn’t do what so many men who pretend to be women do: I didn’t threaten, harass, or stalk him for mistaking me for a man.

As I said, we are completely different from men. We don’t think or act like men and we sure as hell don’t want to BE men. When people accuse us of this, it is either because they truly don’t understand what and who butches are or because they are trying to humiliate, discredit, and/or silence us.

Butches are at both the forefront and at the back of the LGB community. A butch was right there at Stonewall as one of the people who started the riots that sparked the LGB civil rights movement. Butches are highly visible, which leads to taunts, slurs hurled at us, beatings, rape, and death. We are antagonized for being butch women because we are not, according to society, the “right” kind of women.

At the same time as all of the above, we are also invisible. We are not represented in TV, movies, or other media. When we do happen to end up on TV, it is either as a caricature that is made fun of or we are expected to dress, act, and BE more feminine to please the general audience.

And then you have a group of individuals who are trying to erase butches from the planet completely. They are doing everything in their power to render us extinct. This group is comprised of 2 types of people: (1) the men who claim to be women and then further claim to be butches (see Tobi Hill-Miller, etc.); (2a) the women who feel the right course of action in this patriarchal binary system is to attempt to transition into men, but still call themselves butches (FtM or F2Tg); (2b) the women who are butches, but insist that they are also somehow male by labeling themselves “male-identified” butches.

These people make it almost impossible for young lesbians who are “different,” who are baby butches, but don’t know where they fit in this world to be ok with the women that they are. These young women are encouraged and even brainwashed into transitioning into something similar to men because they are taught that to be a different kind of woman is bad. They are taught that the binary is king and that they must choose: masculine = man and feminine = woman.

To be anything else, a masculine woman or a feminine man would be an abomination in these binary-loving people’s eyes. So they preach and they intimidate and they brainwash and they bully these young women (and sometimes even older women fall into this trap) into taking hormones, having healthy breasts cut off, having healthy uteri and ovaries removed, all in the name of patriarchy.

So we are disappearing. As we watch our sisters try to embrace all that is male in order to be more accepted by the patriarchy and as we watch more and more young women trying to transform their bodies into something more acceptable to this male-dominated society, butches are disappearing and being replaced by fakes who distort who we are.

Something has to be done soon about this trans epidemic or we will eventually end up with the total extinction of butches; and that would be a shame. Transwomen are already bastardizing the very idea of what and who a woman is by trying to claim the one thing men have never really owned: femaleness. We cannot allow women to continue to hurt themselves by trying to change their bodies and delude themselves into thinking that change will make society accept them.

There is a whole generation of wonderful butch voices that needs to be heard. There are butches still out here who could be role models to young lesbians, showing them that it is k do be different, it is ok to love your butch body, it is ok to be women who the patriarchy and this binary system of being will never accept.

Acknowledge our existence.

Acknowledge our experience.

Know there is a better way of being butch in this man’s world.

Guest Post — A Black Butch Speaks: Addressing Female Oppression by Pippa Fleming

This is a fantastic analogy on how we treat young black and butch girls who hate their bodies and wish to change things about themselves in order to become more like the rest of society instead of being taught to love themselves and their bodies, society be damned.

 

As lesbians and especially as butches, we need to step out more, be more visible, let our voices be heard, and even mentor a young butch struggling with her body and how it does not conform to society’s standards.

 

Society needs to change, not the individual it chooses not to accept.

Bev Jo -- Radical Lesbian Feminist writing

A Black Butch Speaks: Addressing Female Oppression

Guest Post by Pippa Fleming

I’ve been holding silence for quite some time but now it’s time for me to speak.

When a Black child presents with signs of internalized racism, we want to protect them. We want them to know they are perfect as they are and loved for exactly who they are. If we are conscience Black folks, we try to infuse our young people with the knowledge, skills, wisdom and support necessary, so they may survive and thrive in this racist society.

If little Lakesha comes home with “mommy I hate being Black and I want to be white” we are shocked, dismayed and sadden by her self loathing and rush to find the source of her oppression. Is it school, the media, her peers, society or all of the above?

So why when little butch Lakesha comes home with…

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