Tag Archives: Misogyny

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.

 

(White) Male Privilege

Note: I put “white” in parentheses because male privilege crosses lines of race, religion, country, etc., so while white men are at the top of the pyramid, the men below them also profit from male privilege.

 

The note at the VA dental front desk says, “Please check in at the kiosk. Thank you.”

Naturally, I check in at the kiosk. Because of my conditioning and socialization, I don’t presume to think that I deserve special treatment. Old white male goes to the front desk to check in and the woman checks him in, instead of telling him to check in at the kiosk.

The privilege isn’t just that she didn’t tell him to use the kiosk, as they have done me in the past, the privilege is also the fact that he walked past the kiosk, ignored the sign, and went to the front desk *expecting* the women to check him in for his appointment.

Privilege isn’t just about “getting stuff,” it’s also walking through this world *expecting* stuff – expecting to be first, expecting that the rules don’t apply to you, expecting people to wait on and for you. Expecting to be deferred to, and of course, expecting to be allowed and accepted everywhere, invited or not.

I see it a lot on the road too – white males (deliberately) pull out in front of me, expecting me to slow down for them, turning on their turn signal and thinking they have the right of way, etc. One man did that and hit me, causing a severe accident. He kept on driving because he didn’t notice the commotion that he started. When he got to his destination, he saw the damage to his car and drove back to the accident site, *expecting* someone else to be held accountable. Instead, he was cited for improper lane change – which he fought and lost in court – and leaving the scene of an accident.

They don’t just *think* they deserve more, they actually believe it and walk through life expecting it to be handed to them. Unfortunately, the rest of us are completely conditioned and socialized to give them what they want and not fight it – even getting mad at the few who *do* fight it.

Like when I brought this up to the dental assistant, she gave the excuse that they just refuse to use the computer (to be clear, it’s a touch screen monitor – you stick your VA ID in it, then answer a few Qs, the end). I said, “it’s probably white males doing that, huh?” She blinked and said, “well, yeah, I see your point.” I told her I saw hers as well, because like I said, we are conditioned to give them what they want.

What I failed to point out because I just now thought of it is that they have to use the kiosks in the pharmacy and lab. If they “don’t know how” or “don’t want to,” they have to have someone help them because those two places require us ALL to check in via the kiosks, no exceptions. So crying about it in dental or another clinic is just them imposing their will onto a woman and expecting her to do the work for him by checking him in instead of being firm and insisting he use the kiosk like everyone else.

What’s the big deal? They are taking these women from their other duties: answering the phones, checking patients out, setting up return appointments, and the list goes on. They have to stop doing all of that to cater to these men; and the men expect the women to cater to them.

Imagine how hard these men would fight to keep things like this. That’s why male gamers attack female gamers and developers both on and offline. It’s why male transgenders (TIMs or trans identified males) are so violent towards women, again, both on and offline, who refuse to share in their delusions; and TIMs and their handmaidens are laughably ok with being violent towards women, calling their violence “self-defense.”

See, TIMs view radical feminists’ dissent as violence and they actually believe it is violence to “misgender” them – online. There is not one piece of proof that a radical feminist, or any woman, has killed a transgender. Not one. Still, we are blamed for the violence against them; and let’s be clear, most of the TIMs who are killed are men of color prostituting themselves, getting killed by Johns and pimps. NOT WOMEN. But instead of naming the problem and blaming men for the male violence against transgenders, they blame women and attack us online by using assault, rape, and death threats, sometimes by the dozen(s); and in real life by cornering us, screaming at us, assaulting us, raping us, and yes, killing us.

No, men are not looking to give up their privilege, their entitlement any time soon. It’s why the man who caused my accident became angry and fought his improper lane change citation. He felt he was right because his turn signal was on, giving him the right of way (in his mind). Men, especially white men, expect the rest of us to cater to their wants and needs, no questions asked.

They won’t give up their power without a fight; and the women who can’t see past their own conditioning will always help men fight to stay in control. It is disheartening for us to see women sticking up to, arguing for, and fighting for these men, these TIMs. I liken it to the Matrix: these women, these “transmaidens” are stuck in the matrix, in the false world where their conditioning has them tied down and doing as men wish, even if it conflicts with reality. But radical feminists took the red pill and are free of the matrix, fighting for ALL women, everywhere.

But that’s why radical feminists are so hated: we fight against our conditioning and internalized misogyny and we fight for women’s liberation from male supremacy. Women’s liberation from patriarchy. Women’s liberation from men.

Men have only the power we women give them. If we were to, once and for all, band together over races, religions, countries, and continents, we would be able to topple the patriarchy and end men’s tyranny. Finally.

Banned But Not Forgotten

Yesterday, I was permanently banned from a site that calls themselves a butch-femme site.

Now, this is a site that is owned and operated by a femme and it *used* to be a place for butches and femmes to meet, chat, flirt, or just hang out with one another. But as the TransCult has swept the nation, so has it swept that site, making it a transgender site now.

Ok, first, don’t get me started on what I think about women who think they are men but instead of hanging out with straight people on straight sites, they take over a lesbian site and make their home there. I get it, they are still female and straight women want dick. It’s just a fact of life. It doesn’t make straight women bigots for wanting dick, it just makes them, you guessed it, straight women!

Hence why these women who call themselves men don’t hang out with the straight crowd is pretty clear: they. Are. Not. Men! So, they fall back onto what they know: lesbians. Because we lesbians, we women, have to take in everyone. We cant just be a bunch of lesbians on a lesbian site hanging out and having fun. NO! We have to let in the female transgenders and then cater to them by calling all butches “he” because, we don’t know, maybe that butch over there has decided that “he” is a man now!

So fucking ridiculous. Seriously.

Consequently, slowly, over time, all of these females, these women, who call themselves men or call themselves “male ID’d butches” (an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one!) take over the site and the femmes there let it happen and just shift their focus from butches to these man wannabes. Suddenly it’s a trans-femme site, instead of a butch-femme site. Which is also ridiculous because femmes don’t partner with men, whether they are biological men or women who call themselves men. With a few exceptions (femmes partnering with other femmes, butches partnering with other butches). Femmes partner with butches and butches partner with femmes. Neither are, want to be, or want to be *with* men.

I guess I’m saying that it was no great loss to be banned from the site since it was all trans, all the time and those of us who mourned the loss of the butch-femme site had to keep it to ourselves; and believe me, sister, there are a LOT of unhappy campers on your site who wish it wasn’t a transgender site but a site for actual butches and femmes! I’m hearing from them!

But I digress, because here’s what really gets me about being banned from the site. Here is the part that should make every woman’s blood boil: she banned me from the site because of what I said on ANOTHER site! Even though I held my tongue and played nice on her site, not breaking any rules and even being helpful by keeping track of all of the name changes that go on there, because I spoke some truths about transgenders on youtube (my vlog posts), I was labeled a transphobe, “not safe,” and banned from her site.

This is the big take away here: a Woman silenced another Woman, not only for the sake of transgenders, but because she caught the woman saying things with which she didn’t agree on *another site.* She banned a woman from her site because of the OPINIONS that woman expressed on another site!

This is how far we’ve come, dear reader! Women not only silencing other women for the sake of men, but now also for the sake of “men!” Transgender egos are so very fragile that they cannot handle the truth coming at them from anywhere and demand that we are obedient to them on every site on the internet, lest we be banned from a site over which they have complete control. Control based on fear and stupidity. Fear that if one does not agree with them, one will be shunned and branded a bigot, or worse, the slur, “TERF;” and stupidity because I just find it stupid that women would (a) center their lives on men and (b) enable transgenders delusions instead of embracing the truth.

Jenner’s, “Hardest Part About Being A Woman”

As you may or may not know … wait, who are we kidding? He’s all over the news, he has completely immersed himself into the media because he gets off on all of the attention. So you have most likely already seen the BuzzFeed interview of Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, entitled “Caitlyn Jenner on The Moment She Felt Most Proud to be a Woman” (sic). In this bit of his interview, he also discusses what he feels is the hardest part of being a woman. He said this:

Jenner - Hardest Part About Being a Woman

There you go folks! The hardest part of being a woman all comes down to: what to wear. 

Of course a man would think the hardest part of being a woman would boil down to clothes. In his autogynephile mind, all a woman is, is her clothing, because that’s what gets him off: dressing as a woman and, of course being seen as a woman.

We are all a part of his pornographic fantasy, nothing more.

This was posted in a group I belong to on Facebook, one that discusses gener critically; and here are what a couple of the womyn there had to say:

First Feminist:

“I was so furious. I posted to my page with this comment…

Woman of the year… The hardest thing about being a woman is what to wear…

Call me when your cramps hurt so bad you can’t walk.
Call me when you have a pregnancy scare.
Call me when men honk at you and make lewd gestures at you at twelve years old.
Call me when you don’t get paid adequately for your increasingly difficult labor, and you go home only to find more labor dictated by gender roles.
Call me when you are force married.
Call me when you are sold by a pimp and then blamed for being “in the business.”
Call me when your entire life’s choices are limited by decades of belittling and social conditioning, to the point where you self limit and call it a choice.

Call me when you stop being a stereotype of what the world wants from me.

The hardest part of my day is NEVER figuring out what to wear.  I defy roles you exalt. Bye.”

Second Feminist:

“It’s unbelievable! Out of all the issues that make being a woman difficult!? Doesn’t this just scream to everyone that this is what he truly believes: that to become a woman, one merely dresses in a certain way. Of course this is the most essential aspect to being a woman for Jenner; playing dressup is the aspect that gives him the greatest (erotic) thrill…despite its oh so many challenges! (eyeroll)…what a burden.”

It is inconceivable to me that anyone can take this man, or transgenderism itself, seriously. I mean, here is this group of people who could have been gender non-conforming people, brave warriors standing along side their gender non-conforming sisters and brothers in the lesbian and gay man communities. Instead, they choose to conform to strict gender roles, uncompromisingly adhered to stereotypes of the opposite sex. These completely gender CONFORMING people, transgenders, all believe that to be the opposite sex, one must only have to dress as the opposite sex and then to either drastically shorten or lengthen their hair, depending on which sex they wish to “identify as.”

Transgenders cannot live as they are, they cannot be their true authentic selves in the body they were born into for fear of retribution, so they wear the clothing that society has decided is only for the opposite sex, then they buzz off or grow out their hair (or, in the case of male transgenders, just wear a wig and you’re good!) and voila! They are the opposite sex!

Or in the case of about 80% of male transgenders, they wear the clothing that society has decided is for the opposite sex because they are autogynephiles. They, literally, get off on wearing “women’s clothing.” They also get off on being seen and treated as women. Going into the women’s bathroom, changing room, etc., also gets them off!

This is all so crazy, I cannot stand it! A man is voted Woman of the Year, taking the award away from women who are ground breakers like, Venus Williams, who has amassed 43 championship titles, won 3 Olympic Gold medals and has the fastest serve on record today. Or how about Tony award winning, Viola Davis, the first African American woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Then, of course there is the first woman to become an Army Ranger, Capt. Kristen Griest, who overcame such incredible adversity and against all odds, surpassed both men and women who could not make it and she became the first female Army Ranger, opening the door for other women to not only become Army Rangers, but also Navy Seals!

There are incredible women out there and it is insulting to all of them, to all of us, when women’s magazines and organizations name a MAN to be their Woman of the Year!

This madness has to stop. Women need to rise up together and with one voice, demand that actual women get awarded for this and other awards. It is our time now, sisters! Rise Up!

“TERFs” Do Not Actually Exist, Fellows

I honestly cannot believe that we have to continue to discuss this over and over and over again; but I guess when you are dealing with juvenile young men with male privilege who have yet to have fully developed brains and older men with male privilege going through midlife crisis, not to mention all of the women who, for some disturbed reason, support all of these men, then I guess womyn just have to continue to calmly stay on point and tell these men and the women who support them, again, that they are wrong. In so many ways, yes, but I am focusing on this for a minute.

I am not sure how this has come about, but “TERF” is not an identity. “TERFs” do not actually exist. They are not a community of womyn within the larger LGB community. “TERFs” are not a group of womyn working and plotting against transgenders. They are certainly not working together to exterminate transgenders, something of which I have been accused.

“TERF” is, once again, a slur. This slur is used to silence womyn. None of us actually “identify” as “TERFs.” This slur is actually thrust upon us and shoved down our throats by men who are so upset over the fact that there are womyn out there who are not falling to our knees in our utter devotion to porn sick, cross dressing, autogynephile men who claim to be women, but expect to still be treated and adored as men, with their male privilege, and their penises, intact.

“TERF” may have been created by two heterosexual women trying to give a name to radical feminists who do not wish to have males in their private spaces, but just every other slur in the world, its meaning has changed, morphed into some crazy kind of battle cry for males to use as they attack womyn mercilessly online, threatening to assault, rape, even kill womyn who do not agree with them and who do not fall all over themselves to believe that men (or boys) can be women (or girls).

The slur, “TERF” is a term that includes –all- womyn (and some gay men) who know the truth about biology, all womyn who understand even the most basic science. I am not a radical feminist, but I have been called a “TERF” over and over again, just for stating my opinion, an opinion I am allowed to have and share online or anywhere, an opinion that I share with hundreds of thousands of other womyn (and some men).

I don’t know how much more plainly I can state this, dear reader. “TERF” is not an identity, it is a slur used to silence womyn. We who are labeled as such are not the violent ones here. We do not issue threats of violence. We do not keep lists of male or female transgenders with their contact information so that we may harass them in real life.

Oh yes, dear reader, you didn’t know that? Male transgenders and their female allies keep lists of womyn who they decide are “TERFs.” They say they keep such lists so as to warn other transgenders to steer clear of us, but what they are really doing is targeting women. They keep us and as much personal information about us on a list they call “TERF tracker.” One of the founders of “TERF Tracker” was a woman who aligned herself with the most violent transgenders against womyn. She later tried to align herself with womyn who know the truth about transgenders, but she did so as a ruse, to befriend women (and a few men) so that she could gain information on us. She then turned back to transgenders and now runs a gay and lesbian liberation page that does nothing more than attack womyn like me, womyn who know that men cannot become women and that women cannot become men.

This woman is one of those who makes the assertion that “TERF” is an identity women take on and share with other womyn. She puts forth the idea that a woman who is not a friend to other women is the “leader” of the “TERFs” when there is no such organization of “TERFs,” so there can be no such “leader.”

The other founder of “TERF Tracker” was later found out to be a violent child rapist, He even admitted as much. Just another entitled, cross dressing, porn sick, autogynephile who was later found out to be a child rapist or a rapist of women.

But I digress. I do not wish for my blog to be about these women, one of whom aligns herself with violent transgenders, the other of whom is a woman who enjoys attacking womyn, outing anonymous bloggers such as myself, or that man, that child rapist. They deserve no time or attention on my blog.

No, this post was intended to assert to you, dear reader that “TERF” is not an identity, not a label womyn call themselves, and certainly not a term womyn “reclaim” in an effort to take its power away. Since we never claimed it as ours in the first place, we certainly cannot “reclaim” it now!

No, “TERF” is and has always remained a slur used to silence, threaten, and harass womyn. Make sure to spread this truth around, my sisters, as those who do not know what a “TERF” is are vulnerable to believing the transgenders who call themselves “activists” when they try to assert that “TERF” is an identity we call ourselves. Post about “TERF” being a slur, tweet about “TERF” being a slur, talk to your friends about “TERF” being a slur. Just get out there, sisters, and inform others about this slur!!

Make sure that your friends all know that this label, “TERF,” that is shoved down our throats by transgenders, the very people who claim that self-identification is the most important thing, the people who claim that people who ID them as someone they are not (i.e., “misgender,” which is a misnomer, it should actually be, “missexed”) are actually committing violence against them, the people, mostly men, who claim that “TERF” is an identification that we use to describe ourselves when in reality, they force the label onto us, make sure that your friends know that “TERF” is nothing more than a slur used against women, to silence us and to threaten violence against us.

I call upon all of you, dear readers, to tell, post, tweet, text, whatever you need to do, to make sure that people know that “TERF” is not an ID, it is a slur!

Targeted By Misogynists

I guess it was just a matter of time. I was targeted by a hate group who, ironically, decided my Facebook page was a “TERF hate page.”

BBB-terf

 

Forget the fact that I have publicly stated more than once that I am not a radfem.

Forget the fact that I have publicly denounced male violence of -any- kind, including male violence perpetrated by or against transgenders.

Forget the fact that I have stated publicly that transgenders should be protected from discrimination, i.e., protected from being fired, evicted, violence, etc.

Forget ALL of that because I write about how this patriarchal society should abolish gender and the accompanying gender stereotypes so that women and men and girls and boys could be and dress however they want without having to say they are the opposite sex because that, the sex part, is immutable. One can never change their sex.

So, because I write about that and because I write about male violence, I am erroneously labeled both a “TERF” and a hate site, even though the only posts I currently have on my Facebook page are links to my blog posts here; AND I am labeled as such by an actual hate site that promotes hatred and violence against women.

Make no mistake. “TERF” is a slur and the only people who use it are bigots, i.e., people who hate women and wish to silence us at all costs, including using a slur against us.

This thinly veiled threat did not go unnoticed by me, dear reader and it should not go unnoticed by you either. Because these hate filled people are going after every woman with a voice, every woman with an opinion that does not mimic the trans narrative; and they do this to silence us.

I may have been gone from my blog for a few months, but I will not be silenced. Not by misogynistic men who think following my Facebook page and blog will scare me into keeping quiet. 

Bring it, bigots.

I have been dealing with your kind for a couple of decades now and you do not scare me.

My Line In The Sand

I was reading a thread in a Michfest Facebook group the other day when I saw a woman shame and scold a friend of mine for calling a trans woman a man. This woman said she understood the anger, but not the hate of calling trans women men. In other words, she was trying to shame my friend, another woman, into silence, which is a tactic men have been using for years, especially the men who call themselves women and trans “activists.” They use shaming techniques to trick liberal feminists into siding with them and they save most of their violence for the rest of us, those of us who see past their delusions and to the reality of it all.

But I understood where my friend was coming from: it wasn’t rage or hatred or even anger, it was truth. That was her line in the sand and so it is mine as well. My line in the sand is biology. If I may geek out on your for a moment, dear reader, as Captain Picard said when he was speaking of the Borg invading their space, he said each time the Borg advance, we fall back and fall back and fall back. “Not again,” he said. “The line must be drawn here. This far. No farther.” That’s how I feel about these men who call themselves women, these men who, to fulfill their fetishistic desires, take “woman” as they see her through their male privileged, sexist, misogynistic eyes and they emulate her while declaring they are a better woman than most of us who were born females in this male dominated society.

They want us to use female pronouns. They want us to redefine woman so they can be called a woman in every instance, not trans women, but women. They want our spaces, our bathrooms, our dressing rooms. They want to be housed with women in jails when they commit acts of violence against, you guessed it, women, so they can further their abuse. They don’t want a compromise, they want total domination. They want a total submission. They want nothing less than total surrender.

I feel the same way about the women who call themselves men or the butches who simply need to be considered male while still claiming to be butches, using male pronouns, etc. They don’t want a compromise any more than the men do. They want it all. They demand they be seen the way they want to be seen and not based on any kind of reality or truth in this or any other universe. To this, I say, “No!”

Like my friend in that Michfest Facebook group, I draw my line here, at biology. The trans “women” were born male and no matter how many surgeries they have or how many hormones they take, if they even have or take any, which a lot do not, they are and always will be male. The women who call themselves men are the same: they were born female and no amount of hormones or surgeries will ever change that. Ever. Their biology will always remain the same. Males born males will always be males and females born females will always be females. These are immutable facts. I have put up with the shenanigans of transgenders for so long now, with the hate, the trolling, and the violent threats that my line in the sand is drawn here and I will not move back any farther. I will not concede an inch!

My line in the sand isn’t built on anger, rage, or hate. My line in the sand is built on biology. Biology and reality will win out over delusion and narcissism. Biology is the truth and eventually, when more and more women see the violence, see the narcissism, see the demands for not just a few but ALL of our spaces, these women will also rise up and say, “No more!”

I can feel that time coming. Can you?

 

 

 

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.

Make No Mistake, “TERF” Is A Slur

I find it difficult to believe that we women have to keep saying this and writing about it, but I guess we do because men’s voices are the only ones people want to listen to, not ours’; but make no mistake, “TERF” is a slur created by men to silence and even shame women. I was reading a post by GallusMag the other day where she talked about a man who claimed to be a woman who works for Twitter and who is accused of rape. In the comments section, GallusMag (who was locked out of her WordPress blog because of that post, which is WordPress’s way of telling women that if you write about their friends and colleagues, they will shut you down and fast) posted a pic of a news agency, The Daily Dot, actually using the word “TERF” as if it is a normal, accepted word by everyone and not a word made up by men in their ongoing effort to silence women in the issue of transgenderism. It made me incredibly angry because this was supposed to be a news organization, or at least, that is what I am lead to believe. Maybe they are a trash-rag that doesn’t really report the news so much as they report gossip and innuendo?

So let’s talk about this slur for a minute. A lot of transgenders and their allies like to keep saying that it is simply a description of radical feminists who are “trans-exclusionary.” But let’s get real here, ok? This slur may have started out as a simply description by a man who felt slighted by some women who feel that men, even in dresses, should not be allowed in certain spaces that are for women, spaces like restrooms, changing rooms, showers, dressing rooms, etc.; but the word went way beyond a description and into slur territory within a few minute of it being created.

First, there is no “TIRF” or trans-inclusionary radical feminist. There is, in fact, no term that is opposite of “TERF” that is used, ever. There is only “TERF”; and that term is used to silence, to bash, to put down, to shame, etc. not just radical feminists, but all women who see biology as a real thing and gender as a social construct. It is used against women, especially women who disagree with men who claim to be women, in any way.

Second, the term is not just hurled at radical feminists. I as just called a “TERF” this evening and I have never purported to be a radical feminist, not in any of my tweets or writings’ but there I was, having  label thrust upon me against my will, a label that by its very “definition” shouldn’t include me. But as I said, this slur isn’t just for radical feminists, it is for all women who disagree with men, especially men claiming to be women, i.e., trans “women” or male transgenders.

Let’s think about that for a minute. Let’s think about how (metaphorically) rape-y that is to have a label such as “TERF” or “trans-exclusionist” or “trans-exterminist” thrust upon a woman against her will. Slurs that she has never claimed, never called herself, never acknowledged, but slurs that are forced upon her, whether she likes it or not. That is a part of rape culture, is it not? To force something onto a woman that she does not want? Something that she has not given you permission to do. Especially when this comes from a group of people who want to self-label and do not want others to label them. How hypocritical of them to then force women to accept a term that they all know well and good is a slur meant to silence women.

Third, the only time women can even seem “trans-exclusionary” is when we want to have women-only spaces, like restrooms, dressing rooms, social gatherings, rape crisis centers, shelters, etc. But that is no more “trans-exclusionary” than it is for POC to be “white-person-exclusionary” when they desire POC-only spaces. Just like POC should be able to gather without white people so they don’t have to watch what they say around white people or cater to white people or have white people take over everything, we women should be allowed to have our own spaces without men, without having to worry about what we are saying around men or that they men will take over. Just like POC whould be able to gather and discuss what it is like to be a POC in this white-dominated world, we women should be allowed to gather as sisters and discuss what it is like to be females in a male-dominated world. We should not be slurred with “trans-exclusionary” simply because we wish to gather with other women in female-only spaces.

We should also be allowed to feel safe. We should be allowed to have penis-free restrooms, dressing rooms, shelters, jails, rape crisis centers, etc. so that we can feel safe. For thousands of years, the penis has been used as a weapon, as a weapon to control women, to hurt women, to exert power over women. It has been used as a weapon and we are seeing more and more how trans “women” are accused of or convicted of the rape and murder of women but they continue to be allowed to be placed in female prisons even if they still have their penises. This is so wrong on so many levels but in today’s PC culture of not wanting to offend these men, they are not placed where they are supposed to be: with other men. Instead, the rights and the safety of women are circumvented for the rights and safety of men who claim to be women because they are afraid of, you got it: men.

Before someone jumps into the fray and says that trans “women” have the right to feel safe as well, to that, I say two things: (1) of course, (2) but women are not a threat to trans “women,” men are. Men are dangerous and men do almost all of the damage to women, transgenders, and every other group out there. Women should not have to forgo their own safety to guarantee the safety of men from other men. If trans “women” wish to truly feel safe while respecting women’s need for safety and privacy, why don’t they create their own space, their own restrooms, their own rape crisis centers and shelters, their own changing rooms, etc.? The answer is clear: because (a) they don’t respect women and (b) they don’t want to be safe from men, they want what women have, they want to take over everything that woman is and that women have.

Finally, most women care about other women. There are some women who are so conditioned by the patriarchy that they believe the misogynistic bullshit that men and rape-culture spews down all of our throats. But most women want other women to be safe, they want us all to have our own private spaces, away from men and their penises. As I said, the penis has been used as a weapon against women for thousands of years and most women would agree that not allowing men and their penises, even if under dresses, into our private spaces where we are half naked and vulnerable or where we are running away from abusive men or where we are going for help and treatment after having been raped is something that all women should have without being called “TERFs” or “trans-exclusionary” in any way.

I know this because, as a butch woman, I have received the “look” from women in restrooms or changing rooms when they think I am a man. There have been women who say things to me in an effort to get me to leave the restroom or changing room; and in one instance, there was even a woman who physically tried to keep me out of a restroom, thinking I was a man and shouldn’t be in the women’s restroom. So I know that most women care about other women and other women’s safety; but men are trying so hard to shame these women into hating the rest of us for wanting our own space and using the slur “TERF” is one of the ways that they do this.

They threaten all woman with “TERF” if they don’t allow all men into all women’s private spaces and that is how “TERF” is used as a slur. It is used to control women by using shame to get them to see men in dresses as women and treat them as women when they are not. It is time for women to stop fighting against other women and fight with us. Stop allowing men who claim to be women walk all over you and demand that you see them in a certain way when common sense and science tells you to see them as they are; and stop allowing men to create and use slurs like “TERF” to silence your sisters who do see them as they are: men trying to re-define woman and abolish what the word really means so they can take over all of our spaces, once and for all.

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.

RE-BLOG — Feminists are not responsible for educating men

This is a re-blog from http://feministcurrent.com

I actually just ran into this situation yesterday while dealing with several (at least 5-6) men on Twitter who decided to jump into a conversation I was having with two other women. They started out mansplaining and demanding us to show proof of violence towards men but after a while, they, and consequently more friends of theirs, just started trolling, trying to exact responses out of me by calling me a “sick fuck” (several times, actually, that was his favorite phrase for me) for suggesting male violence occurs and that women should be able to have safe and private women-only spaces, such as women’s bathrooms, dressing rooms, showers, etc. I was even accused of beating my children when I suggested that little girls didn’t belong in the men’s bathroom.

These are men who are completely and utterly filled with their own male privilege. These are men who will always stick up for men (even trans “women”) before they will ever hear or take a woman seriously. These are men who had several women talking to them about the reasons needed for private female-only space and all they could do was demand proof and demand to be educated.

Unfortunately, these are also the same men who would never read, much less listen to a blog post like the one I am re-blogging below. But, hopefully, a few women may see it and they might start to feel differently about “well meaning men” who butt into their conversations and lives in order to demand some basic education because they refuse to do the work themselves.

I will add 3 snippets of it here to my blog and link to it at the bottom so you can go read the rest and view the comments, adding your own to the author, should you wish to do so. it’s a good read. I sincerely recommend it.

-BBB

 

—–

 

Feminists are not responsible for educating men

As a vocal feminist with many intelligent, lovely male friends, I’m often met with indignance when I choose not to engage with them about feminism. Surely if I reallycared about changing our culture of discrimination and inequality, I should be trying to educate men? Isn’t that an activist’s job? Shouldn’t feminists be grateful when men want to bounce questions off us, because it shows that they are at least trying to understand?

It’s both exhausting and diversionary being expected to hash out the basics with men who haven’t bothered to think about their own privilege before. Men are not entitled to expect feminists to educate them. Real change will only happen when men accept that the burden of education is on them, not on women.

……….

It goes without saying that there is nothing wrong with having basic questions about feminism. Unpacking something as complex and insidious as patriarchy, particularly when it requires an examination of your own privilege, isn’t easy. Where it becomes problematic is when you are so confident that your questions are SUPER! IMPORTANT! that you try and co-opt feminist discussions to have them heard.

To borrow the analogy of another woman:

It’s as if you have walked into a postgraduate mathematics seminar, yelling: “Hey, how can you even use imaginary numbers anyway if they’re not real?” When someone rather distractedly points you to a first-year text-book in the corner, you leaf through the first couple of pages half-heartedly for a few seconds and say:  “I don’t agree with some of the definitions in here – and anyway you haven’t answered my question. Doesn’t anyone want to have a discussion with me?!!”

……….

To paraphrase Audre Lorde:

When people of colour are expected to educate white people as to their humanity, when women are expected to educate men, lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world, the oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.

If you are in a group that has the structural advantage of wages, safety, health and education – when you’ve basically already won the life lottery just by showing up – it is your responsibility to educate yourself. And really, don’t tell women to be nice. We’re angry. We have every reason to be. Frankly, you should be too.

—–

Read the whole post here: http://feministcurrent.com/8098/feminists-are-not-responsible-for-educating-men/

Another Sister Lost To The Madness

I was at the store the other day when I heard one of the most heartbreaking things that a dyke can hear one of her sisters say. It was a convenience store, so when we all stood in line and were then waited on, we were all side-by-side facing the 2 clerks behind the counter. When I got up to the counter, this young butch dyke who was helping me was talking to a young gay man (customer) next to me. I would guess they were both around 20 years old. The young dyke was saying that she didn’t know how to tell her mom something, which being gay, made my ears perk because hey, we’ve all been there, right?

Then she says that her mom already knows she is a “lesbian” (she used air quotes there), but that she wasn’t a lesbian, she was “trans” and “wanted to live her life as a man;” and she didn’t know how to tell her mom this.

As I said, this was sincerely heartbreaking; to see and hear a young butch dyke talk about transitioning and living her life “as a man.” I wanted to reach across the counter and shake her like a mom who just caught her child running across the street without looking, consequently almost getting hit. It was sad to see this young woman, a sister to me in many ways, speak about transitioning; and I have to say, she didn’t seem happy about it either. She seemed resigned, like it was something she had to do, not something she wanted to do.

I wanted to tell her not to drink the trans kool-aid. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to take drugs or have surgeries and mutilate a perfectly healthy female body. I wanted to tell her to not give in to the binary and conform into societal demands. I wanted to tell her that it’s ok to be any kind of woman you want to be, patriarchy be damned.

I wanted to say all of that and more, because it sickens me to see the kind of pressure young women like this deal with on a daily basis. I dealt with it as well. I was so masculine looking, I was “passing” in high school, even with long hair. In my early 20s when I came out, people still thought I was a man, but it was made worse because I was a lesbian and to so many people, a masculine looking lesbian “wants to be a man.”

Forget that I didn’t want to be a man. Forget that I loved being a woman. Forget that I loved my body. Forget that I was ok with the non-conforming woman that I was. I received so much pressure to transition, I almost did. I figured I was supposed to transition, that it was something everyone expected me to do, so I should just do it.

I am thankful everyday that I decided against it.

But not every young lesbian is that lucky. So many of them feel so much pressure from society and from the trans community that they should transition, they end up making the biggest mistake of their young lives. Sometimes, that mistake is irreversible.

I was reading some comments yesterday from straight men and women and it was pretty astonishing to see not only how little they know about lesbians and trans people, but also how little they really actually care about lesbians. Here is this blog, created and written by a butch lesbian about her lived experiences and her opinions based on those lived experiences and these straight women and men were commenting about how there is no such pressure to conform, there is no such pressure to transition. Hell, they even commented on how harmless the cotton ceiling is and how it doesn’t attempt shame lesbians into having sex with men who call themselves women.

Instead of believing a woman who has lived these experiences and knows about them first hand, these straight people also drank the trans kool-aid and believed the rhetoric spewed forth by the trans community. Instead of listening to what I had to say about lesbians, butches, and trans people, these women and men decided that I was just another silly woman screaming about how awful the menz are and that they shouldn’t take me seriously.

So it shouldn’t be surprising to see young butch dykes out there who are subjected to the trans propaganda, feel like they should transition. It shouldn’t be surprising that young dykes out there who are confronted daily by a society that ignores, ridicules, and even tries to exterminate butch lesbians, feel like they should transition. I shouldn’t be surprising that young dykes out there who hear from the straight community all of the homophobic, lesbophobic, and misogynistic crap they say about lesbians and women, while praising trans for “being brave,” feel like they should transition.

It isn’t surprising to those of us who felt, and still feel that kind of pressure from the straight, trans, and sometimes even gay communities. but it is heartbreaking. When you are a woman who doesn’t conform to what society believes a woman should be and then you thumb your nose at society again by not conforming to the man they believe you should transition into because of how you look, dress, or act, life isn’t just hard, it can sometimes be down right unbearable.

Life as a non-conforming lesbian can be especially difficult when faced with women from your own group, such as other lesbians or feminists, who are so conditioned by the patriarchy that instead of celebrating the kind of non-conforming woman that you are, they also disbelieve your lived experiences, they also feel that you should just transition already, and they also put your needs as a woman on the back burner for the sake of men.

No, it isn’t surprising that this young woman was resigned to her fate. It isn’t surprising  that she was ready to stop being a lesbian and conform to what people everywhere shove down non-conforming women’s throats about transitioning. It isn’t surprising that she was ready to live life “as a man.” It’s heartbreaking, because I, like so many other women out there who refuse to conform to this patriarchal society’s demands, have been there; and sometimes, it’s just easier to go with the flow of those around you and do what is expected.

Someone on my Twitter joked about staging an intervention for this young woman; and I really wish we could. I wish a group of us could sit her down and tell her that she is beautiful and handsome and wonderful just the way she is, that she is part of a community filled with a rich and amazing history, that she is loved and cherished for the non-conforming woman that she is. Our intervention could even consist of women who I keep meeting through my blog, women who went through the transition stages in their attempts to become men and who, years later, regretted that decision and are on their way back to the women they always were.

I could tell her what I told myself so many years ago when faced with the pressure to transition: Fuck society. Fuck the patriarchy. Fuck conforming. I like the woman that I am and I refuse to become something I am not, nor would I ever want to be in order to satisfy the world’s misogynistic view of woman.

Follow-up to “Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction

Since there were, understandably, a lot of questions about how this butch woman, Doffy, responded to her doctor’s gross misjudgment of who she was as a person, I thought I would follow-up with that information.

I would first like to point out that yes, I know this person, she is a real human being, she is a butch lesbian, and she took and posted the pic herself.

Secondly, As you will see in one of my pics that I will post here, I would like to add that Doffy had absolutely no problem with sharing every inch of the picture, including all of her personal information. The decision to redact personal information including her address, phone number, date of birth, and hospital record number, as well as the doctors’ names, and the hospital she visited was mine and mine alone. It is one thing to say, sure I am fine with you posting whatever, but it is an entirely different beast to have every piece of your personal information posted out onto the internet like that. So I decided her name was enough; and while I am in possession of both the original pic and the redacted version, I still feel that way.

Now that those bits of information are out of the way, on to her response.

When Doffy originally posted this information, a mutual friend of ours asked her what a lot of people are asking: “This was outrageous! How did you respond?”

I was quite vocal at the registration desk. I said with a loudish voice…I am NOT trans, I do NOT take drugs to look this handsome and I have fallopian tubes…the secretary looked at me like I had 3 heads and laughed a bit. Said she’d make sure to note it…which she did not…and I said “I am surprised that the medical industry would assume without question! I am taking my drug free fallopian tubes to the waiting area”

Later, she followed up with:

But dont be mad or upset on this account. I made sure to inform the entire registry office and the registry office in the triage AND the 5 doctors and 3 nurses that I am in fact female… that the doctor who wrote the chart was obviously and easily confused. And the fact that she (the doctor who wrote that without questioning me) did not even order an x-ray on a finger cut to the bone and that that very finger is broken…only proved my point of incompetence both medically and physiologically.

When I was thinking about posting about this, our mutual friend asked Doffy for her permission to post the pic of her chart notes and she responded with the following texts:

 

 Doffy-text-1Doffy-text-2

 

As you can see, she was OK with posting the pic containing all of her personal identification and even had a sense of humor about the whole incident; but that’s what we women do, isn’t it? Sure, we get mad in the moment that it happens, but later we laugh it off as someone’s silly mistake. That is part of what makes this so dangerous and why I felt such a need to post about it. We women need to stand up and know that it is OK to be angry in situations like this, that we can be offended about someone catering to the patriarchy like that and it is OK to do so.

What Doffy went through can happen to any of us who don’t succumb to societal pressure and conform to the binary way of thinking and being. When I was discussing this last night, a horrible thought occurred to me: what if this butch lesbian had been unconscious or unresponsive when she was brought into the ER and the assumption that she was a trans man had been made? It is clear from the texts, that her doctor didn’t do any kind of checking with Doffy when it came to meds. So, what if she were unconscious and they decided to be “helpful” and prescribe this, in their misinformed opinion, “John Doe” testosterone for the duration of her stay at the hospital?

I realize I am taking this to an extreme, but if something like that is even a possibility, how frightening is that for butch lesbians or for any woman who doesn’t conform?

An Incredible Example of Unprovoked Transgender Vitriol

projectz975

This was a response to my blog on male privilege. Usually, I ignore these rants of theirs, especially when it is clear they did not actually read my post, but just decided to turn their rage for the day onto me for being a woman and having my own opinion. But this one was so over the top, so incredible, that I felt I should share it and post about it.

First of all, projectz975, thank you for proving my point by going right to the anger and name calling. The only thing missing, of course, is how I should “die in a fire,” or some other such nonsense.

Secondly, really? THAT’S what you got from my post? Did you even read it or did you just skim a bit and then go off the deep end into a rage that even you can’t explain?

If you would, please tell me where I mention how transwomen have no right to be upset about whatever it is that upsets you on any given day. Then, let me know the passage where I mention chromosomes of any kind. Then, find for me the spot where I mention how you are agry (sic) because you are a sexist man; also, point out where I used the word sexist, at all.

Finally, do me a favor and point out to me where in my post I treated you or anyone else “like shit.” I believe my post was about male privilege and how transwomen still have internalized male privilege, especially when speaking to and dealing with women. I also mentioned that unless transwomen do the work by examining and combating their privilege, things will never change.

Your hatred for women is very clear in your rant, as is your inability to read and comprehend something very simple and straight forward. I find the depth of your rage over something as simple as a woman pointing out that men have male privilege to be somewhat telling and I have to wonder if maybe you should talk this over with your therapist so that the two of you can get to the root of your anger and hatred towards women.

I do thank you for this rant though, projectz975, as it illustrates perfectly exactly what I am talking about in my post and, honestly, the more women that see this kind of extreme behavior brought on without provocation the better.

Definition of Lesbian

The definition of lesbian has been and always will be the romantic and sexual attraction between 2 females. There never has been nor will there ever be a penis in a lesbian relationship.

You can put the penis under a pair of panties and/or under a skirt or a dress. You can even try to convince the ignorant and those without the capacity to think critically that the penis is a female sex organ; but the fact will remain that it is a penis attached to a male body and neither belong in a lesbian relationship.

Shaming, guilting, and/or intimidating lesbians into accepting the penis as a part of their sex life is sexist, misogynistic, and could even be considered sexual assault. Dare I say, some might even consider that action to be lesbophobic.

Lesbians do not want to have sex with males and their penises, that is the very definition of what it is to be a lesbian; and no amount of rhetoric, no amount of screaming about transphobia, no amount of coercion will ever change that fact.

The Bullshit Surrounding Butches and Male Pronouns

You know, this whole craziness with butches and the use of male pronouns on-line started out innocently enough. There we were, back in the day, flocking to  AOL and/or gay.com chat rooms: tons of lesbians connecting from all over the country and world. There weren’t many butch-femme chat rooms and those in existence weren’t populated by that many women (side note: when I say woman in this post, I mean a biologic female), so most of us hung out in the lesbian chat rooms; because, hello, we were all lesbians. Note that this was well before “lesbian” became a bad word.

While some women had pretty obvious names that let others know if they were butch or femme, a lot didn’t and it caused a lot of confusion. So somewhere along the line, people started calling butches “hy” as a way to recognize that this was a masculine person who was not a man; and “he” was used as well, sometimes as an alternative, sometimes as a preference.

I, myself never used either because (a) I am a woman, (b) I really hate made up and misspelled words, and (c) it felt wrong and stupid calling another woman “he.”

Again, this was JUST on-line. I never ever heard anyone in real life refer to butches with male pronouns.

Unfortunately, that innocent beginning snowballed into this massive cluster fuck of pronouns where everyone has their own opinion as to what butches should or should not be called. Most people, femmes and butches alike, default to “he/hy” for ALL butches, even those who they know have expressed a preference for female pronouns.

Then, there are those butches who prefer to be called “she” but don’t mind being called “he.” This attitude about it really pisses me off because this way of thinking reinforces the default to “he/hy.” It helps to reinforce the invisibility of the woman in the butch.

When butches who prefer “he/hy” are accidentally called “she,” they flip their shit. It’s like the world is ending for them because someone called them “she” or “ma’am” or whatever. A battle ensues, people are accused of “feminizing,” etc. It’s crazy.

On the other hand, those who prefer to be called “she” are expected to love being called “he/hy.” We are supposed to feel honored and happy that someone has just ignored the fact that we are women and created this cloak of invisibility around us under the guise of “respect;” and god help us if we try to correct the person using the incorrect pronouns. You would think we suddenly grew a third nipple in the middle of our forehead or something!

The deeper issue here is, of course, misogyny. Male privilege tells us that women, in this and many other societies, are considered less than. Men are considered better, stronger, faster, and smarter than women. Men have almost all of the power in politics, men compromise almost all of the top corporate positions, men are considered to be the leaders of the world. A man’s opinion is considered to be the only one that matters and god help the woman who dares to stand up to him and tell him he is full of shit.

Because women are considered less than, calling someone (particularly a man) a pussy or a bitch or a girl is considered an insult. In that same vein, calling a butch “she” is also considered an insult.

So since woman is the insult, then man is the compliment. The number one compliment for FtMs or male-ID butches (my god, how that term is SUCH an oxymoron!) is that they are called “sir” in public by straight people. Their ultimate horror is for someone to use female pronouns when speaking to/about them; or an even WORSE thing to have happen to them is to be “feminized” (more misogyny).

Continuing on the thought that being a woman is an insult and being a man is a compliment, then butches, who are masculine women, are then supposed to LOVE being referred to with male pronouns; and if we don’t like it, we just have to suck it up and/or fuck off because that’s just the way it is.

It’s all just so fucking heteronormative and misogynistic. Calling us “he/hy” doesn’t just make the women that we are invisible and it doesn’t just perpetuate the misogynistic view that women are less than, it also makes other people start to actually SEE US AS MEN.

Suddenly, all of the erotica written by femmes and butches has “he” and “she” in it, as if it were about a heterosexual couple. All of the things butches are expected to do are all male related: fixing cars, loving sports, drinking a beer with our hand down our pants while watching the game and bitching at “our woman” to make us a sandwich, etc.

In everyone’s eyes, we BECOME men! This is why so many non-femme/butch lesbians assume that butches and femmes are simply emulating straight couples. How could they NOT think that when all of the butches and femmes are calling butches “he” and expecting us to take out the trash and complete our honey-do list?

It all starts with words. Words are very very powerful and when we are not careful, something as innocent as trying to tell who is who in a chat room can snow ball into all of us falling back into the same old bullshit where femmes treat us like men, straight people and other lesbians think we all want to be men, and the young butches coming out today all think they have to transition because, hell, if they are masculine, then they MUST be men, right?

That, right there, is part of why I decided to stop with the silence and start speaking up about these issues: those young butches out there who think their only choice in life is to transition.

It’s time to change our way of thinking. It’s time to stop using male pronouns for women and denying who we are. It’s time to stop comparing butches to men and treating us as if we think and behave like men. Men don’t own masculinity and it’s time we stopped pretending that they do.

It’s time to stop female invisibility.