I'm commenting here because I don't see a way to comment on Unherd (perhaps they require registration).
I am a gay man. It has always been hard for Lesbians to meet each other because they don't seem to exist in the same kinds of numbers as gay men, but I didn't know that their community is under assault as badly as what you say in your article. I can, however, attest to the fact that gays in general feel pressure to accept trans people into our community, even though transgenderism is completely different from homosexuality. I don't see myself as LGBT. I see myself as LGB.
When I was young, there would sometimes be a drag queen in the bars that I would frequent, but usually not. The men there wanted men, not men who wanted to be women. Today, I can imagine that there are some trans men going to gay bars. I would avoid them, for obvious reasons: Whatever they have in their pants is not what I am looking for! You can be sure that I am very focussed on the real deal in that department. The whole idea that a Lesbian should be happy to make love to a woman with a penis is equally preposterous.
I am actually a little surprised that it has been so easy for trans people to disrupt the Lesbian community. I thought Lesbians were more self-confident than that. As a gay man, from a very early age I was confident about who and what I was, and I just assumed that Lesbians were similar. I never realized that so many of them are conflicted that some of them would become trans.
I want to thank you for putting the word "queer" in quotes. As a gay man, I consider that word to be a slur. It mortifies me that people in the gay and trans community are using it as if it didn't have a consistently negative meaning ("strange, weird, unusual, abnormal, odd"). I'm not any of those things.
“ I thought Lesbians were more self-confident than that. "
Wow. That is appalling. You're actually blaming lesbians for this predatory behaviour!?! Unbelievable.
Clearly, we still live in a patriarchal system. Men HATE the idea that women can live loving, fulfilling lives without them. Compare the pressure gay men feel from 'trans-men' and multiply by a thousand. 'Trans-men' don't go around raping and killing gay guys because they won't have sex with 'trans-men'. But 'trans-women' do torment, abuse, vilify, murder lesbian women for refusing their sexual demands. They even shut down an entire women's festival celebrating lesbian culture (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Festival#Exclusion_controversy) killing 3 people in the process. (https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/11/17/whats-current-81/) This is the level of coercion and terror these predatory 'trans-women' are putting out. It has nothing to do with the self-confidence of lesbians. In fact, lesbians have always been fighters and survivors and are always there to support gay men when fighting against homophobia. The same can't be said about gay men.
I'm not gay but I do know lesbian women and what they endure at the hands of heterosexual men is utterly revolting. Even porn has a lesbian category that's more popular than almost any other.
This entire culture is structured around the violation of women's boundaries. It doesn't matter what a man calls himself, he's still indoctrinated into a sense of entitlement to women's bodies. Now into virtually everything that women have fought so hard to claim as our own - private spaces, opportunities, sports, women's prisons and even the sacred space of intimate relationships women have with each other.
Instead of passing judgement why not confront these men, as many powerful women are doing at great cost to themselves? Instead of shaming lesbians presumably for a lack of self-confidence, why not shame men for their predatory behaviour? We all know why, as women. Because you're afraid of these men, too. Victim-blaming must stop. Predators must be exposed, rejected and held accountable for their actions.
Some of us (Lesbians) have been confronting the men stalking us and invading our community for over 50 years and get rape, mutilation and death threats for saying no.
But it's clear to me that the issue actually is the women collaborators who are supporting the men claiming to be Lesbians against us. That is the stranger woman who is screaming in my face when I go to a "Lesbian" event, and who marched in massive numbers at the SF Dyke March in 2018 threatening and attacking us.
The reason it's taken so long for these vile men to take away what little we had left is because the majority of Lesbians said no to them. No longer. The betrayal is horrific and increasing. Lesbians and other women could stop much of this now, but they won't. They genuflect to the latest bizarre male order and demand, and that is because really everyone knows these "transwomen" are men. No real women would get such support.
I agree that women have collaborated in our oppression. I believe that if lesbians did not exist, we would not have the rights we enjoy today as women. I also believe that our socialization into womanhood which suppresses our more 'masculine' traits and the fact that we are, as heterosexual women, hardwired to mate with men has contributed to our current situation.
Patriarchy has a death grip on women's psyches. Human beings evolved in egalitarian cultures, but we somehow took a detour in the last 10,000 years where men and women became fundamentally, temperamentally different. Men became more aggressive, on average, and women more submissive. There are some interesting theories in this book 'Descent of Woman' by Elaine Morgan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/305689.The_Descent_of_Woman. This article is about another compelling theory - 'The Creation of Patriarchy' by Renee Gerlich. https://reneejg.net/2018/12/creation-of-patriarchy/
What I do know is that women around the world are losing the rights we fought so hard to gain. Nor are men doing well. We have collectively lost a sense of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. We've lost a sense of the sacredness of both sexes. We've lost our connection to ourselves as sexed beings meant to live in harmony with one another to bring about the best in each other as we face life's adversities. Between male aggression and female submissiveness, which I would argue are neither normal or healthy expressions of our humanity, we are headed over a cliff.
Unless/until women regain their self-respect and sense of autonomy and push back against their own erasure with sufficient force, For this reason, I'm deeply grateful for the courageous lesbians who've led the way. All I want is a world that is safe for my daughter and granddaughter, but also one which allows my son to reconnect with his own humanity. All I want is a world where both sexes love and respect each other for the unique qualities we have whether they are 'feminine' or 'masculine'.
Yet you are erasing me, a Butch Lesbian who is the opposite of "masculine."
I do not believe in the "hard wired" propaganda or any of the rest of what you are saying. I saw the girls I grew up with hate boys who attacked us, and I then saw then work hard to be attracted to them. And it was for the privilege.
Males are doing just fine and will not change because their violence is biological, across most species. And they know this and will admit it, while women continue defending them. There is no "sacredness" there. Females from other species know better than human females, sadly. But some species are completely or almost completely eliminated males. Your daughter and granddaughter are in danger as long as you don't think your son has his "humanity." He has far more of everything than they have or you have.
It's these politics that keep this mess going. What some of us call "male worshipping."
I suggest reading what has been suppressed, like our book, updated and at my blog. Chapters one and two answer the myths:
Everything you say about what is going on is correct. I think you’re being a bit hard on the guy who I think was more confessing his ignorance but is on the right side The straight world has no idea what
AGAIN, men STILL expect women to BE KIND, even when we're calling out THEIR judgement. Men protect men always at the expense of women.
Women are sick of being kind to men who are clueless. Our kindness is WHY we're in this situation in the first place. Why not just be quiet if you object? Sheesh! Women can't win - we get slammed if we DON'T fight hard enough, we get slammed if we DO fight hard enough. Do you not see how crazy-making this is for women??? When will MEN start calling out other MEN, instead of constantly blaming women no matter how we handle male aggression? Women are being CRUSHED right now in every way imaginable whether they're on the left or the right, liberal or conservative. Yet, men claim victimhood any time they are challenged.
Men insult/abuse,/exploit women. Women fight back. Men say 'what a bitch!'.
Men insult/abuse/exploit women. Women don't fight back. Men say 'it's HER fault!'
It's all bs and women are beyond exhausted trying to live up to impossible and conflicting double-standards. Only women suffer the consequences no matter what we do. Women's liberation was supposed to free us. Now feminism is being used as a derogatory term. I'm terrified for my daughter and granddaughter.
The only reason women haven't completely dismantled patriarchy is because we're hard-wired to mate, reproduce with and become dependent on men while pregnant and raising children. Now, even feminism has been co-opted by the transgender ideology, too. Serving male identified trans-people - or else. Women have been FAR too kind and we and our children are being destroyed as we speak due to male perversions.
In most of the contacts I have had with Lesbians during my life, they seemed to be self-confident, independent people -- not to mention that I recently saw a documentary about a Lesbian couple, both lawyers, who made history in their state. I am also a great admirer of Martina Navratilova, who is a Lesbian. If I got the impression that Lesbians are a self-confident group, I don't apologize. You yourself just said, "In fact, lesbians have always been fighters and survivors and are always there to support gay men when fighting against homophobia." So you see, you believe the same things that I do. You can't be angry at me for believing in stereotypes when you believe in the same stereotypes.
My best friend for the last 15 years has been a Lesbian who is now 93. My neighbors across the street are a married Lesbian couple who have adopted children, and who proudly wave the LGBT flag every year. The person who bought my mother's house in 2012 was a Lesbian who was a very hard negotiator. I think I know enough about Lesbians to be able to characterize them, especially since I was characterizing them in positive terms. How is it that you, a straight person, know so much more than I do about my own LGB people?
Lesbians and women in general face from the trans movement and this gay man has no idea what lesbians in particular face, which is why the article is so important.
Nope. Just a woman defending lesbians and trying to make a point.
Does it make you feel superior slapping a dismissive label on someone because you don't get the point? I can't help that you are unable to understand the genuine threat women face, and lesbians in particular and so I'll just leave it there. But make no mistake, women are DONE appeasing men. The last battle will be between the sexes because male aggression, entitlement and violence have become so endemic and yet men still seem oblivious that it's the only way women will be heard. Their trauma will explode and all the rage they feel for the abuse of them and their children will be unstoppable.
I'm sorry, but your criticisms of me were not valid. You have identified yourself as straight. At least I'm part of the LGB community. Stop trying to be hipper than everyone else.
Thank you for persisting against what I could call "misunderstanding" if I were feeling charitable, but which is here tarnished by virtue signalling cubed!.
Perhaps though there is a genuine issue here because there really is a new trans agenda attempting to define old fashioned lesbians out of existence - the kind you (and I too) knew to be able to stand up for themselves and see off this nonsense.
New lesbians are indeed subjected to the kind of violent enforcement and emotional blackmail described. The old fashioned ones, of whom I too know many, will have no truck with this at all. Because they are same sex attracted and they know what sex means at many levels - their bodies get turned on by similar bodies for a start and they know what sex is without having to refer to the latest LGBTQI+ discovery chart issued by Stonewall or whatever pseudo support organisation rules the local roost.
The New Lesbians are defined on such charts as those attracted to the same gender, but since nobody really knows what gender is, and yet anybody can self define themselves into any gender, only confusion rules the roost. My own suspicion arises from the fact that gender by the new definition turns out to be rather binary! I suspect too that the bulk of the TQI+ is motivated by very bad theory coming out of very bourgeois liberal colleges with a badly acknowledged contribution from cowardly incels and "men's rights' activists". The usual toxic masculinity in fact, but now wearing a dress, not doing the manly things of the stereotypes and getting that head tilt just right. Virtue signalling twattery!
In any case, I think it is now becoming extremely important for old fashioned lesbians to take over the teaching of new lesbians from Stonewall and its ilk. Although I can imagine that for the old guard, returning to the closet would seem a preferable option. Just like in the old days when the law said they did not really exist.
But then again, this leaves an entire generation of same sex attracted young woman at the mercy of idiotic zealots, moronic ideologues and entitled bourgeois theorists, which if I had a daughter, niece or young friend struggling with difficult feelings, would make my advice very much more difficult to get across.
Actually we need armies of old fashioned lesbians out there telling us what same sex attracted means .....
(Copy-pasting my UnHerd comment here, because I didn't realise they expected me to give my real name! It may seem a bit random and out of context here on Substack because I'm responding to the comments over there, rather than the article itself.)
Reading the comments [on UnHerd] makes me think of Chandler Burr’s 1996 book 'A Separate Creation'. It makes some interesting observations on the ideological problem that homosexuality causes for *both* the political Left and the political Right.
In the book, Burr argues that the science of the day shows sexual orientation is similar to being left-handed: an inherent and fixed orientation that you can pretend to change, but can’t really. (As far as I know, the evidence still supports this.) Then he considers the political implications. Note to non-Americans–he uses the word ‘liberal’ to mean ‘left-wing’, in topsy-turvy American fashion.
Here he interviews James Fallows, Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly (p316-18).
‘ “At the bottom of all political differences,” muses Fallow, “is the way people think about human nature. Let’s give the very essence of what we could call the Conservative View of Reality and the Liberal view of reality: to the Conservative, the crucial factors are all internal, the guy’s innate motivation, discipline, and intelligence, but the crucial forces at work as far as the Liberal is concerned are all external. [Earlier, Fallows gives examples like sexism, racism, homophobia, economic policies, etc.] And if you assume, as the Liberal does, that options are only closed off to people by external factors, anything from prejudice to lack of opportunity to hostile circumstances, then any and all possibilities can be open to any and all persons–the world can be a utopia.”
… [Burr] But liberalism faces the research of sexual orientation uneasily.
… [Fallows] “Liberals believe, though they don’t often come out and say it, that any traits that can’t be changed–like whether your body happens to be male or female, for example–will matter less and less as society evolves, and traits that do matter, like ability and behavior, can be changed with the right programs.
“So it’s a real problem for liberal thought when it is confronted with the idea that things that matter might not be changeable. That different genders might carry different facilities, that some behaviors and temperaments are given to us.”
… [Burr] The plain fact is that a scientific look at sexual orientation and the behaviors and traits that correlate with it–and an objective look at gender and many behaviors correlating with it–inherently support the conservative’s view of reality and contradict the liberal’s view. Why? Because they suggest that people are different in basic, unchangeable, and important ways.
[Fallows] “The news media have usually presented this research as damaging to conservatives–“You can’t claim that gay people are willfully violating God’s law if they are born that way.” … And yes, the research does negate the crudest kind of right-wing stereotypes, and the notion that gay people choose to be gay. … This stereotype has always forced Conservatism, a philosophy holding that the environment has little to do with outcomes–and that Liberal programs meant to alter it are a waste of money–to make an inconvenient exception on homosexuality and argue, contradictorily, that young people can be pushed one way or another into profound aspects of their personalities by education and society. Which is exactly what Liberals have wanted them to admit forever.”
[Burr] Being forced to shed an internally illogical position (not to mention one that is empirically false) will only make the Conservative position stronger. In the long run, says Fallows, researching sexual orientation threatens Liberalism, not Conservatism, and it threatens it in a fundamental way. It is a time bomb, ticking away unnoticed. The problem for liberals is that research into homosexuality is … inextricably part of a vaster body of clinical and biological research that tells us that nature controls important aspects of our personalities, behaviors, and intellectual capacities. “This is truly repellent to the liberal mind,” Fallows says.’
(end quote)
tl;dr – The scientific evidence that being gay or lesbian is inherent and fixed should actually appeal to a right-wing view of the world more than a left-wing view. It fits the idea that people are just naturally born different.
Deep down, the Left would rather believe that we’re all potentially anything, and are just socialised into liking what we like and being who we are. (See: the ‘blank slate’.) This might be why postmodernism and queer theory in academia are so ready to proclaim that “sexuality is a social construct!” and even “biological sex is a social construct!” … and why progressives can end up putting pressure on lesbians to ‘relearn their social prejudices’ while honestly believing they’re the goodies and lesbians are bigots. It’s a way of thinking that comes easily to the left-wing mind if you’re not careful, like the proverbial frog in boiling water.
Since feminism is also largely a left-wing movement, and has often argued that gendered behaviour is socialised (but not sex), it’s understandable that conservatives would put the blame for the current mess on feminism. To them, it’s all coming from the same mistaken attitude toward human nature–just different flavours of the same silliness.
(I’m a male left-winger and definitely not a politics major, for what it’s worth.)
The LGBT "community" seems to be taking on the same flavor as religious/idealogical "communities' that are coercive, manipulative, and abusive towards their members. That's why I steer clear. I used to see the LGBT community as a place of acceptance where you could escape pressure and judgement about your sexuality. Now it seems like EVERY OTHER PATRIARCHAL CULT -- shaming and coercing women to accept dick. It's beyond abhorrent.
In England there is an LGBT organization called Stonewall which has so much power than the government listens to them and even negotiates with them. Unfortunately, Stonewall is a full-on supporter of the worst aspects of transgender ideology. Here in the U.S., there are some prominent gay organizations, but I have become estranged from them all because they are also promoting transgender ideology. One would think that transgender people constituted 90% of the LGBT community, but they don't. They certainly have done a great job of promoting themselves.
I always used to think that gays were at the bottom of the totem pole in society because we were so hated, but it has become clear that women occupy that position -- and apparently for no other reason than that they are physically weaker than men.
So true. One of the reasons I think trans ideology has caught on so quickly is because the misogyny that's baked into it is the same misogyny that's baked into the wider culture. This misogyny tells women we cannot center ourselves and other women and if we do, we're being "selfish, man-hating, or bigoted". Trans ideology exploded after the MeToo movement and I have a hard time believing they're unrelated. It seems awful convenient that right at the moment when women are speaking at unprecedented levels about the sexual abuse and violence we experience, "woman" then becomes a meaningless concept. We spoke up about misogyny and were slapped right back down with more misogyny.
Yeah, I just don't know why there is so much contempt for women. It has something to do with the fact that everyone has a mother, and that women/mothers are weaker than men. I haven't figured it out.
I had a conversation with my father once in which he spoke about the family, and he named all the destructive people in his family going back about two generations, and they were all women. When I pointed out to him that all the people he had named were women, with not one man amongst them, he didn't know what to say.
But what trans people are showing us -- that a man pretending to be a woman gets more respect than a real woman does -- that's just bizarre.
"It has something to do with the fact that everyone has a mother" YES. I believe the fact that every person on the planet comes to this life through a woman is a huge part of it. Controlling and degrading that process is a big part of patriarchy. I'm not surprised your dad named all women, that's part of our "place" in society too -- being scapegoats. I feel like trans people are showing us what we've known for centuries -- men define women. We only have value through our association with men. That's why lesbians and any woman who doesn't seem to need men are such a threat.
During the Middle Ages, women were hunted as witches. In Africa and India and other parts of the world, they are raped constantly. In India, if a man decides he's not satisfied with the dowry he got from his wife's family, he can murder her and get another wife (and in most cases he will get away with it). Here in the U.S., serial killers target mostly women. I'm sure there are many situations like this that I'm not aware of. Humanity is a nightmare.
Trans women, who supposedly emulate women, actually feel competitive with women. The way they are moving into women's spaces is a way for them to show their contempt. Do you think that Lia Thomas likes the women she is defeating? Not a chance.
Your mom’s cool.
I'm a fan.
😂
I'm commenting here because I don't see a way to comment on Unherd (perhaps they require registration).
I am a gay man. It has always been hard for Lesbians to meet each other because they don't seem to exist in the same kinds of numbers as gay men, but I didn't know that their community is under assault as badly as what you say in your article. I can, however, attest to the fact that gays in general feel pressure to accept trans people into our community, even though transgenderism is completely different from homosexuality. I don't see myself as LGBT. I see myself as LGB.
When I was young, there would sometimes be a drag queen in the bars that I would frequent, but usually not. The men there wanted men, not men who wanted to be women. Today, I can imagine that there are some trans men going to gay bars. I would avoid them, for obvious reasons: Whatever they have in their pants is not what I am looking for! You can be sure that I am very focussed on the real deal in that department. The whole idea that a Lesbian should be happy to make love to a woman with a penis is equally preposterous.
I am actually a little surprised that it has been so easy for trans people to disrupt the Lesbian community. I thought Lesbians were more self-confident than that. As a gay man, from a very early age I was confident about who and what I was, and I just assumed that Lesbians were similar. I never realized that so many of them are conflicted that some of them would become trans.
I want to thank you for putting the word "queer" in quotes. As a gay man, I consider that word to be a slur. It mortifies me that people in the gay and trans community are using it as if it didn't have a consistently negative meaning ("strange, weird, unusual, abnormal, odd"). I'm not any of those things.
“ I thought Lesbians were more self-confident than that. "
Wow. That is appalling. You're actually blaming lesbians for this predatory behaviour!?! Unbelievable.
Clearly, we still live in a patriarchal system. Men HATE the idea that women can live loving, fulfilling lives without them. Compare the pressure gay men feel from 'trans-men' and multiply by a thousand. 'Trans-men' don't go around raping and killing gay guys because they won't have sex with 'trans-men'. But 'trans-women' do torment, abuse, vilify, murder lesbian women for refusing their sexual demands. They even shut down an entire women's festival celebrating lesbian culture (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Festival#Exclusion_controversy) killing 3 people in the process. (https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/11/17/whats-current-81/) This is the level of coercion and terror these predatory 'trans-women' are putting out. It has nothing to do with the self-confidence of lesbians. In fact, lesbians have always been fighters and survivors and are always there to support gay men when fighting against homophobia. The same can't be said about gay men.
I'm not gay but I do know lesbian women and what they endure at the hands of heterosexual men is utterly revolting. Even porn has a lesbian category that's more popular than almost any other.
This entire culture is structured around the violation of women's boundaries. It doesn't matter what a man calls himself, he's still indoctrinated into a sense of entitlement to women's bodies. Now into virtually everything that women have fought so hard to claim as our own - private spaces, opportunities, sports, women's prisons and even the sacred space of intimate relationships women have with each other.
Instead of passing judgement why not confront these men, as many powerful women are doing at great cost to themselves? Instead of shaming lesbians presumably for a lack of self-confidence, why not shame men for their predatory behaviour? We all know why, as women. Because you're afraid of these men, too. Victim-blaming must stop. Predators must be exposed, rejected and held accountable for their actions.
Some of us (Lesbians) have been confronting the men stalking us and invading our community for over 50 years and get rape, mutilation and death threats for saying no.
But it's clear to me that the issue actually is the women collaborators who are supporting the men claiming to be Lesbians against us. That is the stranger woman who is screaming in my face when I go to a "Lesbian" event, and who marched in massive numbers at the SF Dyke March in 2018 threatening and attacking us.
The reason it's taken so long for these vile men to take away what little we had left is because the majority of Lesbians said no to them. No longer. The betrayal is horrific and increasing. Lesbians and other women could stop much of this now, but they won't. They genuflect to the latest bizarre male order and demand, and that is because really everyone knows these "transwomen" are men. No real women would get such support.
I agree that women have collaborated in our oppression. I believe that if lesbians did not exist, we would not have the rights we enjoy today as women. I also believe that our socialization into womanhood which suppresses our more 'masculine' traits and the fact that we are, as heterosexual women, hardwired to mate with men has contributed to our current situation.
Patriarchy has a death grip on women's psyches. Human beings evolved in egalitarian cultures, but we somehow took a detour in the last 10,000 years where men and women became fundamentally, temperamentally different. Men became more aggressive, on average, and women more submissive. There are some interesting theories in this book 'Descent of Woman' by Elaine Morgan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/305689.The_Descent_of_Woman. This article is about another compelling theory - 'The Creation of Patriarchy' by Renee Gerlich. https://reneejg.net/2018/12/creation-of-patriarchy/
What I do know is that women around the world are losing the rights we fought so hard to gain. Nor are men doing well. We have collectively lost a sense of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. We've lost a sense of the sacredness of both sexes. We've lost our connection to ourselves as sexed beings meant to live in harmony with one another to bring about the best in each other as we face life's adversities. Between male aggression and female submissiveness, which I would argue are neither normal or healthy expressions of our humanity, we are headed over a cliff.
Unless/until women regain their self-respect and sense of autonomy and push back against their own erasure with sufficient force, For this reason, I'm deeply grateful for the courageous lesbians who've led the way. All I want is a world that is safe for my daughter and granddaughter, but also one which allows my son to reconnect with his own humanity. All I want is a world where both sexes love and respect each other for the unique qualities we have whether they are 'feminine' or 'masculine'.
Yet you are erasing me, a Butch Lesbian who is the opposite of "masculine."
I do not believe in the "hard wired" propaganda or any of the rest of what you are saying. I saw the girls I grew up with hate boys who attacked us, and I then saw then work hard to be attracted to them. And it was for the privilege.
Males are doing just fine and will not change because their violence is biological, across most species. And they know this and will admit it, while women continue defending them. There is no "sacredness" there. Females from other species know better than human females, sadly. But some species are completely or almost completely eliminated males. Your daughter and granddaughter are in danger as long as you don't think your son has his "humanity." He has far more of everything than they have or you have.
It's these politics that keep this mess going. What some of us call "male worshipping."
I suggest reading what has been suppressed, like our book, updated and at my blog. Chapters one and two answer the myths:
https://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/
I have nothing to say to this. We'll have to disagree on this issue.
Everything you say about what is going on is correct. I think you’re being a bit hard on the guy who I think was more confessing his ignorance but is on the right side The straight world has no idea what
"...a bit hard on the guy..."
AGAIN, men STILL expect women to BE KIND, even when we're calling out THEIR judgement. Men protect men always at the expense of women.
Women are sick of being kind to men who are clueless. Our kindness is WHY we're in this situation in the first place. Why not just be quiet if you object? Sheesh! Women can't win - we get slammed if we DON'T fight hard enough, we get slammed if we DO fight hard enough. Do you not see how crazy-making this is for women??? When will MEN start calling out other MEN, instead of constantly blaming women no matter how we handle male aggression? Women are being CRUSHED right now in every way imaginable whether they're on the left or the right, liberal or conservative. Yet, men claim victimhood any time they are challenged.
Men insult/abuse,/exploit women. Women fight back. Men say 'what a bitch!'.
Men insult/abuse/exploit women. Women don't fight back. Men say 'it's HER fault!'
It's all bs and women are beyond exhausted trying to live up to impossible and conflicting double-standards. Only women suffer the consequences no matter what we do. Women's liberation was supposed to free us. Now feminism is being used as a derogatory term. I'm terrified for my daughter and granddaughter.
The only reason women haven't completely dismantled patriarchy is because we're hard-wired to mate, reproduce with and become dependent on men while pregnant and raising children. Now, even feminism has been co-opted by the transgender ideology, too. Serving male identified trans-people - or else. Women have been FAR too kind and we and our children are being destroyed as we speak due to male perversions.
In most of the contacts I have had with Lesbians during my life, they seemed to be self-confident, independent people -- not to mention that I recently saw a documentary about a Lesbian couple, both lawyers, who made history in their state. I am also a great admirer of Martina Navratilova, who is a Lesbian. If I got the impression that Lesbians are a self-confident group, I don't apologize. You yourself just said, "In fact, lesbians have always been fighters and survivors and are always there to support gay men when fighting against homophobia." So you see, you believe the same things that I do. You can't be angry at me for believing in stereotypes when you believe in the same stereotypes.
My best friend for the last 15 years has been a Lesbian who is now 93. My neighbors across the street are a married Lesbian couple who have adopted children, and who proudly wave the LGBT flag every year. The person who bought my mother's house in 2012 was a Lesbian who was a very hard negotiator. I think I know enough about Lesbians to be able to characterize them, especially since I was characterizing them in positive terms. How is it that you, a straight person, know so much more than I do about my own LGB people?
Lesbians and women in general face from the trans movement and this gay man has no idea what lesbians in particular face, which is why the article is so important.
Stephen, thank you for trying to defend me against a more-woke-than-thou pretender. That kind of one-upmanship is very irritating.
"more-woke-than-thou pretender."
"Virtue signalling cubed"
Nope. Just a woman defending lesbians and trying to make a point.
Does it make you feel superior slapping a dismissive label on someone because you don't get the point? I can't help that you are unable to understand the genuine threat women face, and lesbians in particular and so I'll just leave it there. But make no mistake, women are DONE appeasing men. The last battle will be between the sexes because male aggression, entitlement and violence have become so endemic and yet men still seem oblivious that it's the only way women will be heard. Their trauma will explode and all the rage they feel for the abuse of them and their children will be unstoppable.
I'm sorry, but your criticisms of me were not valid. You have identified yourself as straight. At least I'm part of the LGB community. Stop trying to be hipper than everyone else.
Thank you for persisting against what I could call "misunderstanding" if I were feeling charitable, but which is here tarnished by virtue signalling cubed!.
Perhaps though there is a genuine issue here because there really is a new trans agenda attempting to define old fashioned lesbians out of existence - the kind you (and I too) knew to be able to stand up for themselves and see off this nonsense.
New lesbians are indeed subjected to the kind of violent enforcement and emotional blackmail described. The old fashioned ones, of whom I too know many, will have no truck with this at all. Because they are same sex attracted and they know what sex means at many levels - their bodies get turned on by similar bodies for a start and they know what sex is without having to refer to the latest LGBTQI+ discovery chart issued by Stonewall or whatever pseudo support organisation rules the local roost.
The New Lesbians are defined on such charts as those attracted to the same gender, but since nobody really knows what gender is, and yet anybody can self define themselves into any gender, only confusion rules the roost. My own suspicion arises from the fact that gender by the new definition turns out to be rather binary! I suspect too that the bulk of the TQI+ is motivated by very bad theory coming out of very bourgeois liberal colleges with a badly acknowledged contribution from cowardly incels and "men's rights' activists". The usual toxic masculinity in fact, but now wearing a dress, not doing the manly things of the stereotypes and getting that head tilt just right. Virtue signalling twattery!
In any case, I think it is now becoming extremely important for old fashioned lesbians to take over the teaching of new lesbians from Stonewall and its ilk. Although I can imagine that for the old guard, returning to the closet would seem a preferable option. Just like in the old days when the law said they did not really exist.
But then again, this leaves an entire generation of same sex attracted young woman at the mercy of idiotic zealots, moronic ideologues and entitled bourgeois theorists, which if I had a daughter, niece or young friend struggling with difficult feelings, would make my advice very much more difficult to get across.
Actually we need armies of old fashioned lesbians out there telling us what same sex attracted means .....
Thank you. Couldn’t have said it better.
(Copy-pasting my UnHerd comment here, because I didn't realise they expected me to give my real name! It may seem a bit random and out of context here on Substack because I'm responding to the comments over there, rather than the article itself.)
Reading the comments [on UnHerd] makes me think of Chandler Burr’s 1996 book 'A Separate Creation'. It makes some interesting observations on the ideological problem that homosexuality causes for *both* the political Left and the political Right.
In the book, Burr argues that the science of the day shows sexual orientation is similar to being left-handed: an inherent and fixed orientation that you can pretend to change, but can’t really. (As far as I know, the evidence still supports this.) Then he considers the political implications. Note to non-Americans–he uses the word ‘liberal’ to mean ‘left-wing’, in topsy-turvy American fashion.
Here he interviews James Fallows, Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly (p316-18).
‘ “At the bottom of all political differences,” muses Fallow, “is the way people think about human nature. Let’s give the very essence of what we could call the Conservative View of Reality and the Liberal view of reality: to the Conservative, the crucial factors are all internal, the guy’s innate motivation, discipline, and intelligence, but the crucial forces at work as far as the Liberal is concerned are all external. [Earlier, Fallows gives examples like sexism, racism, homophobia, economic policies, etc.] And if you assume, as the Liberal does, that options are only closed off to people by external factors, anything from prejudice to lack of opportunity to hostile circumstances, then any and all possibilities can be open to any and all persons–the world can be a utopia.”
… [Burr] But liberalism faces the research of sexual orientation uneasily.
… [Fallows] “Liberals believe, though they don’t often come out and say it, that any traits that can’t be changed–like whether your body happens to be male or female, for example–will matter less and less as society evolves, and traits that do matter, like ability and behavior, can be changed with the right programs.
“So it’s a real problem for liberal thought when it is confronted with the idea that things that matter might not be changeable. That different genders might carry different facilities, that some behaviors and temperaments are given to us.”
… [Burr] The plain fact is that a scientific look at sexual orientation and the behaviors and traits that correlate with it–and an objective look at gender and many behaviors correlating with it–inherently support the conservative’s view of reality and contradict the liberal’s view. Why? Because they suggest that people are different in basic, unchangeable, and important ways.
[Fallows] “The news media have usually presented this research as damaging to conservatives–“You can’t claim that gay people are willfully violating God’s law if they are born that way.” … And yes, the research does negate the crudest kind of right-wing stereotypes, and the notion that gay people choose to be gay. … This stereotype has always forced Conservatism, a philosophy holding that the environment has little to do with outcomes–and that Liberal programs meant to alter it are a waste of money–to make an inconvenient exception on homosexuality and argue, contradictorily, that young people can be pushed one way or another into profound aspects of their personalities by education and society. Which is exactly what Liberals have wanted them to admit forever.”
[Burr] Being forced to shed an internally illogical position (not to mention one that is empirically false) will only make the Conservative position stronger. In the long run, says Fallows, researching sexual orientation threatens Liberalism, not Conservatism, and it threatens it in a fundamental way. It is a time bomb, ticking away unnoticed. The problem for liberals is that research into homosexuality is … inextricably part of a vaster body of clinical and biological research that tells us that nature controls important aspects of our personalities, behaviors, and intellectual capacities. “This is truly repellent to the liberal mind,” Fallows says.’
(end quote)
tl;dr – The scientific evidence that being gay or lesbian is inherent and fixed should actually appeal to a right-wing view of the world more than a left-wing view. It fits the idea that people are just naturally born different.
Deep down, the Left would rather believe that we’re all potentially anything, and are just socialised into liking what we like and being who we are. (See: the ‘blank slate’.) This might be why postmodernism and queer theory in academia are so ready to proclaim that “sexuality is a social construct!” and even “biological sex is a social construct!” … and why progressives can end up putting pressure on lesbians to ‘relearn their social prejudices’ while honestly believing they’re the goodies and lesbians are bigots. It’s a way of thinking that comes easily to the left-wing mind if you’re not careful, like the proverbial frog in boiling water.
Since feminism is also largely a left-wing movement, and has often argued that gendered behaviour is socialised (but not sex), it’s understandable that conservatives would put the blame for the current mess on feminism. To them, it’s all coming from the same mistaken attitude toward human nature–just different flavours of the same silliness.
(I’m a male left-winger and definitely not a politics major, for what it’s worth.)
The LGBT "community" seems to be taking on the same flavor as religious/idealogical "communities' that are coercive, manipulative, and abusive towards their members. That's why I steer clear. I used to see the LGBT community as a place of acceptance where you could escape pressure and judgement about your sexuality. Now it seems like EVERY OTHER PATRIARCHAL CULT -- shaming and coercing women to accept dick. It's beyond abhorrent.
In England there is an LGBT organization called Stonewall which has so much power than the government listens to them and even negotiates with them. Unfortunately, Stonewall is a full-on supporter of the worst aspects of transgender ideology. Here in the U.S., there are some prominent gay organizations, but I have become estranged from them all because they are also promoting transgender ideology. One would think that transgender people constituted 90% of the LGBT community, but they don't. They certainly have done a great job of promoting themselves.
I always used to think that gays were at the bottom of the totem pole in society because we were so hated, but it has become clear that women occupy that position -- and apparently for no other reason than that they are physically weaker than men.
So true. One of the reasons I think trans ideology has caught on so quickly is because the misogyny that's baked into it is the same misogyny that's baked into the wider culture. This misogyny tells women we cannot center ourselves and other women and if we do, we're being "selfish, man-hating, or bigoted". Trans ideology exploded after the MeToo movement and I have a hard time believing they're unrelated. It seems awful convenient that right at the moment when women are speaking at unprecedented levels about the sexual abuse and violence we experience, "woman" then becomes a meaningless concept. We spoke up about misogyny and were slapped right back down with more misogyny.
Yeah, I just don't know why there is so much contempt for women. It has something to do with the fact that everyone has a mother, and that women/mothers are weaker than men. I haven't figured it out.
I had a conversation with my father once in which he spoke about the family, and he named all the destructive people in his family going back about two generations, and they were all women. When I pointed out to him that all the people he had named were women, with not one man amongst them, he didn't know what to say.
But what trans people are showing us -- that a man pretending to be a woman gets more respect than a real woman does -- that's just bizarre.
"It has something to do with the fact that everyone has a mother" YES. I believe the fact that every person on the planet comes to this life through a woman is a huge part of it. Controlling and degrading that process is a big part of patriarchy. I'm not surprised your dad named all women, that's part of our "place" in society too -- being scapegoats. I feel like trans people are showing us what we've known for centuries -- men define women. We only have value through our association with men. That's why lesbians and any woman who doesn't seem to need men are such a threat.
During the Middle Ages, women were hunted as witches. In Africa and India and other parts of the world, they are raped constantly. In India, if a man decides he's not satisfied with the dowry he got from his wife's family, he can murder her and get another wife (and in most cases he will get away with it). Here in the U.S., serial killers target mostly women. I'm sure there are many situations like this that I'm not aware of. Humanity is a nightmare.
Trans women, who supposedly emulate women, actually feel competitive with women. The way they are moving into women's spaces is a way for them to show their contempt. Do you think that Lia Thomas likes the women she is defeating? Not a chance.
Oh, absolutely there's contempt and entitlement. Very true.