Lesbians in the Crosshairs: How the Forced Teaming of LGB with TQ+ Has Harmed Lesbians

It’s no secret that transgenderism has made a big impact in the Western world, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, both by adding itself to the LGB acronym, and introducing men and boys into every women’s and girls’ domain.

In the years immediately following the Stonewall uprising in 1969, lesbians in the gay rights movement fought to have the L located first, in front of the G. Their argument was that lesbians were doubly oppressed, as women and as homosexuals, and furthermore were uniquely oppressed by invisibility; so putting the L first would increase visibility to counteract the cultural assumption that all homosexual people were male.

Soon after the LGB became the LGBT in the late 1990s, and also after lesbians and gay men won many legal rights for same-sex partners, the T and subsequent letters made themselves dominant. Like a parasite, the TQ+ first attached itself to sexual orientation, and then proceeded to destroy its host. This is observed in both the focus and funding for formerly LGB groups such as Stonewall in the UK and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in the US. Once the T was added, it presented itself as the most oppressed letter of all, demanding nearly exclusive priority for funding and focus within the LGBT “community.” Intrusions by men were made into women’s spaces such as prisons, sports, domestic violence shelters, political and professional positions that had been specifically earmarked to ensure women’s representation, and social groups. At the same time, lesbians were framed as privileged in relation to the men who claimed woman identities, and silenced and threatened as bullies if they resisted the prioritization of the T and the intrusion of men. The inclusion of men as lesbians through the magic of transgender ideology, along with this disenfranchising framing of lesbians as having ‘cis privilege’, effectively removed lesbians’ ability to push back within the new paradigm. Whereas the LGB coalition was based on sex and same-sex attraction, the new “LGBT” centers “trans” and “gender identity.”

To make matters worse, the medicalization of children and young adults intended to disguise their sex has primarily affected same-sex attracted people, with the political effect of reducing the number of lesbians who call themselves lesbians, and the personal effect of creating irreversible health issues, including sterility and decreased sexual function in medicalized young lesbians.

Most minor patients seen by the Tavistock and Portman clinic in the UK who were seeking such medicalization were reported to be same-sex attracted. While in early years most of these children were male, in the last several years there has been a greater than 5000% increase reported in the numbers of girls seeking “treatment.” In combination, this data means that the huge increase in children and young adults is largely due to the increase in young lesbians seeking to disguise their sex medically.

Because lesbians are at the intersection between same-sex attracted people and the sex class of women and girls, lesbians are the group most affected by the rise of transgenderism within the political, professional, social, and medical spheres. Lesbians are also a demographic that is traditionally seen unsympathetically in the wider culture, making it easy to frame lesbians as the cruelest of bullies with respect to the T – men who demand the right to enact their sexual fetishes in public  –  who are now claimed to be the most oppressed of all the letters. The T makes the ridiculous argument that if public display of a fetish is prevented, the fetish practitioners cease to exist; so it’s genocide.The power of the T can be seen in the result that lesbians must either accept men as lesbians, or be ostracized and punished as the worst kind of privileged, far-right, hateful bigots, criminals, and fascists bent on the genocide of the fabricated TQ+ demographic that can include any heterosexual man at his whim. This is a remarkable change from just a few decades ago, when the US political left championed both women’s rights and gay rights.

In reality, that demonization of lesbians as genocidal bigots bent on literally eradicating all people claiming to be T is a reversal¹ : According to the Lesbian Bill of Rights, a lesbian is by definition a “human female homosexual; or, a woman or girl who is exclusively same-sex attracted.” But if men can be lesbians, and bisexual women can be lesbians, it is lesbians who cease to exist as a coherent category in law and in public life. For the crime of categorically denying sexual access to all men, lesbians are in fact effectively erased as a coherent group by transgenderist activists, both in terms of definition and in terms of the ability to meet as lesbians in public spaces to socialize or organize politically, and threatened with violence precisely for being what lesbians are, i.e., female.

Here are some specific results of forced teaming of same-sex attracted people with transgenderism:

• Men claiming a woman identity insisting that lesbians date them (the term “cotton ceiling” refers to lesbians’ underwear and the claimed bigotry of lesbians’ denial of sexual access to these men). The demand is made not just in social media, but in lesbian dating apps, lesbian bars, and even private events such as a series of lesbian speed-dating events in the UK, and a lesbian-only event planned  in Australia. LBOR International, an international network of lesbian radical feminist organizations of which the WDI USA Lesbian Caucus is a member, fought for this last event before the Australian Human Rights Commission.
• Lesbians at events and festivals that were heavily attended by lesbians, so much so that they were considered de facto lesbian events, harassed by protesters.
• Males claiming a lesbian identity (and often pressuring their female partners to also identify as lesbians), thereby claiming that straight couples can be lesbian couples, erasing the meaning of the word lesbian.
• Lesbian-only and LGB-only groups framed as right-wing hateful TERF Nazi bigots, with the result that many young lesbians are uncomfortable using the term ‘lesbian’ to describe themselves.
• The TQ+ definition of lesbian used as an umbrella term that now is to include anyone who claims it. The result is not only that men can claim to be lesbians, but that lesbians can opt out of solidarity with other lesbians by claiming instead to be T or Q, negatively impacting lesbian community and political solidarity.

Most women have noticed that we are a target of transgenderists’ wrath much more than men of any sexual orientation are. The forced teaming of TQ+ with lesbians in particular has the effect of erasing lesbians from all public life and driving us all back into a closet that is as restrictive as any in the US during the past century.

As women and girls who deny sexual access to all men, and often reject gender in all its forms, lesbians are inherently subversive to the system of gender on which patriarchy relies, and therefore especially hated, and especially targeted. This inherent subversiveness has value for the rights of all women, not only lesbians. But for its potential to be realized, the forced teaming of the L with the T has to stop.

1. The concept of a “reversal” was popularized by feminist scholar Mary Daly. She said, for example, “We live in a reversal society. For example, the idea that Eve came from Adam is a reversal. It’s ridiculous. Who could believe that? It’s contrary to all biology. But with that myth in mind, people can justify somehow the idea that God is male. And therefore that male is God. And that he’s the origin. But he’s not the origin. The Bible is full of reversals. There are reversals everywhere. Orwell thought that when he wrote in 1984 about Doublethink. You know, the Ministry of Truth was where they made up lies, the Ministry of Love was where they tortured people. Everywhere you go there is Doublethink. There’s ‘natural’ make-up that of course is unnatural. Or think of ‘pro-life’. When they say ‘life’ they mean ‘death’.” ↩︎

The WDI USA Lesbian Caucus

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