What is a lesbian? It’s currently Lesbian Visibility Week, one of the times of year when this question looms particularly large.
Most people agree with the definition provided in the Lesbian Bill Of Rights: a human female homosexual; or, a woman or girl who is exclusively same-sex attracted. The word “lesbian” originates from the Greek poet, Sappho, who lived on the island of Lesbos, with the word in use from as far back as the late 1800’s. However, in recent years, the term’s definition has been subjected to a postmodernist stretching, a loosening of boundaries meant to allow the word to represent anyone who wishes to be represented by it, instead of as meaning a specific sexuality. This has occurred in conjunction with the colonization of the word ‘woman’ to refer not to biological sex, but to a feminine “gender identity,” which is subject to change at the whims of whoever chooses to participate in it.
Gender ideology states that gender — the set of behaviors ascribed to one or the other sex — is innate; whereas sex itself is a social construct. Transgender ideologists frequently use gender and sex interchangeably, however, while insisting that they are different. Both gender and sex are treated more like descriptors of aesthetics and personality rather than either a biological fact (sex) or an observation of how society trains individuals to act as a result of the fact of their sex (gender). Of course, doing this means that homosexuality and gender ideology cannot coexist, because transgender ideology redefines homosexuality as same-gender attraction instead of same-sex attraction. Homosexuality occurs in many animal species, and is a normal deviation of human (and animal) behavior.
Because homosexuality historically refers to attraction to the same sex, it serves as the ultimate validation for those who wish to change sex. While many will go along with respecting pronoun choices, dating is the hard line that illustrates just how hollow those words of validation really are. As a result, many activists for the “trans” industry view dating and sex as the ‘final frontier’ of “transition,” to the point of calling this barrier the ‘cotton ceiling’ — a moniker that refers both to female cotton underwear and to the ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents women from rising higher in the workplace, and is often called upon to be shattered. This namesake brings into question how the cotton ceiling might be breached with force. Indeed, it has been breached with force, both physical and social. Apparent acceptance by lesbians serves as the ultimate validation of men who claim to be lesbians as lesbians.
All lesbian spaces have been invaded by men who identify as women. Lesbian bars around the country have shut down, as what were previously spaces exclusively for homosexual women have been pressured into becoming mixed sex. Dating apps especially are difficult to navigate as a lesbian, as any attempt at asserting personal boundaries, such as having female-only spaces, or noting that one is only attracted to female people — is framed as ‘transphobia’ and may result in being kicked off the app. Because lesbians are both homosexual and women, two categories of people who are disliked and oppressed by gender ideologues, lesbians have often been treated as synonymous with ‘terfs’.
The term terf itself was created in 2008 by Viv Smythe, a self-described “cis-het” woman who ran a feminist blog, where on August 17, 2008, Smythe wrote a blog post denouncing ‘terfs’ (the first use of the term) in regards to the internet discussions on gender identity going on amongst other feminist bloggers, where she wrote:
I am aware that this decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), but it must be said: marginalizing trans women at actual risk from regularly documented abuse /violence in favor of protecting hypothetical cis women from purely hypothetical abuse/violence from trans women in women-only safe-spaces strikes me as horribly unethical as well as repellently callous.
She later compared ‘terfs’ to racists by stating:
Much of the factional divide here comes down to yet another gatekeeping argument about purity in feminism, perennial since the women’s suffrage movement, and this one has uncomfortable echoes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s arguments against extending voting rights to black men.
The concept of lesbian separatism being equivalent to racism and fascism in part stems from the proliferation of the term ‘terf’ by Smythe. With lesbian and terf often being used interchangeably, even spaces which are earmarked for same-sex attracted women are rife with lesbophobia. Particularly offensive is the idea that a group of women who have historically been excluded from feminism on account of respectability politics (e.g., the Lavender Menace) are now themselves being unfairly exclusionary. This is simply not true; no one would argue that other minority groups, such as racial minorities, are bigoted for wanting a space free of their oppressors in which they can speak and mingle freely. However, while many lesbians are radical feminists, the conflation of lesbian with “transphobe” has led to the mistreatment of lesbians within the community that calls itself “LGBT,” as exclusive sexuality based on sex is presented as a form of bigotry that must be unlearned.
One prominent example is HER, a dating app created for lesbians. Over the past few years, the app has become notorious for allowing men to create accounts, as long as they have the right “gender identity,” and for tweeting sentiments that illustrate that the app is not marketing to lesbians, but rather marketing an app supposedly filled with lesbians to those who would want to prey on them. Male intruders in the lesbian community are nothing new. Occasions such as these have been complained about by lesbians going back as far as the 1920’s in Germany. HER’s social media managers have not only posted jokes suggesting that homosexual women learn to love penis, but also suggest lobotomy as a cure for being homosexual, amongst other offensive statements against lesbians rightfully outraged that a dating app geared towards homosexual women prefers instead to cater to everyone but homosexual women. Images of some of these incidents are included at the end of this piece.
The question arises: Why are lesbians disliked so much, particularly within the modern “queer” community? Quite simply, for the same reasons lesbians have always been disliked. Because we are quite content to live our lives without men, without centering our actions or decisions around men. To live a female-centered life is to defy the patriarchal nature of the world we live in; and patriarchy can’t tolerate that; such defiance must be punished.
The WDI USA Lesbian Caucus
Lauren Levey, coordinator
Katherine Kinney
Brandi Kochan
A. Schams
