LGBT has become a meaningless term (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Lesbian and gay people have often disagreed about what it means to be lesbian or gay, though wider society will not necessarily have noticed.
To put it rather crudely, some consider themselves to be “virtually normal” (as Andrew Sullivan’s 1995 book argued). By which I mean they want nothing more than equality before the law so that that they can get on with living lives which are pretty much — except in the bedroom — just like everyone else’s. Others, though, consider themselves to be outlaws: their experience of same-sex desire placing them outside of mainstream, “heteronormative” society and they (at least in the case of gay men) would never be so bourgeois as to restrict sexual activity to the bedroom.
It’s the conservatives versus the radicals: the former position is the traditional “equality” argument; the latter is the more “liberationist” one.
But this good-natured debate is as nothing compared to the division that has opened up in lesbian and gay communities following Stonewall’s 2015 decision to re-formulate homosexuality around the nebulous concept of “gender identity”. Its policy today, which it has promoted through its Diversity Champions scheme, is that biological sex is less important than self-declared “gender identity” — an inner feeling of being either man or woman, male or female, which, according to Stonewall, is an identity we all possess. It follows that biological males can be lesbians, and biological females can be gay men. To disagree is transphobic.
It has riven us like never before, and only now is society waking up to this as a slew of private and public institutions pull out of the Diversity Champions scheme. Ofcom is the latest to quit stating that taking part “poses a conflict or risk of perceived bias”.
The breadth of support Stonewall enjoyed until now was predicated on its small-c conservative agenda; lobbying for legislative equality and wider social acceptance of LGB people, and seeing legislative equality and social acceptance as linked. Its consensus-seeking agreeableness enabled buy-in from politicians of Left and Right. In particular, the issues of civil partnerships and same-sex marriage enabled socially conservative politicians to be absorbed into the equality project.
For radical liberationists, a background of legislative equality was tacitly welcome as a precondition to a more disruptive ultimate goal. On the whole, whether you wanted assimilation or a radically “queer” reshaping of society, Stonewall’s activities were largely uncontroversial among lesbian and gay people.
But the gender identity handbrake-turn fractured that consensus. Stonewall’s strategy for dealing with the fallout has been to insist that there can be “no debate”, characterising entreaties to discussion as equal to debating trans people’s very existence.
The “no debate” strategy was intended to delegitimise opponents’ views while the charity worked behind the scenes with the Government to drive through its preferred changes to the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act before critical voices could get a public hearing.
Today, the “no debate” shield is starting to fail. This is largely down to all those women who refused to concede that a man who claims to to “identify” as a woman counts as a woman in exactly the same way as a biological female does. Stonewall’s stance on gender identity, and the public consultation on the GRA in 2018, created some powerfully angry grassroots women’s organisations, such as Woman’s Place UK and Fair Play For Women. It also produced the LGB Alliance, founded by seasoned lesbian activists Kate Harris and Bev Jackson. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the early planning of LGBA.)
This means that there are now two lobbying charities aiming to represent lesbian and gay people. Stonewall, which argues that the policies and principles of LGB Alliance (prioritising biological sex over gender identity) are transphobic, and LGB Alliance, which argues that the policies and principles of Stonewall (prioritising gender identity over biological sex) are homophobic.
Nothing represents the extent of this schism more powerfully than the intervention of Simon Callow — a gay man who came out publicly in 1984, five years before Stonewall was founded, when gay and lesbian people were commonly hounded by the tabloid press, and when the age of consent for gay men was still 21. Earlier this week Callow pointed out Stonewall’s “strange turn to the tyrannical” regarding self-identification. And described the “extraordinarily unproductive militancy” that surrounds its current position.
As for the charity’s ideological shift, he said: “When it impinges on women’s rights, hard-won women’s rights, the right to exclusive spaces for women, away from any threat at all — I think that’s a very serious issue.”
This must be discussed, he pointed out reasonably.
But reason is in short supply. The last few years of gay and lesbian politics has turned the consensus which held for thirty years upside down. Our most reliable lobbying charity, within which most of us used to be able to see at least something of ourselves, has become radicalised and divisive, igniting and reframing that discussion which had simmered in the background but never seemed existentially important in the way that it now does, namely — what does it mean to be gay or lesbian? Who are we?
For many of us, Stonewall’s position conflicts profoundly with how we feel about our gay or lesbian nature. Let me put it bluntly; I experience sexual desire for men, not human beings of either sex who claim to identify as men. My sexual orientation is towards male bodies — and yes, that means male genitalia too. If you explore this on Twitter (and I don’t recommend it) you will encounter people minimising same-sex desire to “genital preference”, arguing that it is inherently transphobic. Stonewall has avoided endorsing this view — but it has also avoided speaking up for specifically same-sex desire.
For three decades, Stonewall was broadly representative of the majority of people for whom it lobbied. There was only occasional dissent — a minor kerfuffle over whether or not it should follow up its successful campaign for civil partnerships with lobbying for same-sex marriage, for example. But now, through the fog and noise, one thing is becoming clear; Stonewall’s legitimacy is eroding, and with it the illusion that there is one LGBT community, to which the vast majority of us affiliate.
There has been an irreversible shift.
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SubscribeBut I thought the party line was that the Russian army is being destroyed in the Ukraine
They’re certainly taking major losses – particularly in officers (the backbone of the Russian army, since they don’t have an effective non-com layer, the way most Western militaries do). They seem to have already lost more people in Ukraine than they did in their whole time in Afghanistan.
I do think there might be something to the charge that the West is giving the Ukrainians enough support to ‘bleed’ Russia, without provoking a spread of the conflict. The Ukrainians are paying a terrible price, though.
They’re certainly taking major losses – particularly in officers (the backbone of the Russian army, since they don’t have an effective non-com layer, the way most Western militaries do). They seem to have already lost more people in Ukraine than they did in their whole time in Afghanistan.
I do think there might be something to the charge that the West is giving the Ukrainians enough support to ‘bleed’ Russia, without provoking a spread of the conflict. The Ukrainians are paying a terrible price, though.
But I thought the party line was that the Russian army is being destroyed in the Ukraine
A logical next step, if Putin wins.
Right now the Baltic is completely dominated by NATO or NATO friendly nations. For someone like Putin, who tries to go walking around in Peter the Great’s boots (far too big, BTW), the next target has to be the Baltic nations.
And just because he’s stopped in Ukraine doesn’t mean he won’t try somewhere else. He attacked Syria because he’d failed in Ukraine. That in turn made his real goal, the Eurasian Economic Union impossible.
He’ll keep trying to recreate some part of the Soviet Union/Russian Empire until he dies.
That’s his “destiny.”
Come on Martin, take an aspirin and have a lie down you’re driving yourself crazy. The Eurasian Economic Union is not impossible as all those involved have worked out who their friends are and have decided that the belligerent West do not count among them.
The Europeans have only themselves just discovered that they are just cannon fodder as well and are stuck like the rabbit in the spotlight and can’t quite believe what is happening to them. It is a Wily E Coyote moment for them but gravity will rule the day. What they do about it remains to be seen.
yeah Putin attacked Syria
Saved it from ISIS more like
Very hard to say what would have happened in Syria if the Russians hadn’t stepped in to support Assad. Their support made him willing to come down on the opposition; and once that happened, people swung to the Islamic hard-core, who were ready to go kinetic.
Very hard to say what would have happened in Syria if the Russians hadn’t stepped in to support Assad. Their support made him willing to come down on the opposition; and once that happened, people swung to the Islamic hard-core, who were ready to go kinetic.
Come on Martin, take an aspirin and have a lie down you’re driving yourself crazy. The Eurasian Economic Union is not impossible as all those involved have worked out who their friends are and have decided that the belligerent West do not count among them.
The Europeans have only themselves just discovered that they are just cannon fodder as well and are stuck like the rabbit in the spotlight and can’t quite believe what is happening to them. It is a Wily E Coyote moment for them but gravity will rule the day. What they do about it remains to be seen.
yeah Putin attacked Syria
Saved it from ISIS more like
A logical next step, if Putin wins.
Right now the Baltic is completely dominated by NATO or NATO friendly nations. For someone like Putin, who tries to go walking around in Peter the Great’s boots (far too big, BTW), the next target has to be the Baltic nations.
And just because he’s stopped in Ukraine doesn’t mean he won’t try somewhere else. He attacked Syria because he’d failed in Ukraine. That in turn made his real goal, the Eurasian Economic Union impossible.
He’ll keep trying to recreate some part of the Soviet Union/Russian Empire until he dies.
That’s his “destiny.”
Putin has already overextended his military forces in one conflict I can’t believe he has the capacity to take on anyone else particularly a NATO member.
Putin has already overextended his military forces in one conflict I can’t believe he has the capacity to take on anyone else particularly a NATO member.
Hmm the RUSSIAN Orthodox church is spreading anti-western sentiments… Well good thing someone is ringing the alarm bell on that bombshell, otherwise who knows what they could do.
Also, that final quote is hilarious coming from a NATO member after Merkels admissions/justifications regarding the Minsk accords.
Hmm the RUSSIAN Orthodox church is spreading anti-western sentiments… Well good thing someone is ringing the alarm bell on that bombshell, otherwise who knows what they could do.
Also, that final quote is hilarious coming from a NATO member after Merkels admissions/justifications regarding the Minsk accords.
It’s a laugh really. Like the runt of the gang picking a fight thinking the big guys will pull them out of the shit. Perhaps a good idea would be not to get into the shit in the first place. Donate another ten F-16s that you don’t have like the other 10 you have recently announced. I’m sure that will help. Maybe even keep these “planes’ for your own use. Are these people for real?
America is not your friend and looks like it has bitten off way more than it can chew. It would be a good idea to stand back a bit.
You are nothing more than Sovietskaya scatina.
You are nothing more than Sovietskaya scatina.
It’s a laugh really. Like the runt of the gang picking a fight thinking the big guys will pull them out of the shit. Perhaps a good idea would be not to get into the shit in the first place. Donate another ten F-16s that you don’t have like the other 10 you have recently announced. I’m sure that will help. Maybe even keep these “planes’ for your own use. Are these people for real?
America is not your friend and looks like it has bitten off way more than it can chew. It would be a good idea to stand back a bit.
FUC**NG WAITING FOR APPROVAL
SHADOW-BANNING! JUST BAN ME, QUIT THE COWARDLY CENSORING OF A THIRD OF WHAT I SAY. THIS PLACE IS LIKE THE OLD TWITTER.
If so, it’s posting like ‘the old Twitter’ that makes it so.
If so, it’s posting like ‘the old Twitter’ that makes it so.
FUC**NG WAITING FOR APPROVAL
SHADOW-BANNING! JUST BAN ME, QUIT THE COWARDLY CENSORING OF A THIRD OF WHAT I SAY. THIS PLACE IS LIKE THE OLD TWITTER.
I don’t think that Putin is all that interested in sitting down to negotiate anything at all. He has been involved in many negotiations in the past where his opponents have lied and deceived him to the point that there is no way that he would trust anything that they would say. They treat him like an imbecile so why would he bother?
Putin’s pretty good at lying himself. Remember his insistence, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine, that he had no intention of doing such a thing?
Well, he only imitated Walter Ulbricht in 1961: nobody has the intent to build a wall.
Well, he only imitated Walter Ulbricht in 1961: nobody has the intent to build a wall.
Putin’s pretty good at lying himself. Remember his insistence, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine, that he had no intention of doing such a thing?
I don’t think that Putin is all that interested in sitting down to negotiate anything at all. He has been involved in many negotiations in the past where his opponents have lied and deceived him to the point that there is no way that he would trust anything that they would say. They treat him like an imbecile so why would he bother?