Should they be 'open to penis'? Credit: Roberto Finizio/NurPhoto/Getty
These days, a woman who calls herself a lesbian invites suspicion. Over the past 20 years, bars, bookstores, and festivals, once set aside for women attracted to other women, have rebranded themselves as “trans-inclusive” or “queer”, shut down, or gone underground. Lesbian playwrights such as Carolyn Gage see their plays shelved. Lesbian role models such as Ellen (now Elliot) Page come out as transgender. Even gender-nonconforming girls and women from the past fall victim to the new gender creed. Joan of Arc — the subject of Gage’s cancelled play — has undergone a posthumous transition nearly 600 years after she was burned at the stake.
This month, media organisations and mega corporations will bend over backwards to find an LGBTQ angle to cover. But what you won’t see or hear is the underside of Pride: a culture of intense social and sexual pressure that’s pushing some lesbians back into the closet and encouraging others to identify out of womanhood altogether.
It started with the push to redefine “lesbian” to be inclusive of heterosexual males who identify as women. But it didn’t stop there. Now same-sex attraction is out, redefined as a problematic “genital preference”. A surprising number of hardline activists vilify lesbians as “genital fetishists” and accuse them of practising “sexual apartheid”.
Meanwhile, lesbians are bombarded with suggestions on “how to have lesbian sex with a trans woman”. Safe-sex guides for lesbians provide information on avoiding pregnancy and performing blowjobs. Healthline’s “How Do Lesbians Have Sex?” guide, which targets sexually inexperienced women and girls, reminds readers that “any person can have any type of sex”. “[D]on’t apply assumptions you apply to cis men to us, our body works in different ways,” a columnist for Allure scolded readers: “Keep an open mind, and remember you’re having sex with a woman who knows more about her body than you do about hers.”
Not convinced yet? “Estrogenized dicks are… a lot like if a vagina was shaped like a dick and testes… Sex with an estrogenized dick is its own experience, but it’s MUCH MORE like sex with a vagina than sex with a man’s dick!” This remarkable advertisement concludes with a denial of what’s being pushed and why:
“Don’t have sex with anyone you don’t want to! You don’t ever have to give a reason why you don’t want to have sex with someone… But if you go out of your way to tell everyone that you won’t have sex with trans women, and your reasoning is that you think trans women are men, and that sex with us is like sex with men, don’t be surprised when people call you out as an uninformed bigot!”
Or, as one “trans lesbian” put it: “Being shut off from the very idea of it, not even considering that having my penis inside you is different from having a man’s penis inside you? That hurts.”
Somehow, telling lesbians that they “just haven’t tried the right dick yet” went woke.
Young lesbians get the message — from their peers in the “queer” community, their role models in arts and culture, the media, and medical providers — that their discomfort with any of this means that they may really be straight men trapped in gay women’s bodies. Sometimes, adopting an idiosyncratic gender identity — like “transmasc non-binary who’s attracted to women” or “feminamoric” — may be the only way a young woman can set boundaries around her sex life.
Last year, two friends and I launched Unspeakable LGBTQ. We asked: What do you wish you could say about your experiences as a woman in the LGBTQ community?
Some women talked about intense pressure to identify out of womanhood. When femininity — not sex — makes someone a “woman”, women who don’t conform to stereotypes come under scrutiny: “I wish I could talk about how non-conforming women are being pressured to identify as a different gender to validate transwomen’s ‘femininity,’” wrote one respondent. “Feeling alienated by femininity is a near-universal female experience, especially for gay and bisexual women — not something that means you’re not a woman at all,” wrote another. Another respondent confessed that she now feels “more comfortable around my conservative neighbors than I do in ‘queer’ liberal circles because my neighbors call me a lesbian and a woman… [in the LGBTQ community] I’ve had people ask me if I am truly non-binary or a trans man because I have short hair and don’t wear makeup or dresses.”
Relentless policing of lesbians’ sexual orientation and self-expression run through these stories. One woman compared the LGBTQ community today to her experience growing up in the Mormon religion, “where women are subservient in every way that matters”:
“We are allowed to have no leadership positions without the permission or surveillance of men, even in our own organizations… I was excited to join LGBT spaces and meet people like me. But it wasn’t like that. I left one cult and found out that what awaited me was another. In LGBT and other “progressive” circles, women don’t have the right to assemble without the presence of males who, by nature of being male, have no ability to relate to the experiences of female people. Just like my old religion, you aren’t allowed to question the ideology (in this case transgenderism) without being ostracized… Just like my old religion, men’s feelings and sensibilities must be taken into account in everything that women do.”
Another recalled her evangelical upbringing, writing: “I’d really really like, as a lesbian woman, to no longer be surrounded by transwomen who parrot the same talking points and shame tactics used, nearly word for word, by the youth pastor that tried to help me ‘pull away from sin’,” one woman wrote. “I never thought I would have to defend my sexuality against people in the community”, said another. “I get to feel wrong for how I am and how I love all over again.”
One university student described her brief involvement with the LGBTQ community on campus: “I hoped to meet other same-sex attracted people in the ‘lgbtq+’ club at my new university. It was not a community. There were some gay men and some lesbians, but there were also men who told me to my face that they were lesbians. That I should ‘be open to penis’. That I was a bad person for being a lesbian. I didn’t stay.” Another respondent admitted, “I forced myself to date trans women because I was made to feel like I was a bigot for not being attracted to them as a lesbian. It was incredibly traumatic and I was treated like utter crap.”
Responding to a climate where women who dissent from gender identity ideology face threats of violence, one woman wrote: “I want to talk about the incredible setbacks we’ve made in both women’s rights and same-sex rights without people threatening to beat, rape, or kill me.”
For women who have firsthand experience identifying as transgender or transitioning — before deciding to desist or detransition — the LGBTQ community reinforces patterns of thinking that caused distress and harm. One detransitioned woman reflected:
“I spent years running from being a butch lesbian. I transitioned in order to escape the shame & fear I had. When I finally came to terms with the fact that transition had not really helped & I was still the same me I detransitioned… I wanted community more then anything. But there isn’t a place for me anymore. Before I transitioned there were several lesbian groups in my area. They aren’t here anymore. As far as I can tell there is no lesbian space or group anywhere in my area… I can not express how painful it is to not have a place to belong.”
One of the most wrenching submissions was also the simplest and shortest — speaking to something the community at large seems to have forgotten: “there is nothing wrong with women who are only attracted to the female body.” An LGBTQ community in thrall to gender identity and “trans inclusivity” necessarily sacrifices belonging and acceptance for same-sex attracted women.
For women who want to be part of the LGBTQ community, there’s no escaping gender identity ideology. “The problem with leaving the ‘trans cult’ as a lesbian is that you can never really leave,” one young desisted woman wrote. “The ideology is in every LGBT space, every LGBT charity, every dating site, on the front page of our news sites every single day.”
In other words, you can accept yourself as a lesbian. You can desist or detransition from a trans identity. You can accept your sex and your sexual orientation. But if you want to stand under that rainbow flag, you’re not allowed to say so.
Eliza Mondegreen is a graduate student in psychiatry and the author of Writing Behavior on Substack.
elizamondegreen 
My advice to Lesbians: don’t listen to a word the Trans-prostitute MSM says to you. Make it quite clear that lesbians means ‘women preferring same-sex relationships’ and does NOT include ‘men transitioning into pseudo-womanhood’.
How dare the trans-community tell lesbians what to think? How dare they?
How dare they?
Simple: they were given the tools to do this by the progressive feminist agenda itself. The fact that the attempt is outrageous and indefensible is an unfortunate consquence of the fact that progressive politics tends to achieve it’s aims by similar techniques.
I agree. The feminist movement created the practice of fake ‘facts’ 40 years ago. How many times have we been told that all gender differences are due to the way boys and girls are raised. Anyone who is a human knew this was nonsense – but people also learned it is costly to argue about it. Seeing older feminists who have been driven from the herd for being Terfs, etc, is just them being caught in their own trap. I support them on principle – but don’t expect any personal sympathy for you. For young people Inhave more sympathy because they have been brainwashed with this nonsense – they think it is ‘the truth.’
See above.
Always blame feminism. No feminism I knew back in the day said men and women were the same but men w/ old grudges trot out the old saw that women are to blame for men’s behavior. That trope is as old as the Garden of Eden.
Lesbians are really to blame why so many straight guys are still single today.
So where are all the trans men insisting they are gay and male homosexuals should have sex with them , and that they should like vaginas if they are men’s vaginas?
Being told to f**k off by gay men when they do. Lesbians should do likewise, in fact I’m sure that many are.
Lesbians did and they booted us off. The gay men got a pass. The proof of this? The gay subreddits in reddits are still there but the single subreddit for lesbians (Truelesbians) got banned. Now the only “lesbian” subreddit there is infested with transes.
It is unjust.
Really? That’s shocking sexism. (I’m not being sarcastic)
Plenty of them and they are finally triggering gay men who don’t like vaginas.
Lesbians have been doing this since the 1950s. How about men try and talk to these psychos for a change?
After all, they are men.
Yep. I agree.
They are trans male heterosexual cross-dressers w/ a fetish–autogynephiles–and they have pervy paraphilias.
LOL.
There are hierarchically-organised assemblies of text galore today – I think they’re called “threads” – such as this one to which you have contributed yourself, in which members of the general public can comment – easily, without even “daring” to identify themselves – and reply to comments on all sorts of expressions of opinions, and to comments on comments ad infinitum, enabling any Tom, d**k, or Harry to tell any other Tom, d**k, or Harry he wishes how he thinks he ought to think. I think that that’s a freedom in need of defending, rather than something to moan about, even if a few “Lesbians” find it inconvenient.
What the so-called “trans-community” says follows logically from what it believes. It is those beliefs that need to be challenged, if anything, not the legitimate, free expression of them.
Lesbians current problems seem to arise from identifying as left wing. No conservative lesbian would be fooled into thinking they ought to accept men identifying themselves as women into their group as lesbians. They need to come out as conservatives and step away from the conformist ideologies of the left. Probably far more frightening than coming out as lesbian nowadays. Anne Lister who is often celebrated in lesbian circles had no difficulty being a high Tory as well as a lesbian. A real free thinker for the time.
My hope is that lesbians and others will see the leftists for what they are – authoritarians – and will come over to libertarianism, which is closer to a conservative (Republican) and very far from a progressive (Democrat) philosophy.
The acceptance of gay marriage has to be the fastest turnaround in the history of social movements.
Real free thinkers are exactly that – free thinkers. They have no need to become part of a baying crowd agitating for anything.
You absolute melt! Anne Lister had “No difficulty” being a lesbian? What are you on?!? People need to start separating political ilks and safeguarding, they are mutually exclusive! There are thousands of left leaning lesbians who disagree with this woke, sexist, lesbophobic and misogynistic ideology! It’s also about time men started to listen to those ‘pesky feminists’ because they have been shoting about this woke nonsense for years now!
I am not a leftist or right wing. I’m a Lesbian Separatist and have been fighting this crap, including in print, since the early Seventies.
I am so old! I just can’t believe anyone with 2 brain cells could ever not laugh out loud if some lunatic of whatever sexual orientation made these suggestions to them. Basic biology, your own emotional and physical responses? What is happening to people?
That’s what Winston and Julia thought in 1984, too.
You may be old, but no need to be bold
I don’t know Andrew. I think in this case the bold could well be justified. Certainly grabbed my attention.
Dear me, the mind boggles.
Anyway, I was wondering why gay men or straight people aren’t seen as equally bigoted.
Shouldn’t gay men be having sex with gay trans men (formerly women) and straight men with straight trans women (formerly men)?
If you are a straight man you can marry Loretta and have children too (and if you say you can’t, you are a BIGOT!)
Indeed refusing sex from anyone on the spurious grounds that you are not attracted to them might be seen as bigoted if the logic of the trans activist is accepted. The pedophile might reasonable tell children “don’t be a bigot” I identify as a child who likes sex.
And that’s the end game right there.
Good point and the fact that these, gratifyingly more common, discussions overwhelmingly focus on the gaslighting and abuse of lesbians and not gay men is very revealing. This, I feel, is largely because of the misogyny baked into the TQWERTY+ ‘movement’. I feel other reasons are, generally, blokes being blokes, gay or straight, relative body mass and musculature being what they are between the sexes, women (even those who imagine they’re men) being less sexually aggressive than actual men, that gay men are far more likely to tell some sex pest chick with a beard trying it on with us to do one in the most forthright terms with the expectation that they’ll scarper.
Many more gay men urgently need to explicitly support lesbians as they struggle against this new homophobia, partly out of self interest (they’ll come for us too) but also because we owe them one. I’m old enough to recall that lesbians were always by our side, even on issues like AIDS which affected them far less.
You’ve not seen articles addressing the bigotry of straight rejecting trans while dating? This $hit is frankly, unbelievable. What a sad sad world.
“…but there were also men who told me to my face that they were lesbians. That I should ‘be open to p***s’. That I was a bad person for being a lesbian”
Need anyone say anything more, after reading the sheer inane idiocy and hypocrisy of this? Why didn’t the person who was spoken to like this simply laugh in his face? What is the purpose of education, unless it’s to enable people to identify utter rubbish when it’s spouted at them, presumably to gain some kind of sexual advantage?
Woke? Wake up!!!!
Ever tried laughing off a man who wants to have sex with you? It generally doesn’t end well.
It may sound insane but lesbians do end up going out with men to save face in some cases or because of the relentless pressure.
Generally women try to figure out ways to placate the guy so he doesn’t hurt them in some way.
Is there not an LGB group (note the lack of a T, a + an I and all the rest of the alphabet soup) in the UK now, possibly in the US too, but I don’t know? This would seem to be the place for self-respecting lesbians, a community which would not force them to be what they are not.
I think there is – LGB Alliance or something like that. It is being vehemently attacked by the trans people, banned from Pride events etc.
LGB Alliance are indeed at the forefront of the pushback against the violent home invasion of our movement by TQWERTY+.
Thanks for this info. I’ve just looked up the alliance and I’ll alert a lesbian friend of mine who is feeling out in the cold at the moment.
There’s an LGB Alliance USA as well.
I have always been curious as to how this community expanded and how it has created an “all or nothing” mindset. You either are cool with all of it and open to all of it, or you’re a bigot. I don’t think this is what the Stonewall Riots were supposed to lead to.
Forced teaming. A tactic often used by sex abusers
In the end, Pulling your p***s out to a lesbian really just doesn’t seem like a smart move, in most cases. Pardon the pun, but it’s a ‘d**k’ or jerk move to expect that Lesbians would want to have sex with someone who’s still physically a guy. They have the right to be choosy just like the rest of us.
“Choosy”, lesbian is a sexual orientation. Do straight men ‘choose’ women over other men? The mere thought of having a sexual encounter with a male mostly revolts lesbians. It’s not a ‘choice’.
Lesbian is not a dirty word!
“Be open to p***s” – really cannot believe this, if a woman is a lesbian then she is attracted to vaginas, not penises. It really is as simple as that – lesbians need to, if you will pardon the pun, “grow a pair”, stick together and tell these MEN where to go! I am highly suspicious of all these so-called trans women who just happen to be lesbians – please, if you are really a lesbian then lose the c**k and balls! Funny how few trans women actually transition – the minority that do are likely the ones with genuine gender dysmorphia. The rest are just perverts who want to have the best of both worlds. The rampant misogyny of this persecuting of lesbians is unbelievable – as I understand it, they are getting little support from gay men either – so, yeah, misogyny in all its ugly glory.
“Funny how few trans women actually transition”
Is it still medically dangerous to do so fully? When I met my first open ‘transsexuals’ 30-odd years ago, transition was achieved by the use of chemicals derived from mare’s urine, which carried a highish risk of heart attack (confirmed to me by a doctor friend). One of the two did indeed die of that, at age 27 (oddly enough he made quite a convincing ‘woman’ when dressed up). The other didn’t look as convincing and indeed gave up on the procedure and subsequently married a hetero woman.
The last one I met, through work about 10 or so years ago was wholly unconvincing, and in many ways resembled a butch-ish docker. But these were all people who relied on lengthy drug treatments and eventual radical surgery, and I’m not sure if more modern ‘trans’ do.
The first two I met were both from ‘rough’ working-class Catholic backgrounds (one admitted to being a petty criminal when younger), one from Belfast and one from Liverpool, which may or may not be significant in terms of their personalities. I don’t know.
Lesbians have actively and loudly been speaking out against crossdressers since at least 1950s. Just because you don’t hear them doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening.
Lesbians have been getting kicked out of their own d**e Marches by men pretending to be lesbians. Of course, as it is men, they are difficult to challenge as they are loud and aggressive and sometimes violent.
Look up autogynephilia…….
The trouble with activists of any kind is that they tolerate/encourage activism in their own cause – which of course is never a cult – but then complain that all other extremist factions are in fact insane cults.
Most people who consider themselves ‘rational’ in the modern world – isn’t that pretty much everyone? – think themselves immune, or at least resistant, to extremist indoctrination. Yet the experience of recent years proves how easily 90% of us can be drawn into tribalist madness.
Personal pronouns? Ukrainian flags? Useless masks? Destructive lockdowns? Climate alarmism? ‘Taking the knee’? Migrant rights? A dozen other ‘latest things’?
Anyone who presumes to write for Unherd, or indeed any other media platform, should take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask whether they really have learned anything since their “naïve and rebellious teenage years”.
Just FYI, masks are not useless. They block the water droplets that carry the virus . Plus it depends on the mask. N95s will block practically everything.
The problem is, they are TOO good at it. In Hong Kong where I live we have been forced to wear them for over 2 years. Not even had a flu season. Result is damaged immune systems and when Omicron broke out children died instead of shrugging it off.
Weirdly, despite the real life traumas of lesbians written about in this article, rather than empathise, men in these comments seem to believe that it’s all womens’s fault that crossdressing men are pretending to be lesbians! Men in dresses raping lesbians is feminists’ fault so screw them, eh?
Men jumped in instantly to state their opinions in conflict with this article, never considering the possibility that some lesbians might want to comment and to perhaps wait a moment. Always get in first men!
Instead of blaming the problem on men with vile paraphilias for their own actions, it’s all the fault of women who have said that women have the same rights, freedoms and abilities as men and that men are abusive towards women. The men here actually seem not to notice that by blaming women they are condoning the practices of crossdressing men against lesbians as shown in this article by blaming women for men acting out their fetishes. This is actually abusive of women.
Of course, just like when women are raped in any other circumstances, it’s all the fault of feminists, not the men who are actually raping women. After all, wasn’t it women who told us we didn’t have to stay at home taking care of men and babies forever? How shocking. Goddess forbid individual men could rein themselves in to produce a safe and civil society for both sexes.
Lesbians have been refusing men in dresses since the 1950’s but apparently it is still womens’ fault that these insane and violent men have instead flourished and multiplied.
In the media and irl it is almost always MEN defending these paraphilic, mentally ill MEN yet it is all womens’ fault (not the fault of porn made by men) that they continue to plague and infiltrate all womens’ orgs to the point that we are not able to call for woman only meetings or gatherings of any kind without men violently ‘counter-protesting’.
Recently I stated on Twit that ‘In general men are the problem’ in regards to the fact that men have taken over all womens orgs and trashed many. This was reported as HATE SPEECH and I was temporarily suspended. A general factual statement about men is now considered hate. How are women supposed to resist violent and perverted men if we are unable to talk about it without being reported for simple factual statements?
When women are unable to even state publicly that men are the problem, men ARE the problem.
MEN could put a stop to this trans nonsense if they were able to extend their empathy for women beyond the confines of their own DNA. But MEN continue to pass laws allowing the continual infiltration of men into children and womens’ spaces because they’d rather support fetishistic men.
[*awaits backlash from oversensitive men]
This is the fate your movement chose decades ago.
This isn’t intended to be a backlash reply, only to highlight problem facing your hoped for allies. As a “CIS male” I’m officially excluded from workplace EDI forums, I cannot be an “ally” in Pride events unless I conform to the trans politics, and in national politics if I were to offer empathy to you I’d be shouted down for the same reasons I’m excluded from Pride and EDI. In essence, as it doesn’t directly affect me my involvement is not permitted by those forcing these things on you. We are divided by intersectionality rules.
If I was to offer my empathy to support you, it either wouldn’t find an audience or worse, by association with my “CISness”, it would make things worse for you and your causes.
I think I feel as much a hostage to these societally damaging changes as perhaps you do. I hazard a guess that both you and I and a great majority of women and men of all pursuasions have much to agree about yet still we all seem voiceless.
The comments I’m seeing are erasing Lesbians and Lesbian Feminists, our history and our politics. The men here are gloating that we made this mess, but they clearly have no idea who we are. We never said males were different from female because of “socialization” but because of biology. We’ve been saying it for over 50 years, including in print.
https://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/
This article is excellent and I wish everyone would read it, but I would never credit Carolyn Gage for saying no to the trans cult. At the 2014 OLOC conference, she excitedly told me and a friend about how wonderful the Lesbian-hating workshop was that said Lesbian Feminists owed “reparations” to “transwomen”/men identifying as Lesbians. She flips her politics when it suits here. But others have never wavered from saying no to men or this bizarre cult.
Utter nonsense. Everything is not about you, that is the point you don’t get and never will.
Bev in no way indicates everything is about her.
She is literally commenting about lesbians as a lesbian.
The article is literally about lesbians, not ‘everything’.
“We never said males were different from female because of “socialization””
Wrong. The socialization view has always been the majority view, with biology the more ‘radical’ view held by a minority.
No, that’s not the case. Feminists have always held ( until recently) that women differed from men due to biology and that is the basis of out oppression.
The socialization thing is about gender, not sex. Women are not naturally submissive, into shopping, etc etc. Girls don’t innately choose dolls and toy housework. They are taught this… And then taught it’s natural, and those ideas were internalised.
The very existence of Hong Kong proves this is correct. Due to various cultural changes over the last 20 years, gender has changed. Girls are no longer taught (by now dead grandma’s) to conceal intelligence, not study science, etc as “you won’t get married” Result, science and engineering now half female. I know a woman teachers structural engineering, says the females have gone from 2 to 16 in a class of 30…women are everywhere and men are bemused if you ask them do they object to female bosses. Boys, too, are now just as likely to study humanities.
Interestingly, the violence of the protests restored some misogyny,with girls complaining about the behaviour of the fighting lads who started taking a “woman, serve me” warrior attitude sometimes. So that would be sex, not gender, and due to the testosterone boost violence engenders. I would guess, anyway.
All of this! The men commenting here can’t even see their own misogyny
Why would the LGB want to be anywhere near the T at this point?
Why would *anyone*?
What. The. Fuch. is happening?
Like others, I am absolutely speechless that we have got to this place, and that this conversation needs to be even considered, let alone written about.
I am not sufficiently well read or educated to draw comparisons with literature, but it all feels very much like a mad, dystopian vision of the future that I think I once had whilst off my face on pills at the age of 18.
It may be down to my advancing age, but I am genuinely baffled by this debate. Surely, in a civilised society no one has to have sex with anyone they don’t find attractive, or just don’t like. Anything beyond that is student politics gone mad, or rape.
Dear Iwan, hear! hear! I can’t imagine that any feminist or gay activist of my age (I’m seventy-one) would ever have had envisaged a world where this debate was taken so seriously.
The message used to be that “It’s not a choice”. I completely agree with that statement for obvious reasons. Nobody decides consciously who they find attractive. It’s absurd on its face and that’s why homosexuality was eventually accepted by most people, at least publicly. Progressives and progressivism, however, has little need for logic or common sense. What’s more important is the cause. Today’s progressives are just modern day zealots, a common species identified by many different names over the years: Pharisees, crusaders, templars, inquisitors, abolitionists, communists, Greenpeace, etc. Sometimes they are vindicated by history, and sometimes not, but that isn’t really the point. The zealot needs a cause in order to validate their existence. Their self-worth depends on having a ‘good’ to fight for, and an ‘evil’ to fight against. When homosexuality became widely accepted, that no longer fulfilled the emotional needs of the zealots. Society collectively accepted gays to the point there was nobody left to fight except a few kooks on the fringe, so they had to find something new, and they did. I can understand why lesbians are frustrated. They were the darlings of the media and progressive mob for several decades, but now they’re on the other end of the pitchfork. What they will come to understand is that nobody, including the author, can argue facts, logic, or reason to a bunch of zealots. Their minds do not work that way. Whether society accepts transsexuality as it did homosexuality is anyone’s guess, but regardless of the outcome, the zealots will eventually find a new cause to fixate upon. To quote Don Henley, “They will never forget you till somebody new comes along.”
This is appalling, worse than I thought. How did we get here?
Every day we stray farther from God’s light.
There is no god.
Those who think there is no God simply find something else to worship as a substitute for religion.
Indeed. Bible passages that I once considered anachronistic are now making perfect sense.
Well, I agree with Jordan Peterson that the religious stories embody 1000s of years of human experience good and bad. Whether or not there actually is a God is secondary. Acting as if there is helps humans actually survive and thrive.
For deeper take just read CS Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. It’s short and makes all the points that need to be made.
Yeah, that’ll help.
Maybe if he traded up to a 100w bulb …
Relationships are relationships, regardless of sexual orientation. Right now, we are damaging our relationships between all genders with a destructive narrative that focuses too much on “SEX” and not enough on what a relationship is about. Everything is now reduced to sexual orientation, but nothing is said about the relationship that is needed for two to come together. It’s no wonder people are going screwy.
What a mess: it’s time for a reset. ‘Consenting adults in private’ is not that complicated. Human sexuality does require strict laws, but only for the protection of children and female-only spaces. Scrap all the labels. Most people have a sexual preference (though not exclusively – any port in a storm) for the opposite sex: this idea of attraction has led to the mess: things can be simplified by considering repulsion, and then we have one distinct category, people who have an innate repulsion for the opposite sex. They could have the label H(omosexual) and the only reasons for this identity is that they are still persecuted, males in many countries and females as in this article.
Fair points for the most part but I’ll push back on this if I may: not being attracted to and not physically responding to the opposite sex is not the same as being repulsed by it. Gay men, for example, often have a keen sensibility for heightened versions of female beauty and style. This, I stress, is not necessarily out of the desire to dress as or ‘become’ women, but for many, including even many ‘butch’, shaven headed, hairy a$$ed gay men, out of a heightened awareness and appreciation of the aesthetic possibilities in a group of people for who many of us have every fascination for, barring the sexual. This, of course, is at the root of many gay male cliches, like camp, drag and the idolisation of over the top female icons like ‘the Boss’ – Ms. Diana Ross and Bet Lynch.
… we’ll, it’s my theory anyway, and I’m sticking to it.
Yes, you are right. I never meant repulsion for any person’s characteristics, but repulsion for an intimate sexual liaison: as you said ‘barring the sexual’.
Fair enough.
Look, we all know that this latest nonsense is obscenely stupid and borders upon the barbaric, but this battle is going to get worse and worse for women until the feminists who assume the right to speak for women accept that this is largely their own fault.
Feminism has spent nearly a hundred years using female emancipation as a trojan horse for progressivism, and nobody should be surprised at the ludicrousness of the resulting mess.
Please note that I am not saying that the overall process of female emancipation is a bad thing: far from it. But the manner in which it was achieved, especially in later years, was pointlessly confrontational and intellectually vacuous. Idiotic feminists such as Andrea Dworkin, who introduced the concept that all heterosexual sex is rape, normalised the use of accusational ideology to silence inconvenient points of view.
It is of course disgraceful that lesbians now face apparently serious accusations of bigotry for failing to respond to attraction by male-bodied people self-identifying as women, but the point surely here is that an assumption has been made, which is unspoken, that lesbians are expected to demote their own instincts of attraction to beneath the requirements placed upon them by an ideology they are supposed to possess by virtue of LGBTQ membership. Nowhere is it permitted, apparently, that lesbians possess the basic human right to be intimate only with people they choose and without having to explain themselves to anyone else in making such choices, irrespective of how the people in question self-identify.
And it is telling, isn’t it, that men, both straight and gay, face no such pressure? Why? It is not, as some people will predictably diagnose, evidence of sexism in the implementation of social justice, but merely that because men have not generally bought into the intersectional ideology of feminism, there is no means of applying such pressure upon us in the first place.
The vast majority of second wave feminists did no such thing, and did not believe in or go along with Andrea Dworkin and the far Left wokists. We’ve been about emancipation and equality from the beginning, and have not called ourselves ‘progressives.’
Totally a side note but I find the rebranding of Joan of Arc hilarious.
Essentially what’s being said 500 years after her death is she’s a stupid woman who didn’t know what she was and despite being martyred (well, to the French anyways…) for her belief in God and her devout belief in God giving her a divine task, she is now re-assigned as a foot soldier in the new crusade that hates the very idea of God.
Like damn, the LGBTQs have taken away everything the English thought they could do with the fire!
Well done! Finish the job! Use Joan of Arc to tear down her God and her nation! I’m sure she’s on “your” side….
Weirdly, despite the traumas of lesbians written about in this article describing how men are abusing them, men in these comments seem to believe that it’s all womens’s fault that crossdressing men are pretending to be lesbians!
Men jumped in instantly to state their opinions in conflict with this article, never considering the possibility that some lesbians might want to comment and to perhaps wait a moment. Always get in there first men!
Instead of blaming the problem on men with vile paraphilias for their own actions, it’s all the fault of women who have said that women have the same rights, freedoms and potential abilities as men and that men are abusive towards women. Some of the men here actually seem not to notice that by blaming women they are condoning the practices of crossdressing men against lesbians. It’s clear in this article men are to blame for acting out their fetishes. Men have been saying they are lesbians in the body of men since at least the 1970s. Only the clothing has changed.
Of course, just like when women are raped in any other circumstances, it’s all the fault of feminists, not the men who are actually raping women. After all, wasn’t it women who told us we didn’t have to stay at home taking care of men and babies forever?
Lesbians have been refusing men in dresses since the 1950’s but apparently it is still womens’ fault that these insane and violent men have instead flourished and multiplied. Women have been protesting crossdressers actively since the 1970s and much more in the last fifteen years. We are silenced by trans activists so it’s probably not surprising that a lot of men didn’t know about this.
In the media and irl it is almost always MEN defending these paraphilic, mentally ill MEN yet it is all womens’ fault (not the fault of porn made by men or the fault of men talking together) that they continue to plague and infiltrate all womens’ orgs to the point that we are not able to call for woman only meetings or gatherings of any kind without men often violently ‘counter-protesting’ and demanding ‘inclusion for the sake of intersectionality and diversity. Why should these or any other men be included in womens’ gatherings especially when the topic is regarding feminism?
Recently I stated on Twit that ‘In general men are the problem’ in regards to the fact that men have taken over all womens orgs and trashed many. This was reported as HATE SPEECH and I was temporarily suspended. A general factual statement about men is now considered hate. How are women supposed to resist violent and perverted men if we are unable to talk about it without being reported for simple factual statements? Can you not imagine what it is like for young troubled lesbians when it is so difficult for the rest of us?
When women are unable to even state publicly that men are the problem, men ARE the problem.
MEN could put a stop to this trans nonsense if they were able to extend their empathy for women beyond the confines of their own DNA. But MEN continue to pass laws allowing the continued infiltration of men into children and womens’ spaces because they’d rather support fetishistic men.
Fortunately some men like Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh have started exploring these issues. Maybe they will consider giving women a voice.
Yes, but look at crazy women like Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon! She is a woman, and supportive of this trans rubbish, which is entirely fetish-based and a mental illness. Why is nobody asking how men can even know what it feels like to be a woman?!?! Or vice versa? I have not seen that most obvious of questions asked even once.
Well, that’s left me speechless
I fell into a slough of despond yesterday when in a moment of boredom I started completing a customer survey from Boden. Johnny Boden, of all people, asked me to indicate how I ‘identify’. I can only imagine that middle class yummy mummies have fallen out of love with his products and he’s decided to target the trans market.
I’ve abandoned all hope.
Possibly middle class yummy mummies are the ones who demand that he pander to such groups as part of their competitive virtue signalling.
With the (mistaken) expectation that they and their precious darlings won’t be the ones facing the consequences.
Samir, I fear you’re right! It’s the virtue-signalling upper middle class and hobby feminists whose daughters often attend Anglican and Catholic girls’ schools who support a lot of this escalating nonsense.
How confusing!
Trans Right Activists are the most twisted Misogynists there are. End of. But I just going to have to say it. It is Feminist thinking from the 60s 70s and 80s in their efforts to debunk and rage against the likes of E.O. Wilson that has paved the way for this…
What will it be? Solidarity with all of us who reject trans doctrine, and who eliminate from our dating pools all those who put trans doctrine (which you once believed) into practice, if we are lucky enough to recognise them in time? Or will it remain niche appropriation of our common cause, in the form of special pleading that those who believe in the right-on sexual orientation doctrine and claim Lesbian privilege deserve somehow to get away with such reactionary heresy, for which the rest of us rednecks (such as those whom you’d likely label as “straight men”) rightly deserve to be denounced?
To put it another way, how is it any worse for a so-called “trans woman” to try to get into the knickers of a woman who calls herself a “lesbian”, than for him to try to trick a normal bloke into snogging him, or much, much worse? Either way, it’s the same old gender fraud, which since 2005 has been aided and abetted right up to the altar of marriage by none other than the queen, in whose name are nowadays issued fraudulent documents that lie about the sex of the blokes concerned.
Where were you in 2005, when I was trying to prevent the implementation of the ghastly Gender Recognition Act? Haven’t you realised yet that what irks you, documented in this present gripe of yours now that you have come to your senses, is merely one tiny facet of a much larger problem (transgenderism – with which you once flirted yourself, before coming to your senses) that has had the potential to affect ruinously everybody who is choosy about to whom, and from whom, they give and receive sexual favours, or with whom they form Romantic attachments, up to and including legal marriage?
Please read:
Stop gender fraud! Should a bloke be allowed to know if his “girlfriend” (or “bride”) is also a bloke?
What will it be? Solidarity with all of us who reject trans doctrine, and who eliminate from our dating pools all those who put trans doctrine (which you once believed) into practice, if we are lucky enough to recognise them in time? Or will it remain niche appropriation of our common cause, in the form of special pleading that those who believe in the right-on sexual orientation doctrine and claim Lesbian privilege deserve somehow to get away with such reactionary heresy, for which the rest of us rednecks (such as those whom you’d likely label as “straight men”) rightly deserve to be denounced?
To put it another way, how is it any worse for a so-called “trans woman” to try to get into the knickers of a woman who calls herself a “lesbian”, than for him to try to trick a normal bloke into snogging him, or much, much worse? Either way, it’s the same old gender fraud, which since 2005 has been aided and abetted right up to the altar of marriage by none other than the queen, in whose name are nowadays issued fraudulent documents that lie about the sex of the blokes concerned.
Where were you in 2005, when I was trying to prevent the implementation of the ghastly Gender Recognition Act? Haven’t you realised yet that what irks you, documented in this present gripe of yours now that you have come to your senses, is merely one tiny facet of a much larger problem (transgenderism – with which you once flirted yourself, before coming to your senses) that has had the potential to affect ruinously everybody who is choosy about to whom, and from whom, they give and receive sexual favours, or with whom they form Romantic attachments, up to and including legal marriage?
Please read:
Stop gender fraud! Should a bloke be allowed to know if his “girlfriend” (or “bride”) is also a bloke?
Confession time: I have bigoted taste: I prefer only vanilla milkshakes. You can have the chocolate and strawberry versions… they’re just not for me, sorry.
How dare you?
I don’t like milkshakes at all, and I also don’t care for yellow and orange gummy bears. I like white, green, and red.
How dare you?
I don’t like milkshakes at all, and I also don’t care for yellow and orange gummy bears. I like white, green, and red.
Confession time: I have bigoted taste: I prefer only vanilla milkshakes. You can have the chocolate and strawberry versions… they’re just not for me, sorry.
Laid him on the green, did she? Well, if that’s where he wanted it…
Eliza is upset because she has finally got the world that she really wanted.
Decades of activism overthrowing social and cultural norms in the name of LGBT freedom, ‘rights’, etc, has delivered us to this place. She and her fellow travellers wanted society out of their bedroom, and society decided to grant that request. In the time that has followed, the whole world has become their bedroom.
Guess what, Eliza? Thanks to you, it’s in our space too. Some of us warned that this would happen. The Ls, Gs and Bs wanted to become ‘mainstream’, but now want to shut the door on the Ts and Qs. Well, it doesn’t work that way. The ideology is everywhere and affects everyone, not just your community. This is the bed you ordered, and now you must lie in it. I only wish we could leave you there by yourself, but we are stuck there too.
Happy Pride Month.
Not sure why the downvotes here…
Me neither. It seems a perfectly apt explanation of why we are where we are.
L, G and B people have never tried to redefine everyone else, or dictate how other people should behave in their private lives. This is a feature of trans ideology which causes distress to others. There is no comparison, really.
There is every comparison. What is the purpose of Gay Pride?
Let them come.
Derek is rejecting the G and L who create no issue for anyone along with the militant T and Q who are trying to bully G/Ls as well as the rest of us. He can’t seem to separate them.
The comment itself explains the downvotes.
To those who justify extremism in their own cause, but condemn it in all others, nothing is ever their fault – suggest that they may bear some responsibility themselves, and they throw their toys out of the pram.
Many people go through life with so little self-awareness, they are incapable of ever learning the error of their ways.
Yes, weird. Even if you disagree, it’s a fairly well argued and constructive comment.
Not helpful as expressed but there is some truth in it.
Eliza did not cause the current situation and the article makes it obvious that this is not what she wants.
Many leaders of what used to be known as the gay rights movement neither wanted nor support the current ideology.
Based on the polling data I have seen many if not most of the gender obsessed appear to be straight, virtue signaling, neo-Marxists — not that they know their ideology is based on that, having been manipulated into being what Stalin called “useful idiots.” Observe that Critical Social Justice sells identity-based false consciousness.
And to what I hear as the truth in your remarks. “Decades of activism overthrowing social and cultural norms in the name of LGBT freedom, ‘rights’, etc, has delivered us to this place.” —- spot on.
Despite the dominant narrative, conservatives “on the right” are not evil, backwards fascists. They counsel caution when embracing significant change as it is easier to make things worse than better. The gay rights movement succeeded due to their support.
What we see now is illiberal, regressive, stereotype-driven “progressive” ideologues perverting what once was a noble cause.
This is not new. The left self-destructed during the French revolution as well.
Though not taught in schools identity-based “false consciousness” ideology (Marxist/ Leninist) killed four times the number fascists did. Let’s try to avoid that going forward, shall we?
And for the record, the fascists were “conservative/far-right” only in the sense that they wanted to “conserve” a totalitarian, centrally controlled (statist) society like the worst of the monarchies had before them.
We might notice two things about politics today:
1. Today’s intellectual and wealthy elite are overwhelmingly “left,” control most all western institutions, and seek ideological control of centralized government.
2. Far-left rhetoric of “political correctness“ – control of language and identity politics logically and historically has led only to tyrannical totalitarianism and death.
Huh, aren’t those two things essentially the “third way” of fascism?
Well said , but I’d take issue with your defence of the author.
“…the article makes it obvious that this is not what she wants…”
While perfectly true, that’s the real issue. What *every* activist wants is *important* – important enough to justify ramming their agenda down everyone else’s throat. But as soon as the boot is on the other foot, they’re the first to cry foul and complain of bullying.
Fair enough
I don’t see how pushing for gay marriage rights was “ramming their agenda down everyone else’s throat.” It didn’t force anyone to do anything differently.
You’re quite right. You don’t see.
A lot of lesbians are really to blame why so many of us straight single guys have a very difficult time finding love today, and many of us were never single by choice either.
I certainly agree with you, especially the way women have changed nowadays.