Where is lesbian activism?

submitted by Gacho666 from self.Lesbians

I am definitely upset and frustrated, from within the "community" there are people who want to segregate us because we don't want to date men with dysphoria, and from feminism they are spreading misconceptions about our orientation, feminists who call themselves "political" lesbians seem to me to be disrespectful and dangerous, They say things like that we "choose" our orientation, that being a lesbian is only to maintain friendship relations with another woman, only to prioritize them, that is sorority, those women are separatists or fawning, they do not feel sexual attraction for women, they only want to avoid men, but i don't know what everyone with our orientation wants to call themselves "lesbians", wow, with how difficult it was to accept many of us because of all the bad things they said about lesbians (at least that was my case) you want to correct them and they are all the same, There are girls who are abused when they talk about their orientation and even girls who are sent to "therapy" where they are tortured physically and mentally, I have told you but they don't care, how many times is our orientation questioned? If these ideas are echoed, not only will those who want to submit to "therapy" return The typical comments that we have to listen to will be added by some imbeciles asking if we are really lesbians or if we do it for "politics".

The only right that not all women have yet is abortion, and although I support it, it is not a right that we as lesbians need, because in order to have children we planned and must have financial stability. In the feminist movement they don't talk about the rights of lesbians who have even less than hetersexual women, they don't discuss same-sex marriage or adoption, they don't have to go through what we lesbians go through but they just want to come and take us as one more banner without really caring about us.

Lesbians have always been independent, enterprising and pioneering, where are the groups that are not influenced by feminism and that reject lesbophobia within the LGB community?

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[–][deleted] 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It does feel like we face all kinds of lesbophobia from all kinds of people. Don't let it get you too down and stressed out though. Lesbian activists are out there trying to organize and effect change. You may have problems finding them because the safety risks mean women need to stay somewhat covert, but every day I see more and more women fed up with all the abuse and homophobic harassment openly finding other like-minded women. No movement, activist or otherwise, is free of problems or infighting. Lesbians have long called out the homophobia of heterosexual/bisexual feminists. We as lesbians have to search for one another. We have to form these groups.

I would like to offer my personal opinion on something you said.

The only right that not all women have yet is abortion, and although I support it, it is not a right that we as lesbians need

I think that even in liberal western countries, women undermine how many rights we have and how easily they can be stripped away. Like abortion. Right now governments are aggressively trying to restrict access to abortion and birth control regardless of that woman's sexual orientation. You can be charged with manslaughter in the US for miscarrying a fetus. Abortion rights affects all women. What happens when a lesbian is sexually assaulted and doesn't have legal access to abortion? What happens if a lesbian who miscarries a pregnancy that's the result of rape gets jailtime for it? Control of women's reproductive freedom is a central issue to most feminists, because violence against and hatred of women stems from our anatomy and potential to give birth. There are reasons forced pregnancy is considered a human rights violation.

There are so many ways that women's autonomy is stifled that outside of abortion and just speaking in general terms, I don't even believe it's true that it's the only right not all women have yet.

[–]Gacho666[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I am not the type of woman to victimize or allow myself to be harmed, so none of those scenarios that are merely hypothetical fit me. I firmly believe that feminists who call themselves "lesbians" without being one create a huge problem for those of us who really are, silence for me is complicity, many feminists do not care or do not even understand how it affects us that there are some pretending to be lesbians, so I would not form alliances with anyone who does not have a strong position against it.

[–]WildwoodFlower 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm seeing a lot of lesbians and gay men (especially married couples) getting fired up about Amy Coney Barrett and how she and her fellow right-wing SCOTUS justices might wreak havoc on marriage equality. There is also the election coming up in six days, so a lot of lesbians are focusing their efforts on that front.

[–]SickOfThisShitNow 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's really difficult. I was involved in the LGB community and activism there for a long time but obviously that's been completely taken over. I genuinely thought radical feminism was so wonderful and pro-lesbian at first look and it took a while for the scales to fall from my eyes - I think partly because I so wanted it and needed it to be something to replace the LGB community. How do we find each other even? I think on specific issues we can maybe co-operate with rad fems/political lesbians - in the same way some rad fems co-operate with conservatives on issues they agree on - but it does worry me that lesbians are leaving one problematic community with its own agenda that does not have our issues at heart and walking straight into another one. Maybe groups like the LGB Alliance can be part of the solution? Maybe we just have to build up communities from the ground up, get to know other lesbians by word of mouth and sussing each other out like lesbians in previous generations would have done?

[–]piylot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm interested if you're willing to share — A lot of people talk about hitting peak trans or peak lib fem (a moment of falling out of a belief system you used to follow), what was your peak rad-fem moment(s) that made "the scales fall from your eyes"?

[–]WildwoodFlower 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I can't speak for SickOfThisShitNow, but personally I have seen too many Trump supporters in radfem and gender critical groups. I have no way of knowing if these people are for real or if they are foreign trolls, so I just stay the hell away from them. Either way, I don't want to have anything to do with them.

[–]SickOfThisShitNow 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think I'll have to write a longer post about that one day as there is so much to it and I really want to talk to any other lesbians on here who have had similar experiences (although I realise only a small number of us have made it through from reddit). I see lesbians having these arguments with radfem/(political) lesbian feminists online all the time but don't know how many of them were actually involved in any of this stuff at one point.

It took me a really long time to realise that it was pretty hopeless to be involved in radical feminism because I desperately wanted it to be the answer and to have a movement and a community that I could be part of. Some of the key points I guess were:

1) Realising that every lesbian issue that they were absolutely passionately pro-lesbian and fighting for our rights on chimed completely with their own priorities - so the trans issue (and a particular element of it ie straight men accessing lesbian spaces - not elements of the wider queer shitshow that didn't nicely fit in), the idea that we are constantly being subjected to violent attacks by straight men because they want to have sex with us and we have chosen to deny our bodies to them. It seemed like we were basically just a minority label they could use to further the aims they had anyway for straight and bi women. 2) Political lesbian feminists being oblivious to and dismissive of any other lesbian issues. 3) Political lesbians who are absolutely horrified by and see so many issues with males identifying as women but refuse to see any problems with heterosexual or (more commonly these days) bisexual women identifying as lesbians - because they only see sexism and don't choose to see lesbophobia as a separate issue and as something that exists within the female group. 4) Seeing lesbophobia that you couldn't challenge because the perpetrator identified as a lesbian. 5) The re-framing of lesbophobia as "compulsory heterosexuality" of which heterosexual and bisexual women are the main victims. 6) Very strange, idealised ideas about lesbians and lesbian relationships - lesbians were put on a weird kind of pedestal and held to a higher standard than other women but any that didn't meet their standards and share their views or experiences were not only met with horror but called not real lesbians (because being a lesbian is a feminist state, not a sexual orientation). 7) Seeing feminists talk in a dismissive way about lesbian and gay issues - either because it comes under the rainbow/queer stuff in their mind so can be mocked or they are talking about supposedly privileged gay men who apparently don't have any of the real problems we women have. Except I and many lesbians can relate to the problems these gay men are talking about because we have experienced very similar things and the "real, more important" women's problems being discussed are experiences of heterosexual/bisexual women as wives and mothers in heterosexual relationships - and I ended up wondering "why am I on this side, again?"

I don't mean to criticise everyone involved in radical feminism - there are some good women in there who achieve some good things - but I just don't think they can or do represent the interests of lesbians and it does worry me that lesbians will escape from one problematic group and walk into another one.

[–]SickOfThisShitNow 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Tbh, one of the main things that absolutely infuriated me was the way they reframed being a lesbian as being about being woman-centred, being one of the women etc when so many of us have been excluded from female circles and isolated from other women for being lesbians and when young lesbians are being convinced that they aren't even women at all - when the exclusion of lesbians has reached the point that young lesbians are having life-changing hormones and surgeries because they are being so alienated and excluded by other women - told they aren't real women and feel they can't be accepted as one. When the response from so many women to questions about letting people with penises in women's changing rooms is "but we let lesbians in!" - making it clear that they don't see us as real women who belong in those spaces.

Then we are told by political lesbians that, because of this isolation we aren't "woman-identified" enough, so we aren't proper lesbians like the (het/bi) lesbians are. I was even told by one feminist that detrans lesbians are "traitors to their sex" and "chose to other themselves" by transitioning - with no understanding or empathy to the way the society they live in - and other girls and women - would have othered them to make them feel like they had to transition.

[–]Gacho666[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Political" lesbians seem to me an offensive term, I do not use it, I do not think it is correct and everyone who says it should be corrected, such a thing does not exist or you are a lesbian or bi or straight, calling yourself that way is only generating problems About really lesbian women, these women are reviving old erroneous beliefs about our sexual orientation that could make us regress, our orientation is not a whim, nor a stage, we also do not go out with other women just to avoid men, we lesbians go out with other women because We like them and attract, I think that of course we should stay in only LGB organizations but also start our own lesbian organizations and only for lesbians, without the need for feminism, the reason for me I know an organization of "feminist lesbians" I only see them victimizing themselves and that I do not like it, as soon as I have more free time I myself will take care of taking a page about the problems that we Let's face each other as lesbian women, only sometimes I need some support, you know a lot of our spaces are invaded and in person right now I don't know other girls who are on the same page.