I feel like the trans community is hurting LGB people. Especially lesbians. I don't feel safe or okay in the community at all. And I truly fear that if I upset a trans person with my gender critical beliefs they will harm me. I wish trans people would be more compassionate to LGB people and women. But I am truly scared of the trans activists. They are extremely violent at times and make me fear for the future of our community.
7/25/2021 “But Michael Phelps!” is NOT an argument for why being born as a male should let you compete as a womanRead Now “But Michael Phelps!” is NOT an argument for why being born as a male should let you compete as a woman. He won the genetic lottery. That’s not the same as wishing your perfectly normal male body were female and then taking a lifetime of drugs and crying when someone confronts you with reality.
7/23/2021 I’m struggling with the people I love the most not accepting my sexuality, and I don’t even have a community to seek comfort/advice from anymoreRead Now I’m struggling with the people I love the most not accepting my sexuality, and I don’t even have a community to seek comfort/advice from anymore. I feel lost and adrift with no one to tell.
I have to lie about my own sexuality just to get people off my back. I came for support, for friendships, and all I got was more pressure to like the opposite sex. I don't feel safe or welcome.
Back in my glass closet & staying here
I've gotten used to being alone & will not be associated with sick perverts who push the queer pedo apologist, seriously read the damn queer theory & remember paraphilias tend to exist in clusters & bullshit rape apologist agp forced teaming fetishisation & forced compliance awfulness. I feel like females are ask to cuddle male emotions, like always. And if you don't kneel down and submit, those males and their allies will try to ruin you.
7/22/2021 I find it extremely troubling to think I could be threatened with “punch a TERF in the face” just for articulating these subtleties of realityRead Now I’ve given up on saying that sex and gender aren’t the same thing. Or that women should be able to relax in penis-free environments. Or that having gone through male puberty confers an athletic advantage even if the person is taking female hormones. Or that children shouldn’t be the lab rats for hormone blocker experiments that leave them infertile and with no sexual desire. And on and on.
Back when I first learned about trans, it still meant “transsexual.” My heart went out to what I thought were a few unlucky people. I figured they must be truly desperate and unable to resolve their issues any other way since they persisted through so much just to be able to live with the opposite gender presentation. I’m also totally cool with adults changing their gender identities but not their genitals—why trade something perfectly functional for a possible loss of sensation? I think it makes sense for adults to decide how they want to live their lives, and I think it would be fine to have male, female, and a third category of trans/non-binary bathrooms and changing rooms in order to avoid the confusion and discomfort of a “genital surprise” or questionable lurker. For me, the trouble began with the outcry against Chimamanda Adichie when she said trans women are different from other women. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Trans women are trans women. I’m not denying their womanhood, but it’s absolutely different from mine because so much of the female experience is rooted in how you’re treated by society because of your body. We easily recognize this going in the other direction: I don’t see anyone up in arms when trans men reveal how differently they’re treated in the world once they pass as men. Even if they knew their whole lives that they were male, many of them don’t deny a deep understanding of women’s issues from having to experience the world as perceived females. The outrage that comes from trans women if you say they experienced male privilege just reeks of, well, male privilege. They will tell you how oppressed they were for living a female identity in a male body—and I don’t deny that includes a lot of trauma—but that doesn’t negate the ways they did receive privilege. It also doesn’t mean that their trauma is exactly the same as the trauma experienced by born females. One doesn’t cancel out the other. They both exist with intersections but are not the same. I find it extremely troubling to think I could be threatened with “punch a TERF in the face” just for articulating these subtleties of reality. One thing that bothers me the most is the hypocrisy around conflating sex and gender. That’s something that gender ideologists are blatantly doing (a recent conference session I attended on talking to young people about sexuality said that sex is a spectrum and shouldn’t be “assigned” based on external genitalia), but when confronted about it, many of them will vehemently deny they’re trying to say sex and gender are the same thing. And I think somehow they really believe that and can’t see how little sense it makes. If chromosomes don’t define gender, but one’s sense of identity does, how is that not making those into the same thing? For a while, I spent time in the trans critical Reddit that was deleted last year as hate speech. I learned a lot there and was sad to see it go, but at least now there are sites like this one and more news stories investigating what an identity-based gender means for all of us. I do see what I now consider to be some pretty hateful thing in the deep waters of that perspective. People get locked into an anti trans position the same way others get locked into a pro trans position. The reality is somewhere between. It is in fact more likely that a trans woman will be threatened by using a men’s bathroom than it is that a born female will be attacked by a man in a wig in a women’s bathroom. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen. Obviously, it does! But we need to figure out how to find balance in this and keep everyone safe. I finally tried to talk to some queer friends about this last year during the JK Rowling kerfuffle. I knew better than to go public but decided to run my thoughts past a couple of very trusted people. I was surprised at how negative one of them was. She’s usually very good at seeing through irrationality, but she basically told me she thought I was totally wrong, trans women are women, period. (I guess they really do make an impact by repeating that over and over.) I didn’t even bother trying to talk to her about the young women detransitioners who are increasing in number and speaking out for themselves. I didn’t bother trying to point out that what’s being called a “spectrum” of biological sex is actually a very small number of chromosomal deviances that aren’t other “sexes” because they don’t occur consistently and are almost always infertile. I believe in intersex people living as their true selves and not being forced into a category, and just because they have nonstandard bodies, that doesn’t mean there’s anything “wrong” with them. But intersex is not a biological justification for gender fluidity, and it often seems to me like trans people have coopted intersex without actually involving intersex people. Anyway, after testing the waters with my friend, who is still my friend because she very intentionally talked to me about this without holding it against me, I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of speaking out. I’m a lesbian, and I work in a field that includes a lot of queer people, including trans and enby folks. Many of the people in my life are vocal TERF-haters. I’ve seen what happens when people go up against that, and I’ve decided I don’t want to ruin my career and my personal life. I respect what individual people tell me about their identities and pronouns, and sometimes I participate by giving my pronouns. I wouldn’t ever date a trans women “lesbian,” but I’m never going to announce that. Yes, it feels repressive, but I believe the bigger issues are going to get worked out as this becomes more mainstream. I don’t know how long that will take, but I just can’t imagine that the feelings of trans women about their womanhood are going to erase scientific evidence forever. We’re already seeing data that proves persistent athletic advantage, for example. Eventually we’re going to have to have more conversations in the middle and adjust to the fact that there are feminine men and masculine women as well as people who embrace all forms of gender expression, and we can accept those without making it about pretending a visibly male person is a woman or negating that person’s experience. I just think we’re going to have to suffer a lot along the way, and I don’t want to sacrifice myself to argue about it. One by one, my lesbian friends have transitioned or gotten top surgery or have planned it.
I've lost several friends because I openly admitted that I'm not interested in hanging out with or developing trust/bonds with males. Feels pretty lonely. I love being a lesbian and no one can ever take that away from me. But I am very sick of having the same old homophobia repackaged as trans inclusivity. Never going to be interested in men/males. Not sorry about it. Not one bit.
|
Details
Archives
May 2023
Categories |