What I think about as well is the specific sorts of reactionary politics both Jews and non-trans lesbians have to actively resist and that we are specifically susceptible to and are encouraged to buy into because of a fear of disappearing and trauma
Fear of being “converted” and an immense trauma associated with that
We more than owe it to our trans lesbian sisters to examine and correct our own transmisogynistic tendencies as well as not enable these ideas in our community. What I feel has happened as of late is cis lesbians have stopped self criting anymore because they just don’t care and are falling down a reactionary hole and it’s extremely alarming
Any self-critting is immediately short-circuited with “lesbians are Always being called transmisogynists or TERFs, it’s just lesbiphobia, we’re actually Wonderful and Very Supportive Of Trans Women Already and people need to fucking lay off of us” followed by a circlejerk about how despised (cis) lesbians are, contrasted with how (cis) lesbians are actually incapable of doing wrong. I have seen this exact reaction play out more times than I could possibly count
It’s like the alienation lesbians feel from liberal mainstream “Queer” is very real, but we need to be careful to not fall down a reactionary path in turn and critically engage with ourselves to prevent adopting reactionary ideas out of very legitimate frustration
it seems to be increasingly popular and while I have my own criticisms of liberal “Queer” stuff as a lesbian and as a trans woman, modern Lesbian Separatist stuff is incredibly corny and always has a strong component of resenting The Transes Stealing All Of The Attention (LGBT Doesn’t Even Mean Gay Anymore!!)
like, the bitterness over the hypervisibility of trans women really shows through in how people going down this road talk about “being tired of only ever hearing about queer and trans stuff, what about lesbians, you can’t even say the word Lesbian these days” – as if being hypervisible is a privilege, and not a target on our backs and an effect of people actively despising us. The same people often recognize that visibility isn’t a privilege when responding to bi people (also wrongly) attacking gay people for being More Represented And Visible And Therefore Privileged, but forget when they go to talk about (Cis) Lesbian Erasure, and imply that trans women’s relative visibility is not only an advantage, but one that we have at their expense
Lesbian separatism is also just at its core a position that hurts trans lesbians: we’re vulnerable and small enough in number that we’re much more in need of strong connections and community with other trans women who aren’t lesbians, especially bi trans women. The last thing we need is to isolate and split off from other gay, bi, and trans people to go Be Separate, or be pressured to Choose between them and cis lesbians. Like, some lesbian-only groups and networks are really important and good, but an overall move to focusing on Lesbians For Lesbians over broader solidarity is going to mean trans lesbians having to make practical decisions deciding between communities/organizations/groups in which to invest their time and energy.
Moreover, the way the good ol’ days of 20th century lesbian communities, the bar scene, etc. are talked about very often swerves into outright romanticizing, under the guise of Just Being Historical. Especially how things were for trans lesbians at the time lmfao. Like, it’s vital to learn from and build on past social practice, but the way some cis lesbians alienated from Postmodern Qweer Scenez talk about 70′s/80′s Lesbian organizing tends to brush aside that straight trans men were more common and accepted in lesbian communities and organizations than lesbian trans women. Even ignoring when “we just need to go back to how things were” is being intentionally used as a transmisogynist dogwhistle, the more benign cases are still ignoring that Reviving The Good Ol’ Days don’t mean the same thing to trans lesbians as it does for them, and that, yeah, lesbian separatism has a history of transmisogyny that you can’t just pave over by saying “oh we include trans lesbians obviously – why would you think we wouldn’t??”
I checked out a site called LesbiansOverEverything.com recently. I looked around for a while – apparently no content about trans lesbians, anywhere, which was telling enough by itself. But also, sure enough, one of the articles I looked at criticizing Queer Erasure Of Lesbians had vocal TERFs and other transmisogynists all over the comments. And tbh this is really typical of the experience of wading through Lesbians4Lesbians stuff online that isn’t specifically built by trans lesbians ourselves.
Lastly, I’ve been called a TERF by jackasses for being a lesbian and having certain positions on things related to Lesbian, LGBT, and “Queer” discourse, butch-femme stuff, etc. And yeah, it’s annoying and alienating, but it’s absolutely fucking nothing compared to transmisogyny among other LGBT people, and I’m tired of cis lesbians in particular acting like sometimes being wrongly called TERFs is the very worst and most alienating thing in the world, or invoking it to dismiss criticisms of transmisogyny, especially from trans lesbians: “actually, cis lesbians have worked on our transmisogyny enough, we’re already under so much scrutiny, and I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” Or even “you know, this is why some (cis) lesbians become transmisogynistic.” And I’ve seen that exact complaint about “being called TERFs” invoked frequently when cis lesbians talk about lesbiphobia in mainstream Queer stuff, as if it’s the height of alienation as a lesbian……trans lesbians get called TERFs too, but we usually don’t even mention that because it’s so fucking far down the list of ways we’re alienated as trans women and as lesbians. Yet I see it invoked by cis lesbians as a prime example of how very alienated they are and why we need separatism, apparently with no idea or just not giving a shit how that sounds to trans lesbians
And now AfterEllen has been taken over by this specific kind of revanchist cis lesbian weirdo
No offense also but I feel like a lot of the people who ahistorically tie radical feminism and butch/fem and identify as such are the very people who would be decrying it as patriarchal and a reinaction of heterosexuality and it doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence to me that these people are generally white/middle class. It’s just funny to me, especially when these people invoke a history they don’t actually know anything about
Like I don’t know how to tell these losers that Leslie Feinberg would hate you, no matter how many times you read SBB lmao
me: checks out website “lesbiansovereverything.com”
the website: apparently has no content featuring trans lesbians, but does have vocal TERFs and other transmisogynists in the comments
me: Wow, This Is SO Surprising, And It’s A Good Thing I’m SO Surprised By This, Because If I Weren’t, That Would Be Very Lesbiphobic Of Me, And Unfair On My Cis #Allies….I Would Literally Be Undoing All Of Their Hard Work By Dividing Their Lesbian Community, Which Definitely #Includes Trans Lesbians, Except For This Website Which Is Just One Weird Outlier
Mhmm Yes, Love 2 Be T & Betray The G And L (Mostly Ls)
Like…..This is what every corny cis lesbian separatist pining for The Good Old Days is like. This is what navigating Lesbian-Focused (as they said, Lesbians Over Everything) content made by cis lesbians is like for trans lesbians. Sometimes we get Sara Ahmed – who is excellent and makes a point of really talking about trans lesbians specifically in her lesbian feminist writing 💜 – but usually, we get this shit instead. So it’s really tiring when even nominally Trans-Inclusive cis lesbians get all confused at trans lesbians being wary of Lesbian Separatist stuff like “why would you think lesbian separatism wouldn’t be trans-inclusive??” Why wouldn’t we? Their confusion just goes to show that the transmisogyny of other cis lesbians doesn’t even register to them, and that when trans lesbians talk about it, they don’t listen, or brush us off as just being Oversensitive/Hysterical/Entitled/Self-Centered/Paranoid and/or having (Internalized) Lesbiphobia
Weird how this keeps happening with online cis lesbian content specifically 🤔
It’s rather transparent that you actually hate trans lesbians and trans butches and don’t think they’re real lesbians or real butches when the only time you bring up the shared history and similarities between cis butches and trans men is when you want to show how much you resent the existence of trans lesbians/butches, and are bitter at the efforts people make to include them more, rather than “The Good Ol’ Historical Lesbian Days” in which trans men were butch and you didn’t have to openly pretend you cared about trans women
Lesbophobia is real. It’s the prejudice, bigotry, and oppression that exists at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny. Let me say it again: Lesbophobia is real. Hate for lesbians is real.
However, it is essential to acknowledge and understand that the term lesbophobia has been co-opted by a loud and growing contingent of LGBTQ women in communities that share troubling ties and ideology with factions that exist inside the alt-right movement — worse, the dangerous dogma that’s attaching itself to word the lesbophobia has found a new home at AfterEllen.
I first encountered the word lesbophobia in response to the post I wrote called Queer Women Take Over The 2016 Emmys. Her Story got a revolutionary nod for Outstanding Short Form. Kate McKinnon took home a trophy for Saturday Night Live. Sarah Paulson won for The People vs. O.J. Simpson. And Jill Soloway scored another victory for Transparent. On social media there was a small outcry that I hadn’t chosen the headline “Lesbians Take Over the 2016 Emmys,” despite the fact that Kate McKinnon was the only winner who explicitly identifies as a lesbian. (In fact, Sarah Paulson is on record saying, “I refuse to give any kind of label just to satisfy what people need.”) The reasons the handful of dissenters gave for my decision to call the Emmys queer was that I am a lesbophobe, an espouser and executor of lesbophobia.
To be very honest with you, I shrugged it off. The most unwinnable battle we have at Autostraddle is labeling LGBTQ people in a way that satisfies everyone. It’s such a constant struggle, we laid out an explanation about labels in our official comment policy. Recently on a Pop Culture Fix, I wrote about the new queer characters coming to The Good Wife spin-off. One of them will be a lesbian, according to the show’s writers; the other’s sexuality has not been labeled. So, I said, “The Good Wife spin-off will prominently feature two lesbian, bisexual, gay, homosexual, or otherwise queer-identified women.” Just to cover all my bases because it was almost Christmas and I was tired and I didn’t want to have to argue about labels. And yet, the cries of lesbophobia came in again. I got a couple of emails, a dozen or so tweets. Essentially: “Lesbian is not a dirty word! Saying queer is lesbophobic!”
So, on December 26, I tweeted something I think is a true, fair, and accurate analogy:
Yelling “lesbophobia!” when someone says “queer” is like yelling “war on Christmas!” when someone says “happy holidays.” Come on, y’all.
A couple of days later, AfterEllen’s official Twitter tweeted at me and said: “@theheatherhogan oh, agreed. It’s like yelling “biphobia!” and “transphobia!” when someone says lesbian.“
"AfterEllen is three weeks shy of transforming their website into an online support group for victims of wyt lesbian genocide. This is honestly the most ridiculously entitled white lesbian coated petrified bullshit I have seen in a long time. And if you don’t think white supremacy has reached out its dirty little fingers and touched a few groups of marginalized white folks, well. Keep an eye on their feed here and there. Keep an eye on their former writers. They aren’t just trying to Make Lesbianism Great Again… They are asserting their strength. They are erasing the visibility of the defectors. They are sliding their salty little asses into spaces and feeds where they must know they are clearly not wanted or cared for. I was never a fan of AE but this new image they’re building for themselves is a little too Nazi-adjacent for my galaxy Blaaaack aaaass.”
Dickens was, of course, correct. And her point was proven once again the very next day when an article blasted out to the 125,000 followers of AfterEllen’s official, verified Twitter account cried: “Lesbian Spaces Are Still Needed, No Matter What the Queer Movement Says”. It suggests that trans women and bisexual women’s desire to be included in queer women’s spaces is to blame for the decline of lesbian-specific spaces, which lesbians need to stay safe from trans and bisexual women.
That kind of rallying cry feels very much like the “Save Our White Neighborhoods” rallying cry of the alt-right, so I went on a deeper dive to try to find the origins of what I called “the lesbophobia movement” on Twitter. And what I found was more horrifying than I ever imagined.
A few weeks ago AfterEllen — which everyone presumed dead after the company that owns it effectively fired everyone, including longtime editor in chief Trish Bendix — announced it had acquired a new editor named Memoree Joelle. In October, Joelle, tweeted a Change.org petition that she’d signed called Take the L Out of LGBT. The petition is a direct response to a previously failed petition that called for GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, HuffPo Voices, The Advocate, etc. to Drop The T from LGBT. The most popular supporter of the petition is a guy you might know called Milo Yiannopoulos. He signed it, tweeted about it, and dedicated 3,000 words to it in a post on Breitbart. Thanks to Milo’s urging, Matthew Hopkins, one of the main perpetrators of Gamergate, wrote a post called “Why #GamerGate Should Help the ‘Drop the T’ Campaign” on his personal blog. Hopkins called it “one of the most politically important campaigns of our generation.”
In addition to signing and tweeting about the petition, Joelle commented her approval. When former AfterEllen writer Elaine Atwell brought Joelle’s support of the petition to light, Joelle’s comments disappeared from the petition, and so did Elaine’s byline from the hundreds of articles she wrote over the last five years at AfterEllen.
The comments on the Change.org petition mention lesbophobia multiple times and equate it with trans activism, as do the subreddits that discussed Joelle’s contribution to the petition. “Part of lesbophobia is hating us for our same-sex attraction, but another very big part of it is hating us for our rejection of men,” one user wrote on /r/GenderCritical/. (Trans women are almost always referred to as men on this particular subreddit.) Another Redditor on /r/actuallesbians decried the “male entitlement and lesbophobia” of protesting the petition. “The moment we talk about your rape culture or your male violence we’re ‘transphobic’ or ‘biphobic.’” (The men in this comment are actually trans women and “rape culture” refers to the constantly espoused idea in TERF communities that trans women are male predators.) The lesbophobia tag on the blog GenderTrender is a deeply disturbing trip down an anti-trans rabbit hole. The lesbophobia tag on the website 4th Wave Now is horrifying; it equates allowing trans kids/teens to come out and live openly as their true gender with child abuse, ideas that are — again — shared with Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos. Reddit and Tumblr are absolutely flush with lesbians using the word “lesbophobia” to back up the ideas presented in these “Drop the T”/“The L Is Leaving” petitions.
These spaces that use the word “lesbophobia” to attack trans and bi women or people who use the word queer share more than than an ideology with Breitbart. You’ll find them saying things like “trans women want to colonize the lesbian community.” You’ll find them using the phrase “SJW” (meaning Social Justice Warrior), a pejorative term coined by the Men’s Rights Activist movement. And you’ll find a lot of talk about how the correct “biology” is the thing that allows people access to the protections of the majority. And lots and lots and lots and lots of just truly sickening propaganda leveled at trans and bi women. It’s very much about creating an in-group and scapegoating an out-group through tried and true tactics that have been — I’m sorry — utilized by Fox News and the alt-right for years.
I wrote about these things on Twitter, and you can read Dickens further unpacking them here and here. (You should read that last thread before you jump in here and call her “my black friend.”)
Look, we didn’t just wake up one day with an openly racist, openly sexist, openly xenophobic, openly ableist, openly anti-semitic president in the White House, appointing the leader of the most dangerous white supremacist website in history to his top advisor position. We watched blatant and unabashed white supremacist language and ideas slowly take over the movement from the inside. We watched the most powerful scapegoat the most vulnerable. We watched Fox News make heroes out of the white men who murdered unarmed black children and terrify people with their whole War on Christmas bullshit and equate all Muslims with terrorists. A Nazi didn’t walk into the West Wing and have a seat; the slow creep of white supremacy laid the path for him.
Vox did a fascinating interview with former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes earlier this year. He quit over Trump. But the whole interview is him agonizing about how, to him, the GOP had always been about fiscal conservatism and states rights and he believed in that ideological purity so deeply that he fooled himself into believing that’s what the GOP was about to everybody, despite the fact that he saw the white supremacy and fascism slowly gaining power and momentum until it took over.
To realize, first of all, that you’re part of a movement that was not the movement you thought it was, that you’re aligned with people that you didn’t really understand you’re aligned with, and to realize that everything that you thought about the conservative intellectual infrastructure was really piecrust thin. You thought you had this big principled movement and then suddenly along comes Donald Trump and you realize that it was just was just the pastry on top. So I think disorienting is a great term. Disillusioning is not too strong either.
To me, what we’re talking about with lesbophobia is a similar thing. Is lesbophobia a term some lesbians have rallied around to protest the prejudice and bigotry that exist at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny? Yes, of course. Absolutely. HOWEVER. I had to go searching for people using the word lesbophobia like that because my entire experience with the way the word kept popping up in my timeline and in my comments and in the comments sections of other websites was to decry the use of the word queer and to espouse anti-trans and anti-bi ideology. And that includes every single person who landed in my mentions on Twitter when I started talking about this. I did not click on a single profile without finding anti-trans, anti-bi language; or ask a single person if they believe trans women are women and have them say yes.
If you are a woman who is using the word lesbophobia to NOT do those things, and you’re more angry at me for pointing out that it’s happening than you are at anti-trans/anti-bi people who have hijacked its meaning, I … I truly don’t understand. What’s happening at AfterEllen is terrifying me. Maybe the website is technically dead, but it still has clout and power and it’s using it to push some really dangerous ideas about lesbian exclusivity, and those ideas are shared by a very loud group of people who use the word “lesbophobia” on their blogs, social media, Reddit, etc. to vilify the people (like me) who stand against them.
I don’t want to cause anyone pain. I don’t want to make anyone feel unsafe or unloved or unaccepted. I DO NOT BELIEVE LESBIANS ARE NAZIS. I AM A LESBIAN. If you truly think that’s what I was saying when I unpacked these ideas on Twitter, I’m sorry. It was not my intention.
I do think, however, that it’s imperative for you to open your eyes to how the word lesbophobia is being used to persecute and oppress trans and bi women in very vocal and influential spaces that have direct ties in ideology and language with the alt-right.
I always knew AfterEllen.com was cryptoTERF trash but looks like they’re really showing where they stand now.
I don’t know how long this has been in the works but the last week of their Twitter profile is enough:
As well as supporting meghan murphy they are really pushing the idea of trans women as male predators. Miranda Yardley is an English trans woman who repeats TERF talking points for them and was very well received for opposing updating the Gender Recognition Act in the UK. The reference to Stonewall UK also suggests that the new staff are completely in bed with English TERFs, who have links to US Evangelical funding.
Stop supporting After Ellen, the name has essentially been bought out to promote a fascist agenda which wants to remove all trans people from existence and then work on doing the same to the rest of the LGBT community (whether individual contributors admit it or not).
This has been going on for over 2 years, Heather Hogan (who used to work there) has a thread about it. Some of you who don’t identify as TERFs but are obsessed with “mogai” people on here being lesbophobic should read it. This is the end result of that rhetoric.
LesbianChemicalPlant 