#liberal lesbophobia

[an-awkward-tangerine]

Just finished archiving the whole Drew DeVeaux speech about the cotton ceiling. Who could have guessed it was all on tumblr ? Anyway, I think it's interesting that he's defending his concept with "buuuut black people are discriminated against like this too, and disabled people too, so it's not rapey at all" as if black men and disabled men aren't rapey towards women. As if men will not use every excuse they have to persuade women to fuck them.

Very good example of how the cotton ceiling is worse than anything a normie could imagine.

[justhereforlesbians]

Literally have no clue what these women are talking about

https://www.advocate.com/voices/proud-to-be-lesbian?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

You can just feel the Y chromosome

every single time its bisexuals identifying as lesbian despite knowing damn well theyre bisexual and then condemning actual lesbians for not being bisexual

[oops-wedrovethedownwithcisbus]

[marxism-leninism-wonyoungism]

Log in to Tumblr. See women be so brainwashed by the patriarchy that they think misandrists are their enemies and not the patriarchal order and men. Be disappointed but not surprised. Log out.

[feral-radfem]

I have no problem with equalitarians, I disagree with their approach but their movement is for a good cause. If they think clumping all oppressed minorities into one movement because every oppressed group has people in it who experience further oppression within them, so be it. That's their prerogative.

I, however, do believe that this causes division from the main goal of any given social movement and plays into Oppression Olympic dispositions. Just like every minority group has individuals who are also oppressed on other status, the same is true about people within a minority group being someones oppressors on other axises. While I definitely wish we could all just agree to support one another against all systematic structures of oppression that is simply unrealistic. I have no desire to work within the realm of the idealists.

A women's movement should just be about women's oppression, misogyny. Helping the most women, with the greatest need, as much as we can regardless of other factors. A gay movement should be about SSA people's oppression, homophobia. Helping the most SSA , with the greatest need, as much as we can, regardless of other factors.

Forcing communities to try to team up ends up with these communities fighting themselves more than their oppressors. I'm mean most of radical feminist spaces are broken up and divided on different oppressed identities where we are justifying the sexist mistreatment of other women, in our anti-misogyny space, because they are somebody elses oppressor on a different axis. Or we are justifying removing them from radical feminist spaces and its entirety over issues that are not misogyny. Limiting the support and help they can get as a woman facing misogyny. Other identifying factors should be irrelevant because this space isn't for advocating against homophobia, classism, or ableism.

Even though things have the possibility of affecting some of the women here. We can observe which demographic of women may have the most need for any given solution based on these factors, and we should, but that is as far as it should go or else we are slipping into egalitarian territory. Radical feminism is not an egalitarian movement.

While I wish every woman here wouldn't be homophobic, normalizing homosexuality is not the goal of feminism. While I wish they would not be ableist against the mentally ill, advocating for the acceptance of mentally ill individuals on the bases of their illness is not the goal of radical feminism. This remains the case even though there are women who are gay and who are mentally ill. We would help those women's with the sex-based oppression they are experiencing, and then they would go to mental health or gay activists to fight for their rights on those fronts. Where, I can admit men will most likely be the focus, but much like all women benefit from women's rights and liberations, all mentally ill people benefit from policies against discrimination for the mentally ill. Even if they were made with only men in mind. Same for any other axis of oppression.

I can recognize, even as a feminist, that trying to make political topics of class away from the poor general population to just poor women is divisive and limits the scope of support from class efforts. Because while there may be people who agree with one topic, they may not agree with the other, and they were trying to collect support and funds for their social movement so that they can make change for the whole group they are advocating for.

Every minority group is in conflict for finite resources. Each social movement is fighting for money, exposure, positive propaganda, activists, politicians, and the legal consideration. Most of these things have limited slots and we can't all share them.

So this is my controversial opinion: When you join a social movement, join it for the whole movement not just for the parts that benefit you. Realize that you're going to have to fight with women who will gleefully oppress you on other identifiers because this movement is about women. Even the most hateful homophobic, ableist, classist woman has a rightful spot in this movement. You don't have to like her, you don't have to be her friend, you can openly disagree with her if you want but it has nothing to do with feminism, because feminism is about combating misogyny, not every hardship a woman happens to face. Just like every choice of woman makes doesn't make it a feminist choice, every hardship a woman goes through doesn't make it misogynistic hardship.

Understand that we are going to have to go and be a part of multiple movements if we want to uplift every oppressed identity we have. That they cannot all be accomplished under the one umbrella feminism just because they are women in every other oppressed group. That's just egalitarianism which distracts from the goals we could be advocating towards that help liberate all women, such as the Nordic model, porn restrictions, abortion rights, child care, medical misogyny, ect. Obviously these effect women of all demographics across all religions, all races, all sexualities. It would benefit all women to have these things dictated in law and those resources allocated where they need to be.

Honestly, I feel, that equalitarianism is currently the reason people are pretending most men are not oppressors because they are oppressed on different social statuses. It is the death of genuine social movements. It destroys class consciousness and pits the people who should be your allies for this given social movement against one another. Everyone can take the steps they believe is necessary to bring about a brighter future, I just disagree that this is the right one. It feels way too idealistic.

[misespinas]

One of my coworkers got offended I said that when I first started working at my job, I saw him from a distance and mistook him for a girl. He asked me how I would feel if he said I “look like a d*ke.”

Mf that was most of my high school life LMAO

Aside from that, I don't understand why men get so offended by being compared to women, and call women slurs when they are. I have been mistaken for a guy several times and I never was filled with hatred the way a man is when he's mistaken for a woman.

[justhereforlesbians]

In other news, water is wet, lesbophobia never goes out of style and when in doubt use a reductio ad Hitlerum

[oops-wedrovethedownwithcisbus]

The Witch from Slay The Princess is trans :00!!!

[genderkoolaid]

i feel like the crimew thing shows how much queer discourse dehumanizes people. crimew is an extremely cool & talented person who's like. literally embodying 'be gay do crime' in it's truest form, but the minute that people find out it is a bi lesbian, suddenly thats. all they can think of her as? like no consideration of how it Hacked The Fucking No Fly List, everyone can only focus on her lesbian identity crimes. because none of the people who do this shit can ever see "wrong" queer people as people. they treat identity discourse like it's the biggest issue in the world even to this absolutely absurd level. doesn't matter what they do for queer liberation doesn't matter if they are happy, if you Do Identity Wrong all you are in their eyes are a freak who's personally responsible for lesbophobia or transphobia or w/e. funny how that works

[oracle-cassandra]

This is lesbophobic. Not surprising since we live in a society that prioritizes and favors males and male feelings over females and therefore actual lesbians 🙄

Big ol' Happy #LesbianVisibilityDay to ALL the lesbians:

trans, cis, fluid, non-binary and otherwise GNC; butch, femme, in between, or neither; demi, aro, and ace; questioning, closeted, and everyone else who uses the lesbian label!

We see you, you all belong here. 💜

[euniexenoblade]

I'm transmasc and I don't think I completely understand the discussion around TMA/TME.

I'm pretty sure I mostly agree with you. Like, "transandrophobia" is not a helpful or accurate description of the transmasc experience, and I can see how it could be used to belittle what transfems go through.

Transfems definitely get more attention from hate groups. Transmasc erasure sucks, but it can definitely be a blessing when the bigots are picking their targets.

I keep seeing posts comparing trans men to incels and MRAs. I haven't seen many transmascs who would warrant that comparison.

That's not to say it's necessarily an unfair comparison. On the contrary, it probably means that there's a lot of transmisogyny going around that I'm not seeing. And if I'm not seeing it, that probably means I'm inadvertently participating in it.

IDK why I felt the need to send this to you. I guess I was hoping you'd tell me how to do better, which totally isn't your job. Feel free to ignore me and/or tell me to fuck off.

I'll send you $20 for tolerating my bullshit. Have a nice day.

Ok I wanna answer this before I get too high (I'm honestly feeling it already). Thank you for the $20, when I realized I forgot to pack a lunch today that money helped me eat still so legit thank you.

So first off, "trans women get more attention from hate groups, transmasc erasure sucks but can be a blessing." (I can't copy and paste on this screen, so I'm paraphrasing) yes but I wouldn't call erasure a blessing, no matter who it's for. They're two sides of a very fucked coin, on the one side transfems get lots of attention and vitriol, and the erasure of transmascs makes it harder for some transmascs to understand they can be trans. But on top of that, the form of transfems we see are never real representation, 99% of the time it's a transmisogynistic ideal of trans women, it's the weirdo white boy spreading lipstick all over their face just before they smash the mirror in a fit of "dysphoria" kind of shit. Though transfems have extreme visibility, our actual selves are not visible, we are ultra violet rapist horn dogs or we're the super ignorant, super emotional crybaby.

And, a side tangent, cuz you sorta did a thing the transandrodorks do that is frustrating. It's not a measurement of what's "worse." That's not how oppression works, that's not what we are saying, we are talking about the forms of oppression.

Men are not oppressed for being men. They can be oppressed for a variety of things, racism, ableism, interphobia (is this the right term I forget), homophobia, etc etc. Masculinity is rewarded, masculinity is the desire, patriarchy exists so men get to be above women. Things like "misandry" do not exist, they are inventions of violently misogynistic men, your MRAs, your incels, your conservatives (this includes liberals btw).

The person who coined "transandrophobia" used to talk about wanting to correctively rape lesbians. I'm not gonna go at someone's kinks, but the blog was not presented as a kink blog, I literally went there myself and read the posts when this first popped off and they come off as true lesbophobia in the context of their blog and coupled with the misandry posting, this person literally looks like MRAs and incels. The defense the community uses is "it's a kink are you kink shaming?? It was on a private locked blog!" Which, the latter, no it wasn't, I literally went there and looked, and the former. Idk I think if you're saying you want correctively rape lesbians while also talking about misandry and counting "transandrophobia," you look misogynistic and homophobic.

The main writers people follow for transandrophobia related content are straight up liars, who make shit up, and one specific non horse entity consistently cites himself as his own "source" and when he doesn't, he cites terf blogs that are connected to kiwifarms and sites of the sort. They will take bits talked about in feminism and present it as a thing they discovered and present it as transandrophobia. Ie. "Men can't show any femininity and can't cry and that's misandry" despite things like this are discussed at length in feminist texts, men can't do these things cuz that makes them more "woman" in the societal lens. Yeah it's fucked, but it's misogyny, not misandry.

I am, consistently, misgendered by the transandrodorks, and so is every other trans woman that disagrees with them. And it's definitely intentional.

Then there are token trans women who don't know much of anything about feminism or transphobia and will straight up harass you for saying women are oppressed. They often weaponize transmisogyny against other transfems, they misgender, suicide bait, or in velvetvexations case, will stalk your blog for two days even though you ignore her and when she's sees you're on a date with your wife, she goes to your wife's blog and starts messaging her instead. Legit, this woman is one of the worst people on this website, the only reason she's not seen as communismkills 2 is cuz men like her.

On top of this, terfs consistently support "transandrophobia" as a concept and constantly say that transandrophobia is compatible with terf ideology. The transandrodork community is ripe with terfs and crypto terfs. Like that one who said he hoped a friend and I get raped, cuz saying "men arent oppressed" warrants wishing rape on people. Or the trans guy that outright said "trans women are male" and tripled down harder saying "trans women don't experience misogyny and oppress transmascs cuz they're really men," claims that were so wild that even velvetvexations couldn't agree with them lol.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: not every person that believes in transandrophobia is a bigot or a bad person. A lot are just young transmascs who are under read about oppression and history, and this terf/transphobe community swoops in and pretends to be representing them and sucks them in. For every disparaging transmisogynist piece, there's two more that are talking about the problems of transmascs. So when you tell these guys "that's a hate group" they don't remember the post calling trans women men, they remember stuff about T being super illegal. So they think we are attacking them for having a problem, not the actual bigotry on display.

Honestly, if these people would just stop misgendering trans women, they might have more trans women who'd be nice to em. But that's the consistent trend.

Transandrophobia is a violent, transmisogynistic ideology that is propped up by terf ideology. That's why they are compared to MRAs and incels.

[frigid666]

re: why is radblr ‘like that’?

so recently i’ve been seeing some discourse among bisexual users in/orbiting the radblr space regarding its profoundly biphobic (and homophobic) culture. why is radblr hostile to bisexual women? why are lesbians and bisexual women constantly at odds? is this feud manufactured by outside influence? or is it inherent to the space? @watermelinoe wrote a great nuanced response to an anon who attempted to antagonize lesbian users. i agree with everything that was said, but i don’t think placing the fault on black-pill infiltrators and politically unserious edgy teenagers is the full story. this post is mostly in addition to that reply, but i figured i should create a separate post for my lengthy thoughts. 

for context: i’ve been working on a detailed post about the history and politics of the lesbian feminist movement (i.e. the political lesbian branch of feminism), as it is apparent to me that most of radblr is uninitiated due to how frequently its users conflate radical feminist principles and lesbian feminist principles. i still might finish that post at some point in the future, but i thought i should put some of the information i’ve come across while researching for that post out there now since it's become relevant.

one of the readings i found to be crucial in understanding how the culture of radblr enables biphobia (and lesbophobia) is sharon dale stone’s “bisexual women and the ‘threat’ to lesbian spaces: or what if all the lesbians leave?” (x) the title is inflammatory, but i highly recommend giving her paper a read. stone authored it in 1996 as a reflection on the culture of the canadian lesbian/cultural feminist spaces she was an active member of in the 1970s-1980s and provides a truly fascinating look into a niche community that i consider to be a spiritual predecessor of radblr.

the paper is quite dated in many regards. the most obvious being stone’s use of ‘lesbian’ to mean both ‘homosexual female’ (which is the only and rightly so accepted meaning of the word today in radblr) and the political ‘lesbian’ identity, of which the philosophy for is outlined as follows:

it was entirely possible to be a true female homosexual, or female bisexual, or even female heterosexual and be a ‘political lesbian’ and active member of communities like stone’s house on jarvis street. stone says that those voicing opposition to lesbianism as a choice were the minority, but i think this was largely the case because ‘lesbianism’ meant different things to different groups and organizations of cultural/lesbian feminists at that time. the reason i am reluctant to dismiss lesbian involvement in these spaces is because they were mostly born of lesbian (and bisexual) exclusion from other more mainstream feminist spaces and organizations by homophobic heterosexual feminists, as well as the marginalization lesbian (and bisexual) women in the gay liberation movement experienced due to lack support against misogyny by male counterparts. i am also reluctant to dismiss straight women’s involvement in these spaces because even into the late 1980s, lesbianism was conceptualized by many cultural/lesbian feminists as not needing a sexual component at all; all that was required from women to live a ‘lesbian’ lifestyle was prioritizing closeness and connections with other women and eschewing relationships with men (akin to radblr's idea of practicing 'micro-separatism' in one's day-to-day life in lieu of not being able to move to a women's land full-time). from my understanding, 'lesbianism' and 'female homosexuality' were not thought of as synonymous, which is why 'lesbianism' was considered a voluntary political philosophy, even by many female homosexual feminists.

all that said, stone’s descriptions of the jarvis house culture are very reminiscent of radblr culture (down to the usage of slang terminology like ‘gomer’ for men, the radblr equivalent being ‘nigel’ and ‘jakey’). this is because radblr culture is heavily inspired by cultural/lesbian feminist values, not radical feminist values. while both schools of feminism share similarities, lesbian/cultural feminism deviates significantly in its emphasis of separatism as the solution to the male supremacy and patriarchy present in all levels of society. meanwhile, radical feminism calls for a fundamental restructuring of society to eliminate women's oppression. radical feminism was never about female separatism. radblr culture is biphobic because female separatism 'as the solution to female oppression' will always require a politicization and objectification of female sexuality.

i normally wouldn't cite wikipedia articles as sources, but this distinction is outlined on the very top of the entries for radical feminism and lesbian/cultural feminism:

as an aside, this is why i find it very funny when radblr users try to 'kick out' other radblr users from the radical feminist club, because the beliefs these users are being kicked out for not holding (i.e. separatism as the means to female liberation), are conclusively NOT radical feminist beliefs. they are lesbian/cultural feminist beliefs!

the script of political lesbianism that radblr holds is "non-lesbian who believes inaccurately adopting the lesbian label is feminist action, therefore giving credence to the homophobic notion that lesbianism is an active, politicized identification choice, or born out of experiencing trauma from men, instead of a politically neutral, natural sexuality that some women experience." and yes, that is a large and significant aspect of why political lesbianism is harmful (and uniquely so to lesbians). but it also goes deeper than that. in truth, this definition is only surface-level. all women in feminist spaces can be guilty of holding and perpetuating polilez beliefs, and this rhetoric dehumanizes ALL women. through the political lesbian perspective, women's capacity for feminist action is made and broken by her sexual behavior - namely, her exclusion or inclusion of males from her sexual behavior - and by extension, her reproductive decisions (i.e. remaining childfree or birthing children 'for a man.') this is where the core harm of radblr's covert political lesbian rhetoric lies.

saying or implying that:

motherhood is compliance to patriarchy

engaging in relations with men is compliance to patriarchy

bisexual women have a moral imperative to only date women in order to defy patriarchy, and if they reject this, they are in kahoots with the patriarchy

patriarchy is defined by "sexual access" to women

lesbians are intrinsically 'better' feminists than non-lesbians

lesbians are inherently feminist, and choosing to not be living aspirational figures is a betrayal to womankind

patriarchy can be ended through female separatism

female sexual behavior can never be predatory or result in meaningful harm to others

men are fundamentally incapable of changing

and any other type of rhetoric that posits women's physical bodies as the territory for a gender war that can be "preserved" or "ceded" to the "enemy" in accordance to her sexual behavior (including reproductive choices, irrespective of her individual sexuality) ✅️ is political lesbian rhetoric. put radblr posts to the test; a good amount of them will contain or imply at least 1 of the above assertions. during a cursory search through recent/popular radblr posts, i came across several examples of this rhetoric:

i cropped out the usernames from these posts because my intention isn’t to single out any particular users for this behavior; these posts (and similar) have many notes consisting mostly of positive feedback and support, so its safe to say that these beliefs are widely held in the radblr space. the op’s are just the ones to put pen to paper so to speak. i don’t believe some of these sentiments are harmful or bad on their own either. i actually agree with some of them, especially the first one; although note its rhetorical similarity with this section of stone's paper:

however, in aggregate (and especially in addition to commonly held stereotypes about bisexual women and lesbian women that predate radblr), they create a harmful culture that covertly encourages women to objectify their and others' sexualities for political ends, which is never going to be a good or productive thing.

choice feminists and neo-liberals have run the phrase "don't rob women of their agency" into the ground to cheaply deny the power of gendered socialization and gendered consumerism, as they are quite allegiant to these systems for a variety of reasons. so i understand the instinct from radblr to not give it any credence, but handwaving women's (including feminist-minded women's) desire for children and/or romantic relationships with men as products of solely or even primarily patriarchal brainwashing that can be undone through enough cultural/lesbian feminist re-education, which is what many radblr users espouse, is just as cheap. 

for this reason, radblr is hostile to bisexual women, many of whom reject female separatism as the only means to female liberation and don't want to objectify their sexuality in service to this political goal. for this reason, bisexual women will be known as "traitors" and "fairweather." however, just as many bisexual female users believe the opposite and participate in disseminating political lesbian rhetoric (as do heterosexual and gay users). similarly, this is why radblr is toxic to lesbians who have deep friendships with men, who want to be mothers, who practice religion or don't believe in female separatism; their 'legitimacy' as lesbians is questioned, as there is the 'positive' stereotype (and key insinuation of lesbian feminism) that lesbians are naturally inclined towards feminism; and they are often accused of secretly being bisexual because these lifestyle preferences are viewed as in alignment with the patriarchy and therefore oppositional to the cultural/lesbian feminist perspective that reigns supreme in the space. radblr will not stop being biphobic (and lesbophobic) until it is free of cultural/lesbian feminist influence.

[doberbutts]

Something I was just thinking about... You know how we have both the terms homophobia and lesbophobia, acknowledging the ways in which homophobia manifests differently for lesbians? Some specific lesbophobic issues that are talked about are, for example, how the identity of lesbian is often not taken seriously (seen as a phase and/or something women do to turn on men), and how lesbians are often overlooked and erased in society at large, with the focus of more violent forms of homophobia being gay men.

(Not to say that lesbians are never violently targeted. Butch lesbians especially often are)

This reluctance to take lesbians seriously and their "invisibility" are acknowledged as problems. The fact it's a less violent (on average) type of oppression doesn't make it less worthy of being discussed, or to be named.

On the other hand, transmasc invisibility is, in a lot of circles, kind of seen as a superpower and a privilege? Of course I don't envy anyone who is a major target of violence (though, as trans people, we all are. None of us are exempt from it, despite what some people might think. Living as an out trans person is very liberating, and incredibly scary), but I do believe it's worth discussing the ways in which erasure and invisibility harms us without it being seen as controversial and... Kind of ungrateful? In the same way lesbians have been able to discuss similar issues without being shamed for it.

That being said I'm pretty sure I've seen similarly dismissive attitude towards lesbians discussing lesbophobia, but in my experience it was never this vitriolic and widely accepted/encouraged, and lesbophobia as a term was never so harshly rejected

I tend not to talk about lesbian issues because I'm not one and I think the lesbians should speak for themselves, but on the surface I would agree with this.

In my mind it's very similar to the discussion of the invisibility of black women's problems: the fact that many black women are also harmed by police violence, the sheer amount of black women dying in hospitals to medical malpractice, the erasure of black women's contributions to technology and science and history and society... these are problems discussed in the portions of the black community that I frequent, which are strongly activists anyway, but not really discussed or known at all by society as a whole and esp not the nonblack portions.

[Which is something else Crenshaw discusses which is why I keep telling folks to actually, like, read her works rather than parroting whatever incorrect definition of intersectionality they've decided they like]

Similarly, trans men are a relative unknown despite both being victims to horrific transphobic violence and also being major contributors to queer movements and even cishet society. And, similar to the above discussion, there's a lot of resistance from those outside of this conversation to accept that it's a discussion that needs to happen.

[oracle-cassandra]

Worst Ut/Dr Fanon Thing Poll:

Round Three

I usually don't type anything here but this is kind of like TRANS PEOPLE VS LESBIANS so uhm. Yeah. Trans/non binary lesbians, I pity you for the decision you have to make 😔

[oops-wedrovethedownwithcisbus]

[selfundiagnosed]

Why everyone else get normal pins and we gotta be the “le dolla beans” this is modern lesbophobia in action….. jokes aside can we just say lesbian lol why is it a sexualized word. Like thats the only reason people had to censor lesbian like that is bc lesbian is a pornographic word on tiktok. Way to be progressive you liberal store😻 thank you for these important contributions to our community. Not ass backwards at all raygun