First of all, thank you. I'm a 17 year old bisexual teenager who only got introduced to this school of thought a couple of years ago. Instinctively, my brain kept on rebelling against it, not the fact that perhaps some people have gender dysphoria and might want to change their gender, but the fact that it was wrong and transphobic to turn them down. It left me in an extremely awkward situation, because I asked myself, would I date a trans man or a trans woman? And the answer was no. I'm attracted to both men and women, but I do not want to date these people.
I don't mind people being trans. You do you. But do not dare to come to us and say we're transphobic for saying we aren't interested. Complaining that someone's reason for saying no (which is strike one here itself, because you should never need a reason to say 'no') is weak is manipulative and pathetic.
And it's not just dating. It's bathrooms. It's the fucking Olympics. Laurel Hubbard took the place of another woman athlete who had probably spent a lifetime training for it. Laurel Hubbard failed, pathetically, and was still awarded sportswoman of the year. And I think that is fucking unforgivable.
Wrestling. No, men and women are not of equal strength. We are equal but we are not the same. A psychopath pats themself on the back for smashing a woman's skull in, and people applaud them? Seriously??
Bathrooms. You want to use bathrooms? Fine. But self-ID is fucking bullshit. 'If someone says they are a woman then they are a woman'. Nonsense. Do those morons really think that someone looking to commit rape will hesitate to lie?
Yay!!! I'm bi but would rather poke both my eyeballs out with a blunt stick than have sex with these creeps. I find their performance of gender stereotypes insulting and grotesque. They are misygonists, misandrists and mentally ill. Their bodies and minds are equally repellant. We won't compromise our integrity to swallow the gender ideology kool-aid. Revolt(ing)!!!
I understand these sentiments and largely agree, but a voice in the back of my head has a problem with: "They are misygonists, misandrists and mentally ill. Their bodies and minds are equally repellant." It's the "they" that bothers me. As much as, say, a F2M ain't ever gonna mix it up with me, I am also not going to be attacking people over it -- unless I am attacked, but even then my response won't condemn everything about an entire group of otherwise lawful people just trying to make their way.
As a gay man, I came to realize that there is something amiss with the (then) emerging gender identity discourse when I saw what it was doing to the lesbian community. Before that I had naively supported it, just like you. It wasn't long until I started to see something similar happen to the gay male community, with articles in the LGBT press informing gay men of the importance of birth control, because "some guys can get pregnant." A young gay man penned a groveling piece about being ashamed of his "exclusionary" homosexuality that doesn't embrace male-identified females. It was published at Pride.com!
Today it seems that every lesbian and gay space in society is by default a space for heterosexuals who "identify" as homosexuals of the opposite sex. How did this happen? How did we let it happen? We have all been the fool.
Can't say if anyone in any other nation has looked into this issue of colonisation - let's be clear that invasion, occupation and COLONISATION is exactly what this gender identity movement is: a heteronormative Trojan horse - but Michael Biggs of Oxford University did some research into how much the former LGB media and organisations we started had been captured. The graphs alone tell a stark picture as to how much of a fait accompli this is. https://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/LGBT_figures.shtml
I'm so fed up of my straight acquaintainces-people who are ACTUALLY MARRIED to members of the opposite sex- telling me how queer they are! (I'm straight by the way, in my late fifties, been around gay and lesbian friends for years), how I hate seeing my gay friends' spaces and identities co-opted by people who are desperate to claim how "oppressed" they are as queer.
I caught on to this years ago and when I commented about it on gendertrender she deleted my comment. Queer is what straight people who want to appear hip and cool now call themselves; for some unfathomable reason it is not politically correct to just be straight -- you have to use a slur directed toward gay men and lesbians to define yourself. I get that oppressed groups use slurs to deconstruct their offensiveness, but being straight and calling yourself queer is OFFENSIVE!
Bisexuals may sometimes marry the opposite sex. It doesn't make their attraction to the same sex disappear the same way that straight married people are still attracted to people who are not their spouse. (I am of the opinion that the whole "queer" label is usually bullshit though. Just a label a straight can use to feel more special.)
I am an old straight seventies’ feminist, loudly applauding this piece. It is time to call a halt to this nonsense. Live and let live, absolutely, including vulnerable transwomen. But enough of this catering.
If only they were actually as "vulnerable" as they claim to be. Only privileged, heterosexual white men would dare to put on dresses or bad wigs or a smear of lipstick and scream "Bigot!' at lesbians. Most of them are thugs and bullies. Outside a Supreme Court hearing on a gay and trans rights issue in 2019, one such obnoxious man larping as a woman in a dress had a megaphone and was screaming 'Homophobe' at Linda Bellos, a black Jewish lesbian from the UK, whose children had been taken from her in the 70s BECAUSE she was a lesbian.
This is an excellent chronicle of the gradual unraveling of this BS ideology. Thank you for sharing. I hope more of us can find each other and connect somehow -- strength in numbers.
Yeah. I think for a lot of people, it plays upon our need to belong and fear of ostracization. There can also be a very strong unspoken rule about not asking questions which is so troubling.
This is something that has troubled me all my life. People have been shocked by how good I am at doing things, whether it was being the best typesetter in NYC on the system I worked on, cooking, knitting, writing, whatever. Why am I good at things? Because I ASK QUESTIONS! I have never worried about someone thinking I am ignorant -- we're all ignorant, the problem is the willfully ignorant -- this is how I learn. I learn from everyone; I learned typesetting tricks from terrible typesetters. I never judge how intelligent someone is from how they dress or speak; I've met people who were very ordinary who came out with very perceptive statements about all sorts of things. Thank the gods I never felt a need to belong when I discovered as a child that the ones who belonged were just as insecure as the rest of us!
What a nightmare. I remember wondering, once, where all the lesbian bars went. I realized that as straight men masquerading as women showed up, women just quietly left. Now there are none, because these straight men don't want anything for themselves - not toilets, not sports teams, not shelters, not prisons, not bars, not dating apps - because anything for them wouldn't be stolen from us... and taking away what belongs to lesbians is the WHOLE POINT, from our identity to our spaces to our bodies, minds, and self-worth. It's disgusting.
It's a (overwhelmingly white and straight) men's neo-colonial movement; a Trojan horse in a bad wig and high heels. Although an increasing number of gay men are alarmed (even horrified) by straight women in their spaces. A recent ad from a gay men's sauna included a quote from a 'trans man' who identified as a gay man, and 'he' was crowing about performing oral sex on gay men who never thought to look under 'his' towel. If they'd known he was female, most would never have consented, and there's a name for that: rape.
Back in my gay bar days, the bridesmaid's parties pissed me off, but what really did it was the straight couples. It was always a straight woman who brought her straight date. He just wanted to get laid -- understandable and actually laudable. The price was being "cool" in a gay bar, and wasting my time.
This is an amazing, piece of writing, and an enraging, account. As a straight woman who entered adulthood in the late 90s, I fortunately escaped all this, so it's really enlightening to read an account from a lesbian who witnessed all this from such a firsthand perspective.
What a Kafkaesque nightmare. How privileged I feel to have grown up in the sixties before any of this bullshit hit the mainstream. And too that my own kids were able to grow up in a non Anglophone country. The whole ideology when it comes down to it (as the author discovered in trying to decipher the Judith Butler verbal fog) is nothing other than a peurile post structuralist attempt at manipulation of the language, to turn the truth/falsehood axiom on its head. You can't do that so easily with languages that don't yet have a separate word for 'gender'. Other languages force you to name a person's sex when you try to speak of someone's gender, and therefore confront you with a not so easily deniable reality. In English the word gender (having been expropriated from its original function as a linguistic denominator, because the English language doesn't use genders) is freely available to be misused to build and maintain pie in the sky fairy castles where sex can be construed as irrelevant or at least of little importance, compared to the innate gender thing which the ideology can claim is what truly defines our identity. The vulnerability of the English language lends itself especially to this form of ideological infestation, not seen so sweepingly in non Anglophone countries.
Well, as a straight, cynical and increasingly decrepit old bit of Gammon, I am of the generation who viewed such goings on with an attitude of "If they're happy and don't scare the horses, let them carry on," all be it with a quizzically raised eyebrow.
But this old carthorse began kicking in the traces when men pretending to be women began insisting that they REALLY WERE women and women pretending to be men insist that they REALLY ARE Men, especially if they were pregnant.
Now we have men not only pretending to be women, but also pretending to be Lesbians and insisting that real women of the Sapphic persuasion allow them to have sex with them!
Absolute sheer madness.
Chuck in the insistence of these Pretend Women that they be allowed to use the same toilet and changing facilities as women and I'm kicking the stable door down.
Love this essay. We all need to recognise how how reactionary this gender ideology is, and how it privileges the sexual fantasies of straight men over the lives and comfort of women and girls. The discomfort in the presence of 'Chloe' you discribe is absolutely reasonable, because we all feel discomfort in the presence of those who are committed, and possibly violently so, to things we know to be impossible. If someone cornered you in a bar and demanded that you believe the world was flat, you would start looking for escape routes.
Beautifully written - a clear, accurate, distinct trajectory of how multiple crucial issues have been hi-jacked, traduced & reformulated to fit a nightmare narrative which conceals both its slavish conformity to gendered roles while simultaneously presenting itself as brave, bold & daring. I despair as to when we will awaken those so thoroughly enmeshed in the lies we are all expected to believe. Here in Scotland, we are threatened by Stasi-style re-education when raped; to the weight of 'Hate crime' law if we challenge this insanity, even if we do so in the privacy of our own homes. Voices like this truly matter. I only wish celebrity gays would stick their heads above the parapet instead of being so cautious & mindful of their bankability. I sometimes think it would take so little to tip the scales.
Celebrity gays are, except they are supporting the trans agenda as it serves them in terms of adulation. It is nor celebrities that we need to stick their heads above the parapet, it is just gay men and lesbians to say enough is enough and for women to stand by their side. Reclaim gay/lesbian spaces and eject those who have no right to be there. Same with women only spaces.
The Hate Crime Act cannot be used as it is at the moment. The police need to look closely at what is being reported and put it in the actual framework of the Act instead of what people would like it to be. Same with the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act. Transsexual human rights are the same as heterosexual human rights which are the same as gay/lesbian human rights. The difference is that heterosexual, gay and lesbians understand the bit about responsibility and the majority of vocal trans people do not.
Excellent essay! You make me so grateful that I grew up with a radical, fierce mother, and have never thought that I was required to agree with other people when what they were spouting was nonsense. I wish you well on your journey -- life is not easy.
This is such a good essay. As a 17-year-old kind of butch lesbian, I've been exposed to this stuff for a few years now and it has never sat well with me. Unfortunately I think this mindset is only going to get worse.
A few years ago, I barely knew any LGB students at my school (tiny school in a homophobic area), but now suddenly there are a ton of nonbinary or trans students who have taken the "gay" label and run with it like it is some quirky club to join, making the homophobia around me even worse. Even in the past week two girls have suddenly changed their names and adopted "they/them" pronouns. None of these people are ever actually gay/bi/lesbian of course, but they have dyed hair and rainbow clothes as if sexuality can be put on like a costume.
The thing that sold me on the harm caused by this movement was when good lesbian friends of mine "transitioned" to male and nonbinary respectively. They experienced a lot of homophobia and I think they saw transition as some kind of escape from that.
Now every conversation has to validate them or cater to gender in some way- it is like they know they are female and need constant reminders of their "malehood" or androgyny to cope. Of course, now I'm the next target. Me being kind of butch or relatively masculine conflicts with their understanding of gender, so they've tried to make me transition too. It all makes me kind of sad, really.
Seeing these opinions expressed by other people makes me feel a bit less alone and saddened by all this stuff. So, thank you.
As a mom I want to hug the writer and you. I want all lesbians to know they don't have to succumb to the Trans nightmare! I grew up in L.A. /Hollywood in the a kid of the 70's a teen of 80's my neighbors were gay and butch lesbians. They never questioned the male and femaleness. I was the only heterosexual women at 18 with an all gay men acting class because the teacher was my moms sponser. I was like their little sister. I lived in West Hollywood because of I was a single women and the apartment was rent controlled $350. I felt safe. I felt love. In my whole life I would never think an agenda would gun for my 14 year old daughter who is probably gay and make her think she should be a boy. I will not affirm her. I will embrace her with the love and strength of all the gay and lesbian people I have every known. I will remind her she is not born in the wrong body. Hold on tight to who you are! A beautiful butch woman.
Okay, kid. Hey, I'm 64. You're 17. I get to call you kid. And trust me, kid, I'm a lifelong homo and I am on your side, on steroids. You'll see, kid. Put up with me, because I read your comment and I like you. In my own twisted way, I hope to ease the way a bit.
Part of teenager-dom is that sexuality becomes "adult" at varying paces. Think the "normal distribution," a/k/a the bell curve. Takes longer for some than for others, and fear is part of the deal. Some kids react by reverting to a sexless pre-puberty mentality, but as their bodies mature they adopt androgyny. Long, long, LONG before the current gender hoo-hah, a cohort of the teenaged and 20-something population went through it. If you question that, I'll be happy to return with examples, starting with David Bowie and working backwards.
I think (without knowing for sure, but applying "miles on the tires," i.e. life experience) that the pronoun girls are either kids afraid of sex or kids on a trend. It's almost always the girls who do that. Look around: How many teenage guys are calling themselves girls? Some, I'm sure, but not many. Why? They know that other teenage boys just might call their bluff. Big difference between talking about it and facing it up close and personal.
There's another cohort: boys and girls who, for a variety of reasons, are social rejects. No one asks them out, or accepts their invitations. In their misery, they seek company among other rejects, some finding relief among the androgynes -- the only kids who'll accept them. Another cohort is kids goofing off. When I was your age I was friends with two guys who jokingly masqueraded as a gay couple, except that wasn't the word.
That's probably what you're dealing with. The first thing is to try to see past it, which I know is hard. Believe me, please: Time flies. You will see. You are not, not, NOT alone!
Hands down the best description of what is happening I have read. The AGP description makes these men & their intention Crystal clear. Fantastic. Please watch The Cauldron podcasts on YouTube. Scottish witches fighting this dangerous & damaging ideology. @LGBAlliance is rebuilding Gay Rights as LGBTQ🤮🤮🤮🤮 religion is all about T Rites. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
First of all, thank you. I'm a 17 year old bisexual teenager who only got introduced to this school of thought a couple of years ago. Instinctively, my brain kept on rebelling against it, not the fact that perhaps some people have gender dysphoria and might want to change their gender, but the fact that it was wrong and transphobic to turn them down. It left me in an extremely awkward situation, because I asked myself, would I date a trans man or a trans woman? And the answer was no. I'm attracted to both men and women, but I do not want to date these people.
I don't mind people being trans. You do you. But do not dare to come to us and say we're transphobic for saying we aren't interested. Complaining that someone's reason for saying no (which is strike one here itself, because you should never need a reason to say 'no') is weak is manipulative and pathetic.
And it's not just dating. It's bathrooms. It's the fucking Olympics. Laurel Hubbard took the place of another woman athlete who had probably spent a lifetime training for it. Laurel Hubbard failed, pathetically, and was still awarded sportswoman of the year. And I think that is fucking unforgivable.
Wrestling. No, men and women are not of equal strength. We are equal but we are not the same. A psychopath pats themself on the back for smashing a woman's skull in, and people applaud them? Seriously??
Bathrooms. You want to use bathrooms? Fine. But self-ID is fucking bullshit. 'If someone says they are a woman then they are a woman'. Nonsense. Do those morons really think that someone looking to commit rape will hesitate to lie?
I'm gonna end with: Stan JK Rowling.
Yay!!! I'm bi but would rather poke both my eyeballs out with a blunt stick than have sex with these creeps. I find their performance of gender stereotypes insulting and grotesque. They are misygonists, misandrists and mentally ill. Their bodies and minds are equally repellant. We won't compromise our integrity to swallow the gender ideology kool-aid. Revolt(ing)!!!
I understand these sentiments and largely agree, but a voice in the back of my head has a problem with: "They are misygonists, misandrists and mentally ill. Their bodies and minds are equally repellant." It's the "they" that bothers me. As much as, say, a F2M ain't ever gonna mix it up with me, I am also not going to be attacking people over it -- unless I am attacked, but even then my response won't condemn everything about an entire group of otherwise lawful people just trying to make their way.
As a gay man, I came to realize that there is something amiss with the (then) emerging gender identity discourse when I saw what it was doing to the lesbian community. Before that I had naively supported it, just like you. It wasn't long until I started to see something similar happen to the gay male community, with articles in the LGBT press informing gay men of the importance of birth control, because "some guys can get pregnant." A young gay man penned a groveling piece about being ashamed of his "exclusionary" homosexuality that doesn't embrace male-identified females. It was published at Pride.com!
Today it seems that every lesbian and gay space in society is by default a space for heterosexuals who "identify" as homosexuals of the opposite sex. How did this happen? How did we let it happen? We have all been the fool.
Can't say if anyone in any other nation has looked into this issue of colonisation - let's be clear that invasion, occupation and COLONISATION is exactly what this gender identity movement is: a heteronormative Trojan horse - but Michael Biggs of Oxford University did some research into how much the former LGB media and organisations we started had been captured. The graphs alone tell a stark picture as to how much of a fait accompli this is. https://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/LGBT_figures.shtml
I'm so fed up of my straight acquaintainces-people who are ACTUALLY MARRIED to members of the opposite sex- telling me how queer they are! (I'm straight by the way, in my late fifties, been around gay and lesbian friends for years), how I hate seeing my gay friends' spaces and identities co-opted by people who are desperate to claim how "oppressed" they are as queer.
It's fake, it's bogus and it's a sickening lie.
It's funny but all the 'queer' people I know are also in long-term and stable heterosexual relationships. WTF is that about?
I caught on to this years ago and when I commented about it on gendertrender she deleted my comment. Queer is what straight people who want to appear hip and cool now call themselves; for some unfathomable reason it is not politically correct to just be straight -- you have to use a slur directed toward gay men and lesbians to define yourself. I get that oppressed groups use slurs to deconstruct their offensiveness, but being straight and calling yourself queer is OFFENSIVE!
Oh, come on, don't be a bigot. They are GENDURR KWEER.
Bisexuals may sometimes marry the opposite sex. It doesn't make their attraction to the same sex disappear the same way that straight married people are still attracted to people who are not their spouse. (I am of the opinion that the whole "queer" label is usually bullshit though. Just a label a straight can use to feel more special.)
I am an old straight seventies’ feminist, loudly applauding this piece. It is time to call a halt to this nonsense. Live and let live, absolutely, including vulnerable transwomen. But enough of this catering.
If only they were actually as "vulnerable" as they claim to be. Only privileged, heterosexual white men would dare to put on dresses or bad wigs or a smear of lipstick and scream "Bigot!' at lesbians. Most of them are thugs and bullies. Outside a Supreme Court hearing on a gay and trans rights issue in 2019, one such obnoxious man larping as a woman in a dress had a megaphone and was screaming 'Homophobe' at Linda Bellos, a black Jewish lesbian from the UK, whose children had been taken from her in the 70s BECAUSE she was a lesbian.
This is an excellent chronicle of the gradual unraveling of this BS ideology. Thank you for sharing. I hope more of us can find each other and connect somehow -- strength in numbers.
Yes, I really appreciated her reconstruction of her mental processes. It helps me understand how young lesbians get caught up in this horrifying mess.
Yeah. I think for a lot of people, it plays upon our need to belong and fear of ostracization. There can also be a very strong unspoken rule about not asking questions which is so troubling.
This is something that has troubled me all my life. People have been shocked by how good I am at doing things, whether it was being the best typesetter in NYC on the system I worked on, cooking, knitting, writing, whatever. Why am I good at things? Because I ASK QUESTIONS! I have never worried about someone thinking I am ignorant -- we're all ignorant, the problem is the willfully ignorant -- this is how I learn. I learn from everyone; I learned typesetting tricks from terrible typesetters. I never judge how intelligent someone is from how they dress or speak; I've met people who were very ordinary who came out with very perceptive statements about all sorts of things. Thank the gods I never felt a need to belong when I discovered as a child that the ones who belonged were just as insecure as the rest of us!
What a nightmare. I remember wondering, once, where all the lesbian bars went. I realized that as straight men masquerading as women showed up, women just quietly left. Now there are none, because these straight men don't want anything for themselves - not toilets, not sports teams, not shelters, not prisons, not bars, not dating apps - because anything for them wouldn't be stolen from us... and taking away what belongs to lesbians is the WHOLE POINT, from our identity to our spaces to our bodies, minds, and self-worth. It's disgusting.
It's a (overwhelmingly white and straight) men's neo-colonial movement; a Trojan horse in a bad wig and high heels. Although an increasing number of gay men are alarmed (even horrified) by straight women in their spaces. A recent ad from a gay men's sauna included a quote from a 'trans man' who identified as a gay man, and 'he' was crowing about performing oral sex on gay men who never thought to look under 'his' towel. If they'd known he was female, most would never have consented, and there's a name for that: rape.
Back in my gay bar days, the bridesmaid's parties pissed me off, but what really did it was the straight couples. It was always a straight woman who brought her straight date. He just wanted to get laid -- understandable and actually laudable. The price was being "cool" in a gay bar, and wasting my time.
This is an amazing, piece of writing, and an enraging, account. As a straight woman who entered adulthood in the late 90s, I fortunately escaped all this, so it's really enlightening to read an account from a lesbian who witnessed all this from such a firsthand perspective.
What a Kafkaesque nightmare. How privileged I feel to have grown up in the sixties before any of this bullshit hit the mainstream. And too that my own kids were able to grow up in a non Anglophone country. The whole ideology when it comes down to it (as the author discovered in trying to decipher the Judith Butler verbal fog) is nothing other than a peurile post structuralist attempt at manipulation of the language, to turn the truth/falsehood axiom on its head. You can't do that so easily with languages that don't yet have a separate word for 'gender'. Other languages force you to name a person's sex when you try to speak of someone's gender, and therefore confront you with a not so easily deniable reality. In English the word gender (having been expropriated from its original function as a linguistic denominator, because the English language doesn't use genders) is freely available to be misused to build and maintain pie in the sky fairy castles where sex can be construed as irrelevant or at least of little importance, compared to the innate gender thing which the ideology can claim is what truly defines our identity. The vulnerability of the English language lends itself especially to this form of ideological infestation, not seen so sweepingly in non Anglophone countries.
Well, there is "latinx" a word that is unpronounceable and offensive to me.
Thank you! So excellent. I wish all the women betraying us would read this and stop prioritizing the men who hate us over Lesbians.
Well, as a straight, cynical and increasingly decrepit old bit of Gammon, I am of the generation who viewed such goings on with an attitude of "If they're happy and don't scare the horses, let them carry on," all be it with a quizzically raised eyebrow.
But this old carthorse began kicking in the traces when men pretending to be women began insisting that they REALLY WERE women and women pretending to be men insist that they REALLY ARE Men, especially if they were pregnant.
Now we have men not only pretending to be women, but also pretending to be Lesbians and insisting that real women of the Sapphic persuasion allow them to have sex with them!
Absolute sheer madness.
Chuck in the insistence of these Pretend Women that they be allowed to use the same toilet and changing facilities as women and I'm kicking the stable door down.
Love this essay. We all need to recognise how how reactionary this gender ideology is, and how it privileges the sexual fantasies of straight men over the lives and comfort of women and girls. The discomfort in the presence of 'Chloe' you discribe is absolutely reasonable, because we all feel discomfort in the presence of those who are committed, and possibly violently so, to things we know to be impossible. If someone cornered you in a bar and demanded that you believe the world was flat, you would start looking for escape routes.
Beautifully written - a clear, accurate, distinct trajectory of how multiple crucial issues have been hi-jacked, traduced & reformulated to fit a nightmare narrative which conceals both its slavish conformity to gendered roles while simultaneously presenting itself as brave, bold & daring. I despair as to when we will awaken those so thoroughly enmeshed in the lies we are all expected to believe. Here in Scotland, we are threatened by Stasi-style re-education when raped; to the weight of 'Hate crime' law if we challenge this insanity, even if we do so in the privacy of our own homes. Voices like this truly matter. I only wish celebrity gays would stick their heads above the parapet instead of being so cautious & mindful of their bankability. I sometimes think it would take so little to tip the scales.
Celebrity gays are, except they are supporting the trans agenda as it serves them in terms of adulation. It is nor celebrities that we need to stick their heads above the parapet, it is just gay men and lesbians to say enough is enough and for women to stand by their side. Reclaim gay/lesbian spaces and eject those who have no right to be there. Same with women only spaces.
The Hate Crime Act cannot be used as it is at the moment. The police need to look closely at what is being reported and put it in the actual framework of the Act instead of what people would like it to be. Same with the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act. Transsexual human rights are the same as heterosexual human rights which are the same as gay/lesbian human rights. The difference is that heterosexual, gay and lesbians understand the bit about responsibility and the majority of vocal trans people do not.
Excellent essay! You make me so grateful that I grew up with a radical, fierce mother, and have never thought that I was required to agree with other people when what they were spouting was nonsense. I wish you well on your journey -- life is not easy.
This is such a good essay. As a 17-year-old kind of butch lesbian, I've been exposed to this stuff for a few years now and it has never sat well with me. Unfortunately I think this mindset is only going to get worse.
A few years ago, I barely knew any LGB students at my school (tiny school in a homophobic area), but now suddenly there are a ton of nonbinary or trans students who have taken the "gay" label and run with it like it is some quirky club to join, making the homophobia around me even worse. Even in the past week two girls have suddenly changed their names and adopted "they/them" pronouns. None of these people are ever actually gay/bi/lesbian of course, but they have dyed hair and rainbow clothes as if sexuality can be put on like a costume.
The thing that sold me on the harm caused by this movement was when good lesbian friends of mine "transitioned" to male and nonbinary respectively. They experienced a lot of homophobia and I think they saw transition as some kind of escape from that.
Now every conversation has to validate them or cater to gender in some way- it is like they know they are female and need constant reminders of their "malehood" or androgyny to cope. Of course, now I'm the next target. Me being kind of butch or relatively masculine conflicts with their understanding of gender, so they've tried to make me transition too. It all makes me kind of sad, really.
Seeing these opinions expressed by other people makes me feel a bit less alone and saddened by all this stuff. So, thank you.
As a mom I want to hug the writer and you. I want all lesbians to know they don't have to succumb to the Trans nightmare! I grew up in L.A. /Hollywood in the a kid of the 70's a teen of 80's my neighbors were gay and butch lesbians. They never questioned the male and femaleness. I was the only heterosexual women at 18 with an all gay men acting class because the teacher was my moms sponser. I was like their little sister. I lived in West Hollywood because of I was a single women and the apartment was rent controlled $350. I felt safe. I felt love. In my whole life I would never think an agenda would gun for my 14 year old daughter who is probably gay and make her think she should be a boy. I will not affirm her. I will embrace her with the love and strength of all the gay and lesbian people I have every known. I will remind her she is not born in the wrong body. Hold on tight to who you are! A beautiful butch woman.
BINGO! You're the best.
Okay, kid. Hey, I'm 64. You're 17. I get to call you kid. And trust me, kid, I'm a lifelong homo and I am on your side, on steroids. You'll see, kid. Put up with me, because I read your comment and I like you. In my own twisted way, I hope to ease the way a bit.
Part of teenager-dom is that sexuality becomes "adult" at varying paces. Think the "normal distribution," a/k/a the bell curve. Takes longer for some than for others, and fear is part of the deal. Some kids react by reverting to a sexless pre-puberty mentality, but as their bodies mature they adopt androgyny. Long, long, LONG before the current gender hoo-hah, a cohort of the teenaged and 20-something population went through it. If you question that, I'll be happy to return with examples, starting with David Bowie and working backwards.
I think (without knowing for sure, but applying "miles on the tires," i.e. life experience) that the pronoun girls are either kids afraid of sex or kids on a trend. It's almost always the girls who do that. Look around: How many teenage guys are calling themselves girls? Some, I'm sure, but not many. Why? They know that other teenage boys just might call their bluff. Big difference between talking about it and facing it up close and personal.
There's another cohort: boys and girls who, for a variety of reasons, are social rejects. No one asks them out, or accepts their invitations. In their misery, they seek company among other rejects, some finding relief among the androgynes -- the only kids who'll accept them. Another cohort is kids goofing off. When I was your age I was friends with two guys who jokingly masqueraded as a gay couple, except that wasn't the word.
That's probably what you're dealing with. The first thing is to try to see past it, which I know is hard. Believe me, please: Time flies. You will see. You are not, not, NOT alone!
Hands down the best description of what is happening I have read. The AGP description makes these men & their intention Crystal clear. Fantastic. Please watch The Cauldron podcasts on YouTube. Scottish witches fighting this dangerous & damaging ideology. @LGBAlliance is rebuilding Gay Rights as LGBTQ🤮🤮🤮🤮 religion is all about T Rites. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Another fantastic essay! Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.