What a brilliant, insightful, and raw piece of writing this is.
I am straight, middle-aged, and married, but have very close lesbian friends, both older and younger, who have expressed a great deal of this to me over the past several years. You have perfectly expressed the despair, frustration, and simmering rage. Thank you for writing about it!
I've heard that lesbian dating sites have been infiltrated and even taken over by men, and that lesbians on these sites who do not want to be matched with men have been canceled. Weird hombres, these trans-women.
Just last night, though, being told about a young lesbian who became a trans-man, I found myself saying, sincerely, Gee, that's too bad. Couldn't she just have gone butch and saved herself from radical surgeries, follow-up antibiotics, in some cases immunosuppressants, and hormones?
And I meant it sincerely.
(I hope I got the lingo right, I mean in terms of "trans.")
I've been scared of being a DEI hire since I graduated highschool. Young black woman, were you chosen for your skill, or for your labels? It keeps you up at night.
There's nothing quite like being in a majority-dominated profession/space and basically being told that some people think you're only there because of your identity labels, not any sort of merit. There for the company photo.
Magnificent blast, brilliantly written every caustic sentence honed and loaded. So satisfying to read, so good to be able to laugh amidst the despair effect of this madness, felt even as a relative bystander.
Is it really like this? Wtf. I had no idea DEI was so homophobic, sexist and racist. Your post opened my eyes to something I had no clue was happening. Thank you for your insight.
It is this bad. It's like the whole world decided lesbians could be tossed in the trash so they could all gush over straight men who pretend to be lesbians. This is every day, even by places like The Sports Bra, lesbian owned but all in on letting men cheat in women's sports. Unbelievable.
By no means, do I mean to imply that I can understand the experience of a lesbian woman as a heterosexual woman myself, but as a parent, whose child was socially transitioned behind their back and had to leave the best job she ever had because it became infiltrated with people who were supporting the transition of children and the sexualization of Minors- I see a lot of what you’re saying in my own experience. This shit nearly destroyed my family by pitting our children against us while other adults told them that they had the right to hate us because we didn’t think like them. My fear is this generation is ruined.
Over 80% of trans identified people identified as gay prior to transition. As such, BY DEFINITION, transgenderism is anti gay and lesbian. And the movement relies on the most cliche gender stereotypes to emphasize their point.
50 years of the gay rights movement has been jeopardized for this nonsense. It has been infuriating.
Thank you for sharing that. Reading it, I can picture the scene as your composing of a piece of measured writing became the moment a long-suppressed scream of protest at what’s been done to you and your community tsunami’d unstoppably on to the screen. It is an outstanding piece of writing.
Brilliant account of lesbian reality today. Thanks for your sharp eye and tongue. Unlike another commentator, I am not laughing at where we are being forced to go and I refuse to go there, counting myself ‘lucky’ I’m not employed and have the ‘safety’ of a raipdly diminishing small super account and an aged pension.
Wow, it's like this author went inside my brain and extracted exactly what my experience is for the past 10 years and wrote it up nearly perfectly. While my details may differ, this describes the lesbian experience to perfection. It is why I have come to hate "Bob from Accounting" and the pious DEI pronoun brigade so much now.
Let's not underestimate the role sexism plays in the dynamic. It's telling that lesbians are asked to accept men as part of their cohort far more gay men like me are expected to do the same with trans men. It happens, sure, but far less often and (it seems to me) somehow less aggressively.
Thanks for this! I can’t agree more with most of your thoughts… L Word, dating, work place it’s all become nuts. My wife and I thankfully missed this nonsense by a decade or so but my heart hurts for the younger lesbians trying to navigate the field mines of Trans Lesbians and queerness. For the most part we have avoided all LGB etc things because how insane it’s gotten but I do miss the days I could read a lesbian romance novel without first having to make sure I’m not reading about a lesbian with a penis.
Some people now will claim I'm a DEI hire, never mind the years of work, study and professional meetings that it took to earn a senior position. One of the actual DEI hires, who lied through their teeth two years to get an entry position, will soon have a senior position.
I can't be an out lesbian without being an inclusive lesbian, according to management.
That's a problem. In the US we have federal and state laws regarding employment. Judging someone about their demographic categories for hiring, firing, and promtions is possibly illegal. That's a realistic and I think a just standard. I want the best candidates for the job. Meritocracy. But DEI is such a disturbing argument. I often don't need to know someone's demographics to recommend them.
Straight, old, white dude here. This was quite a read. I believe every word. Not because I have any experience with any of this, but because it comports 100% with everything else I’ve read for the last five years about DEI. My question is simply, how did “these people” ever get so deeply insinuated into power positions in government and corporate America?
Trying to even discuss these issues with many - if not most- (re)progressives is impossible. They lie, they ignore evidence, they claim its insignificant. They'll say that it is not harming the gay and lesbian communities or largely transing kids who are or will be gay. And even if one is to the left of them on every other issue, well you are a fascist. The only way this will stop is if lesbians, gays, women in sports, and women in prisons make a huge deal about it.
Quote: "And even if one is to the left of them on every other issue, well you are a fascist."
Bingo!
I have faced this many times. I've lost friendships over it. But c'est la vie. Several of my progressive (so-called. because they're really not) friends have decided I've gone off the deep end and have suddenly become conservative. I'm not conservative (except in saving my money). They're tribal, and they're pissed off that I'm not, that I don't go along with every orthodoxy that comes down the pike.
What is most interesting about this charge is fascism, in its essence, merges government and private institutions and seeks to suppress dissent. Remind you of TRAs?
I have never read such a perfect description of what it’s like to be a lesbian these days. Thank you.
The history of this new oppression of lesbians will start with what happened to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
Yes, it will. That was so awful.
What a brilliant, insightful, and raw piece of writing this is.
I am straight, middle-aged, and married, but have very close lesbian friends, both older and younger, who have expressed a great deal of this to me over the past several years. You have perfectly expressed the despair, frustration, and simmering rage. Thank you for writing about it!
I've heard that lesbian dating sites have been infiltrated and even taken over by men, and that lesbians on these sites who do not want to be matched with men have been canceled. Weird hombres, these trans-women.
Just last night, though, being told about a young lesbian who became a trans-man, I found myself saying, sincerely, Gee, that's too bad. Couldn't she just have gone butch and saved herself from radical surgeries, follow-up antibiotics, in some cases immunosuppressants, and hormones?
And I meant it sincerely.
(I hope I got the lingo right, I mean in terms of "trans.")
I've been scared of being a DEI hire since I graduated highschool. Young black woman, were you chosen for your skill, or for your labels? It keeps you up at night.
There's nothing quite like being in a majority-dominated profession/space and basically being told that some people think you're only there because of your identity labels, not any sort of merit. There for the company photo.
It’s a form of dehumanization and it’s horrible. It can’t go away fast enough.
Magnificent blast, brilliantly written every caustic sentence honed and loaded. So satisfying to read, so good to be able to laugh amidst the despair effect of this madness, felt even as a relative bystander.
Is it really like this? Wtf. I had no idea DEI was so homophobic, sexist and racist. Your post opened my eyes to something I had no clue was happening. Thank you for your insight.
It is this bad. It's like the whole world decided lesbians could be tossed in the trash so they could all gush over straight men who pretend to be lesbians. This is every day, even by places like The Sports Bra, lesbian owned but all in on letting men cheat in women's sports. Unbelievable.
It is that bad. If you've been in nonprofit, the arts, or raising a teenager in a blue city, it's been peak madness for five years.
By no means, do I mean to imply that I can understand the experience of a lesbian woman as a heterosexual woman myself, but as a parent, whose child was socially transitioned behind their back and had to leave the best job she ever had because it became infiltrated with people who were supporting the transition of children and the sexualization of Minors- I see a lot of what you’re saying in my own experience. This shit nearly destroyed my family by pitting our children against us while other adults told them that they had the right to hate us because we didn’t think like them. My fear is this generation is ruined.
It is indeed this bad.
Over 80% of trans identified people identified as gay prior to transition. As such, BY DEFINITION, transgenderism is anti gay and lesbian. And the movement relies on the most cliche gender stereotypes to emphasize their point.
50 years of the gay rights movement has been jeopardized for this nonsense. It has been infuriating.
Thank you for sharing that. Reading it, I can picture the scene as your composing of a piece of measured writing became the moment a long-suppressed scream of protest at what’s been done to you and your community tsunami’d unstoppably on to the screen. It is an outstanding piece of writing.
Brilliant account of lesbian reality today. Thanks for your sharp eye and tongue. Unlike another commentator, I am not laughing at where we are being forced to go and I refuse to go there, counting myself ‘lucky’ I’m not employed and have the ‘safety’ of a raipdly diminishing small super account and an aged pension.
Wow, it's like this author went inside my brain and extracted exactly what my experience is for the past 10 years and wrote it up nearly perfectly. While my details may differ, this describes the lesbian experience to perfection. It is why I have come to hate "Bob from Accounting" and the pious DEI pronoun brigade so much now.
Let's not underestimate the role sexism plays in the dynamic. It's telling that lesbians are asked to accept men as part of their cohort far more gay men like me are expected to do the same with trans men. It happens, sure, but far less often and (it seems to me) somehow less aggressively.
Thanks for this! I can’t agree more with most of your thoughts… L Word, dating, work place it’s all become nuts. My wife and I thankfully missed this nonsense by a decade or so but my heart hurts for the younger lesbians trying to navigate the field mines of Trans Lesbians and queerness. For the most part we have avoided all LGB etc things because how insane it’s gotten but I do miss the days I could read a lesbian romance novel without first having to make sure I’m not reading about a lesbian with a penis.
Some people now will claim I'm a DEI hire, never mind the years of work, study and professional meetings that it took to earn a senior position. One of the actual DEI hires, who lied through their teeth two years to get an entry position, will soon have a senior position.
I can't be an out lesbian without being an inclusive lesbian, according to management.
That's a problem. In the US we have federal and state laws regarding employment. Judging someone about their demographic categories for hiring, firing, and promtions is possibly illegal. That's a realistic and I think a just standard. I want the best candidates for the job. Meritocracy. But DEI is such a disturbing argument. I often don't need to know someone's demographics to recommend them.
SUPERB article.
Straight, old, white dude here. This was quite a read. I believe every word. Not because I have any experience with any of this, but because it comports 100% with everything else I’ve read for the last five years about DEI. My question is simply, how did “these people” ever get so deeply insinuated into power positions in government and corporate America?
Trying to even discuss these issues with many - if not most- (re)progressives is impossible. They lie, they ignore evidence, they claim its insignificant. They'll say that it is not harming the gay and lesbian communities or largely transing kids who are or will be gay. And even if one is to the left of them on every other issue, well you are a fascist. The only way this will stop is if lesbians, gays, women in sports, and women in prisons make a huge deal about it.
Quote: "And even if one is to the left of them on every other issue, well you are a fascist."
Bingo!
I have faced this many times. I've lost friendships over it. But c'est la vie. Several of my progressive (so-called. because they're really not) friends have decided I've gone off the deep end and have suddenly become conservative. I'm not conservative (except in saving my money). They're tribal, and they're pissed off that I'm not, that I don't go along with every orthodoxy that comes down the pike.
What is most interesting about this charge is fascism, in its essence, merges government and private institutions and seeks to suppress dissent. Remind you of TRAs?
Yes, it does.
This is the best article I have read for as long as I can remember.