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ventHave you noticed other ways TRAs have caused a divide in WLW communities?
We're all well-aware of the obvious issue of TIMs taking over lesbian spaces and telling lesbians that we're horrible evil bigots for not wanting girldick. I don't think I need to rehash how divisive that's been in the community because we go over that plenty.
But it's also part of a long pattern I've noticed over the years of the TQ coming into WLW spaces and manufacturing smaller dramas that divide the community further.
Here's a good example. The absolutely inane "bi vs pan" debate. A quick search shows that the term itself is pretty old (and was probably just an obsolete synonym for bisexuality), but I only started hearing people call themselves pansexual maybe around 2010 or 2011 on Tumblr? It quickly gained momentum as the cool new sexual orientation, because it was considered inclusive of "nonbinary" identities, while bisexuality was treated as outdated and exclusionary because how dare they imply there are two sexes. Identifying as pansexual was an easy way to virtue signal adherence to the cult of trans, and in certain online spaces, anyone who called themselves bisexual was subjected to scrutiny. Now, you might ask why this is in the LovingWomen circle as men can be bi too, but let's be real here: the whole discourse surrounding bi vs pan absolutely was occurring in female-majority spaces with women in particular being targeted -- this was all about accusing self-identified bisexual women of being secret TERFs just because they didn't want to use this dumb new word. Fortunately a lot of bisexuals pushed back against this bullshit and didn't appreciate being told they had to call themselves pansexual or else be painted as evil bigots. Most of that discourse seems to have died down thankfully, but I still see terminally online people occasionally trying to stoke that fire again.
Another stupid online thing is pride flag discourse. It seemed like every month there'd be some Tumblr posts saying "friendly reminder the [lesbian/labrys/whatever] flag was designed by a TRANSPHOBE!/appropriated by TERFs!/whatever. As an alternative, please consider adopting this [low effort flag designed on MS paint] which explicitly includes queer disabled trans women of color." I know like five or six different lesbian flags because each time they decided the previous one was problematic.
And more recently, even using the regular old rainbow flag instead of the godawful Progress flag is construed as a political statement. "Oh??? So you're still using the pride flag that EXCLUDES trans people, black and brown people, and intersex people??? Are you saying they aren't part of the LGBTBBQ+ community???" This is less specific to wlw, but again, it's divisive and women have their behavior policed on a higher level than men.
I'm too young to claim to be an "elder lesbian", so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think ANYTHING has divided the wlw community as badly as TQ shit. No amount of lesbians and bisexuals butting heads, no "gold star" discourse, not even "political lesbianism" has caused so much strife and infighting and fragmentation.
And we can't even blame it all on TIPs. we know this is also coming from within our own community. It hurts real bad, because it felt like we were finally starting to make huge strides in terms of mainstream public acceptance, only for this new movement to destroy us from within.
I would say the "sex wars" were comparably divisive, and a precursor to this BS, the pro-porn pro BDSM people were largely also trans supportive, the current lines you see in the community by and large, divide neatly along these old fractures. A number of the women involved in the sexy sex crap, were pioneers on busting up lesbian communities, supporting trans invaders, celebrating and sexualizing butch women who transitioned, etc. Except now theres obviously very serious social and even legal consequences, to crossing them, that you probably wouldnt have faced outside of big communities, politicking or or niche aspects of academia previously.
I was thinking about the sex wars as I read this post. It’s a good point that the ‘sides’ are quite analogous. And in both cases, the overt sexuality and the genderism are causing a rise in homophobia as we’re all associated with those movements.
wait, what are the sex wars?
You'll see them referred to as some variation of the feminist/lesbian sex/porn wars. They were basically the widespread debates over aspects of women's sexuality, including pornography and sadomasochism. Dworkin, for example, was on the anti-porn side of things, but there were feminists who thought it was liberating. Some lesbians thought things like BDSM were fine and feminist if you were both female, etc.
They're generally regarded as having been the cause of the end of the second wave.
The problem is, a lot of TRA's are also prominent community members,
r/bisexual is AGGRESSIVELY supportive of the T (+ their off-brand labels, idk how many of them there are now; omni? pan? multi? whatever). We need to take nuance into this fact because a subsection of bisexuals here are staunchly against it, and are by no means represented by the uncultured swathes.
I theorize that because bisexuality is now so broad, and has now been opened wide enough to include anyone who gets a whiff of admiration towards the same-sex. We're now dealing with a wave of those hellbent to be recognized in those attractions. Queue the T gripping their nasty claws in the door to lesbian spaces. All those TRA's now have easy gain to the lesbian orientation, and an echo chamber endorsed by the same types who have readily taken up space there.
1 lesbian for every 5 TRA's and every 3 Trans identified males. We get shouted down, banned out, and have our sense of self ripped away. The amount of sheer disgust I have towards those men and women is unmatchable.
The sad part is its now being treated like a baby and bathwater situation. It would take more work to weed out the bad faith actors than it would be just to throw them all out and try again.
Here's to hoping a better future where lesbians are permitted the ability to gather free of males and those who endorse them,
Cheers!
I’m not sure about witnessing any divide, but I do lament the change in meme culture. It is so obvious when a “”sapphic”” meme is created by a man. No matter what social media platform, every wlw space online is just Reddit now culturally, in addition to being comprised mostly of TIMs. Nothing is funny, cute or enjoyable anymore.
Actually, I change my mind. I do occasionally notice a bit of… well, not necessarily a divide but a marked change in attitudes towards people who don’t practice polyamory or BDSM. That’s not something I noticed online 10 years ago.
Oh, could you expand on that? I'm curious to know what changes of attitude you've noticed
There seems to be an attitude in some spaces that if you haven’t done BDSM, you’re less “queer.” If you’re a woman with a kinky TIM, you’re somehow more lesbian than an actual lesbian who hasn’t had sex (so it sometimes goes). “ENM”/polyamory is also celebrated and is seen by many as a metric for how gay you are.
Well, I've seen bi women and to a degree bi people in general blamed for a lot of if not all this nonsense on certain sites, so.
I'm not even lesbian I'm febfem, and I've only had experienced this in the online lgbt subreddits, but I was bullied viciously on there for my views, and then i felt the need to seek out lesbian spaces because I felt that my views would at least be tolerated. Reddit lgbt subreddits is just male worship. The gist of what I posted on there is that I feel that a lot of women are male aligned, though I used the lipstickalley term male identified on reddit, and that because of this, there's women who side with the patriarchy. And that I'm sort of repulsed by the male P. Got so much backlash for these views on lgbt subreddits. Interestingly enough, when I went to twoxchromosomes, this one kind understanding lady told me, hey, you might feel this way because men have used their P to harm and violate women, while other women have had positive experiences with the male P, so wouldn't feel the way you feel. It was hard to be so gaslighted and shunned from the lgbt subreddits. Was told I needed to get over my sexist bigotry that some people like the D so get over yourself etc. I felt so invalidated, misunderstood and bullied from members of the community on reddit that I actually started crying. And they were so damn passive aggressive too. Since then, I've signed up to ovarit, I'm still on reddit. But refuse to go to the lgbt subreddits. I go to other feminist websites, and it's so good to see other feminist womans insights and points of view. The Ts that have taken over lesbian and wlw spaces online are not live and let live like most lgb people, they are aggressive nasty bullies who want to shut you down and talk you down. I was told reddit is trans central.
I'm an "elder" lesbian. And yeah, the TQ has been the death knell to lesbians and lesbian community. It is worse now than it has ever been.
At least when we were being abandoned by or thrown out of our families, or getting beat up for looking like dykes, we had refuge and sanctuary in lesbian spaces. In lesbian community that excluded males however they "identified".
What we had, for about 10-15 years, was so good it is unimaginable if you didn't live through it.