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bisexual, celebrity lesbians, cissexism, cissexist, gay, gay pride, lesbian, Lesbian Blog, lesbians, lgbt, lgbt culture, lgbt equal rights
In a recent bubble-gum article for Pride.com, I joked that “apparently you have to look like Justin Beiber to like labia” when listing 8 Real Struggles All Femme Girls Know Well, and all hell broke loose.
As one reader commented, my article was “Implying that all women have vaginas. This is false…” – a comment that left me thoroughly confused. It seems that my insinuation that all lesbians must have vaginas is outrageous. Absolutely shocking. Jaw droppingly offensive. I mean how dare I? Apparently, I was being Cissexist.
“You need to be careful” warned my Brighton-dwelling hipster lesbian sister as I scoffed unapologetically over my keyboard. “People are allowed to identify as whatever they want. You don’t get to tell people who they are.”
*Deep Breath*
Really? That’s how far we’ve gone down the rabbit hole now? I am now no longer allowed to assume that all lesbians will have vaginas… this is ignorance. Who knew, eh? Well, I was about to get a graphic education.
Cissexism (which I don’t actually know how to pronounce) is a relatively new term that has stormed on to the LGBT scene recently, and it’s confusing us all. Now I love watching people argue online – it’s a treasured hobby – but this new word threw me, and so I went exploring. Turns out, Cissexism refers to discrimination against a lesbian just because they don’t have a vagina. Are you lost yet?
The dictionary vaguely translates Cissexism in to “Transphobia”. Cis (from “On the same side”) with Sexism seems to imply that the term accuses one of friendly fire – A discrimination against those who identify as your kin. For example, a man with a penis identifying as a lesbian woman will become enraged when I am seen to push her (and her penis) out of my “club” by implying that a lesbian requires a vagina. This is different from transgender, which relates to whether someone is a man or a woman. This is about sexuality intertwined with inner gender identity. And I can barely keep up.
Now, as an LGBT(QPIA-ETC) writer, I am proud to represent advocacy for freedom of sexual and gender identity for each and every one of us. The thought of a person being born in to a culture, family or even a body that does not match their deep set identity makes me want to cry… Be your True Self… But this new term Cissexism is quite honestly grating on me.
I personally am a bisexual female who agrees that our inner identity should be accepted unconditionally. But what happens when a genetically assigned man who identifies a lesbian (but has no plans to reassign her gender by removing her penis) then becomes enraged and begins bandying around the term “Cissexism”? With the LGBT movement growing so rapidly, the addition of all of these extra letters to LGBT(QIA-WTF?) is starting to dilute our message. Add this (come on, let’s admit it) quite confusing theory of a lesbian-identified-male protesting Cissexism and we are going to start seeing eye rolling again. Something which the LGBT community has been beginning to overcome.
As our generation changes the attitudes towards sexual and gender identified freedoms, it can be argued that there’s a certain point where this goes too far. And Cissexism could be that line crossed.
When I began to speak to friends about this, there were mixed reactions. Some were outraged that I could even take a second look at this word… Of course men can be lesbians! Whilst others told their own stories of Cissexism gone too far – For example a friend in PR promoting a Period Tracker App was told that choosing to market only women was outrageous. And Cissexist. Don’t men deserve the opportunity to document their menstrual cycles too?
In a great article following Caitlyn Jenner’s fabulous Vanity Fair introduction to the world, the powers that be confirm that “a person’s sex is actually a combination of bodily characteristics including: chromosomes, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, and secondary sex characteristics” and according to one of the commenters on my article, “in fact trans lesbians who don’t have a vagina for all kinds of reasons exist. The assumption that every person is cis is called cissexism”
So there, now we’ve been told. I’ll climb back in to my box. The fear of being attacked by non-vagina-conforming lesbians around the globe is enough to make me quit writing about LGBT culture and perhaps breed cats or blog about cooking instead.
But until then, I will be shrugging off the assumptions that I started with and say; if someone wants to call himself a lesbian, so what? Let’s all assume this Emperor’s New Clothes approach to identity… identification… and embrace this hippy free-for-all when it comes to expressing ourselves. Why close the Pandora’s Box now it’s open, eh?
So from this day forth, I am identifying as a unicorn. I’d like to be referred to in the non-human-specific pronoun of “Sire” and if anyone disagrees with this then they are inter-species-phobic.
About the Author: “Sire” E J Rosetta is an LGBT Columnist and coffee addict living in Hampshire with “her” spoiled cat, Hendricks. More ramblings can be found on Facebook or via Twitter @EJRosetta
E J Rosetta 
My fiancee uses the period tracker app to keep track of my cycle. Says she needs advance warning of when I’m going to be cranky. So selling it to men seems like a good marketing strategy.
On the other hand, my fiancee says that the difference between men and women is that men are cranky all month long.
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This is some of the most disgusting tripe Ive seen in a while. Transgender women CAN BE LESBIANS. Not every can afford the expensive and dangerous affirmation surgeries, and by excluding them in your outdated and TERF-ish idea of womanhood is horrible.
You got called out, and instead of educating yourself, you turned into a sarcasm-laced bullshit WOE IS ME FOR HAVING TO LEARN post. You should be ashamed of yourself. This is transmisogynistic. It’s misogynistic in general – the idea that a woman NEEDS a vagina not only excludes transgender women who haven’t opted for bottom surgery, it reduces women to their genitals.
Transgender women are WOMEN. Period! No affirmation surgery needed!
As a queer transgender man, would you argue that my vagina means that if I date a cis woman I’m a lesbian, and not really a man? If I date a cis man would you label me as a straight woman? Because that right there is cissexism. Oh, lord, how cruel of you to have to learn the ever-changing language of our community that, like all language, changes with the times!
In labeling trans women as men and trans men as women, in erasing the identities of the transgender community as a whole, you showcase the extreme transphobia in LGBT+ “communities”. You showcase the absolute worst the community offers. You push us out, you deny us, and you act like it’s a god damned chore to acknowledge that we exist and, as someone who isn’t trans, you act like you’re the end-all-be-all when it comes to our pronouns, how we have sex, and WHO we have sex with.
Oh, and sweetie? I’m a man with a period. I am a man who has given birth. I’m a man who’s had a uterus his whole fucking life – yeah, I deserve a tracker too. Yeah, I deserve health care too 🙂 Shocking, isn’t it?
I really hope you get some backlash for this. You damn well deserve it.
People like you are the reason the trans community doesn’t feel safe even among fellow LGBT+ people.
Grow up.
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This is so fucked up. You clearly don’t understand what cissexism is and you don’t seem like you’ve checked your privilege. You’re sending out a pretty hurtful message.
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Trans men need period tracker apps too genius.
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That article is so horrible I don’t even know how to respond to it….. “LGBT (QIA-WTF)”…… Really? And we are diluting the message by adding the QIA? WE ARE INCLUDING MORE PEOPLE, GENIUS!! “Cissexism refers to discrimination against a lesbian just because they don’t have a vagina. Are you lost yet?” I’m not lost, but apparently you are!!! Cissexism is the belief and treatment of transgender and/or transsexual people as inferior to cissexual (non-trans) people. THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT TO COMPREHEND. Also, the mocking, condescending tone of this is saddening to say the least…… Lastly, comparing trans people identifying with their gender and you “identifying” with being a unicorn is so insulting. It obviously comes from a place lacking in knowledge and a place of privilege. When you say you are a writer for LGBT….. Do you not know what the T means? It means trans.You know, the people you are going out of your way for just to mock and insult. You may want to tell the truth from now on….. You write for LGB…… That is all.
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I think you should move on to blogging about cooking. Just saying.
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Men aren’t identifying as lesbians. Men aren’t identifying as women. Women are identifying as lesbians. Women are identifying as women. Women have all sorts of bodies and all sorts of genitals. Its not confusing most people, its pretty simple. I have seen six year olds understand it.
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I don’t see what’s so confusing about this
You learned new terminology and now you can apply it
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I see what you’re doing here. This is the Dear Fat People of trans issues. Clicking around I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re running some kind of queer satire blog exploring the blatant ignorance and unwavering self-absorption of a cis white bisexual woman. I like it. It has layers.
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As a bisexual woman, you should know how awful it is when people invalidate your identity, such as when both gay and straight people tell you to “choose a side”, among other things like that. It’s mindblowing to me how someone who has likely experienced that type of invalidation could be so invalidating toward trans women, who are a part of the LGBT community, which you claim to represent on your blog, unless you believe that the T stands for “trees” or something, which would explain an awful lot about your utter lack of knowledge about them and compassion toward them.
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You are, well, literally transphobic. You’re right, you definitely should stop writings about LGBT+ (is that so hard) issues, because you are clearly stuck in the past and unwilling to change or learn. How can you say “Be your true self”
But call trans women men and refer to them as HE??? Genitalia has absolutely nothing to do with ones gender. Having a penis does not make someone a man, and some trans women are actually perfectly fine with having penises and do not wish to remove them. If the are lesbians, they ARE lesbians, they do not need vaginas to prove it. Your attempt, which was not given an effort, to understand the term cissexism was almost laughable if it wasn’t so disgusting. The point is literally that TRANS PEOPLE EXIST, not everyone in the world is cisgender, and this needs to be taking into account when you speak, ESPECIALLY about lgbt+ issues. Do not pretend you care about trans people when you clearly do not, and you do not want to make an effort to include them in your activism. You only give a shit about the cis gays. Go write about cooking, because you do not bring anything new or helpful to the table on lgbt+ politics.
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You are, well, literally transphobic. You’re right, you definitely should stop writings about LGBT+ (is that so hard) issues, because you are clearly stuck in the past and unwilling to change or learn. How can you say “Be your true self”
But call trans women men and refer to them as HE??? Genitalia has absolutely nothing to do with ones gender. Having a penis does not make someone a man, and some trans women are actually perfectly fine with having penises and do not wish to remove them. If the are lesbians, they ARE lesbians, they do not need vaginas to prove it. Your attempt, which was not given an effort, to understand the term cissexism was almost laughable if it wasn’t so disgusting. The point is literally that TRANS PEOPLE EXIST, not everyone in the world is cisgender, and this needs to be taking into account when you speak, ESPECIALLY about lgbt+ issues. Do not pretend you care about trans people when you clearly do not, and you do not want to make an effort to include them in your activism. You only give a shit about the cis gays. Go write about cooking, because you do not bring anything new or helpful to the table on lgbt+ politics.
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Lolol EJ Rosetta you just lost all your credibility as an LGBT columnist. You clearly have no humility or dignity. Why did you even try to write a post about something you admit you don’t understand and that you clearly aren’t willing to understand?? I look forward to your announcement that you’ll be starting a cooking blog.
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“Now, as an LGBT(QPIA-ETC) writer, I am proud to represent advocacy for freedom of sexual and gender identity for each and every one of us.”
Really? Because it sounds to me like you are literally doing the exact opposite of this in spewing your exclusionary, terf rhetoric. With “allies” like you, who needs enemies? This is damaging. It is not ok. And you should delete this post. Why do think so many trans women attempt suicide? Your “opinions” aren’t victimless. There is fucking blood on your hands.
Every trans woman doesn’t have to go through surgery. Frankly, it is none of your fucking business what I decide to do with my anatomy to evade my dysphoria. Outside of rare exceptions, I am attracted to women. I identify as trans lesbian. I am a girl. My energy is femme. I am romantically and sexually attracted to femme energies. It’s that simple. My sex parts are irrelevant. Reducing women to walking vaginas is misogyny. This article is misogynistic and transphobic.
************AT OP/EJ ROSETTA Before erasing me again, why don’t you self educate? Because you are literally contributing to my erasure and brewing prejudice with this article. IT’S NOT A VICTIMLESS OPINION. OUR COMMUNITY IS BLEEDING. Read the comments. Take a look at the hate you are creating, affirming, and spreading. Do you really think this is ok? You have no idea what it is like to be trans. To be publicly humiliated and threatened EVERY DAY. To be systematically and methodically viewed as some sort of depraved, sickening creature. To be reduced to a walking male fetish. To fear for your life EVERY TIME YOU STEP OUT THE DOOR. Public places are not safe for us. Private places are not safe for us. And if your “opinions” were carried out on a mass scale–the lgbtqia community would not be safe for us. Delete this damaging article and self educate. Apologize and turn back.*************
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So… like… WTF is this? Why are you hating on trans people? What is so hard about learning about how unchecked privilege affects others? What is so difficult about treating people with dignity and respect? Why do you feel the need to try to invalidate the lived realities of trans people? Because that is exactly what you are doing. Sit down, shut up, and listen to trans people when we are talking about trans issues.
Also, trans women are female. Whether or not you want to admit it, that is reality. As such, if they are lesbian, they need to be accepted into lesbian spaces with open arms. The world is cruel enough as it is. We, as queer people, should NEVER be in the business of leaving other queer people alone in the cold.
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What I find so fascinatingly bizarre about this is that you’re fully aware of your own ignorance and yet still feel educated enough to write about the term. That takes some degree of unwarranted self-importance.
Ignorance is forgivable; Refusing to learn is not.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t know these things yet and aren’t actually a bad person:
1. Referring to a non-transitioned (that is, medically unchanged) trans woman as “men”/”him”/etc. is an act of oppression. It is a source of dysphoria and great pain, which you would understand if you actually identified with your own “I respect everyone”-sentiments.
2. Trans people are trans, and their gender identity is valid, regardless of whether or not they decide to transition. There are myriad reasons why some people choose not to medically transition, be it fear of surgery, lack of funds (in the US), indecisiveness, lack of dysphoria, or having different (psychological) methods to cope with dysphoria and hence avoid invasive surgery.
3. Nobody is attacking you for this because we want to hate someone. We’re attacking you because your words and your ideals reek of the bigotry that keeps us from living in peace, every single day of our lives. Using a new word may be no more than an “annoyance” to you, but cissexism permeates everywhere and ruins our lives.
4. Nobody is forcing you to be attracted to penises (though since you’re a bisexual and presumably don’t dislike penises, it seems pretty openly transphobic of you to take issue with women having them). As an intersex lesbian, I accept that penises don’t do it for me, but I could definitely be with a transwoman, provided she didn’t want to use her penis during sex.
The act of existing as trans people doesn’t give strangers the right to dehumanise and ask us what we have in our pants. Don’t expect to write your frivolous little articles and not feel the kickback from the fight that INCLUSIVE lgbtqia+ people fight every damn day.
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TBH I’ve been a LGBT activist for a long time (nearly 20 years) and I’m seriously considering throwing in the towel.
I’m not even sure I know what trans is anymore and slowly losing the will to find out it’s new definition every single day.
I’ve just been listening to a gay guy with a 4 inch long beard and a penis screaming about how he is “non-binary trans” and how he risks being murdered for it (despite the fact he looks no different from any other cisgendered gay male).
When I questioned him on what made him think he was trans, e.g had he been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or was he in the process of legally changing his gender status etc, etc.
I was immediately piled upon by a bunch of American twentysomethings with their usual foul mouthed tirade of abuse and kermit the frog drinking tea memes,
I just shrugged and walked away.
Don’t even get me started on the “gender neutral lesbian”.
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yikes @ these folks wanting to ~throw in the towel~ cuz they been callin themselves “LGBT writers/activists/whatevers” for years and are just now realizing how ignorant yall are on trans identitys, yet resistant to changing ur ways to actually make room for us. heres some advice:
if this is ur reaction to a group of ppl whom u have made PART OF YOUR NAME (cuz it seems yall have forgotten, the T in “LGBT” stands for TRANSGENDER), if this is ur reaction to us telling yall that your words have been a mess for a while, is u only listening enough to stomp us back down…. tbh yall shoulda lost ur shoddy-ass ~activism~ cards long ago 😞
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Really? You’re going ahead and doing the “your gender isn’t real, look at me, I’m a unicorn now, look at my special snowflake pronouns I’m using to mock you” route? Seriously, that was old on 4chan in 2009.
You are behind the times. You are at least two decades behind the times. Don’t use LGBT if you’re not going to include the T.
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I can’t believe you’re writing on lgbT issues but are so ignorant and hurtful towards your trans siblings. First you keep saying over and over that trans women were men and is super hurtful. Trans women are women and some of these women also like other women buts it’s always difficult because the lesbian community as a whole is super toxic and full of people like you . And also trans men exist and they are men and sometimes they still have periods hence why you can’t just make a period app only for women
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Yes, the term ‘cissexism’ is homophobic and misogynistic.
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And a lesbian is and always has been, a female homosexual. Changing the meaning is also, again, homo/lesbophobic. Homophobia and misogyny is rampant in current trans movement. There is no place for lesbians. Or bisexual woman. Run for your own mental health. All lesbians should walk away from the aggressive discrimination many transwomen do to us. Please lesbians, walk away and create your own spaces where youre not questioned nor discriminated based on being attracted to females, by transwomen. We need respect, acceptance for who we are. Not trans people that attack us for who we are. Its funny we have to accept transwomen, then they dont accept us and abuse us. All reason to walk away from them.
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Dear god. Being asked not to say a sentence is not homophobic. And the nature of intersectionality is such that transwomen would be damn near incapable of oppressing you.
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I’m not sure if words have been invented yet to describe how awfully invalidating this article is. You could’ve saved time and went “I’m transpobic, bluhhhh,” for fifty pages and I probably would’ve learned more. Seriously, if you don’t understand an issue, just stay in your lane.
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The correct response to being told that you were being cissexist was, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”
Would have saved you a whole lot of space and made you look a lot less stupid.
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An ally’s response to being told that they have made a mistake, or are not being inclusive, is not to write hateful garbage. So you can stop referring to yourself as an ally now.
And not just for the “T,” because an intersectional feminist isn’t about picking and choosing which identities you fight for, it’s about examining and attempting to understand the intersection of all identities.
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Hello, EJ.
The comments on this post are pretty angry, and fairly understandably so, because you wrote a pretty inflammatory post about a topic you knew was already riling people up. However, I want to take a chance here and try posting this comment in an effort not to attack you, but to speak to you and try to communicate about the issue with what you’ve written here. I would love to engage you more on this topic.
I think what this boils down to is that you have an inaccurate definition of Cissexism. The definition that you cite, and bolded, being “discrimination against a lesbian just because they don’t have a vagina. ” is not a definition of cissexism, it is an example of it in practice. You then further go on to state that “This is different from transgender, which relates to whether someone is a man or a woman.” Again, this is where I believe the issue of your post and your confusion lie. This is why people are so angry at you.
A more accurate definition of cissexism is: Cissexism (or cissexual assumption or cisnormativity) is the appeal to norms that enforce the gender binary and gender essentialism, and then used in the oppression of gender variant (non-binary) and trans identities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cissexism)
Or put another way, cissexism is to gender identity what heteronormativity is to sexuality. Forgive me if I’m over-explaining here, but to be cisgender simply means to identify with the sex/gender marker you were assigned at birth, hence the “on the same side” when you looked that up, versus trans, which means “across.”
So when someone says to you that it is cissexist to say that all lesbians have vaginas, they’re not saying “Some men identify as lesbians,” they’re saying “there are transgender women who are lesbians.” When someone says “Don’t market the Period Tracker app just to women, they’re saying “Transgender men have periods and might find this app useful too.”
People are simply asking you to be more inclusive of transgender people in your language. Which makes sense, since you champion yourself as an LGBT writer.
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1. The fact that you assume that women need vaginas to be lesbian is super ignorant. There are trans women who either can not afford the surgery, don’t want it, or can’t get it for medical reasons. And that’s valid.
2. You’re basing your ignorance off of the assumption that the norm is straight. You, as a supposed lgbt YES QIA+ advocate/blogger should understand that people aren’t always straight, INCLUDING TRANS PEOPLE. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. AND WOMEN CAN BE LESBIAN. WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAVE HAD GENDER CORRECTION SURGERY.
3. Again, yes QIA (and more) because there IS more to gender and sexuality than you seem to be able to grasp.
4. Men can have periods. Because TRANS MEN ARE MEN, and many trans men still get periods for the same reasons that trans women don’t need vaginas.
5. Yes, please, quit. Nobody needs an advocate that mocks them and compares their identity to a mythical creature.
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This was horrendous to read. Truly awful. This entire article was a privileged tirade against being corrected when you held an opinion that was oppressive. Stop calling trans women men. They are not men. They are women, as much “real” women as you are. (I put real in quotes because the concept of being “real -insert gender-” as a whole is ridiculous.”
Content note for the following, mention of crime against trans women and transmisogynist thinking.
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If you really think these complaints against you are worse than trans women lacking access to women’s shelters (ya know, because women need women’s shelters), being raped by cis men and then murdered because these men feel their sexuality and reputations are at risk, and being treated like freakish perverts for existing….. Well, I don’t know what more to say to you.
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You’re transphobic and this article is a mess.
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As a cisgendered gay male, I find your article extremely insulting and degrading to trans people and the LGBT community in general. I would expect this level of ignorance from cis-hetero people but not from someone in our community who has experienced prejudice first-hand.
Why are you mocking trans people like they are some sort of joke? Why are you invalidating their thoughts and feelings as if YOU know better than them how THEY should feel about their sexual/gender identity? If they identify as female then they identify as female – if they identify as lesbian then they identify as lesbian – point, blank, period. And no article as disgusting as yours will ever be able to change that.
As a bisexual cisgendered female you do not get to speak FOR trans people and dictate their lives, because you have never walked a mile in their shoes and have no idea what they go through daily. A trans ally is supposed to be understanding and show support and compassion to trans people. But you are no trans ally. Please quit writing about LGBT issues, you are clearly a voice that we don’t need in our community.
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I see what you are getting at. I am feeling so jaded these days. I just can’t be bothered anymore when a new word or label is forced into my vocabulary and I am constantly being jumped on and punished for not keeping up with the latest terminology.
Personally its time people just stopped saying one thing but doing another. Trying to get on with everyone but the goalposts keep changing and I have lost interest to a worrying degree. Who is making up these words anyhow?
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Being a lesbian is to be a woman with a sexual preference for female bodies- it’s not a gender preference. Female bodies do not have penises.
Lesbians are not bigots, transphobic, or politically regressive for maintaining boundaries around our lesbian identity which excludes penised or previously penised bodies.
Why are you insisting that lesbians accept trans women AS lesbians based on nothing more than their subjectively asserted “gender identity”?
No one has an ethical or political responsibility to prioritize “gender identity” over and above everything else. No, it is not our obligation to agree that “gender” is more significant than “sex.” There is no right to unconditional “gender” entitlement.
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