Thread by @LaraAdamsMille1

When an AGP demands to be included in the lesbian community, he is coercing lesbian women into providing him with sexual validation and stimulation. His very presence is an act of rape, because merely showing up is a sexual practice for him.

The rage that comes through in my writing sometimes is that of a woman who is being told to be a good sport about being compelled to participate in the sex lives of straight men. I’m being told this by, among others, the very women I’ve fought beside to end het rape culture.

If they allowed themselves to realize for one minute that these are MEN demanding sexual inclusion, they’d hear how repugnant their interrogations about our sexuality are.

“Is it about penis? You’re allowed a genital preference.”

Fuck you! “No” is a complete sentence!

I’m not attracted to the word “woman.” I’m attracted to WOMEN.

Straight women are expected to validate these men with a few words. Lesbians are expected to validate these men with the most personal and important aspects of our lives.

The very worst trans “woman” behavior happens in lesbian spaces. That’s where the fetishists want to be, and the most narcissistic, predatory ones have moved in, grabbed up leadership roles and resources.

Straight women may rarely encounter an AGP. Not so for lesbians.

Crossdresser websites have listing of gay/lesbian bars because this is where these men feel safest going outside to play. And they prefer lesbian spaces, because they don’t really care for gay men. They want to disappear into a sea of women and get high.

Our communities are where we find safety and support, where we meet our partners and build friendships. And these men are using them as sexual playgrounds, a place where they can get dressed and visit before returning to “man mode” in the office on Monday.

We rely on these spaces, and these men make them unsafe for us, and unsuitable for the functions our community has always served. We no longer have anywhere to go where we can fellowship with other women like us. For the sake of porn-addicted men, this has been stolen from us.

I’ve studied this phenomenon, but before that I was in the bdsm world, and I was a sex worker. So, unlike other, nicer lesbians, I know EXACTLY what these men are showing up for. For them, it’s way better than paying a prostitute, because this is REAL!

But the coercive men aren’t who enrage me. There have always been men who think this way and want these things. What’s despicable now is the people who purport to oppose rape culture but tell lesbians to be good sports about the men using our sanctuaries to get themselves off.

I’m enraged by all the voices telling men (who might otherwise have never tried to invade our spaces) that they’re REAL WOMEN, so they’re as entitled to it as we are! I’m furious that out world, our safety, our agency isn’t worth even QUESTIONING the motives of these men.

I’m enraged that men are given license by supposed progressives to call themselves and others “dykes” and describe things as “dikey.” Lesbians don’t use this word nearly as frequently as men who claim to be lesbians. Is everyone really okay with them talking about us this way?

They didn’t just come into communities of lesbians. They came in throwing around slurs & demanding our attention even as they embodied a parody we could hardly bear to acknowledge. A man says “I’m a woman,” then “I’m a bitch/slut/cunt/dyke”- How’s any woman not insulted by this??

I have witnessed behavior by men in lesbian spaces that I’ll never describe here simply because the best hope a lesbian group or event has today of staying safe and even somewhat FOR WOMEN is not being noticed by too many of the wrong people. I don’t want to draw attention.

And that makes me angry, too. I was brave enough to come out to the world, but I still have to lay low to participate in community. We’re by and for lesbians, and we have to belly down and hide because no one will stand up for us and our right to exist without male involvement.

And if we have to lay low to keep from being noticed by the wrong people, that means we can’t be found by the right ones. Lesbians, particularly the younger ones and those newly out, have nowhere to reach out to, no one to help them see their wholeness and worth.

But cutting off young lesbians from true community also serves a function for AGPs, doesn’t it? If there’s no lesbian community but a thriving transgender one, the likelihood of a lesbian deciding she’s male increases, and all those new ftms provide cover & concealment for AGPs.

That also means there’s a higher percentage of femme-presenting lesbians in our communities, and those are the kinds often (but certainly not always) preferred by AGPs. It also makes it easier for their hyper-feminine presentations to even kind of blend in.

AGPs have multiple reasons to want to see young butch lesbians transition. & we’re being compelled to let them inside, hand over our messaging & policy creation. Our girls are being served up, brainwashed & manipulated, altered & drugged, to serve the interests of straight men.

Our communities are being violated, preyed upon, appropriated. Our spaces are being used to snare sexual partners for men. Homophobia is openly broadcast within our own walls. And, to complete the insult, we’re forced to pretend our oppressors ARE us. It’s degrading.

Autogynephilia isn’t new. The fetishization of lesbians isn’t new. Being shamed for our orientation isn’t new. Men wanting to “cure us” isn’t new.

What’s new, what’s absolutely shameful, is our supposed allies are ordering us to open our doors, be nice, & welcome our enemies in.

The autogynephilia doesn’t make them our enemy. What makes them our enemy is what the same thing that makes anyone our enemy: refusal to accept our exclusive same-sex attraction, and our right to express it, as real and moral.

They become our enemy when they insist their need for us to pretend is more urgent than our need to be authentic, our right to speak our truth.

They’re our enemy because they won’t accept that we’ll never be sexually available to men.

We’ll NEVER be sexually available to men.

And I’m not sorry, and I won’t explain why not, or challenge my preferences, or any of that homophobic rape culture bullshit.

Lesbians are a population of women who are a living “NO” to the sexual needs of men.

Aren’t we allowed to do that?

Goddamn right we are.

A lot of people follow me because they desperately want to understand the experiences of trans-ID’d people. I get it. I want to understand, too. That’s what drives my writing.

But I don’t see people putting that kind of effort into understanding the experiences of lesbians.

There’s so much empathy for the men who “feel like women,” so much effort to make the world a place they can live with dignity.

Well, we lesbians have just a few little patches of the world where WE can live as ourselves, with dignity. And we’re being ordered to surrender them.

Do you want to know what it feels like to be a lesbian in 2019? It’s humiliating. Isolating. Depressing. We’re forced to choose between our communities and our dignity - Show up and play nice for the fetishists, or stay home and live as though you never came out.

They built a second closet for us. We have to pretend not to know what a woman is, or what our orientation actually is. We have to feign same-“gender” attraction, because, once again, homosexuality is seen as an abomination. Once again, we are sin.

Half the people I care about see me as a sinner because their religion says it’s so.

Most of the rest, all those friends I made after I fled my fundamentalist hometown - most of them either see me as a bigot or have no idea of my views on homosexuality being, you know, REAL.

Now dating has two layers of danger - First, is she gay? Second, will she think I’m a nazi? Will she spread word of my beliefs?

Guys, I really wish I were exaggerating when I said that I stay home because I can’t bite my tongue well enough to know my family will stay safe.

I’m not going to run down the whole history of Michfest, and how hard those women fought to have a space where a few thousand lesbians could gather joyfully once a year. They did fight, though. They said no.

The fliers left on the women’s land by the men of “Camp Trans”:

One of the AGP trans “activists” that led the charge of men (who camped outside the festival entrance with spears, harassing attendees) was Dana Rivers. He was a “T” darling for a while.

Then, in 2016, he murdered two Michfest lesbians & their son.

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/03/07/tra…

This is the “brave and stunning” man who harassed the women of Michfest. This is the “hero” who would go on to annihilate a lesbian family. He shot AND stabbed them, then tried to burn the bodies but couldn’t b/c all the blood.

Thx @DotAtomosBlog

nytimes.com/1999/09/27/us/…

Also, he wasn’t fired for being trans. They had other trans employees and had a plan to accommodate him. He was fired for repeated discussing details, including his sexuality, with his students, including one 16 y/o girl he spent time alone with in a locked classroom.

The media that loves crying out re: crimes against “trans women of color” has buried this story. They don’t cover it, even though these women were an interracial couple with a black son.

Don’t buy their claims to being champions of diversity. They don’t help poc, they use them.

Addendum: My statement in this thread re: straight women ignored the thousands of women in relationships & families with these men whose lives are torn apart by the men’s narcissistic demands. Trans widows, girlfriends, their children, etc. - I see you, & I apologize.

I was directing that statement at the libfem/non-lesbian “qu**r” women who are the proud and vocal trans allies, the ones who rebuke lesbians for excluding men, the ones who were personally my friends who now call me a bigot. I was sharply feeling my own experience as I wrote.

I also want to acknowledge that women of all orientations are being told they must include men in their sex-segregated spaces, even if those spaces don’t play the same community role as for lesbians. All women are losing privacy, dignity, safety, sports/professional opportunity.

And, of course, being told that we must treat these men, who perform nonstop parodies of us, w respect & “as women” is an insult to ALL women. Whether she chooses to notice or care is irrelevant to the fact that every living woman is being degraded and devalued by this movement.

I’m normally of the “you know what I fucking meant” school of thought in all this, but this time I was really unclear in a way that diminished the harm done to many, many real women, and that is something I will go back and clean up. Sorry, sisters. 💝