ok since i’ve decided to be #real on this blog now: fellow lesbians who are not trans women, we need to do better. and that means applying a lot more critical thinking to the “not all lesbians are terfs! stop calling lesbians terfs!” argument. it’s completely true that many (non trans woman) lesbians AREN’T terfs, and many actively work against transmisogynistic ideals in themselves and in society, but a lot of lesbians ARE terfs or blatantly transmisogynistic! and a lot of terfs (and transmisogynists) are lesbians!
the lesbian community has a massive history of transmisogyny. lesbian activism in the 20th century was rife with it. cis lesbians created events and movements that SPECIFICALLY excluded trans women from attendance or membership. a huge part of the reason transmisogyny is so associated with lesbianism today is because so many lesbians are transmisogynists.
sure, that’s not true for you — you support your trans sisters whenever possible, you listen to what they have to say, and you’re openminded and forward-thinking and you catch your ingrained prejudiced thoughts and squash them before they reach the front of your head. but it’s true for MANY lesbians. you have heard the jokes, you have heard the casual hatred, you have heard the actual rhetoric about bodies and falsehood and the word “female.” i have, too. we don’t get to separate ourselves from it just because it’s disgusting. yeah it sucks when your people are stereotyped as nasty and hateful but that doesn’t give any of us a free pass to say “that’s not ME, I don’t associate with it, and therefore you must drop the attack entirely, you terrible human being.”
there is logic behind those beliefs. there is a historical precedent for expecting (non trans woman) lesbians to be transmisogynistic. and yes, many nonlesbians and non trans women do not bring up these complaints because they actually care about trans women, but in the long run that doesn’t actually matter as much as making sure the lesbian community’s history of transmisogyny is addressed so that it might be rectified. call nonlesbians out for stereotyping lesbians as evil or predatory or gross for the million other shitty reasons that nonlesbians do that, but do not shrug off accusations of transmisogyny. face them, understand them, and work to eradicate them from the roots.
