Guest blog: On the lesbian protesters at Leeds Pride by Lara Adams-Miller

I used to love and support the Pride but the reaction to last year’s protest by lesbian feminists in London and the behaviour of lesbophobic Men’s Rights Activists in response to peaceful protests at various Pride events around the UK this year has appalled me – and I’m not the only one. From across the pond, Lara Adams-Miller saw the tweets reporting that marchers had shouted at lesbian protesters and produced an awesome thread, which I am pleased to reproduce here with her permission.

She’s got a good piece on Medium too. Speaking Truth to Power in the Era of Trans Rights Activism

Edited to add: Lara has just produced another awesome thread here.

Sickened by footage from Leeds today. Some lesbians do not ascribe to transgender ideology. That should not prevent them from having a community or being proud of their orientation. A lesbian of any political leaning or philosophical outlook is still allowed to be a lesbian.

These lesbians want one thing: a community of homosexual females. Refusing them that is an act of hate. It’s a new era of gay-bashing, one that only affects the women. Do you want to know why so many lesbians are “terfs”? Watch the videos.

It’s 2019, and a group of lesbians may not demonstrate. Lesbians can’t march, can’t stand together safely in the streets, and this, to you, is progress. A person born a girl, grown to a woman, cannot celebrate the fact that she loves other women.

“Trans rights are no threat to lesbians.” Not so long as we agree we don’t exist! Not so long as we call men women, say that lesbianism includes penises and that women-only spaces are exclusionary and hateful! Fuck. The entire situation is about threats.

Our lesbianism is now subject to male approval. How is that okay? Men telling us when and how we’re allowed to choose only our own sex to date. We’re being forced to call our sexual orientation a GENITAL PREFERENCE as if the women who draw us are no more than vaginas.

Lesbians are becoming “terfs” because you won’t leave us alone and just let us be lesbians! We want spaces for our community, and sovereignty over our definitions of ourselves and our identities. Men have rewritten the definition of “lesbian,” and we’re not supposed to mind??

We don’t want to hurt trans people, but we’re not responsible for the “gender affirmation” or mental health of (mostly male) strangers! Why is that such a radical boundary? If they can’t be who they are WITHOUT erasing who we are, then they ARE a threat to lesbians!

If transgender people can’t feel “valid” without invalidating us, then they are a threat. If protection of their self-esteem is worth more than our right to gather, march, and speak, then they are a threat to lesbians. How can people not see this??

Lesbians don’t want to hurt anyone, not even their feelings. But we are sure as fuck not going to put an end to actual lesbianism just to show how nice we are! You have no right to ask it of us! Live your lives, march, love, play – just leave us to do the same!

Women – actual biological women – who are solely attracted to other actual biological women EXIST. And there is NOTHING wrong with that, nothing that needs expanding or enlightening. If you don’t agree, then you simply do not support rights for homosexual women, aka lesbians.

So if you’re cheering on the people who blocked that march, who said it wasn’t okay for women to carry a banner that said “homosexual female,” that’s your right. But realise that you are directly opposing gay and lesbian rights. You are a trans ally, not an “LGBT” ally.

If you think homosexual women are worth so little that we can’t even EXIST if it makes transgender people feel excluded, then you don’t give a shit about lesbians, and you don’t give a shit about women. Our bodies and our lives are not community property.
We support transgender people being safe, being respected as human beings (even if we disagree regarding their claim to be a sex they weren’t born to) and having supportive communities to turn to. I don’t have to agree with them philosophically to want that for them.

But I will NEVER agree that men identifying as women have a right to deny women like me our own spaces, our own identities, our own communities. Whatever they think we are – they have NO RIGHT to isolate and silence us. They have no right to erase us.
These actions aren’t those of a human rights’ movement – they’re the doings of toxic masculinity, of abuse and control. You shouldn’t have to agree with me on transgenderism to see that. These are women marching for sexual freedom, being physically bullied and blocked by men.

You don’t have to oppose transgenderism or self-ID or any part of gender ideology to see through these tactics, to call them out. You don’t have to think lesbians are right about trans activism in order to recognise why we see it as a threat.

Wouldn’t you, if you were one of us?

Published on this site 05.08.19

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