The word “fairy” works the same way.
I’m a member of the local Gay Men’s Chorus, and several years ago we named our holiday concert “Sugar Plum Fairies”. We had much discussion about this title, and there were a few members who dropped out for that concert, due to having been called “fairies” when they were younger. We convinced most of the guys that we were reclaiming the term, but a few just couldn’t be convinced. Fortunately, they all returned for the next concert.
Sorry, I agree; I’m just not sure I’ve ever heard them refer to their relationship in those specific terms since she transitioned, and so I didn’t want to put words in her mouth to make my own point. I was overly indirect in the way I phrased it, though.
I’ve seen other threads on this subject where it was claimed that “[female-born] lesbians” had a problem with transgendered women being lesbians. I actually just wanted to point out that this wasn’t my experience, or my personal belief. As you said, she’s a woman, and she’s attracted exclusively to women, and in a relationship with a woman… that seems to fit the general definition to me, although like I said, I’m also not in charge of defining her for herself.
I’m pretty sure that for my friend, being transgendered is by far the bigger hurdle in society. She doesn’t need other women sniping at her from what should be the same side.
In terms of the younger generation being more inclusive, I think that’s not just because they are growing up in a world with different ideas about sexuality, it’s because they are growing up in an utterly different gender context. One thing I’ve notices about gay men and women Of A Certain Age is that they often live in incredibly gender-segregated circles. It’s not just that their sexual or romantic partners are same-sex, it’s that all their friends are, all the people they associate with at work, everything. I think it’s because childhood was so incredibly gender-segregated, really all the way through the 80s, that if you didn’t have romantic/sexual urges pushing you that way, you just never encountered the opposite sex much at all–or at least only within your family. I’ve known some older gay men who only had brothers, and for them, it can be like women and the women’s world doesn’t exist.
These days, kids have friends of the opposite gender right from the start. There’s no “eww, girls” at all. Most of my son’s friends are boys–there does seem to be some strong tendencies or social pressure to play with your gender–but he interacts so much more with girls than I interacted with boys at that age, and there isn’t this divide, where both genders think of each other as mysterious creatures with mysterious customs. It really changes that dynamic long before romantic stuff ever comes into it.
I suspect there’s some truth in this, but there’s also the truth, from my own experience, that gay people are ‘family’ - many of my friends had parents and childhood friends who rejected them, or workplaces where they didn’t feel comfortable coming out, so hanging out with mostly gay people just seemed like a really obvious way to feel settled, accepted and celebrated in your life and your relationships.
This doesn’t necessarily mean total gender segregation, but it does mean most of my friendship group are lesbians and gay men.
Honestly, I think things are getting worse as far as being ‘accepting’ as a group goes. Things have gotten so splintered and divisive even WITHIN certain groups that it’s making a lot of people feel excluded. My best friend really considers themselves trans but are afraid to even join any support groups or even outwardly call themselves trans because they’ve run into so much ‘gate-keeping’ in the community. Lots of people defining exactly what trans is and if you don’t fit into that mold exactly then, well you’re not really trans. My friend doesn’t feel welcomed or even comfortable reaching out to other trans people because of the push back they’ve gotten time and time again.
There was a recent FB post I saw on an asexual group where people were arguing over the definition of what being asexual meant. There were several people insisting that even though they regularly had sex and enjoyed it, they were still asexual because they never desired sex. Which…to me made no sense. I can understand an asexual person in a relationship having sex with their partner for the partner’s enjoyment but these people were saying that they just liked having sex but…since they never had sexual urges they were still asexual?? And the arguments about the semantics of bisexual/pansexual aren’t any better.
It’s things like this that are making the in-fighting so much worse than what everyone gets from the outside. We’re all tearing ourselves apart with everyone trying to make sure there’s a ‘group’ for their exact preferences or that everyone in their group conforms to some exact specifications. I’m getting sick of all these labels being thrown around honestly. It seems like every time I turn around there’s a new one and it just feels…wrong to me. I can’t really verbalize it any better than that but…I wish people in general could just love/screw who they love/screw and stop trying to put a label on it. This goes across the board for me and I think the world would be a better place of people just…stopped. But I know that’s not really a popular opinion nor a realistic one. I’m just getting tired of all the damn arguing.