From a transwoman’s point of view, there are lesbians and then there are lesbians. It’s a divisive issue in gender politics when it comes up. This is IMHO. Personally, I love lesbians, even if only as friends. I feel comfortable around them, I seem to vibe with them well. This is on the level of simple feelings of humanity. But when political ideology gets into it, it’s a different story. Some lesbians adhere to a feminist ideology that condemns transgender and transsexualism. This is the ideology that rules the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival which is off-limits to men. There was an incident some years ago where security rousted a post-op transsexual woman from her sleeping bag in the middle of the night and forcibly ejected her from the grounds. For years afterward, transwomen camped outside the entrance to the grounds in protest at discrimination. I think eventually they changed to rules to allow post-up transsexual women in, but that caused big heartburn among the ideological lesbians and feminists. Kaitlyn’s story about being menaced in a lesbian bar for being a transwoman struck fear into my heart. This was the most unkindest cut of all. I feel naturally gravitated toward lesbians, I love them as sisters when the ideology doesn’t get in the way, and I am a staunch feminist. It’s a certain radical tendency within the “second wave” of feminism that produced this hostility. The “third wave” feminists (with which I seem to fit in best) seem to have gotten over it. I hate to dwell on these divisions within feminism, but for the sake of simple human dignity and acceptance for transwomen it’s necessary to speak up and examine these attitudes of hate and rejection. Of course, not all lesbians and feminists are against transwomen. I think it’s only a minority that hate our guts. Mostly, I have found acceptance and sisterly love among them in the short time since I started trans. I’m also careful about whom I choose to associate with: I seek out the gentle people. I’m basically a hippie. Dianic Witchcraft is a feminist tendency which focuses only on the Goddess and admits only women. I feel drawn to this, but apparently the Dianic covens go according to that second-wave feminist tendency that rejects transwomen. I found acceptance and welcome among the feminist Witches of Reclaiming, which contains the Dianic perspective among its diversity, but is much more mellow and open to all. Reclaiming is a milieu where feminists, lesbians, gays, and trans people can all be friends together without ideology causing divisions.
Polycarp, I meant the word “gaydar”, not the idea in and of itself.
Just to say the MWMF still doesn’t allow anyone who isn’t a “woman born woman” to enter the festival, though it’s not written in policy or anywhere and that there is an implicit policy of “don’t question people’s gender”. Some transwomen go this festival, you can also find a good amount of FTM-something folks, more or less strongly male-identified or on T/post top surgery.
Some info here:
http://www.strap-on.org/mwmf/policy.html
From the group doing the outreach against that.
Thanks for the link, Lazz. I followed the links in there from one link to another and read up on a lot. It was really enlightening; I liked this bit:
I’d like to start finding out current updates on the state of transphobia in the lesbian & feminist communities. I need to be aware of the shifting currents before going into the water.
Oh, and how’s this for bitter irony:
Transphobics, is this really who you want to be allied with?
It’s just a portmanteau word - shorthand, if you will. I seem to have it, although I’ve been surprised once or twice.
A few years ago, my daughter had a crush on a boy in her fifth-grade class. This kid set bells in my head clanging, and I confided to a friend that I thought the boy might be gay. She said, “He’s eleven years old, how can you possibly pick that up from a kid that young?” Fast forward a year, and I’m talking to the kid’s mother, who tells me his father left her for a man. The mother was extremely bitter and quite vocal about it. Now the boy is almost 16 years old, and he’s still setting off my “gaydar” even though he’s dating girls. I’m not at all close to the boy or his family, but there’s a little nagging voice in the back of my mind that worries about him, because if he IS gay, his mother is going to give him no end of grief.
In that case, I think my gaydar is accurate. On the other hand, I met a very masculine-seeming woman this past year and was later thoroughly surprised to find out that she was transgendered, and a lesbian. Even though she seemed kinda “butch” to me, she didn’t even register with me mentally as anything but female and I didn’t pick up on the lesbian thing until I actually saw her smooching with her partner.
So obviously this gaydar thing comes and goes with me!
And then you have people like me who seem to set off others’ “gaydar” erroneously (or set off the wrong kind). My living situation requires me to spend most of my time in boymode, but even then I look a bit androgynous and lately I have stopped being so careful not to act feminine in public. It’s been a while since a woman has checked me out (used to happen all the time, sigh), and they seem surprised when I look at them.
There’s been such controversy over lesbians who reject transwomen — this issue has to be dealt with and understood — though actually, I’d like to see more examples of how Ls and Ts get together and cooperate. There must be examples of that somewhere.