Why This Post
The post below captures a thread I released on eXTwitter on May 2, 2022.* It’s been roughly 18 months since and I wouldn’t change a word – except the misuse of “whose” in the second paragraph. My account there is dormant.
CONTENTS
There are so many lies and intellectually dishonest “What Ifs” being told directly to us, by some of us, about our trans family. It’s their goal to make us feel as if someone else’s rights come at the expense of ours. This is the antithesis of feminism and there is nothing radical about it. It’s the same old same old same old.
As I’ve said for years, rights must be universal or they’re not rights.
Sisters of the Pen who Shaped Me
My philosophy around these complicated issues comes from learning the words of Judy Grahn, Joan Nestle, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Dorothy Allison. And so many more. Their fortitude, brilliance, and ability to sit with complexity without being numbed or overwhelmed into inaction are beacons of unity and love in a fractured world.
I am also grateful to my younger kid, who says, “I had a wonderful girlhood and grew up to be a man.” It’s inspiring to see him pulling together threads of himself that weren’t working well together and now increasingly are. His example speaks loudly to me, especially that when I ask what seems a simple question, his first response is, “Well, yes and no. A lot and only sometimes. I can’t speak for everyone about that.”
I can’t speak for everyone about that. A reality that influencers on social media oft ignore when stirring up the coin of their realm: Anger and Fear.
I Miss the Sapphic Community of eXTwitter
Please follow me at any of these sites:
Over the past year, the sapphic community on the former Twitter became an oasis of normal in a vast morass of bigotry and “free speech” with the sole intent of bullying others into silence. The Barbarians were and are at the proverbial Gates, which left me feeling anxious and unsafe though I was nearly always among friends.
Since the site has deleted accounts for mainstream journalists, non-partisan sources, and dissenting influencers who pointed out a business model now profiting off hate speech and violence, it’s clear our presence there is merely tolerated, as if they simply haven’t gotten to us yet. I’m not going back to living like that – it didn’t feel good to be at or use the site anymore though I dearly care about the people there.
I posted my “Goodbye Twitter, it’s not me, it’s you” farewell in September of last year. I have copies of content posted there, and this is one thread that I simply didn’t want to lose behind their paywall.
I Stand With the T Thread (unedited)
A thread about LESBIAN. It’s long, sorry/not sorry.
I #StandWithTheT, people. I’m a 60+ cis woman whose been a lesbian for 90% of her life. It took me years to say lesbian without inwardly flinching. I fought to use the word and use it proudly. It’s my power word.
It’s because I have lived with my hard-won lesbian identity all these decades that I can’t fathom NOT standing with trans and bi people now.
I didn’t arrive at this understanding easily. It took work, help, and mistakes, all of which was worth it in every way.
In yesteryears, we had to make places to be safe. When you claim space, the world wants it back. So we put up walls for the safety of those on one side of them.
There is no wall that will keep out the future, especially a future you’ve helped bring about. And here we are.
To anyone trying to use LESBIAN as a brick in another wall: I have seen your kind before. You’re descendants of the lesbians that told me how I ought to like sex or what I ought to read, and who I should shun and hate.
You’re the same ilk as lesbians who coined phrases like “gold star” and waged forever tedious arguments about what a “real” lesbian is.
If you police other people’s identities, you’re saying it’s okay for others to police you. I read that in the 80s, FFS.
I see you terrifying yourself with one-off examples of some dude who behaved badly to justify your malignant attacks on millions of people as well as your bad faith, intellectually dishonest hand wringing.
This peril you feel is not because a trans person wants to pee.
I get that it’s easier to attack people – especially those who can’t punch up – instead of ideas. It’s easily monetized for one thing. Fighting ideas means dealing with icky nuances and complexities, and I am right there with you wanting the world to go back to being SIMPLER.
Well, the world never was simpler.
Part of lesbian struggle and history has always been about ENDING gender limitations. Any way a woman can be is therefore the way women are, remember?
Marriage was withheld from same sex couples because of sex boxes on marriage license applications. Jobs, education, credit, wages – all withheld from women because we were forced to mark F on forms, and that F was legally sanctioned way to police and enforce how we behaved.
The first person I heard argue that her sex did not belong on a job application was a butch lesbian. Other feminists made this point too, but the emphasis on defying and breaking gender norms was all lesbian for me.
I’ve been “refusing to state” whenever possible for decades.
The evolution of thinking around individual identity has grown exponentially with each subsequent generation. It confounds and blurs the ever-present rules about how any of us can be in the world.
It is, in part, OUR doing.
It. Was. The. Whole. Point.
I am completely aware of our struggles as lesbians, and I know how much heart, blood, sweat, tears, and loss went into creating a Lesbian Nation. I honor that and was in the smallest way part of it. I am still L.A.B.I.A.: Lesbian Against Boys Invading Anything.
It takes nothing away from the extraordinary achievements of generations of activist lesbians to say our movement was not perfect.
We walled people out because of who they loved or because their journey to a queer life was different from ours.
Also true: We changed the world with only our will and persistence because it wasn’t like we had money. We fought for every scrap of space to breathe.
Other queer people need space to breathe.
Ask yourself who is making you feel as if it’s YOUR air they are taking.
Spoiler: It’s the same people it’s always been. It’s good for them if they pretend air is scarce and we fight over it.
This is an old lesson. Could all y’all hurry up with learning it?
Your attacks on the trans community in the name of lesbian solidarity and history betray both. Worse, they are attacks on yourself. The energy and anger you give to malice and lies about our trans family is coin in the pocket of the same people who WILL come for you next.
The same people who happily point you at the rest of us to make money and consolidate power are targeting trans people like they targeted “Adam & Steve” in the 00s, “Sluts” (women who refuse men) in the 90s, AIDS victims in the 80s, “Groomer” pedophiles in the 70s…
In the language of feminism, you are complicit in your own oppression. Your harm to yourself is harm to our entire community. It weakens all of us and makes it easier to send us back into closets to breathe the scarce air. Again, could y’all hurry up and learn this lesson?
For my trans and bi friends who are tl;dr, some lesbians use “lesbian” in an ugly way to be ugly to you. I know you can’t afford to ignore them.
You’re not alone in having eyes on them.
It seems more true every day: we only have each other.
You know you’re a writer when, in spite of a boatload of compliments and reactions, all you can see is the misuse of “whose” in the very first tweet.
* Thread Info
URL: https://twitter.com/Kallmaker/status/1521311057544814592 You must be logged in to see it, otherwise the site will tell you the page doesn’t even exist. Comments were generally positive though some not-feminists said some ugly things. If respectful discourse didn’t work, I blocked them; you may see their comments if you view the thread.
