Why I am not queer, or the trials of dating as a radical lesbian feminist

The men are not on our side! (no duh)

In my last post, I gave a very partial overview of my journey into lesbian-ville. Just as I never felt comfortable with men, I never felt comfortable in the boy-based GLBT movement. I would go into my local GLBTIQ shop and find a small section of lesbian fiction with an increasing amount of erotica. I attended a regular lesbian discussion group, and many women there dis-idenfied as feminists altogether. (Hey, if I’m going to be a lesbian, I can still get attention from the boyz by not being a feminist!) S/M, dildos, and porn were all the rage. I have been teased by a lesbian friend for spending so much time hanging out with het women, but honestly, the ones I hang with are not into boy-based sex. I have becoming increasingly in despair about where young lesbians are headed. Most totally erase anything to do with woman identification, by referring to themselves as “queer.” As I very much would like a girlfriend, and one I can actually talk to, not just make love with, I am having intense trouble finding a partner.

I have signed up for lesbian dating sites and begun to chat with a few of the women. When I said I was looking for an egalitarian relationship and described myself as a radical feminist, one woman said she had never heard of ever concept, but looked both  “egalitarian” and “radical feminist”  up on Wikipedia (She also said I intimidated her because I wrote in paragraphs, although her writing was not bad at all).

Coming out as a lesbian: let’s get personal

Suffice it to say, my dating life has been anything but simple since coming out as a radical lesbian feminist. I came into feminism almost immediately after coming into my lesbianism, so I don’t know what it’s like to date as an apathetic, twenty-something lesbian in the 21st Century.

I never felt comfortable around men, not after I started every encounter with them had to be turned into something sexual.  As a sophomore in high school, I can recall attending the movies with five guys. I thought nothing of it, although my mom remarked that it was rather odd. The guys did not care about other people’s feelings (they did not offer to pay back the mother who bought us the tickets for the R rated movie, though I did), but they also were totally laid back. I remember one boy, who I would later go on to date, trying to wrangle free tickets from the cashier. They also bought loads of snacks, which they ate without saying how fat their thighs were. Since we were almost the only ones in the small theater, they ran up and down the aisles,  not giving a damn what the few others in the theater thought.

Radical Feminist Seminar: Sheila Jeffreys on Trans Politics

After the heaviness of Saturday’s sessions, I was rather nervous about what Sunday had in store for me. However, I arrived to the conference hall bright and early, because I knew Sheila Jeffreys was starting off the morning by expressing a view that is likely to cause one to become treated as a leper. That is Jeffreys’ was explaining a critique of the queer and transgender movements.

Jeffreys began by discussing how we have arrived at this  point where there  really is no lesbian feminist movement. Jeffreys’ hypothesizes that as lesbians become more involved with gay men, for example through taking care of them during the AIDS crises, we picked up their ways of being sexual with one another. Also, from what I know, gay men in general have always been much more likely to state that their sexual behavior was innate, despite all the historic evidence to indicate otherwise.  Anyhow, as time progressed, women too, have become more convinced that our sexuality is innate; when we “come out” as lesbians, we change our life narrative to highlight the parts we would like to display. Jeffreys’ mentioned a student of hers who completed researching showing that there really has been a change in time over how lesbians view their sexual preference: i.e. innate versus environmental.

When did this become a problem?

“I kissed a girl and I liked it,” –Kate Perry, not a lesbian

‘Cause I’ve kissed a girl and I liked it too
In fact I’ve kissed a few in my day
So how come I’m not famous for it yet
Well I don’t care if my boyfriend minds
Oops, I forgot I don’t got one to hide behind
See I’m not just here for some trendy joyride

–Kate Reid, Emergency Dyke Project

Enough with accomadation, time for liberation!

So, in my ongoing series, if one could call it that, about the harm the LGBTQ movement has done to the Women’s Movement, I am choosing to write about Hollaback! today. Hollaback is probably the most well known anti-street harassment organization, certainly in the U.S. They have a worldwide presence as well. As someone who has experienced severe street harassment, I am very glad they exist to validate that the ASSAULTS I experience are not all in my head.

On it’s “About” Page, the first paragraph reads:

Because we know you like to watch…

I have attended Reel Affirmations, for a couple of years.  It has always been a big highlight of my year, because it’s so easy to make friends at the wimmin’s movies. Even if I go alone, which I have done a couple of times, I find welcoming women to sit with. And some of the movies are actually pretty decent. There was even a fictional movie about May Sarton shown, as well as a documentary about feminism.

However, the festival is not as welcoming to women as it could be. For one thing, their special passes can cost more than 1,000 dollars! Back when the LGBT bookstore was in operation, I would see gay men come in quite frequently to buy such special passes, but I never saw a single woman do so.

My real problem with the festival though is that of a few years ago, their slogan became “We know you like to watch.”

lesbianism in the 21st century

If you have carefully read this website, including the “About” section, this should be needless to say, but I am a lesbian. A PROUD dyke. As I am so womon-identified (read carefully: I DID NOT SAY I “identify as” a woman) I have tremendous trouble fitting into the mainstream lesbian community. In fact, I feel what was once dyke-community way-back-when has now been hijacked by the LGBTQI movement (if I got the letters wrong, sorree, but I can never keep up with what letters are now in the alphabet stew).

My complaints against the LGBTQI movement are many, and I plan to spend a large portion of this blog discussing them. However, I thought I’d start with one anecdote that aptly illustrates my frustration.

There is a discussion group that meets not so far from where I live that is for lesbians, bi-sexual, and transgender women. It usually ends up being only lesbian and bisexual women that show up. Anyhow, one night we got into a discussion about sex-ed in the school system. When I went to the public school system in my county, NO talk about homosexuality or lesbianism was allowed. I do remember a boy asking the teacher a question; the teacher looked very uncomfortable, and, clearly as instructed, told the boy we did not discuss homosexuality in that class, he would have to ask his mother.

Anyhow, the school system was planning on implementing a NEW! PROGRESSIVE! curriculum that would include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender material. Not only that, it was to show us in a “positive” light. By positive, I mean, the school system planned to show a video that said being LGB or T was NOT a choice. This is the message all the male-dominated LGBTQI rights organizations have been sending out to the public for years, figuring it’s the most strategic way to fight for our rights…not like we couldn’t just fight under the rubric of equality for all people or anything.

It’s become increasingly less popular to say that being a lesbian is a choice when studies show that most women experience physical attraction to both sexes. Thus, sleeping only with womyn HAS to be a choice. It may not feel like one; we hear so many times that our sexuality is not a choice that it is easy to believe that it really isn’t. And perhaps, for some womyn, it isn’t…but rather we have never fit into the prescribed category of femininity and thus OTHERS have labeled us lesbian, and this eventually became a label we took on.

But getting back to the story at hand…

The idea of genetic determinism didn’t faze the group of women I was with one bit. No, what bothered them was that, due to a lawsuit from the religious right, the section on TRANS might be cut. There were gasps from women, and immediately, the group, became, well, transjacked.

Trans-rights have become the issue of our time, generation Y’s struggle.

And yet, while we insist there be an inclusive EDNA, there still is no Equal Rights Amendment. How many women even know about the Violence Against Women Act, which the National Organzation for Women has hailed as “the greatest breakthrough for women in nearly two decades”? And of those that know about it, how many know that the civil rights remedy portion of VAWA was struck down in 2000?

I’m guessing not as many of you know about VAWA as are aware of the fighting around EDNA. All the energy women and lesbians are putting into “working for trans” reminds me of the way women and lesbians went off to help men with HIV/AIDS in the ’80s. And how exactly have these men repaid us? By letting their brothers watch more and more pornography, much of it featuring supposed “lesbian sex.”

Am I the only one noticing this trend?

Am I the only one who’s tired of women putting ourselves LAST?

Seriously, I would like to know.