Things are certainly not all peace, love, and understanding in the world of LGBT activism, and no one knows this better than lesbians. Just like women’s locker rooms, their unique spaces are being erased by men who believe they are women. Indeed, The New York Times recently noted the death of the lesbian bars but delicately refused to connect the dots to why.
Also highlighted by The New York Times, The Lesbian Bar Project was founded last October to lament the fact there remains only a small handful of lady meet-up watering holes in the entire United States, where there used to be hundreds. Leftist California has precisely as many lesbian bars as backwater Alabama: one. New York tops the nation with three — all in Gotham. Most states, however, now have none.
So, what’s up? Are women losing interest in women? No, such spaces are dying because biological men who believe they are women are demanding full inclusion in lesbian spaces as unquestioned equals, insisting actual women put on a smile and adjust their plans accordingly.
This fact is unwittingly captured in the Lesbian Bar Project’s own definition of what a lesbian bar is:
We believe that what makes a bar uniquely Lesbian is its prioritization of creating space for people of marginalized genders; including women, non-binary folks, and trans men. … As these spaces aim to be inclusive of all individuals across the diverse LGBTQIA+ community, the label Lesbian belongs to all people who feel that it empowers them.
Yes, the capricious and unbending god of gender inclusion requires the Lesbian Bar Project to define “lesbian” right out of a lesbian bar because being lesbian turns out to be a bit too binary and “bioessentialist,” the new unpardonable sin in queer politics. The problem, however, is certainly not confined to lesbian bars.
Zoe, one of the largest lesbian dating sites, proudly declares itself “the World’s Best Ranked Dating App for Queer Women.” The word “lesbian” is quickly falling out of fashion and is only used once on the entire website. They favor the term queer instead.
Her, another popular lesbian dating site, goes even further, banning both the L- and W-word, explaining they exist “for queer womxn, by queer womxn” and exist “to connect womxn and queer people.” Users enter by clicking the de-gendered red button marked “Find your person.” Inclusivity now excludes women.
Lesbians and other feminists have properly excoriated this erasure. But they are being told to hush and go along. The Washington Post recently charged in a banner headline that saying lesbians are going extinct is “the latest form of transphobia.”
The article trains both barrels on gay rights trailblazer Andrew Sullivan because he had the temerity to ask plaintively, “Where have all the lesbians gone?” Drawing attention to this inconvenient fact in queer politics today, Sullivan observes, “The social justice revolution has space for … dozens of pronouns, but not so much leeway for women who love women and not men.”
Sullivan is dead right on. Before our eyes, the trans movement is eclipsing the women’s movement. Literally and explicitly, gender studies have displaced women’s studies.
Of course, the false and wholly manufactured claim that “trans rights are human rights” cannot peacefully coexist with the inherently true claim that “women’s rights are human rights.” Exemplifying the very strange fork that queer politics has brought us to, J.K. Rowling has been called out in the most violent and misogynistic ways by trans activists for simply reminding the world we have a perfectly lovely word to describe “people who menstruate.”
Another feisty woman who knows about this all too well is Kellie-Jay Keen, a delightfully opinionated British women’s rights activist who heads Standing for Women. She was forced to take down a billboard she paid to have erected in Liverpool because its simple message asserting the most basic biological fact was deemed transphobic. What was so offensive? Her minimalist advert merely stated the word “woman” means “adult human female.”
The BBC reported a man succeeded in getting the billboard removed by simply claiming it was a “symbol that makes transgender people feel unsafe.” Keen deftly explained to Sky News why this man and his buddies were wrong, “I have led as much a transphobic campaign as you have led a misogynist one.” Yet the men in dresses prevailed.
In the blink of an eye, it’s evident biological men who believe they are women are far more favorably situated in the LGBT power differential than actual women. Just consider how President Biden’s day-one groundbreaking trans activism unwittingly erased what a Hillary presidency was supposed to have gained for women.
Abortion supporters have long and proudly claimed they stand for “women’s health care.” But we’re now told such language is transphobic and to be avoided because “We do pregnant people a huge disservice when we imply with our word choices that cisgender women are the only ones who need reproductive care.”
Pregnant people? Of course, because as HuffPost informs us, “Women aren’t the only people who get abortions” as “men and other gender non-conforming folks get abortions too.” Even the academic Journal of Women’s Health declares “It’s time for OBGYNs to care for people of all genders.”
Like the lesbian bar, you would imagine La Leche League would be another ultimate safe woman’s space. Not so. The organization officially explains that trans inclusion requires, “All nursing parents need support and La Leche League is a great place to find it.” Staff, volunteers, and clients are now encouraged to use the term “chestfeeding” to “express support for parents of all gender identities and all family structures.”
Yes, the word “breasts” can make trans men feel uncomfortable, so Le Leche even allows trans men to lead “chestfeeding” classes. One of the most famous is Canadian Trevor MacDonald, a goatee’d trans man who has written instructional materials for La Leche League and “new breastfeeding parents.” “Mother,” you see, is now a naughty word in the breastfeeding world.
Even Piers Morgan scolded CNN last summer for their silly public service announcement that “Individuals with a cervix are now recommended to start cervical cancers screening…”
Clearly, as it now goes in the LGBT social justice economy, old-fashioned misogyny clearly ranks well below trans-misogyny as an intolerable offense. Worse, misogyny is not only tolerated but enlisted as a weapon of choice in the internecine LGBT culture war.
Again, the overarching troubling dynamic is this: Trans rights and women’s rights cannot coexist and are inherently competing claims. Thus far during the current cannibalization of the LGBT political construct, the “Ts” and “Qs” are rapidly consuming the “Ls.”
All of this should have been easily anticipated by anyone who took the truth claims of gender theory seriously. If male and female are merely social constructs and binarity is the new flat earth, then the spectrum — and every possible new gender and sexual orientation it can dream up — must always prevail.
Ultimately, in this terribly problematic turn for a movement that is supposed to be all about advancing human rights, lesbians are the canaries in the coal mine.
