A question I posited to cis lesbians...

[Deleted]

What are your thoughts on trans women being lesbian, especially more “soft butch” type? It seems to boggle a lot of people’s minds. It even boggles my own.

Before I figured myself out and I would hear that cliché “lesbian trapped in a man’s body” I would honestly think to myself, “they think it’s funny, but if they spent five minutes in my head…”

Nature is a fucking lunatic. Why?? Why put this brain inside this body?? It doesn’t make any fucking sense!! And yet, here I am… a dyke trying my best to get this flesh-vessel into a form that makes some goddamned sense.

I posted this on the /r/asktransgender subreddit, and I got a down-vote. WHY? How are my thoughts and feelings regarding this matter invalid? Am I just supposed to unquestioningly embrace my transness? Am I not allowed to be angry?

[Ativan Prescribed]

It opens up the argument that you still have remnants of the male experience, therefore you can never fully understand the experience of a cis woman, or in this case, a lesbian.
By their definition, and this is the case that TERF's seem to be stuck and militant on, you will never fully understand their experience and live their lives as they see it.

From my point of view, this is why there is no such thing as an allegiance of LGB and T, it was a political platform that served a purpose at one time, but it no longer has that kind of function. LGB are in too many cases, more militant about T never really being a part of and can never really know what it is to be cis.

The trans community is left to fend for itself politically. I personally don't subscribe to the idea that LGB even exists, it is nothing more than boxes and labels that confine the trans sexual experience into neat little areas that you aren't allowed to wander away from, and besides, they seem to think it is their exclusive rights to define who is and isn't LGB, so my personal opinion is, fuck'm. They are no better than any other group of self righteous assholes who consider themselves to be the authority and police of their own exclusiveness, so in general, my opinion of them is as low as it is for, say white supremacist groups or any other such self defined groups that reject others who use the definitions as descriptively, but don't have a need to consider themselves to be exclusive and blind to others ways of simply free thinking and using the definitions in descriptive ways that they claim to be theirs to use with their exclusivity.

In other words, your down vote was by LGB trolls that claim descriptions and refuse to even allow others to use them descriptively, which is a large function of the language.
Kinda like the grammar police in the Internet, they are self serving and waste their time in political correctives that are outdated and ill defined, except to their small minded exclusivity.
I'd ignore them and I do, I think they are kinda like Mimes arguing that clowns can't wear makeup as an art form or even as an occupation, if you could consider them to even be one.
It is as ridiculous as a carpenter becoming a plumber and all the plumbers that know about nothing else, refuse to consider them as plumbers because they also have the carpenters experience, therefore diluting the exclusivity of plumbers, and that plumbers have exclusive rights to using plumbing descriptions and others are not allowed to utter those words or use them descriptively.

You were voted down by black and white thinking from a very narrow minded group of TERF trolls.

*Just my own black and white opinion of black and white thinking of Internet, and otherwise, trolls in life.

[Deleted]

It opens up the argument that you still have remnants of the male experience, therefore you can never fully understand the experience of a cis woman, or in this case, a lesbian.
By their definition, and this is the case that TERF's seem to be stuck and militant on, you will never fully understand their experience and live their lives as they see it.

Well, I do have those remnants, except I never actually played up the male role. I didn't mesh with my guy friends except in certain aspects of humor, music and film. I never tried to "macho" myself up, or grow a beard, and so on. I just existed as me. So, my "male experience" was really more like a predominant genderless experience. And no, I won't ever fully understand their experience or live my life with their unique struggles; not all of them, anyway. Some of them I most definitely will as being a woman still means enduring discrimination, albeit mild compared to what it was.

From my point of view, this is why there is no such thing as an allegiance of LGB and T, it was a political platform that served a purpose at one time, but it no longer has that kind of function. LGB are in too many cases, more militant about T never really being a part of and can never really know what it is to be cis.

Yeah, I agree. The term "community" is not just loose, it's flapping delicately on a single thread. This is why I never associate myself in any kind of collective, because people in large numbers start to forfeit their individuality and sense of reason.

The trans community is left to fend for itself politically. I personally don't subscribe to the idea that LGB even exists, it is nothing more than boxes and labels that confine the trans sexual experience into neat little areas that you aren't allowed to wander away from, and besides, they seem to think it is their exclusive rights to define who is and isn't LGB, so my personal opinion is, fuck'm. They are no better than any other group of self righteous assholes who consider themselves to be the authority and police of their own exclusiveness, so in general, my opinion of them is as low as it is for, say white supremacist groups or any other such self defined groups that reject others who use the definitions as descriptively, but don't have a need to consider themselves to be exclusive and blind to others ways of simply free thinking and using the definitions in descriptive ways that they claim to be theirs to use with their exclusivity.

No matter what the focus is of a community or group, and no matter what their cause may be, it's all so very volatile and disharmonious. It's a shame, really.

In other words, your down vote was by LGB trolls that claim descriptions and refuse to even allow others to use them descriptively, which is a large function of the language.

Well, one person replied saying the down-vote was probably because of a) it was not a question relevant to the subreddit since it was aimed at cis lesbians, and b) my use of the word "dyke", even though we pretty much own the word, and it would only seem insulting coming from a straight person, in my opinion. I mean, "lesbian" is accurate, but "dyke" seems more fitting for me, because it expresses a certain kind of queer expression.

[Ativan Prescribed]

It's a problem when using labels, there are always those who use different definitions.
If you used it descriptively, 'lesbian like' 'dykeish', then it doesn't box you into an argument and it doesn't take their box away from them.
English, especially American, is very tied to cis binary and doesn't allow for it's use in other ways, so using it descriptively works better.
That way you're not boxed into someone elses definition as well as your own, and you still get the point across.
Some boxes come with a very exclusivity that is better to let someone else claim.
As for the down vote, they could be right, a lot of who and how labels are defined is inherent to where you are in the country, who you hang around with even.
When you say lesbian to me while referring to yourself, I get what you mean, but someone outside of trans won't understand it the same way.
Even within the trans community, there are labels that mean different things to different groups.
We throw labels around and don't think twice about how we use them, and other people use those same labels that we use and use them with different meanings.
Labels become difficult in a lot of ways, I have been saying for a long time that it is better to be descriptive, rather than confined to a label.
Labels can be handy to use at times, but a lot of arguments have broken out over who's definition is correct and it usually then becomes political of a sort.
It happens mostly with people who lay claim to their labels and are easily offended whenever someone else uses them, even in an offhand manner.

[Leena]

I think the internet, in general, tends to push people into categories. Not just LGBT, but a lot of other groups. It also gives people in general, who are unhappy for one reason or another, a place to complain. You join a group, and you end up feeling pressure, perhaps sometimes subconscious pressure to conform to the standards of the most vocal members. The mechanism in which one becomes a TERF online is not all that different than how one becomes a member of any other extremist group online, the agenda is just different.

I'm dating myself here, but I had lots of LGB friends before the internet became popular, I always felt welcome with them, especially the lesbians and bisexual women. The gay and bisexual guys, I'd sometimes have issue with because they would try to say because of this and that I'm gay, just like the straight people, but at least they had a possible ulterior motive of wanting to sleep with me. I didn't label myself as anything back then though, I was just a male with long hair that often didn't conform a lot of gender rules, or other rules either really. It really was better back then, at least for me.

That said, back then I didn't know there were others like me, the labels are useful in conveying a concept to those who are unaware of the concept. I'm not as sure of the usefulness of pushing the labels on others. I too, sometimes think of myself as a lesbian in man's body, as that essentially is my reality. Explaining it to others in those terms is problematic sometimes, that doesn't mean it's not valid. Know your truth, but if you let others get to know you they will figure out your truth in a way that is not off-putting to them.

[Kira]

Lgbt is roughly equivalent to any other business.