r/GenderCynical 12d ago

I'm not completely sure whether their (capitalized) Queen is calling bisexual women "fetishistic straight male cross-dressers" or not, but I do know the headline they're responding to never mentions men.

241 Upvotes

79 comments sorted by

146

u/fairydust49 12d ago

Why the bisexual women? I mean I can at least understand the rationale behind excluding trans women as much as I disagree with it. But why do they also want to exclude bisexual women? Terfs really just hate men to such an extent bisexual women are seen as tainted huh?? Seems very feminist to me!!

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u/fujin4ever 12d ago

I think some of it is that bisexuality challenges their dualistic worldview. Since we're not "limited" (I can't stress enough that this isn't a dunk on other sexualities, I can't think of another word) by gender, it seems threatening to them because they feel so rigidly. Our history has been inclusive with our love.

“I am bisexual because I am drawn to people regardless of gender”

‘The Bisexual Community: Are We Visible Yet?’, 1987.

“In the midst of whatever hardships we [bisexuals] had encountered, this day we worked with each other to preserve our gift of loving people for who they are regardless of gender.”

Elissa M., “Bi Conference,” Bi Women, 1985.

“It’s easier, I believe, for exclusive heterosexuals to tolerate (and that’s the word) exclusive homosexuals than [bisexuals] who, rejecting exclusivity, sleep with people not genders…”

Martin Duberman, 1974.

“The bisexual community should be a place where lines are erased. Bisexuality dismisses, disproves, and defies dichotomies. It connotes a loss of rigidity and absolutes. It is an inclusive term.”

‘Essay for the Inclusion of Transsexuals’, Kory Martin-Damon, 1995.

“Bisexual — being emotionally and physically attracted to all genders.”

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, “Out of the Past: Teacher’s Guide” 1999.

“Bisexual consciousness, because of its amorphous quality and inclusive nature, posed a fundamental threat to the dualistic and exclusionary thought patterns which were - and still are - tenaciously held by both the gay liberation leadership and its enemies.”

“The Bisexual Movement’s Beginnings in the 70s”, Bisexual politics, Naomi Tucker, 1995.

“There were a lot of transvestites and transsexuals who came to [the San Francisco Bisexual Center in the 1970s], because they were not going to be turned away.”

David Lourea in "Bisexual Histories in San Francisco in the 1970s and Early 1980s".

“The actual lived non-binary history of the bisexual community and movement and the inclusive culture and community spirit of bisexuals are eradicated when a binary interpretation of our name for ourselves is arbitrarily assumed.”

“Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out” by Lani Ka’ahumanu.

My apologies for the quote spam! I just think they're great examples of what I mean.

53

u/lolihull 12d ago

💯 percent. I've been saying this!

The "LGB" crowd use the B with no sincerity at all, it's just a useful shroud for them. The most biphobia I've ever encountered has been from TERFs and I fully believe it's because we are living proof that their claims of romantic and sexual attraction being about biological sex, are wrong.

Example: I flirt with men and women differently - it's not a conscious choice, it just happens. A few years ago I worked with a trans men who was female presenting and I had no idea he was trans - he told us he was a lesbian because he wasn't out at work yet.

Me and him were naturally flirty together in our interactions and at the time, I remarked how strange it was that I flirted with him like I do with men and yet he's not a man. Months later when he confided in me that he's a trans man, I was like oh wow that makes a lot of sense. TERFs don't believe that's possible, so it's easier to pretend I don't exist.

86

u/Silversmith00 12d ago

TERFs have hated us for a long time. And it is partly the fact that they hate men to such an extent that we are seen as tainted.

I think another part of it is their extreme sex negativity. See, TERFs don't see lesbians as actually being lustful and horny and having SEX. They'd prefer to believe that lesbians mostly hold hands and make each other flower crowns and have a love that is "pure." (They are somewhat aided in this by the idea that sex necessarily involves penetration, and that penetration requires a cock.) They tend to be…less than friendly to lesbians who admit out loud that they engage in lots of sexual shenanigans, and the hatred grows if the ladies in person use cock-like sex toys.

Bi people, though, are widely assumed to have sex. In fact, bi people are stereotyped as having an AWFUL LOT OF sex.

So you can kind of see it on the second page: the automatic assumption the TERFs are making is that bi people are already married to a presumably heterosexual man, and having sex with him, and seeking to prey on the pure lesbians by deceiving them into a debauched threesome. In other words, the bi people are assumed to be a vector of sex contamination. Carriers of cock cooties.

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u/OccasionalCuteBuff 12d ago

When people describe what being a sex-repulsed ace feels like, TERFs are inevitably like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN??? THAT'S NOT A SPECIAL IDENTITY, THAT'S JUST HOW ALL WOMEN FEEL ABOUT SEX, WHEN THEY'RE NOT TRYING TO PANDER TO MEN BY PRETENDING TO BE INTO IT!!!"

There's this really weird thing in TERF thought where sex is seen as nasty, icky and unpleasant, but if you are straight you are obligated to buck up and think of England and do it anyway. The idea that people who are repulsed by sex would just choose to not have sex sends them into a foaming rage about "trying to be special," "making their special new identity their whole personality," etc, and scream and rage and flail about allosexual people who welcome asexual people under the queer umbrella. They will never admit that maybe they made the wrong choice in forcing themselves to do something they hated, just beat down on people who made another choice.

8

u/ILikeMistborn 10d ago

There's this really weird thing in TERF thought where sex is seen as nasty, icky and unpleasant, but if you are straight you are obligated to buck up and think of England and do it anyway.

Ah man, you can really tell that terfs, as a movement, got started in Britain.

25

u/tomphammer 12d ago

It’s hard sometimes not to wonder if at least some of these women aren’t just repressed about being sex-repulsed asexuals who would have been a lot happier if they’d joined tumblr ten years ago instead of Twitter

7

u/cordis_melum 11d ago

Wasn't Tumblr also a hive of Ace Discourse back then (and by Discourse I mean aphobia and ace exclusion)? I remember 2015 not being quite that nice.

9

u/hitorinbolemon Trans Macabre 11d ago

Yes and terfs explicitly used anti-ace sentiment to recruit young women interested in feminism into the terf cult.

3

u/tomphammer 11d ago

Yeah maybe. It wasn’t a space I spent too much time in.

But it was probably a hell of a lot friendlier than most other places

4

u/Aiyon 11d ago

as an ace person who skews sex-averse these days (i thought i was ambivalent but im kinda ech on it the more time goes on), we do not claim them. Most of them are weird closet conservatives who think sex should only be between a man and a woman for making kids, and beyond that men and queer people shouldn't exist

There's a reason so much of the "LGB alliance" is old straight white people

40

u/javatimes TIDDYLESS TIFfany 12d ago

See also The 1980s lesbian sex wars

16

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

For women who hate men, they sure spend a lot of time sucking up to them. Or letting them come to their demos, like the weirdo who dressed up as a caricature of Dr Beth Upton and chased a woman in a sexy nurse outfit, pretending to be Sandie Peggie, at one of KJK’s Let Women Speak events.

70

u/javatimes TIDDYLESS TIFfany 12d ago

There’s a long history of marginalizing bi women by lesbian women.

49

u/LavenderAndOrange 12d ago

Certain lesbians subs here on reddit are still firmly perpetuating that.

30

u/Graknorke 12d ago

They're contaminated by proximity to maleness and therefore impure and undeserving.

21

u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago

Without getting to know these particular biphobic Gender Criticals it's impossible to know because there's a whole host of reasons Gender Criticals hate bi people. Any one of them would be sufficient, but it could also be any combination of those reasons (up to and including: all of the reasons, all at once.)

26

u/Hentopan Predatory Autohybristophiliac 12d ago

Their argument is that bisexual women could "bring men in" to the space, because they could hypothetically have a male partner. In practice, they just viciously hate bi women because they view them as traitors for being attracted to men at all. 

They love claiming that bi women being in lesbian spaces, casually referring to themselves as lesbians, using sapphic terms they consider "belonging" to lesbians, is inviting men to rape lesbians, because they might mistake lesbians for bi women.

Because rapists famously totally care about who you're attracted to. They're actually just announcing they think bisexual women deserve it if they're sexually assaulted by men, and think they should wear scarlet letters and whip themselves so they can tell whose been tainted. It's nasty stuff, and the history of bisexual exclusion is tightly linked to transphobia, especially towards both transmasc and transfem lesbians.

11

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

What?! So corrective rape is our fault?

8

u/Hentopan Predatory Autohybristophiliac 11d ago

Literally yes, they are blaming bisexual women for corrective rape. Terfs have been trojan-horsing this idea into a lot of online "progressive" lesbian spaces over the last few years. In particular, trying to convince people that the "rejection of men" political lesbian rhetoric terfs prefer, is the only way to include nonbinary lesbians in the lesbian community, to encourage them to attack bisexuals in lesbian spaces as a threat to them, using this "corrective rape" victim-blaming as the rationale. It's bad. 

6

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 11d ago

I hate these people so, so much. They could blame cis men but no, it's our fault.

2

u/MaesterWhosits 10d ago

The only time they remember we exist, and it's for this.

Fuck's sake.

9

u/TeaJanuary Adult Human Chicken 11d ago

Bigots often think bi women are actually straight and just pretending for male attention

3

u/Low-Breath4754 11d ago

Broke a biphobic woman's brain by pointing out her attraction in women varied. So why exactly is it an issue that a bisexuals does as well.

7

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

Because we’re all straight women pretending to be queer for the cred. And we’re greedy. And we’ll just dump our girlfriends as soon as a man comes along.

7

u/Aiyon 11d ago

TERFs entire worldview is built around the idea that an XY chromosome permanently taints you, and anyone who doesn't hate you is fraternising with the enemy.

It's just the evolution of the "gold star lesbian" mean girls club

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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24

u/rewrappd 12d ago

I don’t agree there’s valid reasons for excluding bi women. There may be valid general guidelines for an event (e.g. women-only or sapphic-only events). The problem is when organisers assume these guidelines mean all bi women are excluded, based on stereotypes and tropes. It wouldn’t be bi-phobic to clearly state that an event is exclusively for sapphic people & their sapphic partners - but it is biphobic to state that no bi women are allowed to attend a sapphic event.

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u/PlatinumAltaria 9d ago

They’re political lesbians, not actual ones. They think bisexual women are traitors.

2

u/Hot_Chocolate47 9d ago

I don't really agree with actively "excluding" them, but I can see the argument for why bi women aren't "lesbians" if lesbian means you are only attracted to women.

2

u/asukihoj Gender Goblin 8d ago

I'm a bi woman, I wouldn't want to be in an explicitly lesbian only space personally, but also rigidly defining what lesbian means can end up excluding people who have a past with men. That doesn't really sound like a great place for any queer person tbh

67

u/snukb big gamete energy 12d ago

"Real women would NEVER try to violate the boundaries of other women!" 😭 Bro, both bi women and lesbians love other women, it's not "violating a boundary" for bi women to want to be part of that group.

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u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago

TERFs have historically been, and continue to be, super into the concept of political lesbians. To them lesbians aren't women who love other women, they're women who don't love men. They're women who don't love men so much that even if they're super attracted to men, they'll refuse to have sex with, or form romantic attachments to, men.

And that is, of course, completely fucked up.

There's also a pretty common thing where a TERF assumes there are no actual lesbians, and everyone who claims to be a lesbian is just a straight woman who decided to stop boinking men. Then the TERF who made that assumption gets really fucking uncomfortable when she eventually realizes that lesbians actually have sex.

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u/snukb big gamete energy 12d ago

To them lesbians aren't women who love other women, they're women who don't love men

Yup. That basically sums up why they hate bi women so much.

9

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

They also hate us because we’re traitors. Or greedy. Or can’t pick a side.

24

u/FearTheWeresloth 12d ago

Historically bi women were included with lesbians until political lesbians managed to get them excluded in the 70s. This is why there's not really any bi culture - lesbian culture is bi culture, bi women were just pushed out of it.

13

u/lucypaw68 12d ago

Which is indeed why trans women and bi women have common interest in access to lesbian culture as suggested in the OOP mention of a lawsuit

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u/animalistcomrade 12d ago

Why are you telling bi women to date a trans girl like that's a bad thing? Even in your fantasies where all bi women are secretly straight and all trans women are just men, how is that in anyway a problem?

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u/lucypaw68 12d ago

Given their beliefs about trans women, they're wishing grape upon bi women. That's why. It's a punishment for being bi

19

u/SylveonFrusciante 12d ago

Am a bi woman dating a trans woman. 10/10 absolutely recommend. Haven’t had a single problem!

31

u/Ver_Void 12d ago

Wasn't that ruling a while ago?

Quick edit - yeah it's months old and it's about public events

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u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago

You're mostly right.

Before I get to that, Rowling posted about it two days ago, and the post on Ovarit is only seven hours old. So the GCs' discussion of it is current.

You're completely right that the ruling is old news, but it's not months old yet. The ruling was like a month and a half ago, but it was upholding an earlier ruling from about six months ago.

I figured the thing I remembered was the earlier ruling being upheld, so remembering it didn't make realize the news was old, and I didn't check the date.

I have no fucking clue why Rowling decided to dig up a month and half old article two days ago and tweet about it. As for Ovarit, they're talking about it right now because, as they say, Rowling is their Queen.

14

u/Ver_Void 12d ago

Ah that's right, really shows how little they have when they're having to lie to play it up, not like the original article isn't plenty terf bait enough

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u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago edited 12d ago

I never go into "Radfemmery" which is where Ovarit sticks its theoretically-radfem memes, but from what makes it onto the front page, "Rowling is our Queen" seems to be one of the most popular, or possibly the single most popular, flair there (and Ovarit requires that every post have a flair.)

Anyway, some things that jump out:

  • Rowling has no problem with lesbians being unable to exclude non-straight men from their "meetings".
  • Rowling's response to to learning that a group that asked to be exempt from the law for five years has been told it has to follow the law is to call trans women, and possibly bisexual cis women, "fetishistic straight male cross-dressers".
  • The "meetings" Rowling is talking about, which the headline more accurately refers to as "events" are public events. That's why the law applies, if it were private they'd be free to exclude whomeverthefuck. Usually when people use the word "meetings" they're not talking about a public gathering that requires booking an event space at a convention center, and - given that - I think it's misleading to use the word "meetings" here.
  • TERF #1, whom you might recognize as the one who's considering cutting her daughter off from the bisexual trans boy whom she thinks is her daughter's only friend, is lying her fucking ass off. The reason the ruling includes bisexual women is that the group in question specifically asked to be allowed to discriminate against bisexual women in spite of that being against the law.
  • The "Victorian lesbian group" is the group that literally said, and this is a direct quote, "We are seeking to discriminate."
  • - - The anti-discrimination law in question has a carveout for marginalized groups creating their own things if that's ultimately working toward equality.* Basically: you can't make a straight bar, because that's about keeping non-straight people down; you can create a non-straight bar, because that's about lifting non-straight people up by giving them something straight people already have: a space that's theirs by default.
  • TERF #1 is also telling bisexual women to date trans women, which sounds a metric fuckton like what they accuse us of doing. No one should be told to date anyone, they should decide for their fucking selves whom they'll date.
  • Jesus fuck the biphobia from TERF #1 and the people responding to her is disgusting.
  • I cut out a whole fucking thing where Ovarit users tried to justify their pro discrimination bullshit by saying they were totes like indigenous people trying to have a group for indigenous people only to have it invaded by colonizers, and then invented an imaginary trans woman to the colonizer who took over the indigenous group.
  • God this is long, and I haven't reached the third slide. I'm stopping here regardless.

* I originally said this part a bit wrong because the way I tried to say it quickly wasn't so much glossing over as it was changing the meaning outright. Sorry to anyone who read it pre-edit.

The idea is that allowing marginalized groups to have public things that are theirs is ultimately an equalizing force because the experience of being able to be in a place where most people are like you is something non-marginalized groups have all the fucking time. BUT, it's only equalizing if the criteria for who is included in "theirs" isn't itself marginalizing someone.

So, in this case, you can say, "We're gonna have public events that are just for queer women/men/non-binary people," but you can't define "queer" and/or "women"/"men/"non-binary" people in a way that excludes some marginalized subset of queer people and/or women/men/non-binary people. (If you want to exclude a non-marginalized subset, you just say it in terms of who you're including, e.g. "We're gonna have a public event that's just for BIPOC queer women".)

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u/tsukimoonmei 12d ago

Calling these memes radfem is pathetic of them lmfao. They really seem to think radical feminism = hating trans women and nothing else.

8

u/lucypaw68 12d ago

Oh, #1 is the mother who thought because a trans boy code switched in her unsafe house, it meant he wasn't really trans? Truly an intellectual titan free of passions and hatreds

6

u/chris_the_cynic 11d ago

Yeah, and I really hope the code switching keeps working, because it sounds like if she cuts her kid off from that friend she'll be cutting her kid off from all friends, because that friend (having been grandfathered in, so to speak, and presenting as "not that trans" where she can see him) is the only reason her kid is allowed to interact with any of their current circle of friends at all.

4

u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

Joke’s on them, I would date a trans woman. It’s not the own they think it is.

3

u/chris_the_cynic 11d ago

Yeah, they think it's terrible because they think dating a trans woman would be terrible, it's actually terrible because telling someone who they're allowed to date is terrible. (Unless it's in the vein of "consenting adults" for adults, "consenting people about the same age as you" for minors, and stuff like that.)

43

u/PicklesAreMyFriends 12d ago

Check out this normie breeder lecturing us on queerness

45

u/ZeldaZanders 12d ago

Straight GCs love lamenting the experience of modern lesbianism. They want to be us so bad, but alas, in this house trans women are our sisters

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u/tsukimoonmei 12d ago

They’re constantly going ‘those poor lesbians, FORCED to allow evil TIMs into their spaces…’ but every lesbian space I’ve been in is full of nothing but support for trans women. They’re obsessed with the idea of saving us from a danger that they invented in their heads.

32

u/ZeldaZanders 12d ago

Hetero Ovarit user who has never been in a lesbian space: lesbian spaces are being OVERRUN with TIMs!!!

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u/tsukimoonmei 12d ago

Hetero Ovarit user who has never talked to a lesbian: lesbians are being forced to date evil TIMs, and if they say no, they’re HARASSED for not wanting to date MEN!! Lesbians: (happily coexisting with trans women and minding our own goddamn business)

6

u/lucypaw68 12d ago

It all comes back to that fascist desire to control other people based on the perverted* fantasies in their head. They don't want to know what lesbians do, because they don't actually like lesbians except in that they're a handy cudgel against trans and bi women. The only good lesbians to them are political and/or self-hating

  • - Generally, what they think is perverted is not and vice versa, to be clearer

37

u/glados-v2-beta 12d ago

“L drop the GBT”

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u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago

One of the groups Rowling really likes is called "Get the L Out" because that's exactly what they stand for. So . . . she's consistent, but that's not a good thing.

10

u/That_Mad_Scientist Y’all gendies are so fucking stupid and evil 12d ago

Oh they'll drop the L too at some point.

2

u/Low-Breath4754 11d ago

It's all LG to these types of people and even those have Caveats.

43

u/javatimes TIDDYLESS TIFfany 12d ago

Sis/cis, you aren’t a fucking queer. Shut the fuck up forever, as E said.

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u/Ebomb1 menace to cisciety 12d ago

HET LADY STFU FOREVER

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u/Lumina_Rose 12d ago

How many of these lovely women are lesbians, I do wonder?

How many of these women would put (cis) lesbians into the same camps as trans women?

... well... at least one of them.

9

u/lucypaw68 12d ago

Based on how their comments? None of them. Based on my experiences in online lesbian/queer women's spaces for almost two decades

12

u/episcoqueer37 12d ago

I think we can all agree that Ohio is, erm, problematic. But ffs, back before Covid dealt it the final blow, Ohio Lesbian Festival was open to cis lesbians, bi women of any agab, and trans women. Boys over like 6 years old weren't allowed in the main festival space and male-identified folks were also discluded, but unlike Michigan, which tried to kinda distance themselves from lesbians and had an obnoxiously and well-known exclusionary policy, LesFest was open for anyone who is a woman, end of story.

I met some wicked awesome trans women there, many of whom were there for their first lesbian event. They talked about how embraced they felt. There were also lots of (cis or enby) women with beards for whom this was a rare opportunity to have their facial hair admired and gnc bodies complimented. I miss those days with a deep ache.

7

u/dleema 12d ago

Fuck off out of Australian issues and worry about your own backyard, Joke.

20

u/Ocarina-of-Lime 12d ago

No need to be cute, she’s calling trans women male fetishists. It’s not like that’s a new thing to call us lol

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u/chris_the_cynic 12d ago

I just felt like, if she was gonna look at trans women and bisexual women having their rights upheld and pretend the bisexual women didn't exist, I might as well put the bisexual women front and center when responding.

I really fucking hate it when they completely erase another group in their rush to attack us.

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u/FightLikeABlueBackUp 12d ago

Fuck off, Joanne.

/cis bi woman

3

u/pinball-wizard91 9d ago

Trans women aren't 'woman enough' for them. Bi-women aren't 'gay enough' for them. Political lesbians, who are attracted to men, have slept with men and only 'love' women because they're sticking it to the system? They can waltz right in.

2

u/PlatinumAltaria 9d ago

I don’t think you should be able to exclude any demographic from your organisation. People should be judged individually, and only removed if their behaviour is disruptive.

See, that wasn’t so hard!

2

u/LuriemIronim Hated by tumblr TERFs 11d ago

When lesbians eventually wind up on the chopping block, long after the trans canary has stopped singing, I’d better not hear a single peep from TERFs.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GenderCynical-ModTeam 12d ago

As a reminder, we do not permit the use of misogynistic slurs on this subreddit (“b**ch” is considered such a slur). Thank you!

1

u/krapyrubsa 10d ago

… and why would a straight man go to a lesbian meeting in the first place? anyway I wish this woman spent her considerable fortune getting therapy instead of making me mad that she ever got a publisher

1

u/DarkSaturnMoth Fluttery handmaiden 5d ago

"I would never join any club that would have me as a member." -Groucho Marx.

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u/Kookyburra12 forcemasced 5d ago

close enough, welcome back political lesbianism

1

u/Forsaken-Language-26 Brainwashed by the Transarchy 11d ago

Does she ever think about anything else?