Just to be clear:
Trans women are women
Trans lesbians are lesbians
#TransDykesAreGoodAndPure
Trans isn’t a gender and transphobia isn’t a sexual orientation.
If you’d date a cis woman but wouldn’t ever date a trans woman, that’s not because you’re a lesbian that’s because you’re transphobic.
ASAB and genital preferences are fetishes, they have nothing to do with your sexual/romantic orientation.
If you date cis women and trans women, those are the same gender so that doesn’t make you bi.
Some lesbians are TERFs.
Many lesbians who are not TERFs, are transmisogynistic in other ways.
Some men are TERFs.
Many men who are not TERFs, are transmisogynistic in other ways.
Some cis lesbians are bi.
Some trans lesbians are bi.
Some cis lesbians think bi people shouldn’t call themselves lesbian.
Some trans lesbians think bi people shouldn’t call themselves lesbian.
Some lesbians are non-binary.
Some non-binary folks are lesbians.
Some non-binary folks are not lesbians.
Many trans women are lesbians.
Lesbianism will not be obsolete as long as there are trans lesbians.
Persecution of trans people has always existed.
Persecution of trans people has always existed in gay male communities.
Persecution of trans people has always existed in queer communities.
Persecution of trans people has always existed in lesbian communities.
Persecution of trans people has always existed in cishet communities.
All of it needs to be addressed. All of us are responsible for combating transphobia and cisheteronormativity. Just because other communities are also cisnormative, doesn’t make the cisnormativity in one’s own community ok.
Cis women are the same gender as trans women. I am a woman in the same sense that trans women are women. I am a lesbian in the same sense that trans lesbians are lesbians. Because trans isn’t a gender and transphobia isn’t an orientation.
Lesbianism will not be obsolete as long as there are trans lesbians.
When SCOTUS ruled that states couldn’t discriminate based on genders in issuing marriage certificates, some conservatives called for getting rid of marriage certificates altogether and having civil unions for all – an idea a lot of queer folks agree with, but for wildly different reasons.
When cis and other transmisogyny-exempt people become gender abolitionists and start using “they” for everyone just as they’re first asked to use “she” for trans women, it’s complicated. Gender is socially constructed, we weren’t born this way, gender abolitionism can be a valid ideology. But suddenly torching the concept of lesbianism – of womxn prioritizing relationships with other womxn, and radically de-prioritizing heteropatriarchal relationships with men – on the grounds that it’s inherently transphobic, can be just another way to exclude trans women from womanhood.
Lesbianism will not be obsolete as long as there are trans lesbians.
TERFs, on the other hand, can go fuck themselves (and no self-respecting lesbian should want to fuck them anyway).