A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).
Thinking about the bigots protesting Pride yesterday, I suppose it was a bit of a relief to see that there was only a handful of them and it *was* the same faces who picketed the Dyke March a few years back, suggesting they’re failing miserably at recruiting. BUT…
That’s absolutely no reason to be complacent. Despite the tiny numbers, we lesbians do need to admit we have this problem of bigots within our community and do what we must to deal with that problem.
It’s not enough to say “they don’t represent us”, although of course they don’t represent us. We need to take a hard-line stance, zero tolerance, standing up to transphobia wherever possible and constantly showing solidarity with and centring our trans lesbian sisters.
We KNOW who some of these people who appropriate lesbian identity in order to spread bigotry are. We need to ensure they are not welcome in lesbian spaces; as well as being bigots they pose a material physical danger to trans and cis dykes alike.
(for those wondering why they’re a threat to cis lesbians too, imagine one of those bigots decides you’re quite tall and they can ~always tell~ when someone’s trans)
We need to make it very clear that transphobia and transmisogyny is NOT WELCOME in our lesbian community and our lesbian spaces. We’re doing this already, to some extent, now let’s do it MORE.
As lesbians, we’re best placed to clean out the massive turd on our own carpet, and as *cis* lesbians, we are the ones who MUST do the heavy lifting here. Cis lesbians are uniquely placed to deal with the dangers posed by bigoted cis lesbians.
Silence is violence and what we cis lesbians need to say is not “not all cis lesbians” but “these transmisogynistic bigots are disgusting and not welcome. I support my trans lesbian sisters”. That’s where we start, and now we get out the metaphorical marigolds and clean our house
Oh and finally, on a purely pragmatic level we kind of need to deal with the bigot lesbians because their definition of lesbian is so fucking narrow that all lesbians will have died out in 20 years or so when old age has claimed those nasty sorts.
tl;dr us cis lesbians gotta step the fuck up because that handful of bigots are our problem and we need to deal with it.
_
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Another angry woman 