– Lesbian Not Queer –

“We need to do whatever it takes to win this fight”?

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:44:26 +0000

This argument usually refers to the idea that the GC movement needs to convince governments to review their policies promoting transgenderism by accepting increasing number right-wing individuals and groups in the movement to make it bigger and more influential (or even by voting for/supporting the right-wing in governement). The main aim is change on the legal level.

From a lesbian point of view, there are of course reasonable arguments towards the necessity to change laws. But transgenderism does not only play out on the legal level. It plays out on a more grassroot, cultural, daily & social life level.

For lesbians, it is on this level that the violence of transgenderism is the worst: our social & dating lives are constantly persecuted by these men, our jobs may be at risk if we say lesbians are exclusively same-sex attracted, some of us suffer so much from patriarchal beauty standards & grooming to femininity & sexualisation that we want to remove our breasts, we experience severe physical & sexual violence from these men etc.

Many of us know that it is not because the legal level changes that the problem of transgenderism would leave our lives.

Of course the legal level influences the grassroot level, but it is not enough. It is not because rape is illegal that men don’t rape women.

And to get actual changes at the grassroot level, we need a movement against transgenderism which promotes the abolition of gender, not its reinforcement. This will not be achieved if the right-wing is accepted in the movement and ends up having its rhetoric taking over in this debate.

The right-wing taking over this debate may mean some change on transgenderism at the legal level – although probably both reviewing pro-transgenderism policies in an anti-women & lesbians (and gays) way + passing anti-women laws in other aspects of life (such as abortion bans or material restrictions on its access).

But this would be a total disaster at the grassroot level for us lesbians!

Right-wing domination of the gender-critical movement and future policies would certainly mean a rise in “conservative” lesbophobia of all shapes: from the state to the streets.

Hate speech against lesbians would most certainly be considered “free speech” and would be protected as such.

If there’s a rise of “conservative” lesbophobia, there’s a rise in the pressure towards hiding back in the closet: pressures against gender non-conformity to be less identifiable as a lesbian, pressures to heterosexual conversion therapy and to force us into heterosexuality and motherhood.

Right-wing governments are not going to make any of the efforts necessary to improve all lesbian lives such as enabling autonomous lesbian spaces, groups, culture,fighting against racism and economic exploitation (which certainly increase under right-wing governments and affect many lesbians), or promoting better lesbian rights.

If there’s a rise of “conservative” lesbophobia, there’s a rise in self-hatred for being a lesbian and for our bodies. What do you think lesbians with “gender dysphoria” will do? Their “gender dysphoria” will be made much worse bc of the promotion of strict gender & heterosexual roles by the right-wing.

There’s also a case towards thinking that “transactivist” lesbophobia would not suddenly disappear on the grassroot level, and that transactivism would both radicalise and increase because:

1. so many lesbians and women would have been completely alienated from any type of gender-critical analysis of gender because of its hijacking by the right-wing.

2. an increase of “conservative” lesbophobia would also mean a strong repression against feminists and make our critique of transgenderism and gender completely invisible.

We argue that:

Lesbians girls & women need a movement that is uncompromisingly against “gender” roles & which fully celebrates “gender non-conformity” & lesbianism.

Lesbians need autonomous lesbian spaces, communities, & positive representation.

Lesbians do not need to hear that they should transition (left-wing rhetoric) or that no one cares about their lesbianism and that they shouldn’t make a big deal out of it (“soft” version of the right-wing rhetoric of “tolerance”).

Lesbians need a society free from male domination, pressures towards heterosexuality, & lesbian erasure.

Lesbians need freedom, autonomy& pride, not just being “tolerated” as a “minority”!

Our Research

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 17:28:13 +0000

In recent years neither the Academia nor GBT charities have produced research truly representing the lives and struggles of lesbians.

It is the role of these charities not only to research lesbian lives but also to protect lesbians against oppression, discrimination and anti-lesbianism in all its forms. Yet when faced with lesbians who are critical of the GBT community aims and strategies (including about the clash of rights between women’s/lesbians’ rights and trans rights) GBT charities, have not only turned a blind eye on our testimonies and protests, but have actively silenced us on the ground that there is no research supporting our dissent. All this while refusing to produce the research they are funded to do.

At Get The L Out, we focus on lesbians. We have direct experience of anti-lesbianism in and out of GBT communities. We also listen, and most importantly believe lesbians who contact us and tell us their stories. GBT charities are invested in supporting the T while demonising lesbians for daring to exercise our rights to have same sex relationships exclusively with women. They are not supporting lesbians. This is why we are committed to investigate lesbians lives to make up for the failing and bias of these charities. It is crucial that the under researched area of lesbian lives and lesbian oppression are properly investigated.

We are autonomous and unfunded, we do research in our spare time on the kitchen table. We welcome lesbian feminists who would like to join this research project and publish research on lesbian experience from a feminist perspective.

Get The L Out UK in Cardiff

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 18:29:30 +0000

On Saturday 27 August 2022 Get The L Out UK demonstrated at Cardiff Pride. Eighteen of us joined the parade, handing out leaflets and unfurling banners proudly proclaiming our same-sex attraction. We took up a place at the front of the parade, ahead of the drag queens and drummers. Our reasons for this are twofold. First, for our safety: we know from past experience that we are vulnerable to assault if we put ourselves in the middle of a march. Second, for visibility: we believe that our message needs to be seen, and not relegated to the back of the queue.

We wanted to show that Lesbians matter. It is important to us to be visible to other Lesbians, particularly younger Lesbians who are more susceptible to queer politics and to the ‘transing’ of young, gender-nonconforming women. It is important that other Lesbians know they have a community of women in us. It is important that Lesbians know their same-sex attraction is absolutely valid, and meaningful, and that Lesbians are females who exclusively desire relationships with other females.

We were met with a few jeers, and with one or two minor scuffles as some men attempted to wrestle the banners from our hands. But our action garnered the attention of onlookers. We could see them reading our banners, taking photographs, and filming. If nothing else, we hope that when they got home and googled this strange phenomenon – the ‘cotton ceiling’ – then they would join us in our outrage at the fact that Lesbians are being subjected to this.

The police soon formed a line behind us, separating us from the rest of the parade. We tried to march on, but we were prevented from moving forwards by both police and Pride stewards. We were effectively hemmed in, presumably because our message, our presence, was deemed to be unsuitable for the front of the parade. Individual police officers approached us one by one, telling us to move aside or we would be arrested. The reasons for this ranged from ‘causing a confrontation’ to ‘for [our] own safety.’ The police told us that the only way we, Lesbians, could take part in the Pride parade was to take up a position at the very back, behind all the other marchers. The irony was not lost on us.

Finally, under threat of arrest for non-compliance, we moved to the side and the parade continued without us. But our mission had been to draw attention to the erasure of Lesbians from ‘the LGBTQ community’ and we had done just that. In fact, the police, and Pride representatives, had proved our point for us: they had ejected Lesbians from Pride for proclaiming our same-sex attraction.

Our action went viral on social media. A video of the police ejecting us has had over 3.7 million views (and counting). Journalist Jo Bartosch covered our action closely (and wrote about it here.) Feminist news website Reduxx also covered the story. On Twitter, we received support from Julie Bindel (who subsequently wrote about our action), Suzanne Moore, and…. Martina Navratilova!

This action was supported by LGB Alliance Cymru, Merched Cymru, and Women’s Rights Network (Wales). Thank you to women there for your sisterhood.

Updates

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 14:25:12 +0000

It’s been difficult for us to keep this website updated since the last post, but we’ve been active!

Best to follow us on our social media to see what we’ve been up to lately:

Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/GetTheLOutUK

Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GetTheLOutUK/

Our Instagram: https://instagram.com/get_the_l_out_2018

Lesben am Nullpunkt

admin — Sun, 16 May 2021 15:03:09 +0000

Download

Challenging Lesbian Myths

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 14:18:42 +0000

[Image: Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler, known as the the Ladies of Llangollen via Wikimedia Commons]

This is a guest post from RadFem_Kat. You can follow her on Twitter.

In honour of everyone’s favourite lockdown activity, this blog post is going to begin with a mini quiz about lesbians in popular culture. Easy, right?

1) Which of the actors below, famous for their portrayal of a lesbian character on TV/film, is also an out lesbian?

Natasha Lyonne (the actor of Megan in But I’m a Cheerleader)
Katherine Moening (the actor of Shane in The L Word)
Laura Prepon (the actor of Alex Vause in Orange is the New Black)
Annette Bening (the actor of Nic in The Kids are Alright)

Answer: b)

2) Which of the films below originally contained a lesbian characterisation/ lesbian storyline that was removed before the film was released?

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Bend it like Beckham (2002)
101 Dalmatians (1996)
Love Actually (2003)

Answer: Trick question (sorry), they all had lesbian characters or storylines cut before release.

3) When was the first lesbian kiss shown on British TV pre-watershed?

2001
1985
1994
1972

Answer: 1994

4) And final question (for lots of points here), name as many out lesbian women in pop culture as you can.

Answer: This can’t be answered really over a blog post, but count them up. Get over 5? Over 10? How easy was this to do?

So did any of these questions surprise you? I hope so. Despite being the first letter of the LGBT, lesbians and lesbian culture are not often at the forefront of Pride month, or of LGBT campaigns. Why is that? Well, there are lots of misconceptions around lesbians in today’s society. Lots of people have the opinion that lesbians have it ‘easy’ in comparison to other people in the LGBT, that lesbians don’t face persecution or homophobia as frequently as other LGBT people, or that the homophobia that is faced is less dangerous. Part of this is due to the lack of UK legislation that ever criminalised lesbianism. Whilst true that lesbianism was never illegal, it was not socially accepted. Politicians did also try and pass laws to criminalise lesbianism alongside male homosexuality, but the laws failed to pass as people didn’t actually believe lesbianism existed, rather than viewed it as more acceptable. Lesbian relationships when they did catch the public’s eye (Ladies of LLangollen, we see you) were framed as immature ‘romantic friendships’. Women were threatened with convents, or married away to men, to separate them from the same-sex partners they had chosen. Lesbianism was used as a political tool to attack women, Marie Antoinette being a prime example. It was a sign of loose morals, of poor judgement, or of childish behaviour.

Another myth is that, given that there has been a 400% increase in women participating in same-sex experimentation since 1991[1], that lesbianism is clearly accepted and lesbians are abundant in number. However, this is also not true. In a survey in 2016, it was found that 4% of women identify as lesbians or bisexual, however there was no distinction made between these two[2]. In fact, there is no survey in the UK that separates lesbian women from either bisexual women or from homosexual men in its results when collecting data on the experiences of the LGBT. However, given that the number of lesbian exclusive bars has significantly decreased in both the UK and the US[3], and that there has been a notable rise in young women choosing to identify as ‘queer’ over lesbian[4], it can be suggested that lesbian culture is not quite as abundant as first thought.

All of this, of course, also comes from a UK focus. What about globally? 73 countries have laws still against homosexual ‘activity’ or relationships. Of these countries, 45 have laws that specifically prohibit sexual relationships between women, or actively mention lesbianism (although that is not to say that in the other 38 countries, lesbians are safe). 12 countries have the death penalty for both male and female homosexuality[5]. In addition to legal punishment, lesbophobic rape is a threat, reported on in at least 16 countries Worldwide. Lesbophobic rape, previously called corrective rape, is carried out with the aim of making the victim heterosexual through sexual assault. First reported on in South Africa, it has been reported in countries such as India, Haiti, the Netherlands and the US amongst others[6]. Lesbians globally are threatened with violence. The UK was shocked with the report of a violent attack on a lesbian couple in May 2019. Statistics state that 90% of lesbians experience verbal abuse in their lifetimes, with 40% experiencing sexual assault and 20% experiencing physical assault for their sexualities[7].

These statistics are shocking, and hopefully go some way to challenge some of the myths that exist about lesbianism and the challenges lesbians face still in 2020. This is not to say, of course, that there hasn’t been progress. One of the most important progressions has been lesbian visibility, especially historical lesbian visibility. To continue this, below are just a few lesbians from history who deserve to be more well-known.

The Ladies of Llangollen

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were aristocratic Irish women who eloped in 1778 to live together for the rest of their lives in Llangollen, Wales. Their relationship was not accepted by either of the families, with Eleanor’s family threatening to send her to a convent and Sarah’s attempting to marry her to a widowed family friend. The two women were unable to work due to the social situation of the 18th Century (a situation that forced many lesbian women in this era into heterosexual marriage), and so instead made money by allowing visitors to their home and garden. Through this, Eleanor and Sarah became seen as novelties of the area and attracted guests such as political thinker Edmund Burke. Eleanor’s diary provides historians with the daily events of their lives together, including the affection they clearly felt for each other, with Eleanor referring to Sarah frequently as her ‘other half’, and the ‘darling of my heart’.

Anne Lister

A more well known lesbian of the 19th Century is Anne Lister, who has achieved recognition recently with the TV series Gentleman Jack. Anne Lister has often been referred to as the ‘first modern lesbian’ for her understanding of her own sexuality during an era which did not accept ideas of female homosexuality, and her sexual expression. Anne Lister was a landowner during a time which frequently denied women the right to own property, an academic, a seasoned traveller and a businesswoman. In addition to this, she spent her life in pursuit of a ‘wife’. She engaged in multiple semi-public relationships with female friends, including a long-term relationship with Marianna Lawlor that continued even after Marianna’s marriage. Anne Lister eventually settled with her neighbour, Ann Walker, a local heiress. The marriage was one of convenience as opposed to love, but they lived their lives together publicly, with Ann Walker moving into Anne Lister’s home, Shibden Hall. Anne Lister’s strong lesbian identity was recorded by her in diaries that spanned her entire life, and allowed historians to understand lesbianism in the 19th Century.

Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper

Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper were a lesbian couple who worked within the early women’s Suffrage movement to encourage working class support in the North of England. They worked together, alongside other Suffragists, to draw the link between the poor working conditions of the cotton mills of Lancashire and the need for women’s suffrage. Eva and Esther’s work inspired Christabel Pankhurst, who later began the militant activism of the Suffrage group, the WSPU. Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper’s relationship was recorded in Eva’s poetry, and the two women lived together from the late 1890s until Eva’s death in 1926.

Stormé DeLarverie

No list would really be complete without Stormé DeLarverie. Stormé was a butch lesbian who has been held by many to be the instigator of the Stonewall Riots, the 1969 riots against the homophobia of the American police at the Stonewall Inn. She performed as a drag king during the 1970s, having performed in a famous American circus for much of her teenage years, as well as performing at many benefits for victims of domestic abuse. Stormé saw herself as the ‘protector’ of the lesbians in New York and worked as a bouncer for many lesbian bars. People reported that she frequently patrolled the streets to prevent homophobic attacks on lesbian women. Stormé maintained an active presence in the New York LGBT scene for her entire life, working still at bars until she was 85 years old.

[1] ‘Why Men Are Less Sexually Fluid Than Women’, Huffpost Canada, 2014

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#United_Kingdom

[3] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/15/we-need-to-pay-attention-to-how-many-lesbian-venues-are-shutting-down/

[4] https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/12/young-queer-women-dont-like-lesbian-as-a-name-heres-why.html

[5] https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_rape

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/justice/grants/results/daphne-toolkit/content/violence-against-lesbians-education-research-public-campaigns_en

Statement on LGB Alliance UK 05/02/2020

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 16:33:28 +0000

During one of our workshops at Woman’s Place UK the question of our position regarding LGB Alliance UK was raised. We are therefore making an official statement.

As lesbian radical feminists supporting women- and lesbian-only spaces, our initial reaction is one of both support and doubts. Doubts because we will never trust that men can ever truly support women and lesbian liberation. We have seen that past alliances with them led to the dire situation of today’s lesbian erasure within communities and groups lesbians initially created. But we also know that the LGB Alliance UK is currently lesbian-led and we are truly happy about that and hope lesbians within this group will flourish and find sisterhood.

We also understand that Get The L Out UK and the LGB Alliance UK do not have the same role in this movement. We are not interested in reformist politics and lobbying as we feel male institutions and male politics cannot be changed from within, but we sincerely respect that some lesbians want to do this work and fully understand that it is necessary work to do given the emergency.

We however want to insist that it is very important to politically and financially support lesbian- and women-only group on the same level, or even more, than mixed groups.

We will always support lesbians, whichever group they belong to, and we will always welcome the ones who might want to focus on women-centred politics and autonomous lesbian activism in the future.

Get The L Out UK – Statement 16/09/2019

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 16:13:03 +0000

WE ARE NOW GET THE L OUT UK!!!

As lesbian feminists, we aspire to be truly internationalists and foster lesbians’ solidarity and unity across borders. Thanks to Get The L Out Korea and to the many individual Korean lesbian feminists who have been using the hashtag #getthelout, we have realised that the name of our activist group and Facebook page, “Get The L Out”, needs to be changed to “Get The L Out UK to reflect the truth: Get The L Out as an idea and political movement does not belong exclusively to the UK.

Lesbians from many countries in Europe, East Asia, South America and North America are organising with this slogan, and us Get The L Out UK need to drop the universal term “Get The L Out” to acknowledge this work and respect lesbians’ self-determination and autonomy across the world.

We hope that there will be more and more national Get The L Out and we will be very happy to be in touch and provide support.

Special thanks to lesbians in Korea, Serbia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil for being so strong and inspiring, we are learning a lot from what you are doing.

Get The L Out UK

Other Get The L Out groups (NB: we are fully autonomous and separate groups):

Get The L Out Spain (online): Facebook

Get The L Out Sweden (online): Facebook and Twitter

Get The L Out Asia (online): Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Get The L Out Korea (IRL event on 14/09/2020):

Get The L Out UK at Women’s Liberation 2020 – Liane

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 23:25:47 +0000

Get The L Out UK held a workshop at the conference Women’s Liberation 2020 in London (01/02/2020). Thank you Woman’s Place UK for organising such an event and providing a platform to lesbian radical feminist activists. The title of this women-only workshop was “Lesbians in a straight world: Lesbian erasure and visibility”. Our main speakers were Maji, Liane T, and Charlie Evans. Angela C. Wild and Sarah chaired and introduced the workshop. Below is the transcript of Liane’s speech. Credit to Louise S. for the above picture.

As far as I remember I always liked girls – and I never was attracted to boys. All the girls loved me, they used to say to me: “if you were a boy I would go out with you”. They all wanted to cuddle with me. I was depressed that I wasn’t a “boy”. I used to think there was something wrong with me.

There was absolutely no pressure in my family for us children to conform to stereotypical gender roles, no “girls’” toys were enforced on me. Before puberty I had no problem with my body. At the age of 10-11 I used to run around topless, playing with the boys, like a “boy”.

As my period were not coming and I had no breast I was not sure they would ever come, I thought maybe I WAS a “boy”. Maybe there WAS something wrong with me. When I had my period I was very proud. I was very proud to become a WOMAN.

But then came my breasts. I realised I had to wear a bikini costume to go swimming and couldn’t run topless anymore. It made me really depressed. I couldn’t play with the boys anymore, I was expelled from football at that age because there was only a boys’ team and no girls’ team. Football was my life. It was heart-breaking. Before my breast came I used to look like a “boy”, not like a “girl”. This gave me some power in my friends’ group. I was physically active, always climbing trees, playing football and so on, and leading my group of friends – who were mainly boys. When my breasts arrived, all this stopped, my life changed.

I felt sexualised, objectified, and vulnerable for the first time. From the age of 12 until the age of 15 I felt deeply uncomfortable with my female body because of this. I used to have fantasies that if I laid in the sun, cover my body but leave my breasts out the sun would burn them.

At 15, I changed school. My friend circle changed as well. I started to come in contact with the women’s movement and women involved in it. Some lesbians were out in my school. I started to feel more comfortable with myself. I was already active in the squatting movement, occupying building that sort of thing. Loads of lesbians were involved in this kind of activism then. At 17, I left home and lived in an alternative house share of several people including a lesbian. She became a close friend. This is how I got in the women’s movement.

In those days in Germany – and it was similar in the UK – we had women’s centers, women’s bookshops, women’s cafes, women’s disco, were we would hang out and meet each other. There was a woman culture and lesbians were central in that culture. Lesbians were everywhere. We were very visible. We had lesbian consciousness-raising groups and discussions. It was so important being in constant contact with lesbians like me and share our experiences. Their presence validated mine, their stories made sense to me.

I came from a religious background and was always against the church, even as a child. When I spoke about this in my group, I was advised to read Mary Daly’s book Gyn/Ecology, which had then just been translated into German. I was 17 then, and suddenly my life made complete sense, everything fitted. I realised what patriarchy meant. I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I also felt strongly that there was something seriously wrong with everyone else: society. My lesbianism made sense in that political context.

I was able to be comfortable in my life and in my own body because of the strong presence of lesbians around me. I was able to understand lesbianism politically because I was raised in the women’s movement and the understanding that lesbianism is political was obvious, always present.

A couple of month ago I attended the Detransition Advocacy Network launch in Manchester and heard the testimonies of the “detransitioned” women speaking there. All of them were lesbians. Their stories was mine in my early years, their hatred of their bodies, their confusion about being female because they didn’t fit sexist stereotypes and loved women. I identified with all of it. I felt strongly connected to their lives and how they felt about their bodies. I was horrified at what had happened to them.

If I hadn’t been born and raised in the middle of the women’s movement with lesbians all around me, if the trans ideology had been around in my days there is no doubt that I would have been a victim of this ideology and might have thought of myself as “trans”. Many lesbians of my generation feel that same connection to young lesbians who feel pressure to “transition”, have “transitioned” or are “detransitioning”

This is why we at Get The L Out UK do what we do, because lesbian visibility help lesbians everywhere.

Get The L Out UK at FiLiA Conference 2019 – What is the Cotton Ceiling – Angela Wild

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 22:33:39 +0000

Get The L Out UK was present on two levels at FiLiA Conference in Bradford (19th and 20th October 2019): Angela Wild spoke at the Violence against Lesbians panel and several Get The L Out UK organisers and sympathisers were involved in the security team led by Liane. Thank you FiLiA for providing a platform to lesbian radical feminist activists.

Angela presented transgenderism’s violence against lesbians in a talk outlining the main ideological and political underpinnings of the “Cotton Ceiling” as part of the latest version of rape culture against lesbians within trans, queer, and gay communities [see the video of her talk above]

The panel also included Susan Hawthorne, Consuelo Rivera Fuentes, and Hilary McCollum. The recording of the whole session is available here.

Angela had previously took part in a FiLiA podcast in which she talks about lesbianism, radical feminism, motherhood, anti-racism, and other important feminist issues.

As Claire Heuchan wrote in AfterEllen, “each panelist took the discussion about violence against lesbians in a different direction. This mosaic of women’s perspectives builds an extraordinary picture. There is the sorrow of life in a world where violence against lesbians is endemic. And there is the magic of women uniting, resisting, building our own platforms and communities”.

On the same day, the security team had to deal with a handful of transactivists [picture right below] who protested the Conference for a few hours outside of the venue.

Pictures of some women of the security team and Get The L Out UK activists and sympathisers

Get The L Out UK at Women’s Liberation 2020

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:13:05 +0000

The title of this women-only workshop was “Lesbians in a straight world: Lesbian erasure and visibility”. Our main speakers were Maji, Liane T, and Charlie Evans. Angela C. Wild and Sarah chaired and introduced the workshop. Below is the transcript of their joint speech.

Transcript (and some more that we did not have the time to say during the 1-hour workshop)

Introduction

Hello women, hello sisters!

We are Angela and Sarah, founding members of Get The L Out UK. We are going to introduce you our fabulous speakers but before that we are going to tell you about a little legend we have at Get The L Out UK. It’s quite simple really. Apparently, whenever a woman says the word “lesbian”, a lesbian somewhere in the world arises and finds the strength to say no to compulsory heterosexuality and fully live her love for women. Imagine then if all of us in this room were shouting the word lesbian three times now? Let’s try? Lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian!

Congratulations, you’ve just said one of the most forbidden words in patriarchy!

Usually, patriarchy calls us bigots, TERFs, man-haters, perverts, ugly, women-who-have-not-found-the-right-man-yet, women-who-behave-like-men. But mainly, they just erase us. You see, patriarchy’s main rule and strategy when it comes to deal with lesbians and the threat we represent is simply to pretend we do not exist in the hope we will go away.

When male homosexuality was a criminal offence in the UK, lesbianism was NOT. This is not an oversight; this does not denote a strange liberal view on female homosexuality that was not accorded to gay men… No, no, no. This is deliberate. You see, passing a law criminalising lesbians means publicly acknowledging that lesbians exist. And acknowledging lesbian existence is dangerous. It could backfire and it could give women dangerous ideas. Imagine ! They could want to be lesbians!!. The unspeakable L word is one aspect of lesbian erasure.

Historically, lesbians are either straightened, “transitioned”or remain unacknowledged. In history books, lesbians’ life contributions are routinely ignored by mainstream historians. It’s just like they never existed. Without the work of lesbian historians, those lesbians do not even make it into history books. If the lesbian can’t be ignored, all reference to her lesbianism is erased, making it look like the lesbian was in fact heterosexual. Nothing to see here…

With queer ideology, patriarchy has found a brand new way to erase lesbians: post-mortem “transition”. When dead lesbians are “transitioned”, it is the reference to their femaleness that is erased, they were really men all along. Problem solved.

These strategies of erasure, straightening or “transition” are not confined to history, they are also applied to living lesbians. Today, a lot of lesbians still live in the closet, for fear of violence or being ostracised. this is also reinforcing lesbian erasure. Many contemporary lesbians only ever met a lesbian while adults. As a result many lesbians come out after one or several heterosexual experiences. Compulsory heterosexuality is a reality for many of us, many of us were coerced, pressured in heterosexual relationships in our younger years.

The cotton ceiling is nothing but the latest version of that phenomenon. Transgenderism’s core aim is to conquer the lesbian body. With transgenderism, men in the GBT see lesbians as the ultimate frontier to colonise and they try to do it through the raping of lesbians and through the “transing” of lesbians, especially lesbians who do not conform to men’s fantasy about what women should look like, those who do not conform to femininity.

Those of us who have survived and escaped the trap of compulsory heterosexuality what ever its shape and who finally manage to call ourselves lesbians are then told we are not “real lesbians” because of that heterosexual past, or because we used to identify as men. “It is just a passing phase” is a sentence lesbian hear a lot still today.

Around the world, patriarchy is based on men’s institutionalised and unlimited sexual access to women’s bodies. The very existence of lesbians threatens this system of male domination because our exclusive love and desire for women does not include men and because we are not privately owned by men. That’s why they erase us, economically coerce us, harass us, beat us, rape us, murder us, here in the UK and everywhere in the world, today and across centuries.

The lack of recognition of violence against lesbians as a anti-lesbian hate crime means that the pressure on lesbians to be invisible or heterosexual, the rape culture we have to navigate, the conversion therapy we go through, the misogynist medical abuse against those of us who are pressured to transition, AND all the consequences this have on our lives, bodies and mental health, are not given the attention they deserve, not acknowleged, not recognised as real issue, not even in most feminist circles. When lesbians are invisible, our oppression is also invisibilised.

The only times patriarchy allows some lesbian visibility, it is actually humiliation through pornification or complete surrender to men’s misogynistic interests and values. This institutionalised anti-lesbianism directly benefits men: when they rape us, they get applause from their brothers. When they pornify us, they get money. When they use us as tokens for their capitalist companies or political agenda, they get power.

These are also aspects of lesbian erasure.

Here at Get The L Out UK, we think that, to paraphrase Black lesbian feminist sheroe Audre Lorde, our silence will not protect us. That’s why we’ve been doing uncompromising lesbian visibility actions for almost two years now. Our journeys to lesbianism and those stories you will hear today reflect some of the aspects of lesbian erasure and our collective struggle to promote lesbian visibility. This is why at Get The L Out UK we welcome and celebrate lesbians from all backgrounds and with diverse life history.

In 2018, we were at London Pride. In 2019, we were at Swansea Pride, Vienna Europride, and Manchester Pride, sometimes on our own, sometimes joined by feminist groups Object! Resisters United, and Make More Noise, and always with amazingly brave and inspiring lesbians and female allies. Other UK groups have also organised actions at Pride events in Leeds, Liverpool, Lancaster, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Bradford. Lesbians’ thirst for liberation and autonomy is international. Our first action was inspired by the courage of lesbians who showed visibility at Pride events in New Zealand, Canada, and the US.

We have had the honour of directly working with lesbians from Serbia, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Austria, and next month we’ll be in Italy. In the past few months, we have been pleased to see the online and offline emergence of Get The L Out Korea, Get The L Out Sweden, Get The L Out Spain, and Get The L Out Asia. All of this happened thanks to the work of lesbian feminists who do not get any funding from men’s institutions, and who refuse to work with men, whether these men are gay, left-wing, right-wing or anything else.

Conclusion

You have heard today of the stories of three women and their struggles to acknowledge their love for women. we have tried to bring you different perspectives across generations, race, class and countries. There are many more perspectives out there and we cannot claim to be able to represent them all in such a short workshop and we hope that this has given you some valuable perspective, and the curiosity to hear some more. We also hope that you start to understand why lesbian visibility is so important for lesbian existence.

Today, as we meet to celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the women’s liberation movement, we also assess our collective situation as women and as lesbians in the patriarchy. While this is not the aim of this workshop It is useful to look back at the seven demands of women’s liberation:

1 – Equal pay now

2 – Equal education and job opportunities

3 – Free contraception and abortion on demand

4 – Free 24hr nurseries

5 – Financial and legal independence

6 – An end to all discrimination against lesbians and a woman’s right to define her own sexuality

7 – Freedom from intimidation by threat or use of violence or sexual coercion, regardless of marital status and an end to all laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men’s aggression towards women

In today’s context we have a duty to look at our feminist movement and make sure that lesbians are not yet again erased. We cannot simply appear in statements and manifestos in brackets among the “diversity” of women (i.e. those who are not white, middle-class, able-bodied, and heterosexual), and neither can women of colour, disabled women, working-class women, and other groups of women who are marginalised within the movement. It is our job to point it out today, not with antagonism but with honesty and respect and in the spirit of constructive criticism and with the hope to raise some important points leading to improvements.

As lesbians we know that discrimination against lesbians is endemic. We know that patriarchy has found new ways to oppress us. We also know from the stories you’ve heard today and many others that women have not achieved our right to define our own sexuality .

As lesbians in agreement with Adrienne Rich’s classic article “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian existence”, we understand the enforcement of heterosexuality upon ALL women not as a side issue affecting lesbians alone; but a cornerstone of women’s oppression. It concerns us all.

This ignorance of the centrality of lesbian issues from some of our heterosexual sisters is sometimes due to lack of experience and understanding of our challenges as lesbians. It has lead to many separations and divisions in our movement at least since Betty Friedan and the Lavender Menace’s resistance. We cannot afford more divisions. Lesbians need to be heard in the women’s movement, lesbian’s work need to be acknowledged by our heterosexual sisters.

So, we’d like to end this by sharing some ideas of what you could do to support your lesbian sisters:

1 – Question if you are not yourself reproducing some of patriarchal erasure of lesbians. Don’t erase lesbians, say the world lesbian when referring to a lesbian. Do you consider lesbian is a dirty world? It is your responsibility to deconstruct why. Lesbian feminists have proved again and again that we are pioneers in feminist activism and theory. This is because our material existence is such that we 1. are usually the first to get attacked by patriarchy and its various backlashes against feminism and 2. are not attached to men in our daily and political lives and therefore we tend to have a more radical and autonomous sex-class consciousness. Disengaging from lesbian erasure as a non-lesbian therefore means that you need to acknowledge lesbian’s work on the issue(s) you’re working on.

2 – Listen and engage more with lesbians stories

3 -Help amplify lesbian voices. If you are holding an event, make sure you platform lesbians with a lesbian standpoint.

4 – Read more lesbian feminist texts

5 – Donate to lesbian groups

6 – Join a lesbian action (if they welcome non-lesbians)

The future is female. The future is lesbian!

Get The L Out Lesbian Visibility at Manchester Pride 2019

admin — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:15:03 +0000

On Saturday 24/08/2019, a group of women marched in front of Manchester Pride to stand for lesbian rights.

Like every time, this action would not have been possible without the sisterhood between women and the presence and determination of the women who marched but also the help and support of the team of invisible women working behind the scene.

We thank Paula, our amazing Welfare & Entertainment manager, Jackie and Sofia for their brilliant work as part of the Twitter team, and the countless Twitter activists who have shared our action. We also thank CM, Thomasin, Charlie, Katy, Rebekah, Helen, Lou, Janice, Suzan, Hannah and all the other activists who want to remain anonymous.

We are proud to have marched with you. And thank you ResistersUnited, Object!, and Make More Noise for the support and participation.

Amongst us were detransitioners, cotton ceiling rape survivor, trans widow, mother of transitioning children, lifelong lesbians, late bloomers, political lesbians, lesbian allies, prostitution survivor, domestic violence survivors, rape survivors, disabled women, women with PTSD, mixed-race women, white women, women from different countries and ethnic background, working-class and middle-class women, mothers, childfree women, with ages ranging from 19 to 60+

All of us came to this fight with our background and our own experiences. We respect and honour each woman’s trajectory to feminism and lesbianism. We need each of our perspectives because it makes us stronger.

As lesbians, we are united by our exclusive love and desire for women! And we are united with all women by our sisterhood!

***A gay male photographer was later expelled from Manchester Pride for documenting our action as Claire Heuchan reports in AfterEllen.

Lesbian Visibility at Leeds and Liverpool Prides 2019

admin — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:00:01 +0000

under construction

OPINION: Lesbians need to get the L out of the LGBT+ community

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 21:48:55 +0000

Thomas Reuters Foundation News website published an opinion piece by Angela Wild, Get The L Out co-founder.

The full text of this piece follows:

Angela Wild is a lesbian feminist activist, researcher and co-founder of Get The L Out, lesbian activist group.

When a few of my lesbian friends and I decided to march uninvited in front of the Pride march in Londonlast year to promote lesbian visibility within an increasingly misogynistic and anti-lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (GBT) movement, we had no idea this would cause such a huge backlash from the GBT community itself.

We had no idea that we would be attacked by officials of GBT organisations as well as by most of the British press.

From being called “transphobic bigots”, “hateful” and “Nazis” who should be “dragged out by our saggy tits”, to having our personal details published on social media and receiving rape and death threats, the supposedly progressive mainstream seemed to have slightly overreacted to the fact that a small group of lesbians were simply marching at Pride in London.

Our crime? We simply dared to reclaim the right to define what a lesbian is.

The definition is – and should remain – “a woman – in the biological sense of the word – exclusively emotionally and sexually attracted to women”.

As lesbians we retain the right to say what we find sexually attractive, irrespective of gender identity, thank you very much.

The fact that such a statement is now labelled hateful says much about the misogyny of those who condemned us.

Lesbians in 2019 are constantly vilified and excluded from the GBT community for stating their exclusive sexual preference.

Interestingly, we are routinely told there is no research to support our stance by a GBT movement that is funded precisely to do this research and stand up for us, but is clearly too busy looking the other way or burying its head in the sand to care.

To confront this bias, Get The L Out has just published research on what we have termed the “cotton ceiling”.

If you have never heard the term, you can just translate it into “the first research on the sexual pressure and sexual violence experienced by lesbians at the hands of what we define as ‘transwomen’”.

Our research findings show that lesbians are under huge pressure within their LGBT+ groups to accept transwomen as sexual partners so as not to be labelled as trans-exclusionary radical feminists – or Terfs – and subsequently excluded by their GBT groups.

Our research shows the invasion of lesbian dating sites by men (whether they identify as women or not); women’s fear of going on a date with a person who could potentially turn out to be biologically male; and the complete disappearance of lesbian-only spaces leading to difficulties in meeting like-minded women.

Lesbians who responded to our survey also reported experiencing sexual violence from transwomen ranging from online grooming, domestic and sexual violence as part of a relationship, sexual harassment, sexual assault (including in women’s toilets), coercion and rape.

Women who are critical of gender ideology are routinely accused of being on the “wrong side of history”.

However, our findings throw up several questions:

Who is on the wrong side of history when the GBT community operates a large-scale gaslighting of lesbians to accept the mantra that “trans women are women”; penises are deemed to be a female organ; and heterosexual intercourse is now redefined as a lesbian sexual practice?
Who is on the wrong side of history when the GBT community uncritically supports a population of transwomen who identify as lesbians to coerce lesbians into having sex with transwomen against their will?
Who is on the wrong side of history when lesbians’ sexual boundaries are disrespected and publicly demonised as hateful by the very charities whose purpose it is to defend them?
Who are the GBT organisations protecting by refusing to engage with lesbians’ very serious concerns?

Major gay, bisexual and trans organisations such as Stonewall and Pride in London should hang their heads in shame for ignoring our rights.

They do not represent us.

FEMINIST CURRENT ARTICLE: Lesbian visibility matters now more than ever

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 17:33:49 +0000

From https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/06/18/lesbian-visibility-matters-now-more-than-ever/

« Get The L Out is about more than defending lesbian’s sexual and political boundaries — it is also about creating a common future for lesbians and other women.

June 18, 2019 by Sarah

The 2019 Pride season is on, and it seems the climate gets stormier with every passing year. Last month at Swansea Pride, Angela C. Wild, a member of Get The L Out, was dragged out from the front of the parade by four police officers. In March, London LGBT+ Community Pride (the community interest company in charge of organizing this year’s Pride in London Parade) released a statement (which has since been removed) reiterating their apology for the “transphobia” at last year’s event, saying:

“We will not let Pride be used as a platform to spread transphobic hate again. We have learned from last year, we have listened, and we are doing everything we can to avoid anything like this happening again.”

As such, London LGBT+ Community Pride says they will be partnering with the Metropolitan Police, Westminster City Council, and the Greater London Authority to increase “security.” In 2018, lesbians throughout the West attended Pride marches to speak out against lesbian erasure by queer and trans politics. I was one of eight lesbians who marched uninvited at the front of the Pride in London Parade and was labelled “transphobic” by the mayor of London, as were my sisters in Get The L Out.

Our action was guided by one key principle: lesbian visibility. While the Pride Parade claims to represent everyone in the “LGBT family,” it does not. A 2016 survey done by Her, a social networking and dating app for lesbian and “queer” women, found that 31 per cent of women surveyed reported not feeling comfortable or welcomed at Pride. Since the arrival of trans activism, this problem has been exacerbated, as women not only feel unwelcome, but lesbians in particular are being actively pushed out of Pride events.

Queer communities and “progressive” heterosexual society alike claim to support lesbians’ right to assert our own sexual and political boundaries, but today’s trans activist movement tells a different story. We decided not to take this (actual) exclusion lying down, and jumped in front of the Pride in London Parade last July in order to give a voice to all the lesbians who feel erased and silenced due to gender identity ideology and queer politics. We carried signs that named the problem — “Transgenderism erases lesbians” — and that rejected the erasure of lesbians in the queer movement: “Lesbian not queer” and “Lesbian = female homosexual.”

Many words have been used to describe our action and the women involved: “protest,” “anti-trans,” “hateful,” “bigoted,” “old,” “bitches,” “saggy tits,” “TERFs.” In truth, we are simply unapologetic lesbians and feminists. Get The L Out means removing the already marginalized “L” from an alliance that is failing lesbians.

Trans and queer politics are erasing lesbians on at least two levels. First, transgenderism is effectively selling a (post) modern version of the Victorian concept of “female and male brains” by claiming that those brains can be in the “wrong body,” thereby enforcing rigid gender roles in a regressive and anti-feminist way. Femininity and masculinity — concepts usually used by feminists to refer to the roles imposed on individuals based on our sex, which have the effect of creating and enforcing a social hierarchy where men are on top and women at the bottom — are said, under this ideology, to be something one is born with and an essential part of our individual nature. This would necessarily mean that women pushed into wearing unhealthy, painful feminine clothes and shoes; forced into subordination and passivity; and exploited in the workplace and in the household were born into these circumstances — an idea feminists have fought from the get-go.

Young lesbians — especially those who do not conform to femininity — are particularly vulnerable to internalized anti-lesbianism and hatred of their female bodies. For girls, puberty usually rhymes with an increased awareness of their bodies and a feeling of shame and self-hatred when they do not conform to rigid, heterosexist beauty ideals. Moreover, adolescence is a time when pressure toward heterosexuality from peers, family, and the media is the strongest. Sex education, pop culture, and questions from family and friends about “boys” all perpetuate the idea that practicing heterosexuality is the ultimate sign that a girl is becoming a woman. For lesbian teenagers, this means that the gap they perceive between their female bodies and beauty ideals is also tainted with the understanding that even if they do try to align with those beauty ideals, they will never be “the perfect woman” because they are not heterosexual. And when feminism — the only politics that offers a way to understand, criticize, and reject these norms — is silenced and vilified by both mainstream society and LGBT groups, some young lesbians feel even more deeply uncomfortable with their bodies.

At Transgender Trend, Gill, a lesbian detransitioner, writes:

“Everything changed as I reached the teenage years. My body changing caused me some distress, and I had thoughts around whether I would simply rather have the body of a boy. At this point I was aware of my attraction towards girls.”

Pushed by medical institutions and queer culture to see this experience as a sign of “transness,” some young lesbians are having mastectomies and/or taking hormones, thereby harming their bodies under this new “progressive” ideology. “Make no mistake, this is modern conversion therapy,” Jo Bartosch argues.

Second, transgender ideology forces heterosexuality on lesbians, pressuring women to accept men as female and accusing lesbians of “transphobia” when they won’t sleep with or date men who claim to be “women.” In her report on the cotton ceiling for Get The L Out, Angela C. Wild found that “lesbians are routinely being coerced into sexual relations with transwomen.”

But the story of Get The L Out is not just about protesting the addition of the “T.” It is also a story of lesbians who refuse to be subordinated by gay men in the movement. In her 2003 book, Unpacking Queer Politics, Sheila Jeffreys, a British lesbian feminist academic, argued that gay men’s misogyny and anti-lesbianism is at the root of lesbian erasure within LGBT culture. Despite a homophobic culture, gay men are men and lesbians are women, and therefore patriarchal dynamics still play out. When doctors were too scared to care for gay men during the AIDS epidemic, lesbians organized political campaigns and volunteered en masse at hospitals, despite the fact that gay men continued to insult and humiliate them. “We’d call them ‘fish’ and make fun of the butch dykes in the bars — and yet, there they were,” one gay man who survived the epidemic told British newspaper, the i.

The free labour and care lesbians have given to gay men over the past few decades is yet to be fully acknowledged. Meanwhile, gay men still tend to treat lesbians like second-class citizens and sexual objects. For lesbians, sexual assaults and sexualized comments from gay men are not uncommon.

For The Good Men Project, Yolo Akili writes:

“At a recent presentation, I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up.”

Testimonies of such sexual assaults are usually ignored because of the idea that sexual assaults are not about domination but sexual attraction, and in this flawed logic the claim that a gay man sexually assaulted a woman does not make any sense.

Further evidence of how gay male politics play out against lesbians is in the misogyny of drag queen culture, one of the pillars of gay culture. While there’s nothing wrong with what is called “cross-dressing,” men mocking women for their oppression and gaining money and fame on their backs is not solidarity, especially when this practice is rooted in gay men’s sexist ideas of what a woman is. Drag queens do more than just put on feminine clothes, they take female names and try to mimic the female body by wearing fake breasts and vulvas and imitating our voices — the same patriarchal stereotypes that men claiming to be transwomen use to justify their “identity.”

“LGBT” is, in practice, a coalition that is not based on equality between all its members but on the political, economic, cultural, social, and sexual domination of men over lesbians. What Get The L Out activists have not had the platform to say is that our activism is about more than removing the “L” from the “GBT.” It is also a call to lesbians to reconsider where we put our energy, who we work with, and what we want to work towards: women’s liberation.

There will be no lesbian liberation without women’s liberation and no women’s liberation without lesbian liberation. Because lesbians exclusively love women, they are living proof that women can survive, be happy, and be fulfilled without men in their intimate and daily lives. As such, lesbianism is in itself a political and revolutionary act under patriarchy.

When Monique Wittig, a French radical lesbian author unfairly co-opted by Butler and queer theorists, wrote in The Straight Mind and Other Essays (1992) that “lesbians are not women,” she did not mean it in a biological sense. Rather, she meant that lesbians do not fit the patriarchal definition of what a woman is or should be: an adult human female who can be privately appropriated by adult human males via heterosexuality. It is because lesbians have sexual desires and boundaries that do not include men that their womanhood has been negated, that they have been compared to men (without ever reaching their social or political power), and that they also experience a specific type of oppression on top of the usual misogyny all women experience.

Lesbians have everything to gain by breaking this abusive political relationship with men of the GBT and focusing on ourselves, as well as working with other women towards our collective liberation. However, given the history of feminism and the current dynamics within gender-critical and radical feminism, there are several challenges related to women’s different experiences of patriarchal oppression that we need to overcome to make a serious step towards uniting women.

First, there is still some work to do to unite women across sexual orientation. Heterosexual and bisexual women in the feminist movement need to acknowledge the anti-lesbianism of patriarchy, and that their own words and behaviours can contribute to this. From heterosexual feminists’ historical fear of lesbianism for the reputation of the movement, as expressed by Betty Friedan’s rejection of what she called the “Lavender Menace” in 1969, to casual accusations of “imitating men” and accusations of “biphobia,” when lesbians claim their rights to lesbian-only spaces and sexuality, heterosexual and bisexual feminists’ anti-lesbian behaviours have pushed some lesbians towards men of the GBT.

Lesbians also have a lot to learn from all women who dedicate their lives to feminism. The radical feminist critique of patriarchy, pornograhy, and harmful practices of femininity, including arguments developed by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, can enable lesbians to get rid of our own internalized misogyny and self-hatred.

The other main challenge we need to overcome is the ongoing impact of white supremacy on the feminist movement, which has serious consequences for lesbians of colour. The rewriting of the history of the 1969 Stonewall riots by trans activists is a good example. The queer community commonly presents Marsha P. Johnson as the “transwoman who threw the first brick,” thereby starting the Stonewall riots. But this is not true. Thanks to this popular myth, two males, often presented as “transwomen” or simply “women,” are getting a statue in New York. This will cost the city an estimated $750,000 and is taking place after a consultation in which “98 per cent of respondents said they would like to see a woman honoured who was committed to social reform or justice.”

A woman who was committed to social justice for black women and lesbians was Stormé DeLarverie, who, after being hit on the head with a billy club and handcuffed, turned to the crowd and yelled, “Why don’t you do something!?” DeLarverie is the woman who started the riots at the Stonewall Inn, but will not get a statue. Claire Heuchan, writing about DeLarverie’s erasure from LGBT history, argues that black lesbians are the first victims of lesbian erasure: “Black representation, female representation, and lesbian representation aren’t always straightforward to find — especially when you’re searching for all three at once.”

The erasure of lesbians of colour from history takes place in a context of racist and misogynist structures and ideologies that dehumanize (and usually animalize) women of colour. From a patriarchal point of view, femininity and womanhood are conflated by enforcing gender roles on women. As black feminist authors and academics such as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks wrote, under white patriarchy, the ultimate femininity is white, and the ultimate woman can only be white, which leaves women of colour somewhere outside of womanhood and their bodies othered.

Priyanka Meenakshi writes about her experience growing up as a young lesbian of colour in the UK:

“I could not meet the markers of being Girl — as whiteness sets the standard for true and pure femininity, my brownness and hairiness relegated me consistently UnGirl…

… Although I was expected to be beautiful, I was consistently conceived of as ugly. And although I was expected to be desirable, I would never be desired — I was an aberration.”

When racist and anti-lesbian misogyny is ignored in feminist groups, it creates further divides among women and weakens lesbian feminism and communities.

Get The L Out does not mean isolating ourselves; it means making lesbian feminism revolutionary again and working with other feminists towards women’s liberation. The way this alliance between lesbians and other women will look is still under construction, and there are different ways of collaborating, depending on the national and local context. The only sure thing today is that if we do not leave this abusive political relationship with men, more of us will be victims of male violence, and our lesbian sisters of younger generations will not know a world where lesbianism is allowed, let alone celebrated. »

FEMINIST CURRENT PODCAST: Lesbians at ground zero — Angela C. Wild on gender identity ideology and lesbian autonomy

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 17:25:00 +0000

Podcast available at https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/04/11/podcast-lesbians-at-ground-zero-angela-c-wild-on-gender-identity-ideology-and-lesbian-autonomy/

« Meghan Murphy speaks with Angela C. Wild of #GetTheLOut about her new report about the impact of trans ideology on lesbians.

April 11, 2019 by Meghan Murphy

The conflict between trans activists and lesbians is reaching new heights, as lesbians are being shut out of their own events, movements, and spaces. Moreover, lesbianism in and of itself is being disappeared by gender identity ideology, as the word “woman” is said to be undefinable, and a category that can include males. What is a lesbian, if not a female homosexual?

But lesbians are pushing back against this activism and ideology, and fighting for lesbian visibility. On today’s episode, I speak with Angela C. Wild, a member of #GetTheLOut, who recently published, “Lesbians At Ground Zero: How Trans Ideology is Conquering the Female Body,” a study looking at how gender identity ideology and trans activism impact lesbians.

Angela C. Wild is one of the organizers behind the #GetTheLOut protest, which took place during Pride in London last year. She is a lesbian feminist activist, a writer, and a political artist based in the UK. Her work focuses particularly on challenging institutions such as compulsory heterosexuality and motherhood, on protecting and creating women-only spaces, and promoting lesbian rights and visibility. »

FEMINIST CURRENT INTERVIEW: Angela C. Wild of #GetTheLOut on Pride in London and Lesbian erasure

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 17:17:17 +0000

From https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/07/17/interview-angela-c-wild-getthelout-pride-london-lesbian-erasure/

« Meghan Murphy interviews Angela C. Wild about the recent Lesbian protest at Pride in London and the state of the LGBT movement today.

July 17, 2018 by Meghan Murphy

“Get The L Out” is a group of *Lesbian and feminist individuals and organizations who oppose the increasingly anti-Lesbian and misogynistic LGBT movement and the erasure of Lesbians.

Angela C. Wild is one of the organizers behind the #GetTheLOut protest, which took place during Pride in London this year. She is a Lesbian feminist activist, a writer, and a political artist based in the UK. Her work focuses particularly on challenging institutions such as compulsory heterosexuality and motherhood; on protecting and creating women-only spaces; and promoting Lesbian* rights and visibility.

~~~

MEGHAN MURPHY: Tell me a bit about yourself — when did you first come out as a lesbian and what brought you to lesbian activism?

ANGELA C. WILD: I became a Lesbian feminist in 2013. I use Adrienne Rich’s definition of the term, “Lesbian feminist”: a woman whose feminist politics, consciousness, and sexuality are interlinked and developed together; a woman who sees heterosexuality as an oppressive institution for women. As a woman who was trapped in heterosexuality for a huge part of my life, when I heard about the “cotton ceiling” in 2012, I was outraged and saw it immediately as an assault against Lesbians’ right to sexual boundaries, as well as an assault against every woman’s right to sexual boundaries, as it pushes compulsory heterosexuality on women. My lesbianism and my critique of the trans ideology developed simultaneously and are inherently linked.

MM: You and your group are behind a website called “Get The L Out” — what does that mean? Get the L out of what? What is the message?

AW: “Get the L out of LGBT” is an expression that has been used by Lesbians for some time now. The LGBT community does not represent nor does it advocate for Lesbians. As is always the case, when women organize in mixed groups, men’s issues take priority over women’s issues, men’s voices and concerns are centred, and women’s concerns are dismissed as irrelevant or secondary. Women have witnessed this on the left, in the anarchist movement, in the environmental movement, etc. Unsurprisingly, what is happening today in the LGBT community is no different. When the sexual rights of men who call themselves “transwomen” or Lesbians take priority over the rights of women to define their sexuality then as Lesbians, we have a problem.

MM: Your group argues that “lesbian rights are under attack by the trans movement” and you “encourage lesbians everywhere to leave the LGBT and form their own independent movement, as well as to be vocal and take action against the proposed changes to the GRA.” How do you see lesbian rights as being under attack by the trans movement and why do you oppose proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) in the UK?

AW: We witness Lesbian erasure in our lives and in the lives of Lesbians around us every day. It is very telling that a lot of gay men — including the PinkNews reporter who filmed the protest — are not familiar with the term “Lesbian erasure.” It reveals how unconcerned they are about the issues we face as Lesbians.

Lesbian erasure takes many forms: it can mean lack of representation or negative representation in the media, and it can also mean the denial of historical Lesbian figures in history (the first wave and suffragette movement is full of Lesbians, yet few know this). Today, it means that Lesbians are routinely pressured — via Lesbian dating sites and forums, women’s festivals, Lesbian gatherings — to include men who call themselves “lesbians” in our communities and as sexual partners. It means actual Lesbians are being shamed for not wanting to have relationships with men who call themselves “Lesbians” (this is what trans activists have labelled the “cotton ceiling,” referring to the fact that lesbians reject trans-identified males as intimate/sexual partners).

Today, in the LGBT community, Lesbians cannot openly say that they are not attracted to penises or would not date a “pre-op transwoman,” because this is now considered “transphobic.” Look at what happened to Arielle Scarcella, the Lesbian YouTuber who has been targeted for saying she would not date a “pre-op transwoman.” In the name of “inclusivity” and “progress,” we have reached a stage wherein same sex attraction is called “hate speech” — this is what Pride and London Mayor Sadiq Kahn’s comments condemning our action communicate very loudly to Lesbians. Reframing females who are attracted to other females as somehow “bigoted” or “hateful” functions as a vicious form of misogyny, because it denies women’s right to have sexual boundaries. It is clear anti-lesbian propaganda enforcing compulsory heterosexuality, under the guise of political correctness.

We also know that “gender non-conforming” girls (what we used to call “tomboys”) are transitioned at an alarming rate in the UK (Transgender Trend and Lesbian Rights Alliance have done crucial work on this issue). As Lesbians who do not perform femininity, and as feminists who campaign against sex stereotypes, we cannot support the social or medical transitioning of women and girls who reject sexist stereotypes. Refusing to look like or behave in a “feminine way” does not make one a boy.

In the UK, the government has begun a consultation process regarding proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). Trans activists are campaigning to make it easier for people to “choose their gender,” meaning that a man could simply “self-identify” as a woman in order to legally be considered female, without any process or procedure. It would make legal what is actually already happening in practice today, which is that men calling themselves women are being given access to women-only spaces, all-women shortlists, female prisons (as offenders), women’s toilets, rape crisis centres, transition houses, change rooms, pools, etc…

Fighting these changes is essential, but we also need stronger sex-based protections. We need to maintain the unequivocal rights of women to have our segregated spaces on the basis of our sex, not “gender identity.”

These discussions need to be part of the consultation process, which is why women need to be vocal now. We also need to highlight the fact that Lesbians need to be heard on this issue. Under the UK Equality Act 2010, there is an evident clash of rights between Lesbians (females who are sexually attracted to other females) and so-called “transwomen” (including men who identify as “lesbians”). In this case, the category “sexual orientation” is in direct conflict with the category “gender identity.” Same-sex attraction is a protected category under the law, but if any male person can identify as a woman and as a lesbian, this nullifies the rights of Lesbians to exclude males from our sexual life. Lesbians are attracted to other women on the basis of their sex, not their “gender identity,” yet men claiming to be Lesbians insist we accept them as sexual partners on the basis of their “gender identity.” It is this new definition of “Lesbian” that we reject. Why should the rights of men who identify as “women” supersede the rights of Lesbians?

MM: Your inaugural protest took place at London Pride on July 7th. Can you tell me about that? What did you do and why?

AW: First, I want to say that the group of women who have worked together to make this happen have been active for many years around this issue. I got involved in 2012, but some of us were aware and active way before that. In the past, we conducted a series of actions, including protesting the 2014 London Dyke March, because the main speakers for a number of years were men (who call themselves “transwomen”). The media took little notice of our protest then, because, in my opinion, no one in the mainstream cares about dykes.

Taking the protest to Pride (which includes both men and women, so naturally is a male-centred event and receives huge media attention) seemed like the obvious thing to do. A number of Lesbians worldwide (New Zealand, Baltimore, San Francisco, and more…) have demonstrated against the increasingly misogynistic GBT movement this year alone. We felt it was important to show that British-based Lesbians were fighting back as well, because this is a global problem. Other women who demonstrated as part of their local marches, carrying signs challenging trans activism and advocating for Lesbians, have been harassed and sometimes beaten.

We decided to not march in the Pride March, because we do not feel part of Pride as its message exclude us. Instead, we decided to confront the parade by standing in front with banners explaining our message and with flyers to distribute to the crowd. The idea was to disrupt and delay the march for long enough for us to be seen. We had a GoPro camera to film our own protest. We have very little access to the media to explain our message, so guerrilla tactics such as this are the only way we found to reach a wider audience. We hadn’t made definite plans in terms of the action, so improvised as we went along.

It is incredible to realize what a huge corporate machine Pride has become, with sponsors and officials all queuing up to show how progressive they are — it is a massive business opportunity for them, so of course Pride has become an incredibly apolitical event. It is also very guarded and regimented, so there is no way we could have obtained a pass to march in the parade given that our pro-women politics are perceived as hate speech. So, a few minutes before the beginning of the march, we just jumped in.

MM: What was the reaction to your protest from others at the march and from the media?

AW: It was very interesting to witness people’s reactions. Many understood the situation and what we were advocating for, and were supportive of what we were doing. This is also true for a number of gay men, who I think begin to realize how inherently homophobic the trans movement really is.

The general media reaction was (unsurprisingly) to condemn the action as anti-trans, because, naturally, stating that Lesbians do not either want or have penises is seen as an attack on men. All these men are completely obsessed with their penises don’t you think?

The main feedback we received after the demonstration came in the form of a huge amount of supportive emails, sent privately by women who say they agree with us but cannot say so publicly. This is very telling and shows that a majority of Lesbians and women, in general, are threatened into compliance by the trans movement or kept silenced by fear. This is the state women and Lesbians are in today. I don’t see any reason to see Pride as a celebration of the progress we supposedly have made.

MM: PinkNews reports that Pride in London issued a statement “rescinding their earlier positions and issuing an apology to trans attendees, [and] condemning GetTheLOut’s actions.” The statement reads:

“We are sorry.

Yesterday a group of individuals labelled as “Get The L Out!”, who were not a registered parade group, forced their way to the front of the parade to stand on the rainbow flag. Their behaviour was shocking and disgusting, and we condemn it completely.

The lesbian board members at Pride in London made their anger towards the unsanctioned group clear and our organisation as a whole condemns their actions. The protest group showed a level of bigotry, ignorance and hate that is unacceptable.

We reject what this group stands for. They do not share our values, which are about inclusion and respect and support for the most marginalised parts of our community.

We are proud of our trans volunteers, proud of the trans groups that are in our parade, proud of our trans speakers at events and proud of the trans people who take part in our campaigns and proud of those who cheered even louder for them yesterday…

… A comment from Patricia Curtis, Board Member: TransPALS

‘It’s disappointing that anti-trans activists decided to hijack the front of a parade, an insult to all the hardworking staff in the NHS whose place they stole.

But their vile stunt failed. London is a place that doesn’t tolerate hate. The reaction of the crowds to our groups was inspiring. We felt their support and goodwill all the way from Portland Place to Trafalgar Square.’

What do you think about this statement? Can you respond?

AW: It all comes down to this: does society at large and the GBT community accept that women and Lesbians have a fundamental right to sexual boundaries?

It would seem that they don’t.

Today, in 2018, Lesbians who refuse so-called “transwomen” as sexual partners receive death threats and rape threats. The Pride committee called women who state that the penis is a male organ which has nothing to do with Lesbians “bigoted,” “ignorant,” and hateful.” Pride, as part of the GBT community, needs to be held accountable for their complicity with this modern form of rape culture which targets lesbians, specifically.

We protested in order to protect our rights and on behalf of all the Lesbians being intimidated, threatened, and silenced. This is what the LGBT “community” is supposed to do. Today, Lesbians are not only not supported by the movement, but actually targeted by it. This is unacceptable and we will not accept it.

MM: It is often claimed that “the Pride movement was begun by trans people.” For example, it is repeated online ad nauseam that “a transwoman threw the first brick” at Stonewall. Is this true?

AW: Here is another obvious example of Lesbian erasure and, in that particular case, black Lesbian erasure. It was a black Lesbian named Stormé DeLarverie who started up the riots. Claire Heuchan recently published a brilliant write up about it: when the police attacked, DeLarverie hit back, then was arrested. Heuchan explains that when Stormé complained about being cuffed too tightly, an officer hit her with a billy club, so she turned to the crowd and yelled, “Why don’t you guys do something?” This launched the Stonewall riots. Historically speaking, transgenderism was not an ideology at the time. Marsha and Sylvia, who are usually credited with starting the riot, were not “transwomen” — they were gay men and drag queens. This really needs to be seen as a patriarchal rewriting of history and erasure of black Lesbians’ significant role in the gay rights movement. The trans movement has not only been claiming gay men and drag queens as “transgender,” but also transing Lesbians in the past, claiming they were really “transmen” (because they were gender non-conforming). The case of Claude Cahun or Radcliff Hall are some of the most obvious example of that trend.

MM: Lesbian feminists have taken up the slogan, “Lesbian not queer.” Why? What does this mean?

AW: “Lesbian” and “queer” have significantly different political connotations. First of all, obviously “Lesbian” refers exclusively to females. Only a woman can be a Lesbian — this is why we do not call ourselves “gay women.” “Gay” and “queer” are used by everyone. Even straight couples call themselves “queer” these days! “Queer” does not mean anything at all, and it certainly does not mean “female who is sexually attracted to other females.”

Queer politics, born from postmodern theory, is in essence anti-feminist. Queer theory claims there is no such thing as the category “woman,” which opened up a path for the trans movement as we know it today. If the category “woman” is seen as politically irrelevant, where does that leave the feminist movement? What are feminists fighting for?

I really like Bit Blair and Ashley Obinwanne’s article about it at After Ellen. They explain that “queer” is a friendly, inclusive, neutral term, whereas “Lesbian” unequivocally means, “I only date women” — “exclusively female only.” That is a political statement in itself. It has a hostile connotation because men hate being excluded from anything (see Marilyn Frye’s notes on separatism and power). A woman calling herself a Lesbian is a political act in and of itself because that means that, by definition, she excludes men, which is forbidden in patriarchy. A Lesbian is a woman who has already said “no” to men’s sexual advances — trans activists who claim to be lesbians are pushing women sexual boundaries. This is rape culture.

MM: What is your advice to lesbians elsewhere — in the US and Canada, for example, where trans activism has similarly taken over and where women who support women-only spaces and who question or criticize violence advocated by trans activists and notions of innate “gender” are branded “bigots” and “TERFs” — in terms of pushing back and defending the rights of women and lesbians?

AW: Apart from raising awareness, this action was taken for women everywhere, to show support for them, to speak on behalf of women who are silenced, and to tell them it can be done. More women have spoken up about the issue of gender identity and trans activism this year than in the last five years. We can win this. I want to see more direct action — this makes us visible and strong, and if we can do it in London, other women can do similar things too where they live and shake things up.

So my advice is this: find like-minded women. That’s the first step. I know it’s tough, but we are everywhere. If you are in a queer environment, leave — this shit is poisonous and it is brainwashing Lesbians. Go online find the radfem community. You will need friends because this is what will keep you sane in this mental environment which forces us to deny the reality we know.

Obviously, disobey. If you support women-only spaces, create those women only-spaces which we are not allowed to have today — even small ones. Have consciousness-raising groups and meet real women in real life — this is the basis of everything. There are a number of spaces that still exist — womyn-only gatherings have happened in France in the last two years, replicated in different parts of Europe this year. Women’s land, I am sure, exists everywhere. Find ones that are near you, go to them, and support them if you can. If you and your group are in a position to create one, do it. This is where the resistance is born in terms of building sisterhood, theory, and activism. It gives us strength and makes us feel as though we are part of a movement– this is why they are forbidden to us.

Trans ideology and trans activism is no different than any male rights movement — it employs the same tactics men use against women to keep us in place: gaslighting, threats of violence, actual violence, shaming, ostracization, economic abuse, name calling, etc. They use these tactics to keep us scared. This is how they maintain power over us. At some point we will collectively need to realize that we need to get past our fear of men, disobey, and take action. »

*Lesbian is capitalized for the purposes of this article as per Mary Daly’s usage, in reference to the writer’s “women-identification” and her rejection of “false loyalty towards men and male myths.” (Daly, 1987.)

Lesbian Visibility at Lancaster Pride 2019

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:33:18 +0000

A group of lesbians from the ReSisters United did an action for lesbian visibility at Lancaster Pride (22/06/2019).

They carried a suffragettes-coloured flag with the slogan « Lesbians don’t have dicks », and banners saying « Cotton ceiling = rape » and « Lesbians don’t have penises – Lesbians are female homosexuals ».

A few gay men and male transactivists gathered a group of about 30 young adults and teenagers to hide the lesbians and their banners, while inciting the group to chant: « transwomen matter ».

One lesbian who took part in the action writes:

“I was later told by an onlooker that this crowd, of mostly teenagers/students, had been encouraged by the male organiser of the event, adult transwomen, who kept their distance, and a drag queen, who themselves did not join in, other than to walk by, pose for a picture. This drag queen, who we understand to be named Ivy Rose, was seen sticking two fingers up at us and then started a chant “Transwomen Matter!” – though nothing about transmen… Isn’t it concerning that they were whispering into the ears of the young people to run across the road, or to chant certain slogans, whilst they, for the most part, stood back? Like sending in the foot soldiers…

Robert Mee, CEO of Lancaster Pride and organiser of the event stood amongst all the young people and said “fuck off you fucking dogs, you’re ruining it”, the swearing was hostile. Some of our group were spat on by the counter protesters and we were all sworn at multiple times.”

Other feminist coverage:

Are Lesbians Welcome at Pride? The answer at Lancaster Pride is no

Lesbian Visibility at Edinburgh Pride 2019

admin — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:02:11 +0000

A dozens of lesbians and allies showed some lesbian visibility at Edinburgh Pride (22/06/2019).

They held banners and placards saying: ‘Lesbian Visibility’, ‘Lesbian, Not Queer’, ‘Transactivism Erases Lesbians’.

In her account of the action, Jackie Mearns writes:

« There was an act of physical aggression when an angry young person grabbed a placard I was holding and tried to rip it up, shouting “TERF” in my face, but this was quickly handled by stewards and police liaison and I’ve honestly faced down worse violence from violent men than a ripped placard.

[…]

But what did chill me and did stir some actual fear for how I and the others might fare on Pride was the speeches given by MSPs from the top of the open top bus. In particular the words of Patrick Harvie, Green MSP, where he felt the need to apologise for the democratic workings of Parliament, and the decision taken this week to put the brakes on GRA reform until the full due consideration and further deliberation by a broad range of groups affected by these reforms and, importantly, the conflation of sex and gender that has infested our policy making.

[…]

I felt Patrick Harvie’s speech inflamed an already dangerous situation for Lesbians on Pride. It did make me fearful, since immediately after, some people started shouting about getting the ‘TERFs’ out – it was obvious they meant us. We had already been blocked in by some very tall people wearing ‘Trans’ and ‘Non-Binary’ flags draped over their shoulders – quite literally and intentionally making us and our ‘Lesbian Visibility’ banners invisible.

[…]

I was dismayed to find out later that my sisters who joined the march were harassed by marchers behind them, had bells rung and whistles painfully blown in their ears and even had a missile thrown at them in the shape of a juice bottle, that fortunately missed them but unfortunately hit a tourist photographing the parade.

[…]

The rally where Lesbians were intentionally blocked-in and made invisible. »

More personal accounts here.

Get The L Out Lesbian Visibility at Europride Vienna 2019

admin — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 23:17:11 +0000

A group of 14 lesbians from Get The L Out marched at the front of the Europride parade in Vienna (15/06/2019). 4 lesbians later joined the initial group at the front.

There was a lesbian labrys flag and banners such as « Lesbian not queer », « Transactivism erases lesbians », « Lesbians don’t have penises », « Cotton ceiling = rape », « Transgenderism harms children », « Everyone knows Black lesbian (female homosexual) Stormé started Stonewall », « Lesbians and Feminists for open borders! Stop sexism, racism, and homophobia! » (in German). We displayed the QR code for the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.

We chanted several slogans: « Lesbians, not queer, we exist », « Stop Lesbian Erasure », « Get the L out of Pride », « LGBT doesn’t speak for me », « Women are not your fetish », « Dykes not dicks ».

Credit to Miljana Ivanovic and Anonymous Sister for the pictures

Facts about the action:

-The biggest group of lesbians nationality-wise is Serbian. The rest of the group came from Austria, UK, France, Hungary, Sweden (and Italy, Spain, Germany in the Twitter team).
-5 of us are under 26 years old

-A male board member of EuroPride claims we were removed but, as the video confirms, we left on our own accord after about 30 minutes because our goals of lesbian visibility were achieved (and we were not booed by the crowd either).

We also handed out flyers: