I can sympathize with your perspective but I have been with this community since we got kicked off Reddit last July. I was in the middle of typing a comment on that sub. I went to submit the comment and learned it was banned. I had found the sub at the beginning of 2020 and it was an oasis of sanity for me, someone who had not been out for that long and peaked through the process of coming out as an adult and looking for resources to help me and coming head to head with disorienting and aggressive gender identity ideology everywhere I looked.

This included my real-life experience of trying to get an in-community therapist while I struggled with the coming out process. I was connected with a “lesbian” therapist I was told could relate to me, who very clearly was a heterosexual male “transbian.” That experience helped me realize a lot of the issues going on. The words “female” and “lesbian” suddenly had no clear meaning. I was left in a position where I realized I couldn’t say, “no, I want an actual woman” or “this person is obviously biologically male and therefore not a lesbian/a woman/like me.” Yet I was a paying customer and this was a service meant to help me, not validate his internal feelings of himself. It was like this in online forums too including all over Reddit. It felt weird to see people just going along with it. When it came to looking for practical information about lesbian sex, Google searches would render porn or guides that were focused on convincing women that of course males and male anatomy were included on lesbian sex, while I wondered if that’s the case how the hell does any girl or woman realize they’re gay? Female anatomy had everything to do with that for me. It was kind of notable that I wanted to eat pussy and that male anatomy did nothing for me. Also no comment anywhere from any LGBTQ orgs about the pornificaition of the word “lesbian.” How even “LGBTQ” orgs treated “lesbian” like a dirty word.

In those lesbian sex resources, I would be deluged by statements about penises not being “male”, “feminine penises,” and “girldick.” That “trans women are biological females.” That because “trans women are women” and “lesbians are women that are attracted to women” that “lesbians are attracted to trans women unless they’re bigots.” I was told directly that it wasn’t possible for me to be a lesbian and not be attracted to trans women because you never know someone’s biological sex and “trans women” can be completely indistinguishable from biological women. So I was either lying out of bigotry or ignorant about my existing attraction to trans-identifying males. Oh yea, and that males who identify as women have no obligation to disclose they are male to me and have every right to assume themselves into my dating pool (and they were alllll over my dating apps).

You know what all of this is? Traumatizing. It made me question my worldview on everything. I lost so much when I came out as gay. I lost what little family support I had. I lost my marriage to my best friend. I lost his family. And I did not have the community support that everyone assumed I had. I felt and still do feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with whatever purports to be the “LGBTQ community.”

This community is not perfect, but it was the only community I found. There is some trauma-bonding going on here. But we are far more civil, and with a few exceptions (especially the ban-evading), more reserved than the TRAs.

I personally want to focus less on the musings of lunatic randos, though the reactions and validation they receive tend to be the telling part. I am burned out, and want to focus my energy into something more productive. But I’m not going to judge those who need to vent here for their own sanity and in dealing with this traumatic experience. We all need this at times. And where else can you say any of this, no matter how nice you try to sound and how much you mutilate language in trying to convey basic thoughts that were uncontroversial 6 years ago?