I’m sorry if this post is long or disorganized, but I’m seriously at my breaking point. I’m the last lesbian left in my friend group. For context I am young, grad school aged. I met a group of AFAB people who I began to hang out with, we were five lesbians and one bi trans guy. Everyone was pretty cool and none of us were super into the political side of trans/LGB rights. We definitely bonded over being gay and in the case of us four lesbians our religious upbringing. For context, all of them are very butch except me who is high femme. In the past we all expressed struggles with our gender identities largely due to religious homophobia and the sexualization of female bodies by society at large. Some of us, myself included, flirted with the idea of transitioning in high school, but eventually wrote it off when we realized we were lesbians.

During the pandemic everything changed. One of my friends, a butch girl, decided to try non-binary identities and he/him pronouns. Now she is socially transitioning and is a man. Her partner also decided to transition and is a man and they are a “gay couple.” We were supportive and didn’t think much of it. This summer as the pandemic waned another lesbian couple we knew announced that one of them was going to be a man. I began to get a sinking feeling in my gut. I didn’t want to say anything about it because I love my trans friends, and I didn’t want to question it in depth. But it seemed odd to me. The final straw was recently when the last two butch lesbians in my friend circle decided to adopt he/him pronouns and become men. I am the last one left. What started as a friend group of four women and a trans dude is now one woman and four trans dudes. As we have grown closer together, my trans friends initial sharing with me about our shared religious experiences with homophobia have turned into revelations that nearly all of them had abusive/absent mother figures. Against my best desires to remain open minded, I began to question why am AFAB person raised in a horribly homophobic environment with an abusive mother would feel alienated from the idea of being a woman

Sometimes I feel that I’m failing my friends by still listening to radical feminist viewpoints, lurking on ovarit, examining the narratives of de transitioners. But there are commonalities in their backgrounds that I cannot ignore any longer. All of them are former butch lesbians who were rejected by religious families. Nearly all have abusive or absent mothers. None of them flirted with the idea of being transgender until they were exposed to the topic in LGBT social circles. As a femme lesbian I don’t see this type of urge to become transgender affecting us in the same way. Sure, some femmes I know use they/them pronouns interchangeably with she/her and act in androgynous ways but they’re never comitted to the idea of becoming a whole ass man. I’m additionally confused and feel guilty as a femme who love love LOVES butch women - and who is increasingly seeing my dating pool turn into men. I would gladly date a feminine looking trans man as I find masculine females attractive but I feel that I would be doing a disservice to that person by still viewing them as female in my eyes. In the end I don’t want to be in what looks like a hetero relationship, I want to be with a masculine woman, but as the transgender craze sweeps through the lesbian community I have become more and more resigned to settling down with a trans man in the future, or with a butch woman who later decides to live as a man.

In short, I’m sorry if this post sounded disorganized or whiny, I’m just questioning a lot of things I’m seeing right now in my community. My gay male friends don’t have half of their friend circles becoming trans women, even if the men in question are feminine AF. I don’t know why the trans thing has become so prevalent amongst butch lesbians in particular and I wish I could have a more PC view on it. As it stands, I resent the fact that butch women are ceasing to exist and I question the motives of my friends to transition.