I got a link to here from one of you, and while I'm not sure if I agree with the radical feminist viewpoint, I am sick to death of the penis worship in r/Actuallesbians.

My story is that although I'm 20 I've assumed I'm bisexual, just very picky with guys, since puberty. I experienced some sexual trauma as a child and when going to a therapist, we spent many sessions trying to unpack my aversion to men sexually and trying to "get over" feeling very uncomfortable when thinking about being intimate with men. I assumed that this feeling was a result of my trauma, not that I'm a lesbian.

It all came to a halt when I got the advice to ask a guy out who I thought was nice/conventionally attractive and I felt so wrong during the whole date, that I knew for a fact I simply have no attraction to men. Not because of trauma, but because I'm just a lesbian regardless of anything.

Where did I go once I had my revelation? Reddit of course! I've always been a casual observer in the LGBT community, since I'd assumed I was bisexual, and of course I want equal rights for everyone. In bisexual spaces it made total sense that trans people were a constant, so far as topics go. While I believed trans women were women on a surface level, I knew intellectually they were not-quite-women. Women, but not female. So it made sense that bisexuals, who are attracted to both males and females, would be very welcoming in their spaces. This compartmentalisation is shocking under further scrutiny, but it simply wasn't something I felt an inclination to explore. TERFs made me mad like they made everyone mad. It was easy to be blindly angry at the expense of people I believed were an at-risk minority.

Now, when it came to AL, when I was desperately in need of other lesbians to relate to, EVERY OTHER POST WAS A TRANS POST. Not only that, but I could very easily tell who was trans and who wasn't from the types of comments under all the posts, and I had an uncanny valley type of feeling the whole time. At first, again, I tried to compartmentalise. Trans women are women, and some of these women must like exclusively other women, so they are lesbians and belong in a lesbian space. This was harder and harder to do the more comments I saw about "lol my vagina if I had one" and "sad pre-HRT noises" and I realised, upon looking at post histories, these people did not fit my mental image of a trans woman at all. I had been picturing someone like the trans girl in Wentworth and similarly behaved, and so I defended them. What I saw was typical male behaviour in profile after profile. Porn, hentai, selfies where these trans women were just hairy hugs in lipstick. I was shocked.

Anyway, this place seems really lovely and I'm glad it actually exists. Thanks to whichever one of you gave me a link, it's really appreciated! And feel free to AMA as a recently peaked lesbian if you want.