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[–]yousaythosethings 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

She doesn’t care at all if bisexual women want to call themselves lesbians. She totally supports that as long as those women also recognize that they are bisexual. That’s the entire gist of this.

This is from memory, but she mentions that “lesbian” has many definitions and mentions two, and neither of which is female homosexuality. She sprinkles a few other definitions throughout the text. The only time she comes close to defining “lesbian” as female homosexuality is in response to one of the points, she says “that’s not homosexuality.” She does accurately point out that the Master Doc is premised on the idea that lesbian = lack of attraction to man gender and not even lack of attraction to man gender coupled with attraction to woman gender. She can’t say “female homosexuality” because she’s trying to validate the idea of a trans lesbian and ground everything in Queer Theory. So we end up with a big mess of her using “lesbian” to mean many different things as is convenient without her specifying, so she does exactly what she criticizes the Master Doc for doing.

The main problem is that she’s not actually concerned at all with what a lesbian is, which is why she doesn’t care whether it has a clear definition or not. She’s only concerned about what a bisexual is. She makes it clear that she can be both lesbian and bisexual. Only lesbians don’t get our own word with a stable meaning. So in waxing poetic about bi erasure, she commits lesbian erasure, just in the opposite way that she’s thinking about, since even she implies that women are reading the doc thinking they’re lesbians when they’re not. But again, she’s personally only concerned about a self-accepting or questioning bisexual reading this and becoming convinced she’s not bisexual, but rather lesbian. Discussions of erasure can get so tired though. We are all focused on our own shit and agendas. We can’t be focused on and mindfully “inclusive” of everyone at all times. Both she and the Master Doc try to shoe horn in trans people in ways that blow up their entire point, water down meaning, and make them hypocritical.

She is also wrong that this was written by a TERF. It was written by a queer theory loving misandrist political lesbian who is dollars to donuts either bisexual or straight. But she doesn’t care whether political lesbians misappropriate lesbianism as long as such individuals recognize their bisexuality.

[–]reluctant_commenter 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The main problem is that she’s not actually concerned at all with what a lesbian is, which is why she doesn’t care whether it has a clear definition or not. She’s only concerned about what a bisexual is.

There we go. That's a core part of the problem with this piece of writing. I'm only 10 pages in or so and I keep waiting for her talk talk about like, "ground rules, these are our definitions" sorta thing and she hasn't, and I suspect she never does.

I liked your takedown much more. Wish we could get that famous on twitter. 😆

The hatred she's gotten for this piece, though, makes me hesitate to even post long pieces of saidit. I don't know who's actually leading this doxxing army of 14 year olds but if she got that level of flack for this queer-theory-positive piece of writing, people would really hate a "document" that defines lesbian as female exclusive same-sex attraction.

[–]yousaythosethings 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have no problem with people spreading out my ideas, adapting them, or taking ownership over them or whatever. I’d like to personally avoid an army of bored straight girls and transbians attacking me.

Instead we should just make our own brief Master Doc. I just wrote this as kind of a joke in a few mins but I think it’s already better than this other Mumbo Jumbo: (1) What led you to look up whether you’re a lesbian? What else is going on in your life? (2) Are you drawn to this doc because you’ve felt attraction to a woman in real life? What did that feel like? How did your body respond? (3) Do you feel actual attraction to women in the real world outside of your head, so more than just porn, hypothetical women, and celebrities? (4) Go outside and walk around. Who are your eyes drawn to and why? (5) What are you attracted to in women/women’s bodies/appearances? (6) Hook up with a woman. Thoughts? (7) Do you have an aversion to or lack of interest in men IRL? In what scenarios or ways? How does it feel when a man demonstrates romantic or sexual interest in you? (8) Mostly the same questions, but change the sexes + do you have desire or interest in hooking up with a man?

But then you run into the problem of how this really just needs to be grounded in real world experiences and feelings. Like it doesn’t mean you have to be physically engaging with other women but that you’re thinking about feelings in your body as you see and interact with women IRL. I think all the comments are right that if someone spends too much time in their own head they’re just going to start shoe horning things in to fit their desired narrative. I think some of the most telling things are why the woman is looking up whether she’s a lesbian and how connected or not that is to the real world. And of course woman will always be defined as biological female.