Wot

Golly is right. My idea was pretty much dismissed as much as the idea lesbians are real is.

what they really want is not the label itself but to control and oppress women who are in no way looking to center men in their lives. Do you really think that changing out some label and choosing a new one will change anything with these people?

Yeah. I mean, think about it logistically. Lesbians are very, verrrrryyyyy small in number. It seems like a ton if not most, claiming to be lesbians are actually just bi/het women and even with their numbers that doesn't grow our numbers beyond a speck. So, that means we need all the allies we can get to actively understand what female homosexuality is and make the barest of efforts to help us out. We need this because as you said, they want to oppress and control and as I said before, to seemingly everyone else we aren't real at all and that's made worse by the co-opting bi and het women.

I don't know if you noticed but the women here have said they don't believe women who tell them they are lesbians are actually the real deal. We have no community and with no community willing to be a voice we pretty much don't exist and that leaves us vulnerable to being further destroyed. I think the easiest way to elicit that help would be to make a grand gesture that would simultaneously shame and outcast co-opters while cementing our legitimacy and beconing a need and development of a community. I think that's the way to go because even women, who are half this planets population, is losing our language to identify and speak about ourselves. If it can, and is, happening to the greatest group we belong to and begin effecting law I just don't see how it won't become even worse for lesbianism which now, right now, is just hetero/bisexuality to everyone else without any push back. And it meant this before the transcult and there's no reason it won't be understood to be this to the greater majority if the transcult is culled. As I said before yes, co-opters gonna co-opt but never before has there been any risk to them to do so that additionally would reflect bad on them and wouldn't reflect badly on us in the long run and there definitely hasn't existed any spectacle that would spread that to the masses and make them critical for us. I've been hearing a bit about the different waves of feminism and it appears homosexual women have always been a strong, if not the leading force for it. It seems like if we won't fight for ourselves, no one will. Take that as you will.

In addition, I think making this move would help those in countries where lesbians are correctively raped, lobotomized or seen as deviants because it would demonize perpetuators further. Like it or not the west is compounding the idea lesbianism isn't real and many countries take cue from the west on how they develop socially. I think at this point it's more important to solidify the legimacy of our sexuality moreso than caring about what it's called and this would be the easiest way to do so and that spot light could help younger people to understand what they are better and faster given how fickle and hetero everyone's understanding of lesbianism is right now and help them navigate a climate where they are being cocered to transition without access to a community that would protect them.

On top of not believing women when they report themselves as lesbians, many lesbians here have already said they've taken to calling themselves homosexual and I've seen the TRAs take issue with this too. They, the bisexuals, the hets and men already have the label. It's already gone. Perhaps, if we were to do this it'd annoy everyone else that there is another term on the market and force them to pay attention to this war on the language of our sex and sexuality. Regardless, we have everything to lose and we are losing it. It was only an idea. The fact that that was enough to call my sexuality into question but not everyone else's mentality of just hoping this will blow over is absurd to me. Unlike any other sexuality we have the most enemies within and with out(?) while being seen as the enemy, making this not just an issue with mentally ill or fetishizing men online. And unlike the war on women's sex based language in general I think you'll be surprised to find out that even if women take this language back they, for the most part, don't give a fuck about lesbians and most importantly also don't think we're real. So many do not even want lesbian daughters, I've even heard lesbians say this themselves (out of protection knowing how homophobic shit is). The denialism and erasure feeds itself.

To me it seems obvious that we need to draw a hard, loud line in the sand especially while gender critical/radfem women are pretending to care about us to bolster their ammo against the TRAs and what better way to get them riled than to appear we're cow-towing to the TRAs. Personally, I think this is a good move for women to do in general. If TRAs want the term woman so bad (which is etymologically wife-man) then I say let's give it to them and call ourselves something better while making it clear it's only for actual women. I think doing so would put a stop to all this non-sense in a weekend. Regardless I'd love to hear other ideas about what can be done.