Is She or Isn't She?????


Mr Lambrou, who happens to be a homophobic ass who calls us sexual deviants among other more disgusting things, lost his case, which means in Greece including the Island of Lesbos a lesbian is still a lesbian. Not your definition not his definition but our definition.

In my opinion, you're obviously not a lesbian and it doesn't matter what those of us who are say to you. Perhaps some would say you're welcome to your opinion, I'm not one of them.

Edited to add "In my opinion".
 
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Well, more apologies, but I seem to have become an Aunt Sally and out of my depth. I posted a reply but I didn't feel in the least confident so yea...
I was only looking to understand - that means asking questions. If you don't know something you ask questions and I never intended to come across as either snarky or condescending.

It's all good. Questions are fine, hon. It's just when people start telling us who and what we are that we feel the need to stand up for ourselves. Learning about one another is part of accepting us as we are, right?



I'd be interested in seeing a cite for usage in the 18th century. The etymology discussions I've seen all put the first appearance of "Lesbian" at around 1890 and "Lesbianism" around 1870, so late 19th. (In a "same-sex-attracted" sense, that is; it's been in the English language since the 1590s meaning "inhabitant of Lesbos".)

I'd also be interested in seeing 18th- and/or 19th-century cites that specifically support the "exclusive" part of that assertion.


Not "everywhere". Most of the folk I know who use it define it more on the basis of "primarily oriented". Some make the distinction "I occasionally sleep with guys, but I only fall in love with women".


Your usage is a redefinition, over the objections of people who've been using "Lesbian" for much longer.


Now this on the other hand is a FINE example of tossing strawmen, repeating bullshit / partial examples and just arguing for arguments sake.

It reeks of foot stompy attitude because we DON'T let people define us by making up their own meanings.
 
I was to a party this weekend, and I met a girl and her boyfriend. And she had been a lesbian over a period of 3 years, and she was a "Christian". And it reminded me of this thread, and well my "aggressive atheist" (read asshole (ish)) attitude, went into in a bit overdrive. And the next day, I sincerely apologised for being such an asshole, cause people are people and sexualities are sexualities. And if sexuality is fluid, then I am fine with it. And if it is not, then it is not. So live and let live, whether people are gay or not. To me it is one big mess at times. And morale hangovers, is probably what makes us human beings think and analyse what we do. I know I am a bisexual man who prefers women, no matter what certain human beings sees me as. But I am a bit in of a peaceful, and happy "what ever mood" :) So peace to all :)
 
I was to a party this weekend, and I met a girl and her boyfriend. And she had been a lesbian over a period of 3 years, and she was a "Christian". And it reminded me of this thread, and well my "aggressive atheist" (read asshole (ish)) attitude, went into in a bit overdrive. And the next day, I sincerely apologised for being such an asshole, cause people are people and sexualities are sexualities. And if sexuality is fluid, then I am fine with it. And if it is not, then it is not. So live and let live, whether people are gay or not. To me it is one big mess at times. And morale hangovers, is probably what makes us human beings think and analyse what we do. I know I am a bisexual man who prefers women, no matter what certain human beings sees me as. But I am a bit in of a peaceful, and happy "what ever mood" :) So peace to all :)


Oh! You mean you've finally had (real ) sex with another man then? If not, your still the same straight guy with fantasies you always were. You seem to always have a propensity for wanting to co-opting labels and definitions you don't deserve, dude, which would make you the poster boy for this discussion.

Whatever you are though, you also STILL don't get to define us.
 
Whatever you are though, you also STILL don't get to define us.

What ever, you really have a big pain in your own arse, that makes life hard to any one in your proximity, even online. But why the fuck should I get to define any one ? that was the whole reason for me apologising to the girl, and her boyfriend. Cause I screwed up, but I believe your hatred overshadows the meaning of my former post. Since there I said:

People are people so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully.
In other terms, cause that would be a Depeche Mode rip-off. If I only wrote that.

To any one else who miss-reads my former post, what I reacted upon in an asshole(ish) way was not her being over a period, a lesbian. But her saying she was a "Christian", which gave me some bad flashbacks. Cause I have seen what kind of monstrosities , so-called Christians has done towards the LGBT. But I apologised, cause she was not the person whom in reality deserved my anger. I was just being quite stupid. Hence I apologised to her.
 
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For what it's worth, I had NO FREAKING IDEA I was that into the idea, let alone the actuality of sex with women until meeting that woman. Falling for her in a romantic sense was completely non-challenging and natural for me. Things didn't work out, but that's the law of averages at work, not "could not have worked out".

And this can't possibly work the other way around because???

Remember, it's 1979 we're talking about. Remember 1979? You can't be a feminist unless you are a POLITICAL LESBIAN. It's radical feminism that made lesbianism a requisite "stance" something any sane woman would CHOOSE in order to show solidarity and throw off her chains. If you enjoy the penis, you are complicit with rapists and a penis by proxy. So you suppress your obviously "programmed" heterosexuality as a means for political expression and solidarity. Anyone can choose to be a lesbian, and anyone can choose to have non-phallic woo sex. To be fair, it's mainly delusional heterosexuals who wrote this playbook, IMO.

God only knows how much more BS was slung your way if you were a woman of color in that context. No pressure, right?

Don't worry, I don't ID as lesbian, in spite of the fact that that's how I will be sight-identified by hostiles any time I leave the house with my partner.

BTW THAT is what people mean when they say "bisexual lesbian" - it means I am with a woman, I plan on staying with this woman, and I am subject to ALL THE SAME oppression that you are externally, because everything except me and my vibrator will perceive me the way they do you, and I'm actually doing that disclosure thing you want only to be given shit for it.

I realize I really have to worry less what radfem lesbians think about me than the douchebag who may have our names on him, so I have gotten pretty good at avoiding this argument, realizing that I really lose no major ground in life by not being able to call myself a lesbian.

Queer is good enough for me, I'll happily sit at the kids' table.

There WAS no kids' table in '79. To question the tactics, no matter how much they may have excluded you, was treasonous.

OK, so lesbian is what, kinsey 6? Gold star? How far off the kinsey 6 axis can a woman go before she has to out herself as bi?

I have no problem with people policing the identity right up to the point where psychic powers are called upon to do so, or a crystal freaking ball.

I agree that "likes to do guys" takes you out of the club, but the idea that everyone has to be gold star is absurd. Shit changes for a lot of people in 10 and 20 year increments. You claim your ground based on what you're feeling surest about, you know yourself, but only ever up to a point.

This is hardly someone kissing girls in order to get laid by guys. Here's someone who probably genuinely thought she was. No "self delusion" required, just one really good romantic relationship is enough to cause you to rethink shit. As long as you come to the approved conclusion rethinking shit is good, welcome to the tribe, but if your conclusions are not approved then you're a liar liar pants on fire, not a person on a journey or anyone entitled to change anything. Sorry that some people's actual lives are a fly in the ointment of those of us who really depend on a "born this way" scientific narrative, so what should these people do? Hide? Die in a fire? Fuck off? Tough shit, they EXIST even if it's inconvenient. And rights should not have to be granted to people only in the event that they can't choose how they are. You can damn sure choose your religion and religions are (for better or for worse) protected classes. That entire argument is bait which we are supposed to lap up.

I agree - people who would actively happily sleep with a man don't get to claim the label, but hopefully this is irrelevant because anyone saying "I am a lesbian" is having awesome earth-moving ladylove with a woman or pursuing same, and too busy doing that to even be thinking about "but might I actually like a dude if I was the last woman in a post apocalyptic cuddle party? Maybe this is all a LIE if I would huddle for warmth and enjoy it in the least!"

People who can't imagine themselves ever being anywhere but in their relationship in a LTR with a woman should not have to submit paperwork about what ALL future relationships might look like should their arrangement implode, end, or someone decide to transition. Lesbians deserve the same level of starry-eyed romantic commitment based on what they know waking up in the morning as other groups.

It's nice to be 100 percent sure of things until you're not. I think it's horse shit that the same people who were making lesbianism a litmus test of feminist cred in 1979 are flogging someone who actually bought in to some degree. This stands to prove that this doesn't work, the personal is political but making the political personal is fail.

Oh yeah. Co-optation. How dare she!

lesbians have been the niggers of the women’s movement

What the ever loving fuckity fuck, 1970? Intersectionality. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.
 
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For what it's worth, I had NO FREAKING IDEA I was that into the idea, let alone the actuality of sex with women until meeting that woman. Falling for her in a romantic sense was completely non-challenging and natural for me. Things didn't work out, but that's the law of averages at work, not "could not have worked out".

And this can't possibly work the other way around because???

I'll speak only for myself, I have never nor can I feel romantic emotions for a man. For me it can't work the other way around. I can feel emotions for men they just aren't those kinds of emotions.

Remember, it's 1979 we're talking about. Remember 1979? You can't be a feminist unless you are a POLITICAL LESBIAN. It's radical feminism that made lesbianism a requisite "stance" something any sane woman would CHOOSE in order to show solidarity and throw off her chains. If you enjoy the penis, you are complicit with rapists and a penis by proxy. So you suppress your obviously "programmed" heterosexuality as a means for political expression and solidarity. Anyone can choose to be a lesbian, and anyone can choose to have non-phallic woo sex. To be fair, it's mainly delusional heterosexuals who wrote this playbook, IMO.

God only knows how much more BS was slung your way if you were a woman of color in that context. No pressure, right?

Pressure yes but not that pressure, as a matter of fact, for black women the pressure to be heard as a feminist was not as a lesbian. Even for a black lesbians there never was the call for a complete break from men. Lack of privilege as a woman, yes, lack of privilege as a lesbian, yes but even more so lack of privilege as a black woman. For any black woman, even today, it's not enough to just fright male privilege, she has to fight white privilege even more so.

I didn't use women of color and although all those who don't fit in the white privileged world are to some degree discriminated against, racism against blacks is still more blatant and institutionalize in the wonderful US of A. I'm not also about to use the term African American, when white Americans start using the term European American I may consider it but I don't think I'll do so, at least not as long as some Americans hold up sign which say things like "Our half white President", which just means to them he isn't white enough.

Don't worry, I don't ID as lesbian, in spite of the fact that that's how I will be sight-identified by hostiles any time I leave the house with my partner.

BTW THAT is what people mean when they say "bisexual lesbian" - it means I am with a woman, I plan on staying with this woman, and I am subject to ALL THE SAME oppression that you are externally, because everything except me and my vibrator will perceive me the way they do you, and I'm actually doing that disclosure thing you want only to be given shit for it.

Queer is good enough for me, I'll happily sit at the kids' table.

I agree that "likes to do guys" takes you out of the club, but the idea that everyone has to be gold star is absurd. Shit changes for a lot of people in 10 and 20 year increments. You claim your ground based on what you're feeling surest about, you know yourself, but only ever up to a point.

I'm not asking you to sit at the kids table but I do admit if you want to be a member of our community you can never admit to being bisexual. Yes that just sucks because you're in the same kind of relationship I'm in. If we happened to be friends I wouldn't care but you would be judged by many of us as not fitting in.

By the way neither Safe_bet nor myself said anything about being gold star. If that were the case I'd have to rule myself out.

You haven't changed my mind about my feelings about lesbian but I'll try to be more tolerant about the term "bisexual lesbian". I'll admit for someone like you it does convey more meaning than bisexual alone.
 
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Gee... somehow I managed to miss Netzach's snarky little diatribe.

Sorry... it reads a bit too condescendingly "poor me wants my cake and eat it too"-ish for my taste so I'll give responding to most of it a pass.

That said the only part I WILL take direct exception to is:

I think it's horse shit that the same people who were making lesbianism a litmus test of feminist cred in 1979 are flogging someone who actually bought in to some degree. This stands to prove that this doesn't work, the personal is political but making the political personal is fail.

Oh yeah. Co-optation. How dare she!


Other than writing a self-serving fluff piece, which she parleyed into a position with the Dinkin's administration, Chirlane McCray didn't do bupkis for the feminist movement. To say otherwise, is an affront to the women who actually DID.

BTW, if you don't like the term, "Co-optation", would "Orientation whore" fit better???
 
I'll speak only for myself, I have never nor can I feel romantic emotions for a man. For me it can't work the other way around. I can feel emotions for men they just aren't those kinds of emotions.



Pressure yes but not that pressure, as a matter of fact, for black women the pressure to be heard as a feminist was not as a lesbian. Even for a black lesbians there never was the call for a complete break from men. Lack of privilege as a woman, yes, lack of privilege as a lesbian, yes but even more so lack of privilege as a black woman. For any black woman, even today, it's not enough to just fright male privilege, she has to fight white privilege even more so.

I didn't use women of color and although all those who don't fit in the white privileged world are to some degree discriminated against, racism against blacks is still more blatant and institutionalize in the wonderful US of A. I'm not also about to use the term African American, when white Americans start using the term European American I may consider it but I don't think I'll do so, at least not as long as some Americans hold up sign which say things like "Our half white President", which just means to them he isn't white enough.



I'm not asking you to sit at the kids table but I do admit if you want to be a member of our community you can never admit to being bisexual. Yes that just sucks because you're in the same kind of relationship I'm in. If we happened to be friends I wouldn't care but you would be judged by many of us as not fitting in.

By the way neither Safe_bet nor myself said anything about being gold star. If that were the case I'd have to rule myself out.

You haven't changed my mind about my feelings about lesbian but I'll try to be more tolerant about the term "bisexual lesbian". I'll admit for someone like you it does convey more meaning than bisexual alone.

Bisexual lesbian fits someone, but not me. I'm glad you're willing to consider that if you are anything other than kinsey 6 maybe you're not the community asshole.

I'm poly (therfore a terrible poster child for anything) and one of my regular delights is a queer guy and I have no intention of hiding that to gain cred with anyone. I'll sit at the queer kids' table, and it IS a kids' table, and I'll leave the benefits of solidarity to those who actually find benefit.

I will never find solidarity with people who view my very existence as treasonous. This works out well - I won't be darkening your doors, I don't care if someone wants to have a woman born woman space I simply don't need what you're offering, and you obviously don't want me. The existence of a pure lesbian community isn't a problem for me. It's the compulsive need for that community to surround itself with a moat that has long-range-shit-catapults stationed all over it aimed at people like me and mine LONG before they're gonna hit "the man" that makes me go "what the fuck?"

I view it as the excercise of control among a minority that has very little control. It feels good to have someone to whip, so why not a woman you dug up some dirt on, or a woman who doesn't have the "right" plumbing. Why not police the moat to a micrometer and worry more about who's slept with a man than you're worrying about the fact that almost no gay man ever gave a dime to ovarian cancer research or sat up nights to care for a breast cancer riddled best friend and we still make no really substantial money as a demographic.

The more trans-hate I get to watch go down in the GLBT love fest the more my stomach can't do it. The wrong kind of lesbian is on the margin - basically if you're not Ellen, fuck off, right? Yeah that doesn't sit right with me.

Double fuck off if you're REALLY not Ellen. Transexuals and transgender and genderqueer are beyond the pale, but the letter sure looks cute on the roster.

I'm not demanding that anyone call her a lesbian. I'm not demanding that anyone call ME a lesbian. I'm simply saying people could stop being shitheads about the woman's personal life for ten seconds and use their brains. I completely buy that some people's orientations are immutable and fixed. I completely buy that other people's are not fixed because biology and neurology work in fucking mysterious ways and no amount of pronouncement by message board amateurs based on how THEY PERSONALLY feel make a fixed identity a universal fact.

Tl/DR version: You know yourself. You don't know anyone else. You don't know what anyone else knows or doesn't know about themselves.

Does it really matter how MUCH of a lesbian someone is if she's being denied the same visitation? Apparently, yes, if a penis touched her one time and she liked it, she's not actually hurting.
 
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Gee... somehow I managed to miss Netzach's snarky little diatribe.

Sorry... it reads a bit too condescendingly "poor me wants my cake and eat it too"-ish for my taste so I'll give responding to most of it a pass.

That said the only part I WILL take direct exception to is:




Other than writing a self-serving fluff piece, which she parleyed into a position with the Dinkin's administration, Chirlane McCray didn't do bupkis for the feminist movement. To say otherwise, is an affront to the women who actually DID.

BTW, if you don't like the term, "Co-optation", would "Orientation whore" fit better???


Snarky little response to an acronym like LUG? Awwwww.....my bad!

Was that self-serving fluff piece the Combahee River Collective statement?

You're right. How dare this woman tread on the same carpet as the "niggers of the women's movement" - white lesbians!
 
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I have seen these kind of arguments for years, and it always boils down to something sad, where someone wants to define someone else, and it usually leads not only to oppression for some, but it also leads to infighting among those who should be working together.

Okay, so what do I mean? So DiBlasio's wife says she was once a lesbian, and we get a post raging against it........why? In large part, because whatever the real story is with her, it lends itself right into the idiocy of the religious right and a lot of mean fucking people in this country and elsewhere, that you can 'cure' being gay or lesbian, that it is mutable, you name it....and I hear the anger. There also is the feelings, that I can understand if I don't condone them, of people who have fought the fight, who have lived openly, fought the battles, you name it, and then see someone who seems to treat it like it was a piece of clothing you wear one time and then discard it. I don't know how I feel about the way she came out, I would have preferred that she said something, instead of saying she was once lesbian, say something like at that time in my life I identified as Lesbian, thought I would be forever, and found out when I feel in love with Bill that I was something different...for the very reason that the a-holes can use it, and use it badly. I also think it is very possible she thought she was lesbian, that at that time she hadn't had any attraction for men, hadn't had any inkling they wanted to be with them, it is very possible. Human beings can bury things quite deeply, people who have been abused can literally blank it out, people who are trans often don't discover what they are until later, because they buried it deep and couldn't see the problems that caused , that come out sideways, as clues....there are also gay and lesbian people who bury their orientation so deep, usually when they are kids and get scared at being different, that they don't know, they grow up so having buried it they don't even realize what is going on; many of them try straight relationships but don't have a clue it isn't working right, but because they don't have anything to compare it to, then at some point something breaks through, and from that point on, they know what they are (it isn't putting themselves in the closet, pretending, they really don't know..and I have gotten this from trained professionals in gender and sexuality, many of whom are gay or lesbian...).

I also can understand the idea that being lesbian is a lot more than who someone sleeps with, the girls in college fooling around, the married woman who has sex with another woman in a threesome, or has sex with another woman while married, is probably not lesbian IMO (unless she really is attracted to women, knows that is who she wants to be with, but is living closeted...). One of the biggest problems with the whole discussion of gays, lesbians or even bi people, is this notion that somehow it is about the sex only, when there is so much else to it, they put everything down to the fact that a straight woman is sexually attracted to men, for example, without even discussing the other levels, about how they also view themselves, how they feel about themselves, and how they have relationships....

I can understand when some of the strongly lesbian identified women say when they talk about what it means to them to be lesbian. how deep it runs. Everyone I have known who is gay or lesbian, I mean strongly identified as it, the way the posters have, have told me that they knew long before they hit puberty they were different, they started recognizing that difference, even if they couldn't put a label on it; it was how they saw other girls, and how they saw the world and I respect that.

My big problem, though, is with labels in general, and how they are used. Netzach makes a great point, if she is living with a female lover, she is going to be treated as a lesbian by society no matter whether she sees herself as lesbian or not, and the scumbag who decides that they are sinful bitches who deserve to be raped won't care whether they are pure or not. I think the real issue for me is whether someone is a stone cold butch dyke who has id'ed as that all along, or someone who id'ed as straight who finds at some point that they find themselves in being in a same sex relationship/oriented that way, that the labels at some point stop meaning anything, or should, because quite honestly, to quote Cesar Rodney during the prettty intense fighting over the issue of American Independance, the enemy is out there, the ignorance, the stupidity, the political scumbags who use hate to get elected. My problem with lesbian 'puritans' (for lack of a better word) or trans 'puritans' is when we get into this mode of defining who is real and who gets to use the label, it turns into the same kind of thing you see in religion, that 'my way is better', and using that to form a new hierarchy, the same kind of hierarchy that left LGBT people on the margins.

The same people who claim lesbian purity also were often the same people fighting to keep M to F trans people out of women's spaces (thankfully, the numbers of people doing that have dwindled down, as one friend of mine put it, you id as a woman, you present as a woman, and you are respectful of others, you got as much right to be here as anyone else). The same purists who get upset at how lesbians are marginalized would in turn decide that an M to F trans person (I am not talking a crossdresser or whatever) is really a man, no matter what, and if they claimed to id as a lesbian, they weren't, they were a het man simply trying to invade women's spaces because he thought lesbians were hot (and yes, virginia, I heard this said and it wasn't all that rare). I think it is fine to wear the lesbian label with pride and to have pride in it as an identity, but I also think there are problems in trying to decide what real is. I can understand the problems with the posers, the bi girls who think it is cool to be in the space (and also the very real heartbreak lesbian friends of mine have had when they found out their partner was sleeping with men on the side, or left them for one, and never told them they were bi), but I also have seen where a label of pride is used as a weapon, to decide for others who they are. There are women who have been married for 20 years who finally find themselves in being lesbian, there are M to F trans women who come to fully id as lesbian, and while there are plenty of people in the lesbian community who recognize them for who they are, there also are a lot who use the lesbian identity as a weapon, declare those they have decided aren't real are the enemy or somehow an affront to them, and make their lives miserable because they have decided they have the right to do so.

One of the problems with radicals of any type is that more than a few of them fit into the mode of an old Moody Blues song, that said something like 'revolution is just another gun, to use against those who had used it against them'. Lesbians are angry, and rightfully so, of being marginalized and fetishized, I fully recognize the reality of things, but that anger has also been used to marginalize others who fully id as lesbian, who have come to that, and that I don't respect, it is assuming that you know what is in someone's heart.

I am not talking Diblasio's wife, I am not talking about the weekend lesbian or the summer camp lesbian or the college lesbian, I am talking about someone who went on a life journey and finally found themselves and after all the battles and such, came to find themselves id'ing as lesbian and then find themselves battling people who should understand. And sometimes this takes on an absurd bent. The Michigan Womyn's music festival as far as I know still bans M to F transwomen, but let's F to M trans men, who started out id'ing as lesbian, go, I am talking one who are fully id'ing as men, have been on HRT, had their breasts removed, etc.......

Personally, I would rather we just fight for the right that we supposedly have in the US, and should have elsewhere, to live as we wish, that however we id, we fight for the right of others to id as they wish. I also think a lot of energy is wasted in all communities by some trying to decide who is real and who isn't, when that energy could be better served simply trying to make the lives of ourselves and others better.
 
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