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While I understand the pain of detransitioned women who had no lesbian role models and feel like this was formative in their disidentification, some of us did have a connection to lesbian culture and it was shitty, toxic, alienating, or abusive...
I find this experience is more common broadly, although not necessarily in the youngest cohort of transitioning or trans-identified female people. You'll hear this theme over and over again, especially in women who have lived openly as a lesbian for a while...
While the effects of homophobia are life-altering, disorienting, and traumatizing, sometimes it is your inability to find a place, or your rejection from the only place you thought you had, which is more wounding or chronically painful to your sense of self...
I was not able to integrate into a sense of self as a lesbian when young. Those lesbians I looked to for guidance- mostly online, but some in real life- were difficult people with plenty of unresolved issues that drove me away from believing I could be female or homosexual...
When I looked to develop an healthy adult sense of my sexuality, I ran into lesbian women who ranged from reactively mentally ill to petty bullies to suspected sociopaths. My interpersonal relationships were filled with pain and reenactment of trauma...
I was lucky to have a core of support in my partner & the inner clarity to weather some of the most intense experiences of my life. Had I had a more shaky grip on reality and less material & emotional resources I would have yet again rejected "lesbian" in favor of "trans"...
I don't think some lesbians who have had a degree of internal security in the label- even if corroded by shame from the outside- understand why so-called "female homosexuals" might not feel it "fits" even if it is by definition correct...
If other lesbians do not accept you, & not only reject you but do so in a way that "girls" more generally do so, you begin to believe in a fundamental difference between yourself and them, one that neatly dovetails with your shame, one others will support...
If you have to choose having your rejection & alienation by lesbians validated by those who have contempt for lesbians, even at the cost of denying or renegotiating a fact about yourself, sometimes that is the choice you make if no one will listen honestly...
The nature of female interpersonal relationships means that almost any lesbian, should the occasion strike, could redefine herself as "not really a lesbian/woman all along" on the basis of internalizing the dynamics of problems she's encountered with other women...
People in radical lesbian groups, feminist activist groups, women's spirituality groups, midwives and doulas, daughters of lesbians have transitioned. Being present in female space in intimate & powerful ways is not a panacea against transition. Sometimes it becomes "proof"...
One of my foundational experiences, stupidly enough, of deeming myself not-a-woman was being nominated for a state women's scholarship and attending the associated "empowerment conference". I found it pathetic, weird, alienating, & had no language for why...
This is not something many radical feminists are prepared to address. Charitably, it is because they think they cannot handle how it might undermine female solidarity, or simply because their exposure to male violence leads them to focus on that as their priority...
Uncharitably, & I do believe that is the reality in some cases, it is because they are adept at harming other women & their victims who seek out radical feminism are often 1. uniquely traumatized 2. are looking to other women to heal, absolve, or transform them...
I've been chastized for offering this extremely tepid criticism in the past. I am over feeling cowed by women who are too insecure to recognize that women hurt each other, sometimes profoundly, & that this is actually essential to a patriarchy rather than a mere coincidence...
Understanding lesbians who transition means understanding our dirty laundry, the stubborn and dissatisfied, the alienated, the women who bite the hand that feeds, the predators in our midst, our strengths as well as our failures and how they can transmute from one to another.
