trans women aren’t dangerous for young lesbians. TERFs are.

a response to Kathleen Stock, Julia Beck, the LGB, and Get the L Out (or: my unedited, not super well-informed attempt at queer theory)

Former academic and disgraced lesbian Kathleen Stock’s un-peer-reviewed book Material Girls (2021) may be generally considered unrigorous in the world of academia, but it’s apparently done quite well in the popular marketplace. Glowing reviews of Stock’s book call it “a vital reminder that revolutions don’t always end well,” while anonymous commenters on her social media pages praise her for “saying what’s on everyone’s mind.”

On the other side, most queer activists and academics have dismissed Stock as a bigot, transphobe, or TERF. Indeed, every supposedly radical feminist claim in Material Girls is fairly standard trans-exclusionary stuff, echoed by fellow disgraced lesbian Julia Beck in speeches with noted feminist activists Tucker Carlson and the Heritage Foundation. Stock responds by suggesting that dissenters are misrepresenting her arguments, and that they need to actually read her book. So I did (as much as I could stomach), and I listened to a couple of her podcast interviews as well.

I won’t entertain Stock’s absurd version of the “history of gender identity”: much of Stock’s confusion could be cleared up by taking an undergraduate-level queer history course. However, taking a note from “Gender Critical,” Contrapoints’ AKA Natalie Wynn’s excellent video on this topic, I also will not depend entirely on the popular maxims that I happen to believe— trans women are women, for instance— that so aggravate Stock and her ilk. And to avoid repeating the existing large bodies of work on these points, I will speak mainly to the ideas that I believe affect lesbians specifically. 

As a young lesbian who wants to increase lesbian visibility, advocate lesbian safety, and organize under a collective lesbian identity that includes trans women and nonbinary people, I am deeply disgusted by Stock, Beck, Get the L Out, and other lesbians’ use of the “lesbian” identity label to spread “gender critical” ideology. When lesbians advocate for trans-exclusionism as lesbians, they harm the young lesbian community by bringing further negative connotations to lesbianism, preventing young lesbians from forming a collective identity at a time when we are desparately in need of spaces and political organization. 

What is a lesbian? 

“A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society cares to allow her.” — From the Woman-Identified-Woman manifesto by Radicalesbians.

This may be surprising to some considering my trans-inclusive stance, but my personal favorite definitions of Lesbian are political. I like defining a lesbian in terms of its rejection of norms for women and turning romantic, emotional, and sexual energies toward women (Adrienne Rich), combined with the modern understanding that nonbinary people and transgender women can “count as” lesbians if they so choose. 

I prefer these political definitions to others that have cropped up to promote trans and nonbinary inclusivity, such as “non-men attracted to non-men” (although that does technically suit). This is simply because I believe that lesbian identity is much more complex than physical attraction. Purely attraction-based models can also be highly confusing to many women because of compulsory heterosexuality which, in my anecdotal experience, is quite Real. Using a more political definition that frames lesbianism as a choice is freeing to me, personally. It combines the intellectual and social history of the word Lesbian with the practical existing connotations that provide aesthetic norms, gender deviance, and existing communities. I obviously don’t mean that one makes a “choice” in the way that raging homophobes do when they say this, but I mean that a woman / enby who has the existing sexual, romantic, platonic, and, yes, sexual inclinations toward women / enby could easily choose to identify as a Lesbian. Though this is tautological, I think you could also just say “a lesbian is attracted to other lesbians.” As the notorious Masterdoc says, all should feel free to try on the lesbian label: “Lesbian is not a dirty word. Do not settle for men if you don’t think you can ever be truly happy ending up with one. Being a lesbian is healing [...]”. 

Now, what do trans-exclusionisary lesbians believe? Most of them, like Stock, Beck, and the LGB alliance, try to cleanly separate sexual orientation from gender identity, arguing that one is innate and scientifically-backed, while another is unverifiable self-identification. As the LGB Canada chapter writes:

 “All aspects of young people’s identity — including their gender identity — are in flux, which is a natural part of being an adolescent. (Sexual orientation, by contrast, is identifiable by innate physiological reactions — sexual arousal by one or both of the human sexes — that emerge and persist irrespective of whatever social identity we adopt while negotiating our role in the social environment we inhabit).” 

Similarly, Kathleen Stock believes in an Essentialist, not Constructionist, frame of sexuality. In her words, her lesbian identity means she is simply a “female who’s attracted to females.” For these groups, the signifier “lesbian” isn’t culturally constructed at all, just simple, innate biology.

 As the LGB Alliance correctly identifies, one often adopts a new social identity to navigate their cultural environment. But a less bad-faith argument would acknowledge that this itself is a Constructionist viewpoint. Gender only exists within a social environment, and gender identity and sexuality are deeply, irrevocably intertwined. Stock came out as a lesbian late in life, and I wondered on hearing her life story if she may have done anything different to change her gender presentation (in other words, did she look that butch when she had a husband?).

 Many lesbians cut their hair or begin dressing differently to embrace their newfound identity, or because they suddenly feel they are allowed to. Many also begin spending time in lesbian spaces, making lesbian friends, using lesbian slang, or learning lesbian history. If Stock did any of these essential parts of becoming a healthy out lesbian in our society, then she has participated in identity construction and self-identification, the exact things that she claims don’t exist or are invalid when applied to trans people / trans lesbians.

Of course, lesbian isn’t just a sexuality determined by biological essentialism. It should not need to be said to any queer person that human sexuality is a complex, psychological, social, and even spiritual experience as much as it is a physical one “identifiable by innate physiological reactions,” in Stock’s words. After all, lesbians don’t understand ourselves as “inverts” or “tribades” these days. Much like the word “transgender,” “lesbian” is also an identity term, a cultural group, a signifier of gender deviance, and a basis for political organization. Lesbian generally signifies, yes, exclusive attraction to women, but it also conjures up images, connotations, personal connections and historical figures. That’s an identity. And no one but you can tell you that you’re a lesbian. Guess what: that’s self-identification. If you use strict bio-essentialist logic applied to relatively modern queer terminology, then women who have had sex with both women and men (such as Stock, who was married to and had two children by a man) are not lesbians, but bisexuals. But the vast majority of lesbians know that this is not true. 

So, how are you a lesbian? Why do you use that label? Why enjoy looking like a lesbian? I’ll answer for myself: because I am a lesbian. Because I love being a lesbian, and even if some people hate me, I’d die before I stopped being a lesbian, because I found out who I am, and I’ll never go back.

The case for a modern inclusive Lesbianism

The TERF lesbians seem to not be too keen on Judith Butler. I’ll grant you, I’m not a huge fan of deconstructionist prose myself. But Butler (who notes having “been identified variously as butch, queer, [and] trans* for over 50 years”)  had it right when they pointed out that queerness is not static and categories are constantly changing.

This is not a heady postmodernist argument, but an irrefutable historical fact. As Stock, Get the L Out, and the LGB alliance constantly point out, visible lesbians, particularly butch ones, understand well what it’s like to be gender transgressors. Stock’s insight that trans people shouldn’t be the paramount word in gender theory is absolutely correct. Trans people don’t have a monopoly on being gender non-conforming, nor should they be the first and only word in gender theory. 

Lesbians have always been a major voice in gender studies, if not one of the most influential of the letters of the LGBT in the field. Of course, Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Pat Parker, to name just a few, have written unbelievable works that shaped my understanding of womanhood, lesbianism, and gender. For the record, Stock isn’t a good example of a TERF theorist. I think lesbians like Germaine Greer and Sheila Jeffreys have strong lesbian feminist work (not on this topic!) that is very much worth reading, despite their deeply unfortunate trans-exclusionist views. Terry Castle and Kim Chernin, to name a couple more recent ones, are also excellent and, to the best of my knowledge, not TERFs. And although it’s a bit off-theme, it bears mentioning that Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues or Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness could at once be considered essential works of both lesbian, nonbinary, and trans history. Lesbian and transgender identity are not mutually exlusive, nor have they ever been.

This is because linguistic identity categories are fluid. The same person who identified as a butch lesbian in 1980s might today identify as a nonbinary queer who uses they/them pronouns. A Victorian woman who dressed as a man, worked, and acted as a man and was married to another woman could be seen as predecessor of a modern butch-femme lesbian couple, or alternatively, an early example of a transgender man and a cisgender woman in a relationship. The point is, queer identity labels and queer understanding shifts throughout history, and it always has. There is no queer identity without self-identification. But self-identification is imperfect and constantly in flux. So is the English language. But this is all we have. We need to use the language we have to find a collective solidarity and history that moves across time. This means that lesbians need to include trans and nonbinary people in our identity.

Stock credits the thriving gay, bisexual, and lesbian community of Sussex to her coming out in adulthood. If it was not for the thriving gay scene, she acknowledges, she may never have come out or realized who she was. But now, she says [paraphrasing], it’s overrun with the “queers, the trans, the I’s, the A’s, all of it.” Well, young people need their chance to move to queer-friendly urban centers and find community too. Maybe Stock wants out, but many young people, including young lesbians, want in. In fact, their survival and happiness probably depends on it.

 The subject of the Disappearing Dyke is far too well-documented, controversial, and complex to get into in this essay, but it’s undeniable that lesbian identity is less prominent in the younger generation compared to other terms, like “Sapphic,” “bisexual,” or “queer.” This may be for many reasons. The ones my broadly Sapphic friends often cite is that the word “lesbian” feels very sexualized. It is, indeed, one of the most popular porn topics for men. The second, of course, is that many bisexual and queer women want to include men and other gender identities in their attraction, and don’t like the exclusivity of “lesbian.” But one reason may also be because of bigoted attitutes of lesbians who purport to represent the entire community. In my experience, the vast majority of queers, particularly urban Gen Z queers, do not have any reservations about accepting trans people, and aren’t typically inclined to hang out with those who do. The wider queer community wouldn’t exactly welcome people like Stock and Beck with open arms. 

Futher, if lesbians exclude trans women, they lose an important sister-in-arms. Trans women (and some nonbinary people), in my personal experience, do understand women's experience (shocker). Many of them (the lesbian ones) understand the lesbian experience. Though they are not lesbians, many trans men once lived the lesbian experience, identifying as lesbian and hanging out in lesbian communities for much of their lives prior to coming out. Trans women understand the aesthetics and social performances of womanhood, and why these can be simultaneously powerful and stifling. They often know queer and feminist theory far better than most cis straight women do. They also know the ugly side of womanhood: trans women know what it’s like to be harassed on the street, face sexual discrimination and even sexual assault, and are oppressed within institutions and policy on the basis of misogyny. Those who identify as lesbians do so not because they want to prey on cis queer women, but, like so many lesbians have done before, based on an emotional, romantic, and sexual camaraderie with other queer women and nonbinary people, as well as an alienation from men based on ideology, impulse, or past traumas. 

So, I, for one, am a young lesbian who isn’t worried about trans women or nonbinary people lurking in all-female spaces. I’m more worried about what happens if we ban trans women from all-female spaces. Who do lesbian TERFs think is going to be the next group facing political ire and violence on the basis of being sexually predatory and invading all-female spaces? I’ll give a hint: recall the “Lavender Menace.” 

I envy the world of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For. I don’t know if this ~ lesbian utopia~ (sarcastic) ever existed, but I wish it did. I wish I lived there. Even being lucky enough to live in Montreal, a thriving center of young North American queer culture,  it’s hard finding lesbian bars, let alone lesbian bookstores. As we well know, there are a mere 21 lesbian bars left on the continent, and though they probably will never fully disappear, they are constantly in danger of closing. I would kill to work in a lesbian bookstore, but that is not really something that exists. We can’t build a strong lesbian community if we’re known as the bigots of the acronym; we will simply go extinct. So for the sake of the youth generation, lesbians should need to stand with trans women and trans people, or find another term. I don’t necessarily want all lesbian spaces to be subsumed under a pan-queer umbrella, but I really don’t want to “get the L out.” There’s strength in numbers and young lesbians, the vast majority of whom support trans people, need community. We need all the dykes we can get.