Prove You're a Lesbian, Please.

It gets to a point in any socially progressive shift where eyes are locked, fists are clenched and lips tremble across battle lines. Both sides fiercely willing the other to back down and surrender, hoping their fervent snarling will sufficiently deter their foe.

The truth is, neither side really have a clue what they’d do next if things escalated.

All they do know is that going into actual battle will leave both sides exposed. Both sides are, deep down, worried how their fiercely held belief will withstand the direct onslaught. Perhaps everyone is just hoping the other will just hold their hands up and say, “You know what, you’re right. We’ve got this totally wrong. We’ll be heading off now.”

When it comes to trans rights, the tension has been building thusly for a while.

The Gender Critics (GCs) stand off against the Trans Rights Activists (TRAs). Both have far less generous names for each other, as is the style of such feuds. The GCs shout “bad philosophy, perverts and misogynists” at the TRAs, whilst the TRAs cry “transphobia and bigotry” at the GCs. Both are angry. Both feel like the very core of their being, their identity, is being destroyed and dismantled by the other. Both have fought hard to be seen as they truly are and have the right to exist freely without fear as themselves. They have more in common than they’re willing to admit.

At this point, I need to lay my bias out. I am non-binary. I consider myself an LGBTQ+ activist (whatever that actually means) and have done what I can to progress the rights of my community in my small capacity. I know I’m non-binary, much as the next person knows they are a man or a woman. I made a terrible woman when I tried to be one. I’d make an equally terrible man. For those who argue that one does not simply feel like a woman, one is by virtue of being a woman, I ask them to explain why I have been unable to be sufficiently womanly my entire life. If it is enough to be born with a certain organic configuration to perform man or woman successfully, then why do we so aggressively reinforce gender literally EVERYWHERE. Clothes, toys and even disposable razors. If gender is an illusion and sex the reality, why do I get frequently screamed at in public loos? If the answer is that I need to present in a more feminine way, well, you’ve answered my question. I think sex is a terrible category to dissect our species. We can probably blame the heteronormative fixation on PIV (penis in vagina) sex for this. The same rhetoric that erased lesbians throughout history; “How do they even have sex?”.

I am told though, by GCs, that those feelings don’t matter.

Despite this, I actually feel quite a lot for the GCs. I do. They have fought long and hard to define and protect the category of woman. Like any civil rights movement – a simple and effective device is clearly defining something to protect it in law. We have to be able to describe what a woman is, in order to ask for rights for those types of people. We’ve tried to gatekeep the concept of woman in the past (married, over 30, blah blah blah). It didn’t work. Working-class women and lesbians revolted, rightly. The category was opened up. The gatekeeping of woman stopped for a while.

We move forward some years, and GCs have now decided we have progressed enough, held their hands up and declared, “Woah, woah, woah, hang on there. Trans women are not women.”

“Well, you hang on,” say the TRAs, “Trans women have always existed and have been in women’s spaces for years with literally no problem. We just want to protect that in law. Like you did before.”

GCs have decided, that no, that is a stretch too far for womanhood. Facts over feelings. We can’t self-identify . . . material facts matter . . .

Except, perhaps, that self-id has been the norm for the last 20 years when it comes to gender’s close mate - sexuality. Now I remember being a young queer at the gates of GAY Astoria in 2004 having to prove myself sufficiently gay to enter the venue. I had to name queer publications and kiss my mate on the mouth. Since then, however, my attraction to women has never been challenged – every form that asks me the question asks for no proof of it. I effectively, like anyone else, self-id my sexuality. If a woman calls herself a lesbian, who am I to question? Who is anyone? Is there a grand arbiter of sexuality that decides that late bloomers, those who have in the past (or currently – a topic for another day) experienced fleeting attraction to the opposite sex or deep all-consuming love, can formally ‘transition’ into the lesbian identity? Do some get rejected?

Are celibate men who are same-sex attracted still gay? Do they get to identify that way? Do straight men identify as gay to get hold of some of those sweet, sweet gay rights?

We trust people to tell us the truth. We don’t gatekeep sexuality. We accept how people feel and also understand how that can change over time.

I dunno. Yet still, here we are. And people are scared. But I guess as always, the elephant in the room is that men continue to behave badly around women. But rather than getting men to hold themselves accountable, GCs have decided that punishing trans women for the behaviour of cis men is a necessary evil. If I was feeling flippant, I might offer that as a solution to all our nice things. Get rid of the NHS, marriage, saving refugees JUST in case someone uses any of this stuff nefariously. Easier than simply dealing with the odd twat who breaks the law. That’s why we have laws, mind.

Either way, GCs’ position is ideological, or philosophical should I say, as one of the more potent members of their movement believes. I still stand by the fact that if these folk hung out in queer spaces with trans and non-binary people, their fear that they are all violent cis men in women-suits would dissipate real quick. Philosophise that – experience matters. Feelings matter. You’ve based your whole outlook on a feeling. That or you’re going to have to immediately kiss a woman on the mouth next time you tick ‘lesbian’ on your census form.