Professional Judy: What does LGBTplc do when it has been exposed with its pants around its ankles? It goes on the attack.

Scrolling through Twitter, even though banned for human rights abuses like saying rape porn is wrong, I stumbled upon the latest LGBTplc scandal. If you’re fragile you need to prepare yourselves. Grab the smelling salts. Fetch the fainting couch. Put on your best pearls and prepare to clutch them with a death grip. Load the ‘valid’ cannon. Trigger warning engaged.

Writer and campaigner Graham Linehan set a profile up on a lesbian dating app!

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I acknowledge that some people may feel a bit hurt by what they see as an attack on their identity, and it’s not nice to feel upset. I also feel that he might have overstepped the line a little bit. Lesbians and gay men can empathise with being disrespected and ‘invalidated’.

If you have yet to read the excellent article by Jo Bartosch about ‘Transbians’ on lesbian dating sites go do it now as it’ll help you get up to speed. The experience of lesbians using dating sites that also allow males is eye opening and genuinely uncomfortable to read. This situation is against a context of 56 per cent of lesbians surveyed by Get The L Out reporting that they have been “pressured or coerced into accepting a transwoman as a sexual partner.” Then have a read of Julie Bindel’s piece where she laments the loss of lesbian bars.

What does LGBTplc do when it has been exposed with its pants around its ankles? It goes on the attack. It sets out to punish anyone who dares point out that not only does the ‘empress’ have no clothes, but she’s also got an 8 inch penis, it’s clearly visible through the red dress, and it’s making the lesbians feel very uncomfortable.

It seems that regardless of its online, or off, safe lesbian-only spaces where women can go and meet and spend time with other women away from the prying eyes of males is rarer than an anime avatar on Twitter with a sense of self-awareness. The legacy LGBTplc organisations and press sneer at the complaints regarding lesbian erasure. However, when Stonewall – that owes it name to an uprising where a lesbian was the catalyst – participates in lesbian erasure you have to question if Stonewall is taking the piss? Stormé DeLarverie’s name appears in just one press release on their site at the time of writing.

It is against that backdrop that Graham made a profile on ‘lesbian’ dating site, Her. Some think it was inspired, some think it was crass. I think that while it crossed the line a little bit it was a humorous way to make a serious point; his gender identity is not valid but other males on the platform are. But as Harry Potter, Hermione, and that ginger one said in Harry Potter and The Betrayal of the Ungrateful Shits, ‘trans people are who they say they are.’ Self-ID is based on that. What gives?

Why is Graham considered to have committed a crime so heinous that it required a police response yet others like leading figures in international banking go to work in a wig and women’s clothing half the week – and there isn’t a murmur? Is it because Graham’s highlighted the hypocrisy of it all whereas others just play along? Aren’t they just as offensive (or not) as each other?

Where is outrage for the lesbians being mocked by the males on these sites, encouraging them to get used to the mouth feel? Suggesting, in an act of pure selfless concern, that they don’t have to touch the penis if they don’t want to. Magnanimously giving them permission to refuse only if they’ve had a past history of sexual trauma. We should be talking about that; we owe it the 56% of lesbians pressured or coerced into accepting a transwoman as a sexual partner. Do the boundaries of lesbians mean nothing?

What does LGBTplc do when it has been exposed with its pants around its ankles? It goes on the attack. It sets out to punish anyone who dares point out that not only does the ‘empress’ have no clothes, but she’s also got an 8 inch penis, it’s clearly visible through the red dress, and it’s making the lesbians feel very uncomfortable. Her calling the police was meant to send a message to anyone else who might dare speak out.

Where is outrage for the lesbians being mocked by the males on these sites, encouraging them to get used to the mouth feel? Suggesting, in an act of pure selfless concern, that they don’t have to touch the penis if they don’t want to. Magnanimously giving them permission to refuse only if they’ve had a past history of sexual trauma. We should be talking about that; we owe it the 56% of lesbians pressured or coerced into accepting a transwoman as a sexual partner. Do the boundaries of lesbians mean nothing?

And don’t worry guys, you’re next as we’re increasingly seeing on the apps meant for us.

We need make a choice as a community, either we reform LGBTplc from within or we abandon ship and create new spaces like this site has for news and opinion, and LGB Alliance is doing for advocacy. We have created our own spaces before, and we can do it again.

What we shouldn’t ever do is accept what is clearly unacceptable.

We welcome contributors – of any viewpoint – who prefer insight to invective, who want to test ideas rather than dismiss them, and who’d rather build bridges than blow them up. If you want to write for us email editor@staging.lesbianandgaynews.com