FSTDT

Lizzy Shaw #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

I do like a good introduction. Also, thank you for pointing out that bisexual women do have privilege over lesbians and do oppress us. The current mindfuck narrative is that lesbians and gay men are somehow treated just as well as heterosexuals due to only being in romantic relationships with one sex. They like to call us “monosexuals” which used to be a term for a narcissistic person who masturbated too much, because calling lesbians and gay men sexual deviants is sooooo progressive. The popular lie is that bisexuals don’t have to worry about homophobia, oh no, it’s those mean gays and especially those mean lesbians that cause all their problems!

Bisexual women (and some het women) who are trans boot-lickers like to call lesbians “genital-obsessed” even though they are dick-lovers who are obsessed with making sure other women do as the patriarchy commands and fuck men. (For some “mysterious” reason though, they have less problems with het men who say no to the trans cult.) I also recall many online discussions about lesbian issues being derailed by obnoxious bisexual women who were mad it wasn’t about them, despite how some of these women like to pretend to be us. That said, there are some bisexual women I like and who do have a radical way of thinking. There is one blogger who is very good and calling out the trans cult and the bs that counts for bi-activism, but just her and a few others is not enough.

(Also, the phenomenon of people who claim to be bisexual or pansexual but immediately go back to just having het relationships after their first brush with homophobia shows that it is in fact homophobia they need to worry about, not “mean” homosexuals.) I never used the word “queer” to describe myself and it is illogical to use a word that now has such a diluted meaning. This is why I think it’s really important to not let the trans cult have anymore of our words. Plus, a lot of people were labeling others as “queer” without their consent and calling lesbians “queer women” to erase their lesbianism. There’s nothing wrong with reclaiming a slur for yourself if it applies to you, but you shouldn’t be naming others with it without their permission.

I think your writing style is great. Some academic writers are good, but many are just bad at it. People in STEM careers are notoriously bad at communicating and I often find myself asking, “What the hell is this crap?” One of my former lab instructors told me that good communication is considered secondary for most journal articles and you really just want to cram in as much jargon as possible to sound smart. The interesting thing is that the journal articles with a lot of jargon sometimes have disappointing results or you can just tell that the people who wrote it were bored out of their minds.

Bev Jo, Linda Strega and Ruston #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

The Power of Names — Our Definitions

Dyke: We use this term for the most Lesbian-identified of Lesbians. It’s important to remember that it was originally used only for Butches.

Lesbian: A female who loves and falls in love with other females, makes love only with females, and never relates sexually to males or injects semen into herself. When Lesbians are single and celibate, we’re very different from celibate het women, who are still sexually, emotionally, socially, and culturally focused on men.

Lesbianism is far more than a “sexual preference” or “sexual orientation.” It is a choice of women loving women. Everything we feel and do in our lives we do as Lesbians. Our political and creative work is Lesbian. Our friendships are Lesbian relationships.

No male can become a Lesbian. “Transwomen” are simply men perving, fetishizing, and caricaturing women and Lesbians.

Female: The term we use for our sex, since it’s not age-specific and is less identified with heterosexuality than “woman.” Also, it’s a reminder of our link with other female animals on earth, who are generally called “female,” rather than “women.” And, as Julia Penelope said in The Mystery of Lesbians, “female” is derived from the French “femelle,” with no connection to the word “male,” while (crediting the writings of Monique Wittig and ideas of Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte) “woman” comes from “wif” (wife) and “man.”

Woman, Womyn, Wimmin, etc.: For many of us, “woman” has meant heterosexual — a “real” woman by men’s standards. It’s a male definition imposed on females and isn’t our natural state. The many feminist variations are closet terms for “Lesbian,” and we refuse to support that trend. When we say “Lesbian,” we mean it. It’s understandable that Lesbians in unsafe situations use a code name like “womyn” to make contact with other Lesbians, but when Lesbians use those terms instead of “Dyke” or “Lesbian” among ourselves, it weakens Lesbian identity. “The womyn’s community” is het-identified, not Lesbian-identified.

Some Lesbians embraced “woman” because that term is denied to many females, especially Lesbians. Men call us “girls” to demean us. However, some Lesbians prefer the term “girl” to “woman” for other reasons. For some African-descent females, poor and working-class females, Lesbians who came out before the Women’s Liberation Movement, and young females, “girl” is a familiar, affectionate term. After all, we’ve all been girls for a long time, while “woman” is a term laden with images of “adult” females who are heterosexually active, wifely, and motherly. For many of us, girlhood was the time when many girls we knew were most clear about loving other girls and rejecting boys. We support girls who call themselves “girls” as a statement of pride, and we support adult females who call themselves “girls” as part of their culture and heritage.

We also don’t call ourselves Gay women since that associates us with Gay men. That term has been a dividing line between Lesbian Feminists and non-feminists or Lesbians who felt afraid to use the term Lesbian.

Bev Jo #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

The propaganda is that being pregnant is natural and even needed, not just by humans, but by other animals. Some women even force their pets to get pregnant because they think it’s good for them, though for many species, this means being raped. Many female animals are left scarred and injured, and some die as they fight to defend themselves from being raped. In zoos, when they want a species to reproduce, they often shackle the female to be raped because some will fight to the death against the rapists. Being pregnant also sucks the life force from the mother animal. Female bodies respond as though it’s a parasitic invasion and try to kill the fetus. And many women still become permanently disabled or die from pregnancy and childbirth, which is rarely publicized.

Bev Jo #sexist bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

Hetness and, in most cases, motherhood, are choices, and both choices come from a commitment to men first. Even when women don’t decide specifically to get pregnant, if they choose to be fucked by men, then they know what the risks are. Women who choose pregnancy gain the particular privilege and respect that only mothers are allowed. (Women often just continue doing what they are told they are supposed to do and follow what “everyone else is doing,” which means choosing men, making babies, etc. But clearly not every women does that, and trying to fit in and be considered normal is going for privilege. Some women are more calculating and aim to get a man with substantial privilege so they can have security, status, and money, while providing heirs, as well as sexual services as their part of the bargain — higher class monogamous prostitution.)

SheilaG #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

(response to a het woman who chose to get married and have children and questions radfem lesbian separatism)

Sonia, what the hell are you doing on this blog? I want at least one country in the world that is completely woman owned and operated. You can stick with your male crowd, go ahead, hang with the males. Bev Jo and all lesbian separatists have better things to do with our time. Again, we want 100% male free space. Sonia, go kiss ass with men, you belong with them have sold out to them, and we don’t give a damn about you. Get the heck out of our space, you penis colaborator. Again, why are you here? This is our space of lesbian freedom, it has nothing to do with sell outs like you! Go to men, continue to support the rapists and oppressors of women; we have no respect for you. Again, why do you come to lesbian sacred space?

Bev Jo #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

And no, I don’t believe any female is naturally heterosexual. We are relentlessly pressured to be heterosexual and to believe that that is natural, but it isn’t. We are bombarded with heterosexuality shoved down our throats in patriarchy and its media. The truth is hard to find. How many of us were told the real story about “the birds and the bees?” We’re not told that you never see a heterosexual honeybee because almost all bees are female, and the very few who are het (the “queens”), are het only for a moment in their lives. Children are indoctrinated with animated movies about bees and ants (ants also almost all female and never heterosexual), with the main characters male, including one voiced by a famous child molester). Finding the truth in the maze of lies makes it much harder to internalize the Lesbian-hating they teach us to have about ourselves. Many species of animals live in female communities and they keep the males out because they know that males are rapists and the murderers of their babies.

Bev Jo #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

One of the biggest patriarchal secrets has been the rape of girls by male relatives in “normal, happy families.” We’re taught the lie of “family love,” but we live the reality of family rape.

Many Lesbians don’t want to know about the extent of family rape and the reality of male violence in general, and say that talking about it is “negative.” That attitude weakens us. Knowing and facing the truth stops the flow of self-hatred in ourselves. Men don’t want us to remember or to know what they’ve done and continue to do. They don’t want us to remember the power we felt in our essence as little girls before they began their assaults. And they don’t want us to regain our full selves, because then we can stop them and change the world. Our families fight to stop us from talking about rape by male family, to protect our attackers. For most of us, we already know the truth. To finally say it out loud and to fight it politically releases the horror and frees us.

Girls are literally owned by their rapist fathers. Families exist in order for men to be served by females — domestically, emotionally, and sexually. A lot of us haven’t realized until recently that such sexual service is required of daughters as well as wives, and that the rapists include all male family members as well as fathers. Combining the numbers of reported assaults10 with the many more unreported ones (especially knowing that many victims of rape by male relatives forget the attack, and others lack information to name it for what it is), we believe over 90% of all girls are victims of family rape. Of the many females we know who were raped as girls, none reported it to the authorities. The majority don’t tell what they know won’t be believed. And they’re also in fear for their lives. Most who did tell their mothers were not protected. Instead, the mothers defended and protected their husbands, sons, and other male relatives, and the attacks continued. The horror of living with rapists, sadists, and their collaborators — usually without the support of one person –means many little girls survive by forgetting the attacks and ultimately forgetting much of our/their own girlhoods. This mental and psychic colonization10 is even more powerful than males’ ownership of our bodies.

Bev Jo #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

Most men pollute the earth for the sheer pleasure of it, not just as the by-product of their industries. Men love to leave their mark as a territorial statement, just as many male animals mark “their” territories by spraying. Of course, human males also mark with urine, as anyone who’s been in a public telephone booth knows. Even when public toilets are available, men leave their smell and mark on objects in ways females don’t.1

Some Lesbians say in anger that men are such “animals,” but that’s insulting to animals. Of course all mammals, including humans, are animals, but men are the least natural of animals. European-descent men in particular seem to have the goal of creating a completely artificial world2 and have left their mark on the earth forever by altering the natural landscape in many places. They kill forests, build their ugly cities, change the land’s shape with their destructive farming and mining methods, and they’re even changing the weather.3 They’ve exterminated countless plants and animals, and their murder of entire species is accelerating. Their radioactive and toxic chemical wastes will contaminate many parts of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. Plutonium, which is completely man-made, remains deadly for 250,000 years. One sixteenth of a millionth of a gram can kill a person, and men have already made thousands of pounds of it.4 If we didn’t know this was true, it would be hard to believe. Even so, it’s still unimaginable except in nightmares. Man has truly left his mark on his territory and, for the most part, he’s very proud of himself.

People speak of “man’s inhumanity to man,” because the effect on females isn’t even considered. But Man enjoys his power and cruelty. It makes him more of a man. A male nuclear scientist who watched numerous nuclear explosions said what a “rush” it was because, “A male human being likes to see an explosion.”5 (And there are over 50,000 nuclear weapons on earth.)

Bev Jo #fundie bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

Girls are literally owned by their rapist fathers. Families exist in order for men to be served by females — domestically, emotionally, and sexually. A lot of us haven’t realized until recently that such sexual service is required of daughters as well as wives, and that the rapists include all male family members as well as fathers. Combining the numbers of reported assaults with the many more unreported ones (especially knowing that many victims of rape by male relatives forget the attack, and others lack information to name it for what it is), we believe over 90% of all girls are victims of family rape. Of the many females we know who were raped as girls, none reported it to the authorities. The majority don’t tell what they know won’t be believed. And they’re also in fear for their lives. Most who did tell their mothers were not protected. Instead, the mothers defended and protected their husbands, sons, and other male relatives, and the attacks continued. The horror of living with rapists, sadists, and their collaborators — usually without the support of one person –means many little girls survive by forgetting the attacks and ultimately forgetting much of our/their own girlhoods. This mental and psychic colonization is even more powerful than males’ ownership of our bodies.