- Joined
- Jul 22, 2021
I've seen a fair few lesbians online saying that using that label is considered old fashioned and has "TERF" connotations nowadays. Seriously.It's honestly horrible. I haven't experienced it myself (married) but from conversations with other lesbian women, every dating app lesbians use is absolutely teeming with trans-identified men who identify themselves as "lesbians" and are seeking out lesbian women. Most of my lesbian friends and acquaintances have stopped using these apps altogether because the sexual harassment is so bad from the men there. The ones who stay... it depends. Some get pressured into relationships and sex they don't want to have with men. Some play nice but turn every one of the shits down. Some just ignore them. All of them have it pretty rough.
Offline lesbian groups and meetups usually happen more or less in secret, because otherwise either you have to let the men in and the entire nature of the space changes (and many of the actual lesbian women leave the group) or you have to deal with turning them down and being called "exclusionary," possibly ostracized in your community, possibly losing your job and/or receiving death and rape threats, etc. I know at least one lesbian woman who I met online who got in huge trouble with her local "LGBT" group for trying to organize a lesbian only meetup group. (It's not all bad - there's a lesbian group in my town and to the best of my knowledge, it has never included any men and still exists. Probably just because it's all organized through an email list, though.)
It's really tough. These men are incredibly entitled and sexually aggressive, and they don't take rejection well. A lot of lesbians have had to go "underground" just to be able to meet up with one another without the presence of males. It's so ridiculous. And it makes it so much harder to find community and relationships than it already was - and it was already difficult due to a small population that is really spread out.
Most young feminine lesbians now go by "queer" "sapphic" and shit like that and if you still use the term lesbian you're likely a contrarian.