“I’m also not gonna freak out tho if a woman had sex with a man once, decided it wasn’t for her, and then never did it again and she calls herself a lesbian”

Coming from a supposed ‘gold star’ blog btw.

This is literal rhetoric homophobes use by saying “how do you know if u don’t like men if you haven’t tried it?” You’re pretty much saying lesbians can ‘try’ men once and be a lesbian even though that goes against the definition of our sexual orientation? Why does a ‘lesbian’ need to try a man to see if she likes it or not? This may be hard for a non-lesbian to comprehend, but the mere THOUGHT of being intimate with a man makes me want to throw up. I don’t need to try a man to know i’m a lesbian, I know it will do nothing for me so it’s pointless.

“Decided it wasn’t for her” many het and bi women have disappointing experiences with men in bed, doesn’t mean they’re not attracted to them. The fact you even TRIED a man is antithetical to being a lesbian. You have to have a baseline attraction to have consensual sex.

Now, fun games:

Go on the goodreads page of that book written by a bi woman where the main character starts out as a lesbian and ends up with a guy, filter for 5 star reviews (most of them written by bi women) and search for the word “fluid”. In the first 2 pages of reviews (and not counting the book’s blurb about ~the fluidity of love), I found 15 different people using the “sexuality is fluid” argument (usually in all caps) to defend the book. That’s why I called it a conversion therapy propaganda book.

Read the document written by the conversion therapists and notice the arguments that sound absolutely identical to what trans & bi women tell lesbians on a daily basis.

I’ll get you started: “The [term sexual fluidity exploration] accurately conveys that the therapist is not being coercive but merely assisting individuals in a client-centered examination of their sexual attractions.” (“Nobody’s forcing you to date transwomen, we’re just asking you to examine…”)

What they have to say about category change is also interesting: talking about sexual fluidity exploration rather than conversion therapy is better because it “does not imply that categorical change is the goal […] nor does it imply that change which is less than categorical in nature cannot be meaningful and satisfying to clients”. Which is exactly the way that bi woman who defended the book yesterday argued - the lesbian character does not become straight, therefore it’s not conversion therapy. Their rebranding efforts are really successful. Although mostly with people who were eager to support them in the first place.

And of course when they say “Scientifically, the fluidity of sexual orientation (and, for our purposes, especially same-sex attractions) for many women and men is now beyond question”, they quote Lisa Diamond to support their claim. Diamond, whose study shows that lesbian sexuality is not fluid at all. In fact the main thing her study shows is that bi women love to call themselves lesbians (”Other women with nonexclusive attractions would routinely change their identity labels in accordance with their current romantic partner or social network. If they were seriously involved with a woman, they identified as lesbian. If they were seriously involved with a man, they identified as bisexual or heterosexual, all the while acknowledging that they remained attracted to both sexes.”) and that it’s incredibly harmful to actual lesbians because bi women’s lies about their orientation will then be happily quoted by conversion therapists to convince their lesbian patients that they too can and should learn to love dick.

the gold star lesbian discourse around comphet is really …. something

i just wanted to give my two cents as 2nd gen immigrant and woc. In my culture, and many of our families (mine being West Asian) being queer is genuinely not an option, whether that be because of years colonialism stripping us of queer history, religion’s impact, or both. It still stands that being queer is unacceptable or unheard of. I was always curious about queer history in the Western Asia, and would ask if we had any queer folks/suspected queer folks in my family, I was told “that doesn’t exist in our race/ethnic group”.

We not only aren’t allowed to exist, we aren’t expected to.

I grew up not even knowing I could be lesbian. I tried my hardest to like men, I never noticed any feelings I had for women. If I liked a girl, it was because I wanted to be friends with pretty people “that’s normal” i thought, everyone wants pretty friends. At one point I was 12 and I remember being jealous of this girls dog because I thought “he gets to spend time with her” …. and I still didn’t put it together. I went years picking crushes, telling people I liked certain guys, to the point where I started believing it and getting anxious around them. I would mistake my literal anxiety for feelings.

When I was 14 I decided, okay I have to be asexual, because I just don’t feel attracted to men, and being with them sexually disgusts me. However, I thought, “I like YA novels with these straight couples, so that must mean I can romantically like men, if not sexually”. Again being attracted to women never came to my mind, it just wasn’t a part of my reality. But interestingly, I remember I would wish I liked women, I thought “life would be easier if I liked girls”, because I genuinely was terrified of the notion of even having to eventually spend my life with a man (as was expected of me).

Still I would force myself to flirt with guys, I remember my first kiss (after having run away from and dodged every single other guy that had tried). The kiss felt like nothing, so boring, I thought “why do people like doing this”. Starting from that point on, my high school experience was me getting drunk going to parties and trying to see if I could feel attraction to men. Drink after drink, nothing made a difference— I could not bring myself to kiss another guy again. So I led people on, faked crushes based on conventional attractiveness, felt nervous around said “crushes”.

I was inexplicably lonely in my experience.

I remember once at an all girls party when I was 17 and sober, I really had the urge to kiss this girl, I just wanted to be near her. When I heard her compliment me, it made me feel something for the first time in my life. And do you know what came to my mind? “I must be really lonely, I need a boyfriend”.

I didn’t realize I was a lesbian until I moved out at the age of 20, fell in love with a woman I didn’t realize I had feeling for until my heart was absolutely broken.

Anyways, I find it extremely unfair to say that lesbians that experienced comphet through perceived crushes on men, are “fake” lesbians. Our expierences are not the same because our lives are not, our cultures are not. The Lesbian masterdoc genuinely helped me put the pieces together, so even shitting on it irks me (* clarification, you can have issues w it but to discard how much it has helped people is ?). Not every single lesbian’s experience is going to be the same.

It was still an option for me to be homosexual. Indeed, it was the only option, because that’s actually how I was born. It was biological. I wasn’t physically capable of being in a hetero relationship or of kissing or having sex with a man. It wasn’t an option for the literally hundreds of other homosexuals I knew or knew of in my country. That’s why we were imprisoned and tortured and killed. We literally couldn’t hide it, we didn’t have the option.

bisexuals are the ones with the option to opt out of homophobia at any given moment by getting into an osa relationship; homosexuals will never have that privilege. And I know that SSA leaning bisexuals think that will never be them, but even still, i think it's wrong to wish you were a lesbian. you're not one, you'll never be one, you'll never experience lesbian specific attraction or trauma because you're inherently someone with osa; osa potential is foundational to your sexuality, even if you choose never to act on it. that does not go away just because you choose not to pursue men or have no desire to pursue them. as one anon told me, "Plus I’m a kinsey 5 and a febfem so I don’t think calling myself a lesbian would do material harm to any of you “born gay” types." that is absolutely false & disgusting of you. lesbians are telling bisexuals to not invade lesbian spaces & bisexuals instead insist we are "virtually the same" & then later complain about "biphobia" & "bi erasure".

calling yourself "gay" as bisexuals is homophobic; gay = homosexual, it shouldn't be an umbrella term for opposite sex attracted people to hide under. bisexuals are bi, attracted to both sexes; there's nothing wrong with that. where things do go wrong is when blatant envy of lesbians comes into play. it is hard to be attracted to your oppressors (men), i understand, but that doesn't mean lesbians are living in some misogyny-free d*ke paradise. being a lesbian is pure hell on earth. it's not some cutesy thing that the internet gives you cool points for. people think you're privileged because the L in LGBT comes first, but you get no boundaries as a lesbian; everyone wants you to not be one & they go out of their way to violate and abuse you. the idea that they think being gay would've made their life easier is just so…. tone deaf. i dont even know where to start. Conversion therapy has NEVER focused on making bisexuals "gay", it's on making lesbians and bis "straight"- yet they live in some delusional land where being a lesbian is overall easier. so infuriating

"well, this way i won't have to explain to people i am choosing not to date men", bis who say this are cowards, that isn’t safety, it’s hiding behind someone else’s identity. being a lesbian is not easier, its being seen as a complete failure of a woman, their choice is not "easier", it just harms lesbians, but they genuinely do not give a fuck because they have a lesphobic mindset. Bisexuals have their own issues and i wish they'd focus on community building instead of leeaching of lesbians.

EDIT: I forgot to mention but the biggest & most influential example of what i am talking about is the "lesbian masterdoc" that argued that liking feminine men, fictional men, or romantic attention from males, was a lesbian experience. when in reality, it was a bisexual woman coping poorly with her lesphobia while desperately clinging to the delusion that she is a lesbian.

screenshots of the posts i linked are below:

I think another reason is to gain oppression points, it is true homosexuals face more hardships in a lot of way than bis, we don’t have the privilege to be in an opposite-sex relationship and seem straight. So they want to be seen as us to get more points in LGB spaces.

Another is to gain access to homosexual spaces. The amount of times a bi will try an infiltrate lesbian spaces, online too, is shocking and an erosion of trust. Stay in ur lane and respect our spaces.

In a lot of radfem spaces there are bis larping as lesbian. Radical feminists don’t like men, and they want to say they’re lesbian to prove they don’t like men despite attraction to them. In a radfems eyes, being a lesbian is a fuck you to the patriarchy (i’ve seen them say this) so they want to be seen as the biggest feminist. Of course being a lesbian doesn’t mean you’ll be a feminist etc.

For some of them, it's simply "I'm married to a woman or have no intention of dating men in the foreseeable future, so why call myself bisexual". Those women typically think that everyone is secretly bisexual so to them, lesbians are either same-sex-leaning bis, liars, or playing hard-to-get.

In feminist spaces (I don't say radfem because unfortunately in my country there are a lot of libfem polilez as well), it is definitely about being the best, most rebellious feminist, which is why a lot of them will throw actual lesbians under the bus with phrases like "I'm a lesbian, not a homosexual" or opposing Lesbians (polilez) to born-this-way lesbians (actual lesbians). It's not that different from men in dresses claiming they're more womanly than actual women.

A lot of fakebians/polilez call themselves lesbians as an excuse to do behaviors they would normally consider antisocial (being "ugly", being mean, being lazy, being selfish, being predatory, cheating on their husband with a woman, abandoning their children, etc.) Remember that to a lot of them real female homosexuality is a myth, so for them identifying as lesbian is just as real as identifying as a witch or a gremlin. It's to scare people! This type of fakebian completely changes behavior and personal style depending on their bi/fakebian phase (they'll usually justify coming back to male attraction and good behavior with therapy or "healing their feminine energy" or things like that). Other fakebians simply decide to identify as lesbians once they consider themselves too old or ugly to attract men.

I've also read from an ex-fakebian that, for traumatized bi women, the "I'm a lesbian but I sometimes feel attraction to men" cognitive dissonance is easier to bear than "Men have hurt me over and over again but I still desire them". The comphetbian cognitive dissonance is even easier to bear when they are surrounded by enablers who call comphet every time (so it doesn't count! Don't think about it! Keep dissociating and repressing! :D) and silence anyone who says differently.

I've been thinking about something else recently, that some bi women have a conversion therapy/corrective rape fetish towards lesbians. Maybe not outright, but they get a kick out of calling themselves lesbians while feeling attraction to men. They laugh at lesbians who are upset about them. They'll lie about being a gold star on dating apps to hook up. They'll make content about being a lesbian with many male exes, being a lesbian with an exception, about going from man-hating liberal lesbian to heterosexual tradwife, etc.

The truth is, men intentionally use women to recruit other women into sexual exploitation. This is not because they care about either woman’s safety- it’s because women are more likely to be groomed into sexual exploitation when it’s marketed by other women.

Think of the average ad you see for egg donors. They don’t show the male CEOs of IVF and fertility clinics, they show a young college woman who made the noble choice to help families in need 😇 Ads for onlyfans or seekingarrangement show a lively young woman entrepreneur, never the cottage industry of “managers” who take a cut of the woman’s profits from sexual exploitation.

This is one reason it’s so devastating to see women support the rape economy- prostitution, porn, surrogacy, etc.,- because sadly, despite their ideological zeal, those women aren’t the ones being empowered or by their support of female commodification.

It’s not “devastating” to be treated like a sex object but it’s “devastating” that her man might actually be holding a gun to her head to make her do this crap? I have some oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you.

I really don’t give a fuck that these women only benefit somewhat from preying on lesbians whereas men could gain more. “Oh the women who do this are harmed.” She is doing the harm here, but thanks. “The men don’t let them have upper-level positions in their Preying on Lesbians Business.” As the lesbian being preyed on, so what?

I’m getting treated like crap and you people are bummed out that bi-curious women can’t treat me like crap even more. Homophobic movement for sure.

Sure, it’s always possible that the woman in the picture is a human trafficking victim who gets beaten every day and is kept in the basement in chains and therefore cannot be held responsible for being a creep. But when are we going to be honest with ourselves and admit that odds are she isn’t being “marketed” by a man but rather is using her free will to introduce her husband’s dick to a bunch of women who don’t want it?

She’s not being used as a marketing tool for “male sexual exploitation” she IS the exploiter. If it was me imposing my pussy on her no one would he jumping to my defense.

Btw in case you thought anything I said was an exaggeration people are implying that female unicorn hunters are doing what they do because their husbands are PROSTITUTING them and they have no choice because they’ll go HOMELESS.

“If men don’t change, I’ll become a lesbian!” Is something that straight and bisexual women have repeated ad nauseam. Hell, second wave feminists wrote books about that. Opposite-sex attracted women are really comfortable with throwing lesbians under the bus and using our existence as ammo for their heterosexual troubles, and the only way they can conceive lesbianism is as somehow being tied to heterosexuality/being helpful for opposite-sex attracted women in some way. They’re not going to help you. They will only acknowledge your existence as long as it benefits them and as long as they can profit from lesbian communities and support in some way, and after that, you’re on your own. If you’re a lesbian and at any moment express discomfort in being lumped with women who are clearly opposite-sex attracted, you will be ignored at best and called some form of “bigot” at worst. There’s women who don’t do this, of course, but most of the time they won’t risk calling them out because it would result in a massive shit show for them.

Most of them don’t even truly believe that lesbians exist, deep down. They believe that lesbian women are bisexual with a heavy preference for women, and that not showing some degree of mandatory heterosexuality is “extreme” and HAS to be tied somehow to a political ideology. They just can’t wrap their heads around the fact that lesbians are repulsed by male bodies and that they can’t tolerate men sexually in any way, shape or form.

Here is the wikipedia definition of comphet. As you can see, it is the theory that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced upon women. Whilst I do agree heterosexuality is assumed by a number of people ( but this is only natural for people to assume, as the majority of people are heterosexual anyway ) I am critical of Adrienne Rich saying heterosexuality is enforced. A lot of people are naturally heterosexual and this makes sense from a biological standpoint. Men being attracted to women exclusively and vice versa makes sense for the purpose of being able to create offspring, there seems to be a biological drive in a lot of people to have babies ( whilst i would argue lesbians and gay men do not have this drive at all )

For a lot of women, heterosexuality is not enforced, it is their natural sexuality. Speak to a heterosexual woman and she will gush about her partner, you can see they are genuinely attracted to men.

In some cases women are forced to get married to men, but this is the exception and the majority of women are NOT forced.

Heterosexuality, just like homosexuality and bisexuality, is natural.