After well over a decade on tumblr I guess it was time to make a terf sideblog, lol
I am a lesbian who was involved in the queer/trans community in my city for about a decade and entered into a serious (unfulfilling, primarily but not entirely sexless) long-term relationship with a trans woman (fully and blindly accepting that trans women are women, fully denying my own desires out of a need for love and acceptance). Years later, I am dealing with shame and regret now that I realize how much I let myself get brainwashed and robbed of my own sexuality. The person I dated wasn’t this evil manipulator, no one was forcing me to be there, but I still feel violated, still feel like I was deeply manipulated by a lot of the queer/trans stuff in my 20s that led me into this situation that I thankfully got myself out of. Even before I got out, I was growing skeptical of the cult-like way the queer groups ran my city (a fairly small but very liberal university town). I dared to speak up against a community organizer and was severely cancelled in 2014 before canceling was really a thing. My ex and I were both anti “sex work” and we ended up being harassed in the streets and had our apartment vandalized for helping someone avoid resorting to entering the industry. My relationship thankfully ended with Covid, but not before I had what I can only describe as a mental breakdown complete with my first manic episode that lost me my job, stability, and a lot of friends, and earned me several diagnoses. Luckily with Covid, I got away from any opportunity for in person social events and rediscovered fandom and non-queer lesbians online, which really saved me. Getting into the queer/trans community in my city was a mistake, there’s no other way to put it. As a teenager I didn’t have any great confusion about being a lesbian once I had my big realization, but a severe confusion developed as an adult. It was easy as a kid to figure out and somewhat easy to accept that I only liked women, and came out to various people when I was around 16. And then from like age 18 until Covid, I guess you could say I slowly but surely completely indoctrinated myself, completely and thoroughly went all in, with a lot of help from other people.
This started I guess with the university lesbians around me telling me they’re queer because gender isn’t binary, which in 2010 was a pretty foreign concept to me, and the underlying message was that queerness was the morally and intellectually superior sexuality to lesbianism (so of course I fairly quickly called myself queer too because if not it was clear I was dumb and didn’t Get It.)
Next came my attraction to and dating a (now identifying) trans man, who began testosterone at the end of the relationship and insisted that being attracted to him meant I wasn’t a lesbian at all, but that I had to be bi/pan, which I did accept with some passive agreement.
Finally, there was a trans woman, who knew and validated I was really a lesbian (as long as I returned that validation), and pursued me (somewhat aggressively) in a way no one had before. But I was seeking any sort of validation and acceptance by this point, since I dealt with a lot of rejection and abandonment, both friend and relationship wise in my 20s. Out of so much detachment and confusion and now deep depression, (I think I also considered myself asexual for a time, as well as nonbinary of course), I went with it. It was serious, we planned on having kids together some day, I was miserable by the end. But I was so comfortable in my misery that I wanted it to continue, afraid of change, until my mental breakdown blew everything up and this person had the sense to end it for me, and I am thankful for that.
It didn’t help that of all the lgbt people I know, I barely knew a single lesbian. Ultimately, bi people, gay men, and trans people will always greatly outnumber us. Not to mention I spent a huge amount of time studying this shit in grad school. A wasted education, lol (I am happily self employed now though, so it all works out.)
Today, for the first time in my almost 30 years, I am dating an actual lesbian, and it’s only with that and some distance from my past and all my processing that I can really understand how unhappy my life was and how detached I was from my sexuality.
Despite coming out as a teenager, I find myself resonating more with late bloomer lesbians who only find their happiness after years of denying themselves and focusing on men. I wish I could find people who went through the same experience as me because I am still processing my mistakes years later. I don't want judgement or sympathy but I wish I could talk about this with someone who gets it. Please feel free to reach out if any of these resonated with you.
tl;dr: lesbians DO get coerced into dating trans women, the queer/trans community fucked me up a bit (a lot), but i’m happier now

























