i'm a witch & you can't kill me

So, after this criticism, the group has rebranded to "FLINTA", a category that explicitly includes trans lesbians, but also: all straight women, all intersex people irrespective of gender or sexuality, all non-binary people irrespective of sexuality, all trans men, and all agender people irrespective of sexuality. The majority of people on Earth are FLINTA, and the majority of them are exclusively attracted to men (because they are straight women)! That's not a sapphic group any more!

I found this really frustrating because the problem was never the admissions criteria for the group, but rather the fact that we couldn't know in advance how transphobic the organisers were. If a sapphic group is run entirely by cis women, that is frankly already an amber flag, and to counteract it it needs to say something like this: "We encourage all trans women and all non-binary people (no matter their assigned gender) who consider themselves sapphic to attend. We know transfeminine people have historically been excluded from spaces like this and we want to make it as clear as possible that we encourage you to join." Otherwise most of us will always be too nervous about abuse to attend at all.

Instead of doing that, they responded by also opening the doors to trans men and straight women, which is an extra insult because it suggests that they think trans lesbians don't count as "lesbians" in the first place. To respond to a request to be more accommodating of trans women by saying, "sure, what the heck, in fact everyone might as well join!" is just another way of saying you didn't really want us.

And even with these changes, I still don't feel welcome, because FLINTA (essentially "anyone but cis men") is a category that has historically excluded many transfems in practice even if not in theory. A cis woman can show up to a FLINTA event wearing whatever she wants and always be welcome. A trans woman will often feel compelled to present as femininely as possible, especially because FLINTA includes a lot of cishet women who will just call you a man if they clock you because they have no tact or experience with queer identities at all. If you show up in trousers and no make-up as a transfem there's a chance you might not even be allowed in the room, so it can often serve as a gender presentation barrier that is exclusively applied to us.

also, for the unaware: mclaughlin v. florida was a 1964 supreme court case that struck down a florida anti-miscegenation law that criminalized cohabitation (and thus, as implied, sex) between white people and people of color of opposite genders. anti-miscegenation laws made marriage and sexual relationships between white people and people of color, most often specifically black people, a FELONY in several states in the united states up until the 1950s and 1960s. though it was already struck down by the supreme court, the state of alabama didn't repeal their law until 2000! there were THREE ATTEMPTS at codifying anti-miscegenation into the us constitution!

like yes, the issue here is partially straight white people's ignorance on the united states's history of homophobic policy, but it's also really important to recognize that arguably the majority of the issue here is straight white people's ignorance of the united states's history of codifying eugenics and antiblack racism.