Guest Post- S.K. Petition to Confront Lesbian/Dyke Organizations Defaming SF Dyke Marchers

This is from a public forum but important to include here:

I want to say thank you to everyone who's signed the petition and contributed to the fundraiser for legal fees so far.  You are ALL appreciated SO much!  We're up to 760 signatures and climbing! 😊✊🔥

With that being said, I'm loving the comments on why people are signing it, and wanted to share this excellent and eloquently written reason by "S.K.".

REASON FOR SIGNING

"I'm tired of the misogynist attitudes that ignore women as an oppressed sex-identified minority (on a systemic level, by the larger society). Women are oppressed in their own right for their biological existence from birth according with/to gender stereotypes, and they are oppressed in regard to their sexual preferences and proclivities, slut-shamed, shamed for being not sexually "giving" enough, and shamed as lesbians for being female and attracted to only the same sex. These experiences are separate and distinct from what transwomen experience as males in the larger society, who feel a need for social recognition and acceptance into women's spaces. The needs of females and lesbians are often different and separate from (widely held) trans belief systems about how women should organize, "what women should say"; how women should express affinity/ relationship to each other, and how women can "appropriately" express their sexual attraction to other women in an "inclusive" way, when who they really need to include is members of their own political class and those who legitimately share their lived experience under the patriarchy as female lesbians. The appropriation and erasure of this experience is lesphobic and denies women their autonomy and rights as females to experience themselves as human and having a valid political and social experience of their own social and political reality without constant gaslighting and demands by transwomen for inclusion and centering. This has gotten to the point where homosexual woman are being told their sexuality is invalid and they are transphobic for not wanting to be with males. They are not allowed to define what males or females are or to define their oppressor class. Transwomen need to show respect and deference for females and lesbians as legitimate social minorities with mature lived experience within their own distinct political and social realities. What is happening on a large scale is cultural appropriation and micromanagement of female minority groups (lesbians and women), which includes telling women who they can and should be sexually attracted to, by males. Women are being silenced by transwomen, or males, and denied a right to protest and facing assimilation of their identities and political interests. These are people with a lived experience as a minority group. We're talking about 30-60 years of lived experience as a specific minority group being appropriated and erased by people with no shared lived experiences of being female, and completely different political interests that center male access to female spaces, identities, and sexual identities. Lesbians are being denied their own culture through forced male assimilation by threat of violence, coerced, manipulated into having sex with "male women" and denied pride in their sexuality by being told they are not inclusive "enough" of transwomen, they are expected to welcome transwomen into their beds, to bend and fold to male sexuality and political interests, and they are told they cannot speak publicly and organize as an independent affinity group; their female voices must represent trans interests at the expense of their own political interests and safety, and they must not be insensitive by reminding transwomen of what they don't have-- even when that represents the lived political reality of females who are told from birth that they are going to be women. The lesbians involved in dyke march protests are being told they are expressing hate by clearly stating their sex difference and the realities of their socialization process as female, but they are not expressing hate only their reality. It is not wise to attempt to change society to be more accepting of trans people by silencing women. If you want trans people to be accepted, patriarchal values and violence must be eliminated, and gender stereotypes must be eliminated. Saying demonstrations like this are hateful is a projection of fear, insecurity, and self-hate. The women who were attacked at the dyke march are simply representing their own separate political interests as females, which any legitimate minority group should have a right to do in this country. Lesbians deserve to have access to solidarity among themselves, political agency and organization, and respect for themselves and each other as a minority group with a valid lived experience that is separate and distinct from other minority and majority groups, and also a political voice that is not solely representing or representative of another groups political agenda. Females, or women, and female lesbians today remain concerned about their safety from male violence for good reason, and they are not wrong to want their right to their own self-definition and spaces as an oppressed and vulnerable class of people."-S.K.