Marriage Equality: A Case in Point: MINE

Now this is truly disturbing and I am considering ending a friendship around this.
I have a friend of mine that I hang out with a couple times a week when she's available. She claims she's AC/DC(bisexual), but comes across quite butchy/dykey in the way she takes up her space and in her persona. We come from the same hometown, so we were raised in a similar environment which influences our personalities to a great extent. I don't want to go into all the details and thus 'outing' her online...

I've known her for a couple years and we are engaged in some of the same activities which brings us together. I have felt that she is in denial of her Lesbianism, but yet she engages in it in a very indirect platonic way with a female friend of hers, that she buys all kinds of items for, treats and gives expensive gifts to. The woman is way more femme than her, straight, and they fight like an old married couple, like this old married couple, my partner and myself.....Butch on Butch! She knows both of us, and we are longterm partnered, going on 10 years, longterm sobriety, and LEGALLY MARRIED since 2008, though we also married in 2004 while Gavin Newsom was allowing it before the courts stopped it. Those marriages held for six months before they were struck down. The ones in 2008 are still legal(yes we got to hear the actual arguements in the California Supreme Court itself, one day).

We have done the marriage equality marches, rallies, marched for 6 years in San Francisco Pride for Marriage Equality....so we've done our part. Our marriage certificate sits upon our hallway wall.

SO ANYWAY, this pal of mine, I talked to her two nights ago, and she went on about how 'gay marriages aren't legal in California because of the law[Prop 8].' I told her
OURS IS. That my partner and I are LEGALLY MARRIED in California...she started to argue about it and for someone who hasn't followed the whole struggle it's rather confusing to understand it all(she's pretty nonpolitical). I told her we married in the 5 month window when the California Supreme Court allowed same sex marriages in 2008. We married two weeks before the infamous election...and even so, when the case was finally decided, going before the CA Supreme Court again, they kept Proposition 8 legal, the discriminatory law that stopped the same sex marriages, and declared marriage between a woman and man only, but we're still fighting it...AND it also allowed all of us who married LEGALLY in that 5 month time frame before the 2008 election, to stay MARRIED. So, our marriage, unlike in 2004 when 4000 same sex marriages were annulled, 18,000 same sex marriages in 2008 including ours, was NOT annulled by the State. We still have California State Legally Married status.

I tried to explain this to her and then she retorted: "Well, the Catholic Church says that marriage is only between a man and a woman." Do you know how many people we picketed, including the Mormon Temple in Oakland, how many times we marched, how many times we protested and how much consciousness we've tried to raise, around those who would deny us, and shout their religious crap at us???To get this from my own friend whose too scared to claim her Lesbian identity???But still wants to hang out with us, go to coffee and meetings with us, and be our friend? WELLLL...this fucking HURT! It was so unexpected....for a moment I was in shock...but then I came to my senses and responded: "And do you know how many churches support Marriage Equality? The Unitarians, the Quakers, liberal Jewish Congregations and many others..." Then I told her I had to go and hung up on her. She called me back the next day 10 minutes before Obama's speech, but I just couldn't bring myself to answer it.

I would feel sad to let go of yet another friend...but...but....and my partner was just as shocked, her knowing us as a MARRIED committed Lesbian couple in longterm sobriety and all, and proud of who and what we are....we just did not expect this to come from a friend...so I'm grieving and angry too.....

It never is easy for Lesbians..especially OUT LOUD AND PROUD ones, but it's done so much for me being married to my partner. It has changed everything. Not just the rights, but my attitude towards commitment, and especially having the right unchallenged to have complete access to her while she was in the hospital and Emergency room for several serious health incidents in the last few years since we married.

Whether you believe in marriage or not, I'm glad that we at least can claim the right.
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon

My Response from Dirt's Blog: Real Lesbians do not stay partnered to TransMen/FTM's

That is really a concern of mine. I've worked so hard to convince especially nonleather lesbians to practice safe sex(most leather lesbians know about and practice safe sex with casual/nonfluid bonded partners). I've known too many to come down with Herpes or other STD's. To include gay men in the mix because FTM's want to date EVERYONE, from Gay/bi men to Lesbians, puts us in a much higher risk category.

But hey folks, it's SIMPLE. Dykes want to be with DYKES..with other FEMALES, that's why we ARE Dykes/Lesbians...and Lesbian has got to be almost a dirty word(replaced by those coopting the term Dyke, who are not, or using the term 'queer woman' for 'anything goes'.)

I remember one year when I went to my leatherwomen's group at the time, and there was one well known and loved figure in the community who was having a double mastectomy because of breast cancer, no choice in the matter and we had an event for a fundraiser for her since she had no insurance and AT THE SAME TIME, was another interloper who came to said WOMAN TO WOMAN meeting and proudly pulled up her shirt and bragged about how she had her breasts removed, and showed it off...I was so fucking disgusted, it was one reason I quit going back to this group...
fast forward several years later and this self same individual is now leading a FEMALE IDENTIFIED BUTCH group...no breasts, and no longer identifying as FTM, supposedly, but still the hormone induced voice.

Meanwhile the double breast cancer survivor is nowhere to be found, or minimally so, having struggled just to survive, and still Female as far as I know....

Comparing yourself(the MTFS) to a woman who no longer has a womb and enforced hysterectomy because of cancer or other female disease and can't get pregnant and is forced into premature menopause, or the FTM's comparing themselves to a breast cancer survivor when you CHOSE to have your breasts removed, is just so absolutely misogynist and disgusting to me that it shows just how insensitive the trans movement is to bio-female reality and Being.

Keep on keeping on! Dykes and Lesbians date FEMALES WHO ARE PROUD TO BE FEMALE, whether they be Butch, Androgynous, Femme or any other XX combination thereof...

Otherwise, just call yourself a 'queer woman' and quit coopting OUR IDENTITIES. I've said this before and I'll say this again. I've known too many Dyke Femmes who have told me they just can't find a Butch to date, or are having a very hard time, because so many are identifying as MALE, or some version thereof....and they really, really are mourning the loss...the other coopters are 'queer women' or bi/queer/pansexual femmes, NOT Dyke/Lesbian Femmes....

There is power to womon to womon love, and NOTHING will replace it, no matter how much whining you do, or attempts at cooptation. Those Dykes/Lesbians who know, KNOW the difference.

If you're dating a transman, unless you've been in relation to this individual already, you'll be mourning the loss of this individual's female parts/identity/Being/Dyke Self....if not sooner, then later....cuz well, We're Dykes, and we LUST for the authentic FEMALE whatever package it comes in, Butch, Femme, ect.
XX...no penis or induced testosterone for the purpose of changing 'sex' between us friends/lovers.
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon