A Dyke A Broad #7b
ThingsGiving, TERF-baiting, and More...
Happy Tuesday!
Thanksgiving is over, making way for Thingsgiving, which is handy, because I’m still selling Lesbian Avenger tees. Not that I remember why, anymore (Yes, I do. They’re great). So what if everyone else thinks lesbians are passé?
The new-found spirit of optimism I described last week endured approximately 24-hours. Which is when I ran across a dog whistley dyke-baiting article by an extremely well-funded nonprofit news site which mostly exists to suck up donations (seriously, their top staff have been paying themselves up to $278,000 each a year out of a modest overall budget).
But on Wednesday, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, they prominently featured on their front page, “Is There a TERF at Your Thanksgiving Gathering?” If there was, the writer light-heartedly suggested assault. “Throw the turkey at them.” The piece was accompanied by images of violence against “TERF” women from the realistic and bloody to the cartoonish. Some were later removed by the editors. No, I’m not posting the link. Fuck them.
They make me puke.
Theoretically TERF is supposed to mean Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, who completely reject trans identities. But in activist and academic circles, TERF is increasingly used as a generic insult for feminists, and a synonym for lesbian, the same way “banker” is used in some quarters for Jew. For the last couple of years it’s been happening to me—in reverse. I use the word lesbian, so I must be a TERF. I’m a monster. And seeing that article on Wednesday, I felt so… so… ARGH… that I ended up with a migraine, and The Girl ended up eating knock-off Doritos for her Thanksgiving meal.
I tried to write about it once last March, Using “TERF” Randomly & Other Signs Your Misogyny Is Showing. In fact, that was almost the last time I published anything at all before this newsletter. Because the queer listserves were enraged, and I was informed they all agreed, unanimously, (and anonymously) that I was a trans-hating TERF. Pretty much proving my point. Too bad only a few had the balls to comment directly on the article. But that’s the way of things. Hate grows in the shadows.
I wish I could say I don’t care, but I do.
They are largely the reason I faded from Gay City News. It’s hard to write with all those predatory, gaslighting chowderheads just lurking there. Waiting to rip you apart. For what? Saying lesbian? Fighting back against misogyny? I actually have a pretty good track record writing about trans rights. But who cares? Frankly, why should I write anything about (or for) anybody? Why should I write at all?
More and more I think I should accept I have no community and move on. In fact I was looking for a job at a nearby Monoprix store before Covid hit and I decided my dream of peacefully stocking shelves would be suicidal. And stayed at home. Whereupon I continued writing. Now I have a whole new memoir but it’s so unpublishably lesbiany and full of female flesh I’m tempted to burn it, like TERF-haters want to kill and burn me.
I don’t know why I’m not used to it yet. Being hated. I mean. My mother was pretty good at hating me herself. According to her, I was fat. I was lazy. And I smelled. You should have heard her scream that time I held my coffee cup, “LIKE A MAAAAAANNN!”
As for the rest of the world, I’ve had bottles thrown at me a couple of times, “Fucking dyke.” When I worked at Yellowstone National Park a group of girls used to stand outside my door and howl, “Lezzie, lezzie, lezzie.” And when The Girl and I had an online magazine we used to get death threats from right-wingers worldwide, along with emails detailing fantasies of our rapes that involved broken bottles.
But this is something different. Mostly because the lesbian-hating is coming from the self-described Left, above all from LGBT people. From DYKES. Which is weird. Because it’s not like females have quit having sex with each other. They just call themselves queer, or something new and fancy, or nothing at all. What they hate is the problematic word, lesbian. Which unlike other words is sexed. Declares us members of the losing team. Cervix-havers. And vulva-wearers.
In the back of our reptilian brains, we remember lesbian was once the polite, even exciting word for homo females. And now is the only word that evokes not just our homo-ness, but as I said, our disruptive female bodies. And slams the door unforgivably on males. Which makes it an old sin in new clothes, I guess. Which means the hate will stick around until there’s yet another wave of feminism with an analysis that remembers the flesh our discrimination is based on. And has the guts to name it. Like Suzanne Moore who, for instance, just joined the ranks of those chased out of their jobs for saying female bodies have consequences.
Last night she actually posted a funny little piece about holding a crowdfunder for the Endangered Species of Lesbians. I wonder what the donation perks will be? Most of us Lesbosauri already got toasters when we came out. I suggest Lesbian Avenger tees.
I’d like to hint at a bright future just around the corner, but the fact that this little ole womyny word lesbian has them shitting their pants—again—means I’m not holding my breath for change any time soon. The Lesbian is dead. Long live the Lesbian.
Because the rest of the world is thankfully not the U.S. and Anglo world, here’s a little good news from Thailand about lesbians proudly coming out and playing soccer, even if some have to do it in the hijab.
And since you clearly deserve a treat, here’s a recipe from the Disgruntled Dyke herself.
Hot Chocolate
What you do is wait for a day when it’s grey, and raining on and off. And you or your Girl’s been making disagreeable phone calls that no one answers, or the wrong people do. And your frustration is high. And temper short, and morale low enough that some solution must be found. Why not hot chocolate? It’ll be hot cocoa, really, but since we always called it hot chocolate growing up, that’s what it remains.
It’s not hard at all. While you heat up a couple of cups of milk, you get out the cocoa and dump a couple teaspoons in one mug with a little sugar, not much a teaspoon maybe, and a shake of cinnamon if you swing that way. And then you take a couple of tablespoons of the heating milk and stir it into the cocoa mix until it creates a kind of paste, so that when the milk is finally steaming hot you can pour it in gradually, still stirring, and it won’t be all lumpy, clumpy and gross.
That’s for The Girl. Chocolate gives me exquisite migraines, so I flavor my own hot milk with a little sugar, a drip or two of vanilla, and cinnamon and live happily ever after with a brain in working order. Kinda.
Extra-disgruntledly yours,
Thanks Doll xx