Why would you want to be seen as something that you are not? If you are dating / in love with / attracted to a man then you are not a lesbian. Bi potentially, queer potentially, but not lesbian. If the lesbian label is so important to you then you need to either re-examine that importance or re-examine your relationship. Doing anything else would be a disservice to you and to your partner.
I do speak from experience. I went from radical lesbian separatist (I wouldn't even let men into my apartment) to wonderfully, happily married to my husband (see icon).
Hubby put it very simply: "I'm a man. You're married to me. We're a straight couple."
(Of course, I still find myself attracted to certain types of women so consider myself queer. But since we are monogamous that is rather immaterial.)
I disagree. I still hold my lesbian identity despite being married to a man and he's okay with that. I happen to be a lesbian who found a man she loved. And I am certainly not okay with him dictating MY sexual identity based on HIS transition. They're two different things. I know that works for some people, and that's okay, but I do strongly feel that inasmuch as it's my husband's right to identify as "straight", it's my right to identify as I so choose.
Goodness, some people in this community come off as sounding like the sexuality police. Like I'm wrong for labeling myself a lesbian despite staying in a relationship with a transgendered male. The person I fell in love with was (perceived as) female at the time we met. We've stayed together because I love him as a person, regardless of his gender. Gender is a social construct and bodies are fleeting, but you love somone based on who they are inside all of that.
Just because I chose not to end a perfectly good relationship over my partner's transition does not make me any less of a lesbian. Those who say otherwise just don't agree with my on what the term means, and that's okay, but don't you dare try to enforce your view on me or tell me my image of myself is somehow flawed.
His transition has changed many things about me: it has made me more open, more self-aware, more conscientious, more honest. But it has not made me bisexual. Nothing against those who identify this way, but that's just not me.
I think it's a very general perception of the GLBT community, at least the one I know, as a whole. When I came out, it took me nearly five years before I was "one of the gang" so to speak. I was always "too femme", etc. And now, as someone in a loving relationship with a transman, I am suddenly "straight" and "not queer enough". And to be perfectly honest, the people in our lives who have not been able to come to terms with it the most happen to be people in the community. It's very frustrating. I wrote an essay called "His Transition, My Identity" for precisely this reason.
I guess I could've cleared things up a while ago by saying that I usually identify as 'queer' but I did 'come out' as a 'lesbian' when I first came out to parents/friends etc. However, I agree with you, and my partner has said the same, labels are not ultimately important when deciding who you love and who to spend the rest of your life with. It is still unsettling in the short term to believe that I could end up living my life portrayed as a 'straight couple' and that as someone had related to before, finding your way in the queer community might be sometimes difficult. I guess a poster was right when they picked out my subliminal 'It was so fucking hard to come out as queer..now I have to examine myself as the partner of a potentially straight male identified partner' and also what that might mean for him. It is definitely a process.
i made a bulleted list!governmentcandyJanuary 30 2008, 22:26:53 UTC
-There are, I think, a lot of women dating FTMs/male-ided people who continue to ID as lesbians. I used to have a pretty big issue with this, but after actually hearing what they had to say...I don't know. Everyone has a right to name and claim their own identity, and I don't think your identity should ever have to be defined by who you're sleeping with. I was always queer, even though I only slept with bioguys for a long time. So, you know, if you feel like you still need to id as lesbian, do it...and if that changes over time, do that too, you know? fluidity is fun
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I think the most important thing about all of this is that these are the exact feelings you need to share with your partner. As other people have said, this is Your transition too. I transitioned with my current partner. I was a strong identified lesbian with a small attraction to guys. When he first started talking about transition, I got scared. I understood that he wanted top surgery, but I was adamently against him taking T. I just wasn't going to do it. It was a slow process for us, which was good. It involved a lot of study and discussion between both of us. What he thought he wanted to do, and I what I wanted
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I was always pretty proud of my fag hag status, and I would kill to go to a club with my partner and be seen as a fag-hag-hanger-on other than his fiancée because that would mean people were reading him as male.
But they don't. We're the token lesbians in town, and I'm pretty bisexual. In fact, we both like boys more than we like girls.
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I do speak from experience. I went from radical lesbian separatist (I wouldn't even let men into my apartment) to wonderfully, happily married to my husband (see icon).
Hubby put it very simply: "I'm a man. You're married to me. We're a straight couple."
(Of course, I still find myself attracted to certain types of women so consider myself queer. But since we are monogamous that is rather immaterial.)
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Goodness, some people in this community come off as sounding like the sexuality police. Like I'm wrong for labeling myself a lesbian despite staying in a relationship with a transgendered male. The person I fell in love with was (perceived as) female at the time we met. We've stayed together because I love him as a person, regardless of his gender. Gender is a social construct and bodies are fleeting, but you love somone based on who they are inside all of that.
Just because I chose not to end a perfectly good relationship over my partner's transition does not make me any less of a lesbian. Those who say otherwise just don't agree with my on what the term means, and that's okay, but don't you dare try to enforce your view on me or tell me my image of myself is somehow flawed.
His transition has changed many things about me: it has made me more open, more self-aware, more conscientious, more honest. But it has not made me bisexual. Nothing against those who identify this way, but that's just not me.
Sorry. End rant.
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But they don't. We're the token lesbians in town, and I'm pretty bisexual. In fact, we both like boys more than we like girls.
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