There is no such thing as a ‘trans lesbian’

Now the United Nations is gaslighting lesbians. This week, the UN’s gender-equality organisation, UN Women, seized upon International Lesbian Day to admonish us. ‘Remember’, it declared in a post on X (formerly Twitter), ‘trans lesbians are lesbians, too’.

The term ‘gaslighting’ can feel overused these days. It comes from one of Ingrid Bergman’s most iconic roles in the 1944 film, Gaslight. Bergman plays Paula, the beautiful, distraught wife of Gregory, who sets out to drive her mad. He fiddles with the lights, turning them brighter and dimmer while denying he has done so – the visual metaphor for his psychological torture of her.

The film gave us the word ‘gaslighting’, where misrepresentations of reality are repeated in an attempt to make people accept lies and think they are going mad. This insidious tactic has been employed particularly aggressively by gender ideologues, who repeat the mantra that ‘transwomen are women’.

Unfortunately, the strategy has proven successful. We recently learned that a third of the UK population think that ‘transgender women’ were born female, rather than male. Or at least, they aren’t sure whether transwomen were born male or female.

To be clear, the ‘trans lesbians’ the UN refers to are men who self-identify as women and who are attracted to women. In other words, they are heterosexual men. The vast majority of them remain physically intact as males. For a supposed women’s organisation to declare that these men can be lesbians really is gaslighting on a grand scale.

Back in the 1970s, when I told people I was a lesbian, men would often smirk and say they ‘felt like a lesbian inside’. It was a crude, unfunny joke. Today, the men who say this are no longer joking. They are laying claim to an experience that is not theirs. Some even go as far as to invade female-only spaces and prey on lesbians, as happened earlier this year with Jenny Watson.

Jenny had been running a highly successful lesbian speed-dating event at a central London pub. The event was a fixture in the local lesbian calendar. It had resulted in countless dates, at least two marriages and an enormous amount of fun.

Men had occasionally attended these events and, since Jenny is a progressive person with lots of trans friends, she didn’t make a fuss about it. It was only after two male attendees behaved in a predatory fashion that Jenny made it explicit that the event is for females only. That prompted activists to complain and led the pub’s new manager to ban the events for not being ‘inclusive’.

Thankfully, Jenny managed to fight back with the support of LGB Alliance, of which I am a co-founder. Jenny went all the way to the top and told the pub’s owners that the manager was in breach of the UK’s Equality Act 2010. What many people don’t understand is that the Equality Act explicitly allows for the exclusion of people according to their sex, as long as it’s a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Excluding men from a lesbian dating event might well be the archetypal legitimate exclusion.

When proper boundaries are not enforced, we see women’s spaces being assaulted, women’s sport being undermined, female prisoners being exposed to danger, and the dignity and agency of women and girls being placed under threat. All of this is happening under the guise of ‘trans inclusion’.

The rest of society will eventually realise what many of us lesbians did decades ago – namely, that lesbians represent the ultimate insult to male vanity. The whole point of lesbianism is that we gain our sexual and emotional pleasure from, and forge our deepest bonds with, other women. Some of us are old dykes, invisible and happily uninteresting to the male gaze. But young lesbians bear the brunt of men’s frustration and aggression at being excluded from their sex lives. That helps explain some of the hideous threats that Jenny has received.

Yet this is not just about men’s sexual frustrations. Those spreading the false doctrine of gender identity are currently in positions of power. That the UN’s official women’s organisation would insist that men can be lesbians is an absurd denial of reality. Whatever the motivation, it is an inexcusable betrayal of lesbians around the world.

In Gaslight, Gregory’s aim is to pack Paula off to the madhouse so that he can pursue his search for his wife’s valuable family jewels in peace. The motivations of UN Women may be more complex, but the dishonesty is the same. We must reject this gender gaslighting and hold a firm grip on biological reality.

Bev Jackson is a co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance. Follow her on Twitter: @BevJacksonAuth