Mayday4Women supports lesbian separation from any kind of queer politics and transgenderism. “LGBTQ” politics have failed lesbians, contributing to our erasure and to enforcing compulsory heterosexuality on us! Even before the rise of transgenderism, lesbians were always treated by gay men as second-class citizens and lesbian culture was never supported, or even respected, by this political alliance with men. With the latest developments in what is wrongly called “gender identity”, heterosexual men who pretend to be women are now trying to impose themselves as “lesbians” on the rest of the world and, above all, on actual lesbians. This is pure rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality imposed on lesbians and on our identity, sexuality, culture and dignity.Far from condemning those men, “LGBTQ” organisations are ideologically and financially enabling them, while shaming lesbians. Butch lesbians and lesbians who do not conform to femininity are increasingly pressured into coming out as “transgender men” or “non binary”.

We believe that as women, lesbians have much more in common with other women than with any man. Therefore, lesbians’ first political group of reference is women, not the queer alphabet soup.

We want:

To reassert the definition of lesbian = a woman (an adult human female) who is sexually attracted to and has sexual and emotional relationships exclusively with other women (adult human females).

The “L” to leave this absurd coalition called “LGBTQ”

Respect for lesbian separation and autonomy

To reject the Born This Way rhetoric imposed by gay men on lesbianism, rhetoric which was always designed at attracting pity and sympathy for “the freaks who really can’t help it”, not pride and liberation. Compulsory heterosexuality is designed to disproportionately control women and girls. This means lesbians often have very different trajectories away from heterosexuality than gay men do. Lesbians have little in common with gay men.

Protection for lesbians from men, however they call themselves, trying to enforce heterosexuality on us.

To create and protect lesbian culture and lesbian-only spaces.

To stop the transing of lesbians who do not conform to femininity

On the 30th anniversary of the introduction of Section 28, it is very clear that there has been 30 years of decline. Section 28 was part of the backlash against the politicisation of lesbian and gay sexualities. There has been enormous capitulation since then, and many have abandoned the revolutionary politics involved in lesbianism. Whilst gay men have been rewarded institutionally by the liberalisation of their politics, lesbians have only dropped further into invisibility. The representation of gay men in the media has increased, online, and in politics – and for this we do not mean reformism, counting MPs and the like, but who is allowed spaces (bars, shops, clubs), resources (organisations, groups) – the representation of lesbians is entirely absent (there are heterosexual versions of lesbianism allowed on TV, such as the promotion of ‘femme culture’ as apology and sop to the male gaze).

Lesbian culture, like all female cultures under patriarchy, is a dominated one. There remains only one single lesbian bar in London and our media, such as Diva magazine, is actually complicit in the dismantling of lesbian culture.

As we continue to fall in numbers, due to the erasure of our culture, transgenderism, and other threads of anti-lesbianism, something must be done to challenge this situation.