DIVIDED WE FALL
LAST DECEMBER, comedian Rhea Butcher tweeted at the 17-year-old lesbian pop culture website AfterEllen: “You don’t represent me or my friends and your website is a sham.” Butcher, who identifies as both nonbinary and lesbian, continued: “You’re not a lesbian/bisexual website, you’re a TERF website.”
THAT WEEK MARKED A PEAK IN THE CONTROVERSY long swirling around the site, pitting communities of queer women against each other over gender inclusivity. In one camp stood transgender-inclusive queers for whom “lesbian” or “dyke” can be claimed by trans women and nonbinary people, as well as trans men who feel a strong connection to the lesbian community. The other, increasingly vocal camp are “gender critical” biology essentialists who believe that only cisgender women can identify as lesbian, and that trans people are in some way trying to “trick” those women. Members of this latter camp are often referred to as Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), which some people claim is a slur used to discredit them.
AfterEllen was once a behemoth in the queer media space, focusing on lesbian and bisexual women’s representation in film and television, but it has recently moved into a new sphere. These days, the site runs articles about the vagaries of “girl dick” (in other words, the genitals of some trans women), claims that young cisgender lesbians are being bullied online for not wanting to have sex with trans women, and makes calls to separate the “L” from the larger LGBTQ+ initialism out of a desire to no longer be associated with trans people. The new AfterEllen has made its stance crystal clear: Trans people are not welcome.
By the end of 2018, a coalition of editors from a newer crop of arguably more popular outlets for queer women, including , , , and , authored an open letter slamming the “message these so-called lesbian publications are sending to trans women and to young lesbians—including trans lesbians—and we want to make it clear this is by name, editor Carrie Lyell told that the site’s “writers and editors are certainly among those we are referring to.”
