I think between things like "born this way" and criticisms of "choice feminism" many people have developed this mindset that their empathy can only be exercised when someone is in a situation they didn't choose

"If you want to liberate yourself as a queer woman you also have to want to liberate a straight women" deeply resonated with me. I'm a lesbian who's best friend of 12 years is a straight woman. I'm almost 30, my friend is 33 and recently she opened up to me how being straight woman without husband and family at her age leads to insane heteronormative pressure painting women like her as a losers, undesirable and too old. She told me that this pressure is so high and devastating she cannot be friends with other women but me not because she's misogynystic (she's not) but because when her straight ex friends get married and have kids my friend feels judgement from them which continuaties the heteronormative pressure, and if they don't she still feels jealousy and unfulfillment even if she's deeply ashamed of these feelings. She told me if i had a partner and good relationships our friendship would be the only friendship which won't be tainted by societal expectations. You can say "wow your friend sucks" or "wow she's weird about queer relationships" but for me that moment of vulnerability and honesty (even if a bit uncomfortable) is something which makes friendship even more deep and personal.
After these words i always thing that being straight in a heteronormative society can truly feel like a prison.

maybe im out of my depth here.. but choosing a label for your sexuality feels a lot like picking your disability aid as a disabled person.. as a child i chose to use a walker with forrest gump style leg braces.. as i got older i decided i fit better into a wheelchair full time.. labels get demonized a lot but i think if people started approaching this conversation with 'im using this label because its the one i feel the need to use right now' we'd be in a better place.

not my strongest analogy but theres something there about the number of different disability devices being as numerous as the number of sexualitys

I’m a little more generous to the “born this way” thing because it was a response to an aggressive push for conversion therapy in the 90s and 2000s. Tho the slogan itself is way too simplistic, there’s truth in the message that sexual attraction (or lack thereof) is innate and attempts to force change are ineffective

I'm an intersex trans woman who is also a lesbian and so so often I find (especially online) a lot of gatekeeping that try to tell me I not only can I not be a lesbian, but if I am fine with other trans women I also cannot be a lesbian. I'd be quite the hypocrite if I I didn't accept other women in similar circumstances to mine. But the gatekeepers always try to push me into being a 'sapphic bisexual'. I don't have any interest in guys. They always seem very TERFy and make genitals into what decides someone's gender and hence what makes a lesbian. There have traditionally been a lot of gender nonconforming people in the lesbian community and under the lesbian label, but they really hate that idea.

i think i will be updating my gender identity to "mortal enemy to the patriarchy" 😂

This is gonna set back the “this is gonna set back lesbians”

I'm a bi woman, my spouse is genderfluid, and I don't really intend on dating anyone else unless something goes very wrong, but I have thought about whether I'd consider dating men if I was ever single again, and I can't see that for me. I don't consider myself to be a lesbian, but I could see how someone like me with a strong preference for women and NB people could feel like that label suits them better. Anyway, I love conversations like this, I think it's so interesting. I just hate when it gets turned into infighting and it feels like it's bi women vs lesbians, it's exhausting!

As Trans guy who used to think I was a lesbian and has called myself gay and bisexual I know terms get messy. If I meet a queer person I call myself queer, explaining myself to my straight coworkers I am bisexual, I frequently get assumed to be "just gay". I don't think I'm searching for the one correct term to describe my sexuality, infact I've never officially "come out" with my sexuality. I know labels can be so comforting and a way to connect with people, but it can also be really isolating if you feel like you have to cut off parts of yourself to find entrance into that space.

I also see this when talking about the trans experience. I often get people telling me ”you were always a guy" when that doesn't feel akin to my experience and I'm actively disagreeing with them. Unfortunately, it's seen as The™ way to validate trans people. I didn't even consider I might be trans until I was past 20, I was a teenage girl for a while! I chose to stop living my life as a woman and chose to start living as a man (and the kind of man I want to be). For me the queer experience is choice and freedom and community. That's what we should be defending.

gay trans guy here to celebrate the lesbians realizing they're allowed to be lesbians 🎉🎉🎉 hope it fills you with warmth and light and joy!!!!!

Tbh as a trans guy I do not feel like a lesbian is being trans inclusive if they “won’t ever date a man but trans men are an exception.” I feel like they’re being transphobic

My wife comes at this from a bisexual perspective and I come at from a lesbian one and we are softly disagreeing with each other in the topic. I don't have a super strong stance, I feel like I'm still a fence sitter on the topic as I unpack a lot of the toxic lesbian discourse I was immersed in as a young adult. But she feels this whole premise is flawed from a bi point of view. She had many words, but it boiled down to that the fact that the author even "gets" to choose is an inherently bisexual experience.

I don't have a real point to this comment but I am curious about what bisexual people think about this topic as much as lesbians, so long as we're not invalidating the choices and experiences of this author.

As a straight woman, my thoughts on the main topic are likely neither needed, welcome, so I'm just commenting to help your engagement and to let you know that:
1. As a fellow yellow/lemon lover, your videos are gifts to my serotonin
2. Your eyeshadow in this video was gorgeous and hit every one of my dopamine receptors like sour candy,
3. As a fellow chronically ill migraine sufferer I am really really glad you're not sleeping on mold anymore! And
4. I really respect your commitment to making videos you believe in even when you don't expect them to be well received or profitable in your financial situation. You're good enough at this that you could probably make more money by making more frictionless content and you choose not to. Happy Pride and I hope people are able to join you in the nuance corner for this one or at least not be too mean! 💖🏳️‍🌈🍋

no cops at pride means no policing the journey of the people who are being oppressed with me either way

Every argument I’ve ever seen pitting born this way against queerness as a choice seems to come down to a difference in definitions causing people to talk past each other.

Most everyone seem to agree that some people are born with same-sex desire, gender dysphoria, or whatever other force underlies their queerness, but the split comes in deciding whether the existence of that driving force alone makes you queer, or if it requires positive identification and/or action on top of it.

Without this clarification, a lot of the criticism of born this way rhetoric can read like conversion therapy logic: if you can choose to be gay/trans, it necessarily implies you can choose NOT to be, which understandably feels like a slap in the face to some.

I get a lot of yardsticking as a bigender transmasc primarily attracted to women. I'm on testosterone so I "must be a straight man". I thought a fictional dude was hot so I "must be bisexual". I think that I've been beaten up for being a lesbian enough times that I can call myself one if I want to. XP

Watching this as a gay man,
I do resonate with many of the talking points.

I did not choose to be physically and romantically attracted to men,
But I am choosing to be part of the community.

And part of that choice absolutely comes from the fact that straight male machismo culture is just plain awful and suffocating.

Gay culture is fun and joyful, full of in jokes and celebrating a diversity of experiences.

And even though dating men is... not great... and the gay male scene has a lot of problems,
Those are still my people.

Also,
When people say they wouldn't choose to be gay,
Most of them seem to be saying that they hate the homophobia that comes with it.
Because being LGBT really isn't a big deal when you don't have societal prejudice breathing down your neck.

Also, also,
Thank you Ophie for speaking up about some of your controversial queer community takes.

Because the LGBT+ scene is incredibly diverse to the point of confusion,
And I think it would be better for all of us if we were given space to question our labels and identifiers,
Ask what they really mean and if they're useful or not.

Because those kinds of questions are not inherently harmful.
But queer people are often so defensive from all the bigotry that these ideas seem threatening.

I’m so, so glad to see you covering this. I don’t have the spoons to watch right away, but engagement comment. I’m bi/ace, the whole conversation around the article was Upsetting. The aphobia in particular really got to me, because a person can in fact choose to enter into a romantic and/or sexual relationship with someone they don’t feel attracted to, and it can be fine and healthy, and to argue otherwise is to erase a lot of queer people. I don’t think people even realize they’re punching down.

Still think she could've phrased it a different way though 🤷‍♀️

I think a lot of people mistake the map for the territory in regards to all sorts of identity politics, and I see this all the time being both a bisexual woman and a mixed race woman. It's unproductive and very limiting and inflexible! The width and breadth of human experience and ways of being can’t possibly be captured by these broad identity categories, no matter how precisely we try to define them!
I'm glad you mentioned how people demand a whole, like, intimate personal history so that they can sort you into the right identity category. People do this lately with race also, like how many of your grandparents are one thing or the other and is that on the maternal or paternal line, etc. IDK I'm not that hung up on what category you can sort me into, there are some truly large fish to fry!