When Girls Who Would Have Been Lesbians Remove Both Breasts and Say They're Trans or Non-Binary Instead
Interview with Lesbian Activist Lauren Leggieri of the LGB Courage Coalition
Who do you think masculine little girls grow up to be? If you see a very masculine little girl, she’s probably going to be gay.”
Lauren Leggieri, 42, moves with an athlete’s strength and physical fluency. Her voice and gestures match her gait: direct, confident, unapologetic.
Co-executive director of the LGB Courage Coalition and co-host of Informed Dissent,1 Leggieri is an activist dedicated to stopping medical interventions for gender-related distress — and stopping the conversion of gay kids into trans kids. At last year’s American Academy of Pediatrics conference, she loudly interrupted Admiral Rachel Levine’s speech2 to ask why he pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to abolish age limits on medical treatments for gender dysphoria. Standing, she shouted from the audience what has become a signature slogan:
“Stop trans-ing gay kids!”
And,
“Most gender nonconforming kids grow up to be gay!”
For a presentation at Genspect’s recent pre-conference parents’ meeting, Lauren wore a shirt that stretched tight over sculpted shoulders and tucked into fitted pants that accentuated muscular thighs. She spoke about the relationship between gender ideology, gender nonconformity, and kids who would naturally grow up to be gay – but are now convinced that they’re “in the wrong body.”
“Who do you think masculine little girls grow up to be?” she asked the group, gesturing toward herself. “We all know it. We all understood it until about fifteen seconds ago: If you see a very masculine little girl, she’s probably going to be gay.”
Watching her as she spoke and moved gracefully in front of the audience, I thought, this is a woman who lives in her body. I need to talk with her about embodiment. I opened our conversation with sports.
Mariah: You look like an athlete.
Lauren: Thanks. I am. I played softball and basketball in high school. Now I swim, and mostly I do Ashtanga yoga. Also, I’m a contractor. I work with my body.
Mariah: I’ve been thinking about the relationship between sports and embodiment. Trans-identified girls are alienated from their bodies by definition. I wonder if sports or other physical activities could help.
Lauren: I’d love to start a camp for kids who are vulnerable to trans identification. We’ve got a plan. We just need funding. It would offer sports and building things. Making things, lifting things: it’s so good for developing an appreciation for your actual body.
Mariah: What’s going on with young lesbians these days?
Lauren: Gay functions nowadays are mostly trans. You go to a lesbian party – and it’s not even called a lesbian party. It’s called a queer women’s party. There’s no one under thirty that looks like me: gender nonconforming. They are all medicalized. They’re all “trans men.” I’m not into that scene at all.
Mariah: Wow.
Lauren: It’s such a social contagion that even feminine lesbians are masculinizing through testosterone. It’s crazy to me. A lot of these “trans men” will even tell you that they’re straight men. That’s what the younger generation of lesbians believes. They believe that they’re heterosexual and they were just born in the wrong body.
Mariah: Lesbians actually believe they’re straight men?
Lauren: And then you have predatory males coming in to these parties and preying on young women who can’t even say, “No, I’m a lesbian.” Because the men will say, “So am I.”
Mariah: Tragic.
Lauren: Yes, and dangerous. You can’t even subtly reject these men because then, “You’re a transphobe.” Or, “You’re obsessed with genitals.”
The men also act like men. They’re in a dress, but they take up space like men. They flirt like men.
The women, you can see in their body language how uncomfortable they are. But they can’t reject this man, because he “belongs there” and is part of the community. The women can’t even walk away politely and go to the bathroom because these men can just follow them into the bathroom.
This is why so many young girls don’t want to identify as lesbians: because the only people who identify as lesbians now are men!
Mariah: Unbelievable.
Lauren: It is. But true. The women who would be lesbians are now either “non-binary” or “trans men.”
Mariah: What about double mastectomies?
Lauren: Rampant. Even if they just identify as non-binary. It breaks my heart. These are young women who have just come into their sexuality. Yet, they’re removing their breasts, which are erogenous zones. Breasts are sensitive – with your child, with your sexual partner. It’s how humans pair bond. It’s how you create lasting relationships. And the people who have been puberty-blocked and then on cross-sex hormones are never going to be sexually functional. They’re going to be sterile.
Mariah: Not exactly delivering on the “care” part of “gender-affirming care,” is it.
Lauren: It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a crime against the LGB community.
Mariah: I’m hearing the phrase stone butch again. What’s up with that?
Lauren: Stone butches are typically butch lesbians who don’t like to be touched by their partners. I think it’s unhealthy for women to be so out of touch with their bodies that they don’t want reciprocal pleasure. The acceptance of this as normal probably led to the trans identification that is ravaging the community.
I think many of us had gender dysphoria before there was a term for it. Perhaps if there had been some recognition of the insecurities that gender nonconforming women, particularly lesbians, experience, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Personally, I think the gay and lesbian community never grappled with our own internalized homophobia and shame. It all comes back to making space for gender nonconformity as a natural phenomenon and the importance of learning embodiment.
Mariah: You told me earlier that people now mistake you for trans.
Lauren: Yes, it’s getting harder to go into public restrooms. People think I’m a detransitioner, or on testosterone, or a man who has been feminized. I don’t know what they think. I’m just going to keep saying it until I’m blue in the face. Most gender nonconforming people are gay. We’re just gay.
Mariah: I could tell.
Lauren: Ha. Good!
Lauren Leggieri can be reached via the LGB Courage Coalition.
Thoughts? I’m always curious. See also:
For more about Lauren’s background, check out this recent interview.
Lauren’s protest begins at the 3:50 mark.
It’s always a relief to me to find lesbians who don’t think they need to be “trans”. I got into an argument with a fellow teacher last week because I “misgendered” his student. First of all, I had no idea that the young woman had changed her name and pronouns, I described her to him as a “short Latina girl who is really smart and quirky”. After several rounds of this, he could not fathom which of his students I was talking about. I finally said, “I think she’s one of those girls who might have changed her name.” It finally dawned on him who I was talking about- he named the girl with her male name and said, “but he is a he, not a girl!” I responded with, “I am so upset by the number of young lesbians who run away from womanhood and need to pretend to be men!”
He came to me a few days later telling me how insulted he was by my making that statement and misgendering her. In a rush before my class began, I kind of let him have it- “there are NO role models for butch lesbians at this school- all these young lesbians see are reels of young women like them taking testosterone and cutting off their breasts! The older lesbians are silenced- no one is listening to them- I didn’t fight for LGB rights during my 20s to be silenced about the erasure of lesbians! I am not going to misgender her- she is female, and I want her to be proud of that!”
After my outburst, I texted him asking for a more calm discussion because I was angry and probably didn’t do a good job explaining my point.
I was seeing this trend in the later years of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, primarily around the crew and staff. One beautiful butch after another would show up the next summer with changed voices and missing breasts. Even Maxine Feldman, author of Amazon Women Rise, the festival theme, changed her name to Max and called herself "he" by the end of her life. I attended her memorial service. Today, Wikipedia calls her a "non-binary musician." This is overt female erasure, lesbian erasure.
And it's hard to be a publicly visible out lesbian today in support of young women because lesbian spaces have been queered. Here in Albuquerque there is not one gay bar left, just a queer bar. No women's bathroom, and Dyke Night ads say "No terfs."
I agree with Lauren that girls need more opportunities to work with their hands and bodies - to create, move.