Men don’t belong at lesbian speed dating events

Lesbian speed dating sounds fun. It reminds me of the old joke ‘What does a lesbian bring on her first date? Her cat, the toothbrush and a removal van.’ It refers to the outdated image of lesbians instantly committing to each other, falling madly in love, then taking seven years to split up.

There is always truth in stereotypes, despite this one being more fun than fact. However, lesbians have recently had somewhat of a makeover – and not in a good way. According to some trans activists, egged on by the likes of Stonewall, some of us are in possession of a penis (and I don’t mean as a trophy à la Lorena Bobbitt).

Which brings me back to speed dating, a process designed to enable singles to meet a large pool of new potential partners in a very short period of time. A woman called Jenny Watson runs weekly lesbian speed dating evenings in a London pub. Or at least she did, until trans activists complained to the management about – you guessed it – men being excluded, lipstick not withstanding.

Following a number of incidents involving trans-identified males claiming to be lesbians attending her events, Jenny was compelled to remind would-be participants that ‘lesbians don’t have penises’. She even stated, ‘If you are male, please refrain from coming’ on the basis that the evening was for the ‘protection of sex-segregated spaces for lesbian women’. According to Jenny, one transwoman pushed himself against a lesbian in the toilets, and another, clad in purple lycra, was sporting a visible erection.

The pub in Bloomsbury received a number of complaints about her comments, and as per usual, the venue chose to launch an ‘inquiry’, rather than support one of the city’s few lesbian social events.

When Kathleen Stock and I founded the Lesbian Project in March this year it was to reassert the correct meaning of the word ‘lesbian’ as being reserved for same-sex attracted females. We were sick and tired of being lumped together with the rainbow soup of LGBTQIA+, and thought it was high time we were recognised as a distinct, and much neglected, minority. We were also aware that there was growing demand to include men in our community. For example, former firefighter turned barrister Lucy Masoud was banned from lesbian dating site Hinge after she said she was only interested in biological females. Having set her profile to ‘women seeking women’, she found every third or fourth match she was offered was a transwoman.

Another stark example of this Orwellian madness came to light during the case brought by Mermaids against the LGB Alliance. Kate Harris, a co-founder of LGB Alliance, was asked by Michael Gibbon KC, counsel for Mermaids, whether some people might include fully intact transwoman within the category of ‘lesbian’. Harris’s response was unequivocal:

‘I’m going to speak for millions of lesbians around the world who are lesbians because we love other women… We will not be erased, and we will not have any man with a penis tell us he’s a lesbian because he feels he is.’

But this pressure on lesbians is endemic. Research by the lesbian feminist Angela Wild found that half of the 80 women who responded to a survey by campaigning group ‘Get the L Out’ had been pressured or coerced to accept a transwoman as a sexual partner, with the majority reporting that they felt intimidated, or had received threats, after rejecting the idea that lesbians should include transwomen in their dating pool.

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In reality, there isn’t a person on the planet that truly believes that it is possible for a lesbian to have a penis. Everybody knows that a lesbian is, by definition, a biological woman who is same-sex attracted. But for time immemorial, men that are bitterly resentful of the fact that some women reject them emotionally and sexually have decided that lesbians are only legitimate if a penis is part of the picture. As online porn shows, many men struggle with the idea that sex can happen at all sans penis – which is why lesbians are regularly asked, ‘What do you do in bed?’

Jenny Watson should be applauded for running a female-only event and sticking to her guns. Shame on those misogynists. They have decided lesbians should go back into the closet, and accept that we like penis after all. Some men just can’t get over the fact that we have no appetite for their meat and two veg.