Confessions of a Bearded Lesbian
Since the United States’s same-sex marriage victory in 2015, legacy LGBT organizations such as GLAAD have become almost solely preoccupied with trans inclusion, strictly defined as full, unlimited access to spaces according to gender identity rather than sex. In many areas of Western society, these efforts have been successful. The impact on lesbian-only spaces in particular, such as bars and dating apps, has been largely underrepresented in the public conversation. As a 2021 Smithsonian Magazine article put it, “spaces dedicated to queer and gay women have been closing at a staggering rate over the past 30 years. [...] In the late 1980s, an estimated 200 lesbian bars existed in the United States. By 2019, researchers believed only 15 remained.”
Lesbian culture is disappearing beneath our noses, erased as part of a homophobic feedback loop — one I became painfully ensnared in.
What few lesbian venues remain are under fierce attack and yet garner almost no attention, despite headline-worthy incidents. One of the most striking examples surrounded the female-only Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest). The festival has been the subject of intense condemnation in activist circles and has been disrupted by protest encampments (known as “Camp Trans”). In 2016, matters escalated when a trans woman involved in camp trans, Dana Rivers, murdered two lesbians in the Michfest community: Charlotte Reed, her wife Patricia Wright, and their 19-year-old son Benny Diambu-Wright. The exact motive is unknown. One rumor I’ve heard from the community is that Rivers had become enraged because one of the women wouldn’t have sex with her.
Trans women have always been the loudest facet of trans issues. For trans men, by contrast, finding belonging has been a quiet, mouse-like affair. This is partly because trans men, who often self-identify as “female-to-male” or “FTM” for short, have been entirely sidelined in the conversation. I identified as a trans man from 2006 to 2024, and during that time witnessed and participated in the creation of FTM spaces. In the 1980s through the early 2000s, most trans women — who, like me, had medically transitioned to live as men — were part of lesbian communities as adults. In keeping with our lesbian-centered community building, trans men created FTM groups, mentorship programs, newsletters, conferences, resource centers, and publishing houses aimed to produce FTM-focused content. Trans activist Jamison Green, in his book Becoming a Visible Man (2004), chronicled a time when he’d been asked to lead a men’s group. In good conscience, he disclosed that he was a trans man and asked permission from the group to accept the role, which they granted.
I attended a virtual panel discussion that included Jamison Green recently. It was the 10-year anniversary of an anthology of about 20 trans men’s stories — a friendly and celebratory conversation between friends and FTM elders. Many discussed their conception of manliness as informed by their personal feminist analysis. It was, in truth, a delightful discussion among people I’ve liked and admired for two decades. After listening for a while, I raised my hand to ask, “What about lesbian-only spaces?” I invited the group to listen to lesbians like Kathleen Stock, who have reasonable concerns about the impact of trans activism on lesbian rights. A mortified tension descended over the virtual room. The chat was flooded with warnings about my affiliations with “hate organizations” — a politically motivated mischaracterization of my advocacy work and the organizations I have co-founded or partnered with, including the Gender Dysphoria Alliance, the LGBT Courage Coalition, and Therapy First. No one treated my question with the seriousness it deserved — they simply attacked me personally.
It’s perplexing to me that most trans men aren’t outraged by the loss of lesbian spaces. After all, there is considerable overlap between the two. Are FTM-only groups not sex-based and therefore female-only? Trans men seek, benefit from, and enjoy these sex-segregated spaces for the exact same reasons lesbians do: safety, shared life experiences, shared culture, and the general comfort of sameness. Lesbians deserve the same fellowship, mentorship, and comfort of their own spaces. To say that I’m disappointed in my “brothers” would be an understatement. They know better. The contortionist acrobatics of cognitive dissonance were clear on the faces of some. Those who didn’t appear angry looked scared.
I understand the fear. The fear wasn’t caused by my question. My question simply pierced through the well-polished trans armor to touch the ever-present anxiety at the heart of the FTM experience. Without the veil of “trans”, we are just bearded, masculine lesbians, vulnerable to even greater intolerance than the traumas that motivated many of us to transition in the first place. We’ve enjoyed the relative peace and safety of living as “men” for the past 30 years or so, since medical transitioning became more popularized and widely available, in part because we knew we were accepted in lesbian spaces and could build from there.
The homophobia I experienced through my adolescence, growing up in the religiously conservative Bible Belt of Western Canada in the late 1980s, was so traumatizing and heartbreaking that by the time I was a young adult, I was almost entirely mute. I was accidentally outed to my family at age 16, who rushed me to our family doctor for a diagnosis. I found admission papers for conversation therapy in the kitchen drawer a few weeks later.
I fled to the city as soon as I could, where lesbians fared better, but the near-constant public harassment didn’t end. Guys would commonly scream things like “fucking dyke” out of their car windows. Skinheads showed up at our 1992 Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Liberation march to intimidate us. I lost a job the day after I was outed as a lesbian. Sometime later, when I began working as a graphic designer, I was regularly told by coworkers that my lesbianism was sinful and disgusting. My long-term partner and I also lost housing opportunities because landlords didn’t want to rent to a lesbian couple, which they weren’t shy about expressing. In 2001, my partner — the mother of our daughter — was in a bad horseback riding accident and suffered a brain injury. The hospital refused to give me any information about her status because lesbian partners were not seen as next of kin at that time. Living in Vancouver in 2004, my neighbor, Aaron Webster, a gender-nonconforming gay man, was murdered by three men in a nationally covered hate crime. I attended a massive vigil march in which thousands of participants, including police officers, openly wept.
Eventually, I reached a breaking point. I wasn’t so clear-headed about why at the time, but my transition into trans man finally gave me enough relief from ongoing discrimination that I could begin to address the original adolescent trauma. I was functioning, but not to my full potential. I still barely spoke unless I had to. For a week following my first testosterone injection, I stayed home and sobbed uncontrollably, feeling as though I was murdering myself. I’ve never told anyone that. Eventually, I came around and put in the work to see the transition through. Nearly 20 years later, I no longer consider myself a trans man, but I’m at peace with the fact that, even off of testosterone now, I’ll always see a manly face in the mirror. I take responsibility for the decision made to preserve my spirit and heal. It was a gruesome decision, made mostly due to misinformation, fatigue, and the all-consuming desire to just make the pain stop. But it felt empowering at the time. Even as I took steps to look and live as a man, I saw my choice at the time as a big lesbian boot on the neck of oppression.
This brings us back to the subject at hand. What about the lesbians?
I was a gender-affirming care provider for a brief period in 2019, and the vast majority of young people I assessed were same-sex attracted girls and young women. The UK’s much-publicized Cass Report — a systematic review of the evidence for gender-affirming care for youth — disclosed that 89% of the 70 youth participants in the original Dutch study that formed the basis of youth gender medicine had been same-sex attracted. The Tavistock Gender Identity Service in London, UK, stopped collecting stats about sexual orientation in 2014, but a report from 2014 states that approximately 88% of their young patients were also gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Since about 2015, there has been a clear, overwhelming, worldwide uptick in young females wanting to halt puberty or medically transition, and while we are seeing more heterosexual girls at these clinics, most are still same-sex attracted. 2015, not coincidentally, is also the year of the Obergefell decision in the US to legalize same-sex marriage, and when legacy LGBT organizations pivoted almost exclusively to trans advocacy.
In the years since, a quiet sea change has occurred beneath society’s notice. Lesbian bars, like the one I took refuge in as a 16-year-old, are long gone. The book collectives, dances, and festivals… all gone. Lesbian dating apps are now full of straight men. I’m not referring to trans women — just dudes. Because the activist doctrine of self-identification as the only criterion required to demonstrate one’s transness, which has been accepted in many institutions and legal codes, means that any man can barge in and gawk at lesbians. I’ve had the surreal experience of having young lesbians reach out to me to say they’ve never met another lesbian. They’re isolated, confused, and considering transitioning. The lesbians aren’t okay.
Yet, interestingly, young people report being lesbian at an increased rate. In a 2023 US survey, 3% of Gen Z women identified themselves as lesbians, compared to 1.3% of Millennials and 0.7% of Generation X and Baby Boomers. It’s difficult to reconcile these growing numbers with the systematic disappearance of lesbian culture from society. It may simply be the case that as the English-speaking world becomes more tolerant, LGBT identification is climbing across the board, and that this rise offsets and subsumes the surge in young lesbians transitioning to trans men.
Transition did help me for a time, and has improved the quality of life for others. That shouldn’t come at the cost of lesbian erasure, and I won’t participate in the harms being done to my sisters by denying that sex matters. The definition of lesbian means nothing if it’s only an identity that can be opted out of or into, as though there is no material reality at all in women loving women. Without sex, lesbianism itself is gone, along with all lesbian spaces. I felt compelled to take a stand.
Source: The Guardian
In April 2024, I ironically branded myself a “bearded lesbian” in protest, acknowledging that my material, biological reality is female, regardless of how I feel or appear. I fear that many of the young lesbians who are rushing to medically transition today will likely regret their decision. In the coming years, there may be thousands of young lesbians, with beards, no breasts, some with neopenises, who want to re-identify as women. Women who, like me, transitioned to escape the disgust and violence they experienced for being gender-nonconforming, and will now be left gender-nonconforming in the extreme. And, in many cases, we look no different than the straight dudes who like to gawk at lesbians. The young women I mentor are already struggling to find a way back in ways that are safe and respectful. They feel shame and fear rejection. They’re far more likely to quietly self-destruct than to make demands for space. Medicalized lesbians will not be setting up protest camps outside women’s spaces. We will not threaten or kill lesbians.
We’d simply like to talk. It’s what women do.
During the summer and fall of 2024, I was invited into lesbian-only spaces to facilitate discussions aimed at helping prepare a way back for these girls. These have been very difficult workshops. The anger, resentment, trauma inflicted by male violence, grief, and distrust are harrowing. But I’m heartened by the many lesbians who have embraced me in my commitment to plan for a reintegration of our sisterhood, so that the girls have a home to come back to.
We’ve started coming up with practical solutions, including ways in which former trans men can reassure lesbians that we are their sisters and not a threat. Some exclusion may be necessary. For example, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to ever work in a women’s rape crisis center, as my face and voice could cause distress among traumatized women and interfere with their therapeutic process.
I was told by the women I met at these events that one tangible gesture I can make is to shave my beard. It wasn’t a demand, which was wise, because I don’t cater to demands about what to do with my body. It was a respectful suggestion of something I can do as a sign of my sincerity. Easy. The beard is gone. It’s the least I can do. I don’t think women having to shave off any body hair can be made mandatory for womanhood, but these women were gracious enough to invite me into their space, and brave enough to tough out the difficult work with me. I gladly gave them my smooth face in return as a gesture. That’s how community building works. It’s how women work.
Many of the young lesbians at these events thanked me for being there. They said that most of their lesbian friends have transitioned. They know how hard it will be for those young women to walk back. The pathway is a minefield. Even so, I saw hope on their faces when they looked at me. I can’t let them down.
The “bearded lesbian” brand has run its course for me. Now I’m just a very gender-nonconforming lesbian, facing the homophobic disgust that evokes. Homophobia is the root problem in need of attention. In particular, the gender-nonconforming dimension of homosexuality needs to be brought back to light and reclaimed as a common gay, lesbian, and bi experience. Sex research has shown that while gender-nonconformity is a universal, organic aspect of same-sex attraction, the distress it causes (i.e., gender dysphoria) is often culturally bound. Young lesbians showing up to gender clinics at an exponentially increasing rate is a massive red flag that our culture is failing them.
Published Aug 29, 2025
