The right answer to someone saying 'All feminists are lesbians/fat/hairy/ ugly is 'So?' Lesbians deserve equal rights and so does fat, hairy people and people you don't find attractive. "Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female."- Diana Vreeland

I'm bisexual and a proud feminist.

Lesbian and a feminist, unapologetically. 😘

Some of us are lesbians. Some of us aren't. And that's okay.

The Lavender menace was a term used against lesbians within the feminism movement in 1970's to push lesbians out of feminism because there were seem as undermining feminism. Yes, not all feminists are lesbians, however it is OK to feminism and a lesbian as well. Not all lesbians are feminists as well, the term man hating has been used to undermine lesbians as if someone must be a lesbian because there hate men rather love women.

I think this is reading too much into it... It's true that not all feminists are lesbians and that's ok... it's a true statement because people tend to generalize and not understand the diversity within the feminist movement. If we keep getting offended by everything it will debilitate the movement not make it stronger...

I don't think the people who say,"I'm not a lesbian." are actually trying to say these things. What are they supposed to do if someone assumes they're a lesbian and they aren't? Just go with it? Even if it isn't true? Do we expect the same of gay feminists, both male and female, if someone assumes something about them? Do we expect them to just nod and say yes?

I don't think this article is as concise as it could be. The issue, as I see it, is that people who throw these insults around are attempting to *invalidate* the movement. And they do this by assigning value to words that isn't immediately obvious. "Feminists are all ugly", the hidden meaning being: "Feminists are incapable of securing a man's interest". It's reduced to jealousy. "Feminists are fat", again, they're really alluding to harboured jealousy. "Feminists are lesbians", the hidden meaning being that they're anti-man. So what we're doing when we say "Look, some of us are actually pretty/straight/*insert acceptable trait*" is to provide feminism with borrowed validity, based not on its fundamental structure, but on the attempts to disprove the initial invalidation. And it's a backwards way to do it. A better way is to draw attention to their actual agenda, by asking them why they are so quick to invalidate lesbians, or fat women, or women who are not conventionally attractive.

So I read through this and I didn't find advice on how to properly correct a person who approaches you or a group of women and just tell you or the group that "y'all are just a bunch of lesbians". I understand that saying "No we aren't" in a defensive tone makes us sound just as homophobic but is there a way of dispelling this myth without sounding homophobic? Like could I or we say "not all of us are but some of us are."

It's important (to me) that people recognize that their "box" they put feminists in doesn't work. A feminist can look like me. It can look like a lot of people. My response has been "that's irrelevant." But I do also make sure people know where they're wrong about me and my feminist views. So I have, and will continue to tell people my orientation when it comes up. I'll also fill them in on men who identify as feminists - just to really blow their mind. lol