Gay & Lesbian are transmisogynist terms.

Aside from asexual aromantics, everyone is pan. You do not know someone’s gender until they tell you. There is not qualifications to be any gender. Any gender can literally look any way. Everything from wide hips, long hair, short, and busty to broad shoulders, rough skin, tall, muscles, and a beard. These two examples could be men, women, nonbinary, agender, etc, etc.

Because attraction tends to happen before you have a chance to know someone’s gender, saying you’re gay or lesbian or not attracted to certain genders makes assumptions about people’s gender, which is wrong and horribly transmisogynist. Say you’re a lesbian, and you look at someone you believe to be female based on appearance. But then they turn out to be a trans male… You either have to admit you aren’t a lesbian or are a transphobe.

Using terms like gay or lesbian perpetuates ideas that we can know someone’s gender based on appearance alone or that genders have qualifications and common traits to them. These ideas are what keeps trans women away from women’s spaces and gets us killed.

I will no longer call myself a lesbian from this point on, and if you care about trans women I urge you to either ID as pansexual or even better just dump sexuality labels altogether as well. You only need to tell people, “I am attracted to who I’m attracted to.”