the slippage that queer “romance” is somehow equivalent to straight “romance” or that it even makes sense to refer to the former as “romance” at all is part of the reason why queers opposed gay marriage
so anyway i’m glad the kids are rediscovering that, but let’s not pretend like the TERFs using their unwillingness to date trans lesbians as a way to exclude them from lesbian networks of support is in any way a unanimous or necessary consequence of queer activism of old
it’s a new development spurned by the increased acceptance and normalization of gay dating in the ’10s, mirroring the similar (but much older) deployment of romance by heterosexuals with the aim of controlling acceptable forms of gender expression, especially among women
the trend of using romance as an exclusionary policy to gatekeep who does and does not receive community belonging or social support was both precedented, predicted, and opposed