We can all appreciate a good highly personal subjective personal identity.  However, there should be no obligation or pressure to validate said identity, especially when doing so has deleterious results for an entire class of people in society.  Look what happens when words don’t have meanings

 

“Toward the end of the lengthy and tense meeting convened to discuss her role on the Commission, Julia Beck stated with clarity what had become patently obvious in the foregoing discussion:

I think everyone’s heart is set. I think what we’re doing here is postulating. I’m trying my best, people, but we all understand words to mean different things, and that’s not really conducive to the purpose of our committee, which is to advise the Mayor and other city agencies on laws and policies. If we don’t agree on the meanings of words, we cannot do the work…. I could bring out a dictionary and prove to you that a lesbian is a female homosexual, or a woman is a female human, but if your beliefs disallow you from seeing the dictionary definition as a legitimate definition… then why would we have a diversity of thought… if there’s only one thought acceptable?

I could talk about this all day, and I would love to, because it affects my life. When we cannot define woman, women’s liberation is moot. When women cannot define themselves as female adult humans, there is no way for us to organize as female adult humans. If lesbians cannot define themselves as female homosexuals, if male people can call themselves lesbians, then the women’s movement and lesbian liberation is destroyed, it’s obliterated.

As the Commission was established it seeks to include a diversity of people and experiences and ideas, and that’s why I’m here. I’m here to represent lesbians. [But] when lesbians are forced to include male people with penises, it destroys lesbianism, and we might as well call it a “GTBQ Commission.”

The more you look at this, the more it is clearly the same old patriarchy telling women how to behave in society and to shut up when their lives are on the line.