All lesbians think they're predators. They think this because this is the position of mainstream culture, and because they will have had the experience of being in a full-blown relationship, then either dropped cold or publicly humiliated and possibly persecuted for their normal and heretofore-co-created sexuality. (We all know at least one who continues this pattern well into adulthood; unmourned love turned repetition compulsion trumps all.) The latter, coming from someone they already love deeply, forms an especially-easy-to-introject vicious cocktail.
All trans women think they're predators. They think this because everyone keeps telling them this and it's the position of mainstream culture. This I think is so self-evident in 2026 I don't need more exposition. One may appreciate how particularly rancidly these combine with both principal strains of transgenderism (the intersex transgender [1], for whom this will strike a cord with their dominant shame dynamics; the introjector transgender [2], already plagued by hostile introjects). (In many cases this will be additionally reinforced by a dearth of positive-to-benign, actionably introjectible material.)
Individuals born with anomalous genitals…(p. 353)
A natural defence against the fear of being predatory is to refuse to take (refuse to acknowledge) an active position in a sexualisable scenario or the co-creation thereof [3] The standard image of this is the "i didn't know this was a date", "girl i didnt know i was dating just proposed to me", (of a partner to whom she had been functionally married for years) "i may ask my roommate out >_< >_< >_<" — all of which defend against the unbearable active/predator position by dissociating the affect, and thus also the positive parts of the experience — or by choosing partners on whom it would be impossible to prey on due to distance (lesbians love their long-distance girlfriends) — we know this one doesn't work as a defence because they still complain about it incessantly — or one of the more usual power dynamics; all lesbians love "older women". Are they hot? yeah. are you free to be as horny at/about them as you wish without a hint of impropriety from your end? also yes.
Anecdote #1: I remember this happening to us (the vague dyke collective) in our high school class w/ our polish teacher (an old, stately woman). In retrospect this was clearly at least part displacement, and chronologically would fit with flaring up around the time one of us (with the largest amount of social capital (at the time she was by far the best at being gay)) got big time rejected by a classmate who turned out apparently-"straight" (see dynamic #1 at the top of this post).
Anecdote #2: a gay friend (22), who is not plugged into modern culture, especially modern lesbian culture, had recently sheepishly asked me if it was crazy/deranged/inappropriate/rotten of her to desire a wife who is like a bestie but theyre in love. (What we recognise as a very sober position, which made it all the more heart-rending to see it framed as a nigh-unacceptable-to-consider state of affairs.)
The zoomer lesbian who does partake in our zeitgeist, tends to relieve her introjected depression differently, in a way that bears some similarity to a reverse hysteria: [4] rather than defending against sexualized interest with repression (then, failing that, dissociated enactments), it is the enactment (passive-into-active transformation) itself that is unacceptable, and so it is deflected into yearnposting, which can function either ejectively or be reinforced with social rewards (engagement) as a sublimation defence.
(One may also construe these defences as falling on the psychotic-borderline-neurotic spectrum v/v moralisation-[projective identification (ejection)]-[sublimation by co-creation with your peers but not your object. sometimes with your object too [*])
Repression can be a useful defense, but it is a brittle and unreliable one when directed against normal impulses that will continue to exert a pressure for discharge.
Sublimative defences are, naturally, strongest when encouraged by one's peers and the local culture, and any microcosm [5] that is largely or entirely queer women naturally gravitates toward yearnposting as a self-reinforcing negative image of the common neuroses of its participants.
The function of the onlineness aspect bears touching upon — I believe that here as in many other scenarios it functions like the analyst's couch, insofar as it allows the patient to associate more freely by preventing them from seeking approval from the analyst. The equivalence of this dynamic — "I want to post about the girl I like to her face, yet I can't because of my anxiety I'll be predatory, but I can post about her into the black mirror with full knowledge she'll see it and engage with it", even though they're notionally equivalent — I believe resolves the oddity of [*], above.
thank you for reading my psychoanalysis paper about a girl i met recently
Nit-pick? Correction? Improvement? Annoying? Cute? Anything?
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