Exposing Male Violence Against Lesbians

99. 06/04/2022

I'm a 29yo lesbian who has been out for most of my life and I like to think that by now I have a good head on my shoulders irt identifying and avoiding male nonsense. I think that was at least in part why this incident was ultimately not as bad as it could have been. My friends and I were out at a local gay bar, as we were most weeks. This particular night I was being followed around by a (very clockable) trans woman. I didn't think much of it since most nights at the gay bar some man would end up following me around. Usually if I just stuck around my gay male friends they wouldn't approach me. Alas this trans woman didn\'t have those same reservations and readily infiltrated our group. I repeatedly turned down propositions from them throughout the night, but ultimately couldn't avoid them since they just followed me around like a bad smell. Around 11pm I was sharing a bottle of wine with my friends, and this trans woman again invited himself to our table. I was a bit drunk at this point and didn't notice him slip something into my drink (I later saw that on CCTV). I didn't finish the glass, I was suddenly feeling very sick. I excused myself and hurried to the women's toilets. My best friend noticed and commented on it, resulting in the trans woman saying he'd go 'check on me' because he was the only woman at the table and would be able to enter the women's toilets. Anyway, I'm in there throwing up my guts and get a knock on the stall door and this trans woman is there telling me to let him in so he can 'help me'. My female spidey senses are going off at this point, so I wait until a female bartender comes in. She calls me an ambulance and takes me back to my friends. Eventually I find out in the hospital that there's ketamine in my blood. Being an actual lawyer I wasn't having that shit. I filed a police report and called up the gay bar to request the CCTV footage. The gay bar dragged their feet every step of the way, ultimately only handing over the CCTV footage when the court ordered them to. When I went back to the gay bar with my friends the next month (it's the only gay bar in town) this time I was followed around by their security detail (which consisted mostly of trans women) and generally just made to feel very unwelcome. I haven't been back since. Fortunately, the trans woman who spiked my drink ended up in jail for it. So there's that. Also, while rumours flew around the local queer community about me being transphobic and a TERF and whatnot, at least most queer publications are at loathe to publish anything about lesbian issues, especially irt to lesbians being victims of trans male violence, so thankfully my name stayed out of the public sphere. And since I stopped going to this gay bar I managed to avoid the weekend where a bunch of men beat the shit out of all the lesbians waiting in line outside (an incident which again didn't make the queer news, oddly enough). But anyway, that's a day in the life of a lesbian at the gay bar for you.