Just some thoughts on this story. Men posing as lesbians in online lesbian communities has been a problem since the inception of the Internet. I learned how to spot a dude in a "women4women" AOL chat room as a teen. Usually they'd give themselves away in the first or second message sent. A rare few would create elaborate back stories, all for the chance of having cybersex with a lesbian or maybe getting a sexually explicit photo. It was so pervasive, some chat rooms on IRC would set up gender checks in the form of questions men would be unlikely to know. (I admittedly failed a check myself because I don't know what sizes pantyhose come in. Call me butch.)

Maybe I'm just a cynical, but I think this Tom fellow was, at least in part, getting off on pretending to be a lesbian.