#Although there is obviously a need to talk about patriarchy especially with a seeming resurgence of young people who seek the comfort of

[dancerfelix]

I think I am frustrated by the term TERF (or other iterations of it, ie twerf) because of the way it has changed the discourse about why radical feminism is bad. 2nd wave radical feminists believed that gender was the primary axis of oppression, the oldest and most expansive and most oppressive, and that all other bigotries either sprung from it or were not as important as it. Historically there were very few black radfems in the US at least, and most of the radfems (lesbian or otherwise) were educated (which was even less achievable for the poor people of the time). Of course they were transphobic, but that wasn't a focus of theirs at all, and in fact racism (or at the very, very least a lack of intersectionality) was a primary flaw, a driver of the progressive shift away from it. Being radical is of course important and good but "radical feminism" specifically is not redeemable in my opinion and I am extremely uncomfortable with any shift towards it. Patriarchy is absolutely expansive, but it is not uniquely so, and any analysis of gender that treats gender as a uniquely oppressive paradigm will always be flawed, imo.