#alison bechdel

[genderqueerdykes]

For more context on the Allison Bechdel TERF stuff

https://www.tumblr.com/plaidos/773013656721031168

https://www.tumblr.com/plaidos/773109023016894464/im-going-a-little-bit-crazy-how-many-people-im

https://www.tumblr.com/plaidos/773128198487785472/somebody-made-a-post-claiming-you-said-anyone-who

https://www.tumblr.com/plaidos/773135751312523264/you-literally-cant-even-search-michfest-on-this

TLDR: Bechdel was for years and still is to this day a strong supporter and attende of Michfest, an openly trans fem exclusionary event who in order to be a "safe space" for women and lesbian violenty excludes anyone "male socialized", there's a long history of trans women every year protesting right outside the event and when they tried to Enter in getting assaulted and abused by the cisbians. Allegedly the term TERF was born from the Michfest supporters

Bechdel has also been caught threating transmasc like [cis] butch lesbians in events and Even intentionally misgendering them to fit her narrative of them being [cis] butch lesbians. Has talked possitively and even collaborated with open transphobes like the creator of The Transexual Empire. And in her comics she has Made tasteless jokes about "Men pretending to be lesbians" and reffered to trans characters with dog whistles like "Trans Identified"

I feel people a lot of the times forget that like, fascists and bigots like terfs aren't always openly derangedly hateful like JKR or Posie Parker. There's a reason the "crypto" label exists. Allison may not be hateful, but a lot of her actions fit the literal definiton of "Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist"

okay wow, thank you for letting me know that, i genuinely appreciate it. i had a feeling there was more to the story and i genuinely want to thank you for providing additional context. i don't always have the time to look into these things. i had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else going on under the hood. that just really fucking sucks

i'm really not a fan of when someone sings one tune but then their actions don't line up with it. that really sucks that she did such a great job dispelling transphobia in her comics, but then has been shitty in person. like i get that people wanna look like they're accepting, but you have to actually *BE* accepting if you're gonna try to make people think that you are.

i had a feeling people were talking about more than just her written works, so thank you. man why do people gotta be assholes. it's really not that hard to just be fucking nice to people.

[a-polite-melody]

Yeah, I’m not sure

“Any queer creator in the public sphere who hasn’t been 100% perfect about everything they’ve said about trans women is actually a TERF in disguise and deserves to be ‘outed’ as such.”

is actually a productive statement at all when the world is only getting more and more hostile to trans people.

Allies get things wrong sometimes. Hell, people directly affected get things wrong sometimes. Especially when “wrong” can also look like using outdated language that an elder queer has grown up with, for example. Demanding that everyone be absolutely perfect is a standard we don’t even hold ourselves to.

Why decide that our allies not being able to live up to perfection is a reason for separatism? It’s defeatist as hell and does nothing to advance trans rights; if anything it pushes away would-be-allies because it’s impossible to be perfect and any accidental misstep is grounds for ousting and labelling them as the worst kind of bigot we can think of and creates a heavier isolation and then divide. That’s the opposite of what we need to push trans rights forward.

[velvetvexations]

Maybe it’s just me but the calling Allison Bechdel a terf specifically feels misogynistic, like if she’s doing transphobic things she’s a transphobe. A TERF has a specific ideology. But it feels like people funnel her into the terf label because she’s a woman

To be clear I haven’t read up much on this stuff so I’m just spitballing

They're trying to rewrite history so that the term TERF was originally coined to refer to cis women who continued attending Michfest, which is emphatically not true lol. These fragile babies just literally cannot get over the fact that people AFAB were welcome and we weren't, which, yes, was bad, and offensive, and also not really a big deal unless your activism is centered around feeling insulted, as opposed to actually creating a society where people are free to define themselves. The obsession with gender validation to the point of thinking that Bechdel attending Michfest outweighs her advocating for minors to have access to HRT is maddening on a level that makes me want to drop a hammer on my toe so I'll feel something other than blinding rage. It's not really surprising that the "liking shark plushies is cultural appropriation" people have embarrassing priorities but this is extra bad because they're just openly admitting that's what they put above things that matter.

[j-psilas]

I'm going to throw a stone at a hornet's nest and say that the TERFs who like to claim Alison Bechdel as one of their own lack basic reading comprehension—and worse still, they lack shame.

There's an actual, honest-to-goodness, authentic, genuine strip of Dykes to Watch Out For in which Mo gets called out for her transphobia when she whines about sharing a restroom with a trans woman. Moreover, she then becomes the victim of bathroom policing herself, because butch women don't fit the cis-hetero-normative mold. It's all right there in the text, plain as day.

Just because Bechdel is a butch lesbian, and prefers that identity over "trans man" or "nonbinary," doesn't mean that she rejects the theory and rhetoric that produced those labels. That's child logic.

Cherry-picking her work to support their bigotry, just so they can claim lineage from a distinguished queer writer, is not only stupid and easily debunked, but it's deeply insulting. It betrays how little TERFs actually care about LGBTQ rights, feminism, or literature.

Any so-called "radfems" interacting with this post will be blocked—thereby cleaning up the "Alison Bechdel" tag for my browsing, so I don't have to wade through a bunch of bigotry every time I scroll through it. Thank you in advance. ❤️

[thedickcavettshow]

Her: You must be Alison Bechdel zip-lining at dusk if you think we r fucking

Me:

[evilandcrazygirl]

people act like lesbo fujos are weird as if it’s not an integral part of our history 🙄 whatever

[garak-pussy-indulgence]

This did not hit well on Facebook but I'm hoping it will hit better in its native environment

[aardvaark]

uhhh lesbian as a gender and lesbianism and gender being inextricably intertwined compilation

comics: all from alison bechdel

book page about butch identity: from Butch Is A Noun by S. Bear Bergman

image IDs in alt text (you have no idea how long that took lol).

[noxaeternaetc]

Alison Bechdel, self portrait for The New Yorker, April 16, 2012.

[dtwofdaily]

from Dykes to Watch Out For #5: No Sex (Alison Bechdel, 1987)

[plaidos]

Not only is Alison Bechdel a terf, anybody who defends her as “ohh it was a long time ago” “ohhh she didn’t know any better” is a terf too. She used to go to SegregationCon and still brags about how magical it was that there weren’t any “male socialised women” there for fucks sake. What do you think “TERF” stands for you dumb motherfuckers? She’s a radical feminist whose concept of womanhood doesn’t fully extend to trans women. That’s the whole definition you morons

[marciies]

by alison bechdel

[invertebutch]

Alison Bechdel in Her Minnesota Apartment, Tom Sweeney, 1990 (photo taken from lesbian archives/ @/butchusband on twitter)

Highlighting this photo specifically because it really shows how Mo from Dykes to Watch Out For has the same exact hair swirl that Bechdel had! Seeing photos of Bechdel with this hairstyle always jump out at me because it looks stunningly similar to her cartooning.

[dandelionmoss]

DTWOF 503, Alison Bechdel

[sendme-2hell]

[riotkittiesarchive]

from Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel