#and the fact that the women in these terf circles allow the men in their ranks

[nellygwyn]

I feel like I'm going insane reading all the terrible information coming out of the currently on-going trial of the alleged murderers of Brianna Ghey, a transgender teenager who was murdered here in the UK several months ago, some of the most bleak shit imaginable, allegations of months and months of attempts to poison Brianna (and then finally resorting to stabbing her multiple times), very explicit transphobia in a lot of the leaked transcripts (including Boy X, the male teenage alleged murderer, writing that he wanted to see if Brianna screamed like a man or a woman) juxtaposed against TERFs and general transphobes rushing like vultures to a rotting carcass to "correct" journalists who are using she/her pronouns for Brianna, turning themselves inside out to try and make excuses for murder (I know a lot of autistic people fyi, and they don't horrifically murder trans people or anyone lol), and making sure to remind everyone that the killing had nothing to do with transphobia (because it was never explictly charged as a hate crime), not at all, the alleged murderers of Brianna were just looking for some rando to kill. Like.....are you all collectively hallucinating a scenario where YOU look like the morally decent people in a situation where you are bending over backwards to diminish the brutal death of a 16 year old? Even if it could be proved 100% that transphobia played no part in Brianna's death, you still look like freaks. Seriously.

If you can even make the horrific murder of a teenager all about you and your foulness, you are very very sick.

[0w0tsuki]

You wanna know what fucking sucks about the trans andro crowd? You know besides the fact that all it takes is a transfem breathing the wrong direction at them for them to call her a Terf. The fact that they have the SHEER GAUL to claim it is in the name of TransUnity.

You wanna know what trans unity was? It was a term created for us to rally around when this tide of genocidal legislation started rising. To gather around and show SUPPORT for one another. To mobilize and RESIST this wave of hatred.

And tbros saw this as a very convenient shield, an uno reverse card, something to accuse other people of being against when they themselves aren't performing it. If you call them out on their infighting and punching across they will use the very fact that your criticizing them of this to argue that actually? NO! YOUR infighting!

None of these tbros are going in counter protest to ACTUAL Terf rallies. They aren't spreading donation posts. They aren't talking about news about daily anti-trans laws being put forth and trying to resist them. No. They spend their whole time trying to Gotcha! Trans women.

You know what people interested in ACTUAL TransUnity don't do? We don't have our top blog actively promote a blog dedicated to block evading (while simultaneously blocking out all criticism) to grab full username screenshots of trans folks they want to witch hunt and put them next to hate anons from feds calling them shit like zipper tits in order to whip up their audience to either sent hate or to EXCLUDE THEM. Like actually patting themselves on the back that they got swaths of the community to denounce and exclude us. All while trying to claim it's not transmisoginistic because they're MAINLY targeting other transmen. You know. Those trans men who said "actually that's kinda fucked up. I'ma actually stand in solidarity with my sisters" who were immediately branded as traitors by them. DEFINITELY not an attempt to separate us from the few allies we have while simultaneously telling those in your community "THIS is what happens if you stand against us!"

They don't "joke" about their group chat of Transandrophobia truthers that have been called transmisoginsts so many times that they see calling themselves that as an inside joke signalling each other to swarms posts about transmisoginy.

They don't purposely form insular communities where the only transfems allowed are those who sign at the gate they agree to every single say and they have social clout within that circle for organizing it. They don't try to USE said clout to try and redefine the TERF for these people in a way that would give them the position to call transfems TERFs (which they themselves admit to being a former member of).

And they don't try to discredit and not read arguments from the other side by screenshoting their bios to see if there's anything that they can point out that in their opinion shouldn't be listened to in the first place from "oh she's a white uwu cat girl" to "oh she's a bi lesbian". For all of the hand wringing that the trans andro crowd goes on about how "everyone listens to trans women over trans men and we just get ignored" they CERTAINLY don't have ANY interest in actually listening to trans women. There are no attempts at appeals to our arguments. No "I can see why trans women feel this way and I want to acknowledge their oppression while still advocating for mine" just "oh so you just hate trans men". No attempts at actual UNDERSTANDING trans women who feel hurt by their actions.

Your telling me the crowd who so ADAMANTLY opposed the terms transmisoginy and tme/tma in the first place. Who viewed every post of transfems complaining about the intracommunity oppression they felt as a personal attack on them. Your telling me these people should be given the benefit of the doubt when they try to argue for their own term which is DEFINITELY not reactionary to transmisoginy.

Your going to tell me the crowd that has convinced themselves that they are in a subculture war against transfems have their hearts in the right place and are trying to bring the community together when they are actively working to exclude transfems and their allies from the queer community?

Yall should find FUCKING APPALLING these people who've only ever acted like exclusionary bullies about their politics take a term that was supposed to be a rallying cry for trans people and turn it into the "so much for the tolerant left" but for the queer community, to demand all of the patience and consideration in the world while giving none. I don't even have to argue against their theory. Their actions speak louder than words.

[sapphicsvibes]

I absolutely hate using agab language but people tend to be really silly when people make this point but the way perisex amab transfems are treated is really gross. the way people have reinvented new ways to discuss transmisogyny and in those ways, they exclude amab trans fems from these discussions, and don't allow them said platforms is just sad. it's like, people didn't care about transmisgoyny because it didn't impact them, so to actually care about it, they invent ways that they are impacted and just simply, ignore trans fems who are amab.

using agab language is an ick to me, but every time i see a trans fem or a trans fem ally discuss transmisogyny, people who aren't intersex, like to jump in these converstions and speak over trans fems, call themselves transfem, etc., and almost always ignore trans fems who are amab. like a lot of hate i've seen in these sects is specifically aimed at transfems who are amab.

the funny thing to me is that we've created this whole group of perisex people who are afab, but call themselves transfems, who have gone out of their way to paint amab trans feminine people as aggressive, violent and dangerous to them. and within these groups, t*rfs quite literally hijack these convesations.

it is a full circle. and it shows me that in this new langauge of saying who and who cannot face transmisogyny, transfems who are amab are often times ignore, and made the boogey men if the community.

in short, it just shocks me how perisex afab people have formed a new definition for transmisogyny that excludes and villainzes transfems who are amab.

for the record, i don't think that afab people who aren't perisex can be transfem. i think we can fact the affects of transmisogyny, but that doesn't mean we experience it. as a masc presenting black gendefluid person, who was born female, i experience the intersections of both misogyny and racism, and face the affects of transmisogyny but i'll never experience it the same way a trans woman does. i'm only using amab trans women so my post isn't taken out of context.

also adding, because i messed up originally and was corrected but perisex afab people calling themselves trans fems are terfs by default...

[coffeebean-transmasc-experience]

tw// mentions of csa, sa, radfem, f-slur

(sorry, this is v rambly but i’ve never really told anyone abt this so i’m still gathering my thoughts)

so i suppose i could share my perspective/experience with being amab transmasc; i feel a sense of connection with the label is because so much of my identity has been interlinked with masculinity and my connection and relationship to it evolving. that relationship has evolved physically, psychologically, emotionally, socially, and aesthetically

like ive spent far more time in transmasc circles, i’m often assumed to be transmasc based off of how i dress/talk/identify/etc (esp bc of stereotypes), plus i’ve been incredibly close with, befriended, dated, and loved many transmascs in my life.

like so much of this has connected to how i feel abt masculinity; when i was younger, i felt so alienated and avoidant of masculinity due to trauma from near-exclusively masculine people - to me, masculinity was dangerous, violent, sexual, and inherently harmful towards me. it took me years to feel safe around masculine people, to forgive myself for my fear, to embrace the masc parts of myself and not feel obligated to be feminine, to feel comfortable honouring masculine deities, to feel that i did not have to hate masculinity.

seeing transmascs was foundational for this, like seeing the confidence, gentleness, strength, and their love of their masculinity felt so affirming; like, i could see if as something to love and cherish - vs the radfem perspective that treated it as a monster to be hated and scorned. there is such a concentrated effort by radfems and terfs to make us hate masculinity, which only hurt me more. it taught me that men were inherently bad, inherently harmful, and could not change - that their base nature was to hurt me. and that scared me. i felt like there was no other option, so being exposed to this allowed me to feel safe, to believe that men can be better, are better, and are not inherently bad. radfem ideology felt like giving up, whereas transmasculinity gave me hope.

i never fell down the terf/radfem/tirf rabbitholes bc i knew their logic was reactionary and absurd, but it nonetheless affected me. seeing the way men were spoken about felt like it targeted people like me to weaponise our fear and trauma from masculine people to turn it into support for them.

being denied the ability to be masculine as a kid also affected my relationship with masculinity; while i never felt a strong connection with gender as a child (at least not in a binary way - i never saw things as man/women but rather as, simply, things), however, i was often forced to choose. and being the fem queer kid meant i was pushed away from masculinity. i was encouraged towards feminine hobbies, feminine presentation, feminine spaces - in art programs i was a soft, sensitive creative; in sports programs i was a weak faggot. as such, i felt like i never really had the choice of my gender. while i don’t regret any of the gender affirming stuff i’ve underwent (nor anything i intend to undergo), i felt like i had to. i felt like i had to.

while i don’t mind the fact that i’m feminine (like i’m pretty much always read as a girl by cis ppl), my experiences with being pressured to be feminine are inherently linked to trauma for me. i was extensively sexually abused as a child, with multiple abusers targeting me bc of my appearance, so it’s always felt to me like my body doesn’t belong to me; so being forced to be feminine, especially when that presentation was - in my mind - linked to trauma, felt like i was once again not being in control of my body, that i was just a doll to be used by anyone

when i came out to my mom, it was basically like ��okay well then youre a binary woman now” - despite that not being what i came out as - so i then had to fulfill that role. i had to be feminine, hyperfeminine and cisnormative, to be treated as valid, as real. any deviation from that was punished, scolded, and looked down upon - i never got to define femininity for myself but instead had to fulfill an ever-narrowing role set out for me. i thought that coming out would’ve broadened my ability to express myself, but all it did was tighten the rigid frame of gender around me.

it especially created a struggle for me because i came out at such a young age; i knew i was non-binary from basically birth, so i had years of figuring out my own identity before i started coming out to people, which created this huge gap between how i felt/identified vs how people treated/identified me when i came out to them (this is MASSIVELY influenced by my autism as well)

while i don’t think i would ever, say, go on t or whatever else (bc, god, have i had enough of medical transitioning at this point), i feel the label of transmasc gives me freedom. it gives me the freedom to express my gender as i feel. like, genuinely, buying a binder was one of the most freeing choices i’ve ever made. while i don’t hate my chest, realising i could choose to bind is so incredibly freeing. like, the idea of transmasculine femininity has freed my expression of my gender to be whatever i want - to be androgynous, to be masculine, to be feminine, to be a masc person who presents fem, or whatever else i want it to be.

so that’s my experience

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your experience. That's so wonderful that the transmasc label could help you so much, and I'm glad you've learned to accept yourself. That is such a unique and bittersweet journey, and it's amazing you've come so far despite all of the difficult and terrible things that happened. That sucks that you went through all that, but I'm so glad you could accept yourself and your masculinity. Thanks again for sharing.

I don't know what to say, I'm bad at articulating what I'm thinking/feeling, but that was genuinely so moving. I appreciate it anon, thanks for sending in the ask.

(Side note: don't apologize for rambling! You can send in as many asks as you want and make them as long as you need /gen. The whole point of this blog is for someone to be here to listen.)

[mothman-dyke]

Writing all of this out does make me feel a little "pictures pinned to a corkboard connected by red string" but in the days following the election I find it less and less surprising that Donald Trump won. It's a confirmation of what we've always known to be true-- that society and America fucking hates women. (Obviously people of color, immigrants, gays as well but this is a post about misogyny.) And I allowed myself to maintain some hope-- that people were broadly well intentioned, that the majority of Americans would not choose, after everything, to bring him into office again. This hope was a mistake; it was a mistake back in 2016 when he was elected in the face of his misogyny and violence against women and it was a mistake this time.

we bear responsibility for this in many ways. Not least among them is the rise of a very specific strain of misogyny and woman-hate, one cultivated and spread in MRA, MGTOW, and incel circles, but in no way limited or insular. This brand of misogyny has become ubiquitous in our culture and crept into liberal, progressive, and leftist spaces, where we handwring about how really, men are the biggest victims, and the male loneliness epidemic, and meanwhile label any attempt at feminist thought or (God forbid) activism as white feminism, TERF-ery, etc. this misogyny, which we have, as much as anyone else, allowed to proliferate, is the bread and butter of male trump voters. (Take a peek at some of what those guys are saying on Twitter and threads!)

So the part of this where I start feeling very corkboard-and-thread is that I think the writing was on the wall for years and my big example of this? 2022: Depp v Heard. Remember that misogynistic hate campaign against a woman who dared to speak out about a mans violence towards her? Remember the #edgy tiktoks mocking her rape testimony, the sex toys mimicking her account of her assault, the endless mockery under the guise of "supporting male victims" (support which btw ended at Depp lol did y'all see them advocating for anyone else?) this huge cultural event embodies and reflects our attitude about women AND men. Fuck women who speak out! And we'll do anything for a man if he played a pirate in a movie that was good 20 years ago, or if he promises cheaper gas. Misogyny is the same and in that moment people across political parties came together to say "yeah, fuck women! Woman-hate is ok/good/funny/great!"

The other thing is just a rise in complete disrespect and dismissal for feminist thought, theory, activism in leftist, progressive, and liberal spaces. There is a real hostility towards feminists in these spaces regardless of the fact that many of them consider themselves pro feminist "safe spaces" feminists who have been raising the alarm about incels, men's rights activism, MGTOW, depp-fans, progressive misogyny, or just plain ol sexism have been written off as hysterical or characterized as bigots-- regardless of whether or not they are inclusive and intersectional, or even trans/women of color themselves.

We wanna think we have nothing to do with this but we do! We wanna think we didn't do this but we did! We have allowed woman-hate to rise and flourish and now we're upset with the results. All the while the same women who have raised alarms from the start, will be dismissed and told that our oppression isn't real or cause for concern in the face of the other, "real" oppression of others.

There isn't like a point to this it's just a shout into the void from someone who sees men bragging about how they own and control the bodies of women in America, and who has to live in one of those bodies every day.

The moral I am choosing is not to give up hope. It is that I will strip the blinders from my eyes. America hates women. America wants women in chains, unable to vote, barefoot and pregnant and beaten, raped, and dead. The moral I am choosing is that I'll continue to funnel my energy into my fellow women, of all classes races sexualities and abilities and do better. The moral is also that I'll stop even pretending patience for the patriarchal bullshit spewing from across the political spectrum.

[villainessbian]

Lesbians CANT be bisexual. They are literally mutually exclusive. To insist that they can is a TERF dogwhistle because they coined the term

No.

Lesbians can be whatever they want and do whatever they want and you need to learn to deal with it

TERFs are notoriously the ones who say that diverse queer identities cannot exist, not the ones who support them. Remind me, do TERFs want or acknowledge lesbian diversity? No they do not that's in fact one of the primary things they fight against.

"Bi lesbian" is predominantly used by trans women, if you want it to be even clearer with whom you stand.

If your definition of lesbianism excludes Sappho of Lesbos you're just wrong.

Literally the overwhelming majority of lesbian history is inclusive of bisexuality. Not just Sappho of Lesbos, you know, the person who got us named sapphic people and lesbians, but up to and including today. Get in a real physical queer space with an average age of more than 20, start the kind of shit you're trying to here, and see how fast people begin wondering if you're a cop. It'll get you a stern talking to at best, and kicked out at worst. Why do you want to eschew centuries of lesbian tradition for the sake of hating other queer people?

Separating lesbians from bi women is literally what TERFs did, what launched TERFs in the first place, and it only started in the 70s, see "Lesbians in Revolt" 1972 from the same old "lesbianism is just feminist praxis" separatists we keep finding in TERF circles today. Oh, they say bi women have male privilege? WHERE ELSE HAVE I HEARD THIS HMMMMMMMMM

TERFs are the first to say "lesbians can't like men" and hate on bi women, they're also the first to say that bi lesbians don't exist. Look: this is what TERFs say and think. Overtly. Openly. In front of everyone.

So if you actually care even just a little about not siding with TERFs, or about defending lesbian integrity and history, just stop. Look at where we come from. See how despite the flaws in our history, we have those too, we were placed in front of the LGBT+ - previously GLBT - acronym, because of the good we did. Don't tarnish that mark by arguing for people to be kicked off of queer communities because their definition doesn't fit what a tiktok user read on a carrd written by a kid probably raised by a TERF. None of us are defined by what we aren't allowed to do by the High Queer Authorities. Our communities are always going to be diverse, messy, overlapping, complex, sometimes hard to describe in a single phrase, and that's good. That's what being alive is. That's what being part of a community is. We're not fandom characters to argue about, and we don't need that in-fighting.

[wazzuppy]

I saw your post about how people treat the phrase "white feminist" and yeah, I totally agree. There is this really weird trend to fully ignore misogyny even in leftist circles and belittle women who try to talk about how they're oppressed. Even if a woman is white she's still gonna be systemically oppressed because that's just how misogyny works. I find it pretty disgusting on this website where most discussions about misogyny are hijacked by people literally going "man hating is so bad and you shouldn't point this out". It's cool people defend trans people but 1. criticizing men as a social class isn't "bioessentialism" or whatever, it's genuinely just talking about the oppressor class and 2. why do you see trans women as men??????? like why is this argument always brought up anyway? i get TERFs would say it that way but when the target is so obviously not a TERF it's so odd. I've lost mutuals on here for just saying the words patriarchy and that MRAs are bad. It's baffling. I hate this progressive language coded misogyny in leftist spaces with all my heart. Women should be allowed to be afraid and angry when they're so obviously oppressed in every part of their lives. Sorry for the big rant

no need to apologize, i pretty much completely agree.

i think there is a very weird attitude around men's rights in general. like, it often feels as if they're trying the take the fact that they're men and have an inherent advantage to GAIN their rights out of the equation.

not to say i don't think men should have rights or that every single man is more privileged than the average cishet white woman. that's not true. but privilege exists even in marginalized groups because hierarchy still exists, and advantage and disadvantage often affect the same person. like, even a gay man has a leg up over a het woman because they are a man. and likewise, a het woman has an advantage over a gay man because theyre het. things arent as simple as "this group is always more oppressed than this one no matter what." its more fluid than that.

not to mention... a lot of the issues that do affect men (as in the hyper masculine, "feelings are gay" bullshit) are ones that were started and continue to be perpetuated by other men. like yeah, it fucking sucks and it should be fixed, but you get why the victims aren't the ones who should be doing the work, right? we can help and we can offer sympathy, but ultimately that's something THEY need to get over for any real progress to be made.

i also think there's something kind of gross about how a lot of feminist discussions are taken as "you just hate trans men!" automatically, without even knowing the genders of the people having the discussion. trans people should ABSOLUTELY be taken into account and defended, and its completely true that many, many feminists are transphobic. but the assumption that radical feminism (and i mean actual feminism, not "radfems" because thats just a different flavor of wanting patriarchy) = hating trans people feels very icky to me. you can be feminist without being transphobic, and you can be transphobic without being feminist.

leftist language, in general, needs some kind of adjustment or just for people to better understand what certain terms are actually supposed to mean. because lots of people just slap the word "terf" onto someone who is either not feminist or not transphobic.

for example: j.k rowling is undeniably transphobic. she regurgitates lots of terf rhetoric, but the problem with calling her a terf is that... she's not a feminist. like at all. she has an obvious hatred of women and has an extremely conservative mindset of what women should be. that's why all of the mothers in harry potters are good, and all of the unmarried/women without kids are bad. that's why hermione's personality is just a list of misogynist stereotypes.

this issue is especially gross when you remember how dogshit trans feminists are treated, masc or fem. trans people will talk about how men have personally hurt them and how that affected their views, and then a dozen cis queer people will come in like "noooo hating men is bad!!" and assume theyre cis.

i have more to say, but honestly, im tired and a lil sick so i'll leave it there for now. but theres a lot i think that needs to be discussed with how leftist language has evolved, and how feminism is sometimes treated like a scapegoat when it comes to who should be blamed for transphobia. i dont know of any of this made sense but yeah.

[silverity]

are there any arguments that have been made by other marxists in regards to your stance on sex based oppression that have made you deeply reflect/question your stance or do you find most of them monotonous and downright dismissive?

asking this bc i’ve been going through your original posts and most of them (other marxists) are essentially regurgitating the same points (that you’ve tackled amazingly btw) and so many of them aren’t open to genuine discussion. thank u for answering in advance and i love your blog sm. 💗

unfortunately, most marxists i've encountered possess little to no understanding of radical feminist & gender critical or abolitionist perspectives. they're unable to form any adequate rebuttals, arguing instead against the radfem/terf bogeyman that is so popular online & not actual feminist theory. even prior to the trans movement radical feminism had long been dismissed within marxist circles as "white bourgeois feminism" & so not worthy of any consideration. combining this now with the thought policing within tra circles where nobody is allowed to read the feminist theory they're arguing against for fear it might convince them... it is not producing great feats of reasoning, to say the least.

the other issue is that many marxists make arguments not rooted in actual marxism. i think there are two reasons for this: one, because they assume the identity of "marxist/communist" without any devoted study of marxism (especially anything concerning women), and two, because they too are swept up in the wave of postmodernist queer theory spreading massively across social media, that is particularly rife within western academia. again, it seems it's a combination: without a core understanding of marxism they are not able to recognise the contradictions within gender identity ideology. for instance, the over-reliance on mantra such as "trans women are women" despite foundational marxist texts warning against generating support via slogans & depositing ideology into people without fostering true political consciousness. these people cannot explain what the fuck they mean by "trans women are women", they are just supposed to believe it and repeat it.

there are some arguments, however, that i have paused to consider. the first is that the concept of "gender fluidity", while it might be flawed & imperfect, could lead to the breakdown of gender roles and along the path to eventual gender abolition, in the sense that fluidity is at least less rigid than traditional gender ideology with all its fixed biological essentialism. this falls down, ultimately, when we analyse the actual character and ideology of the trans movement. traditional biological essentialism insists femininity is inherent to the female sex, and masculinity is inherent to the male sex. the new form of (gender) essentialism simply says the biology is now optional (or at least mimicry of the biology via HRT) but women are still feminine beings and men are still masculine. despite their supposed commitment to dialectical materialism these marxists are unable to explain the how or the why, it ranges from gendered souls (we are all innately either feminine or masculine) to social roles (we just happen to learn a social role as children, which one is just a matter of chance, no such thing as sex-role socialisation & in fact this can be chosen & reversed as adults). either way none of this destroys gender roles. we still reach the same conclusion, we still have the same two categories, we still have women and men divided between the feminine and the masculine.

more importantly, none of this presents any meaningful challenge to gender as a political system, which under marxism is most crucially the sexual division of labour & the exploitation of women. instead we have a preoccupation with identity politics, enhancements and aesthetics, oppression olympics scoring in the case of white heteroqueers adopting "oppressed" identities, & i guess weird hedonistic sex stuff. none of it is rooted in marxism, none of it follows dialectical materialism. it's much more in line with the politics of liberal capitalism with its consumerism and individualism. this shouldn't be news to marxists but individualist or reformist politics are not the path to the radical reordering of every facet of society, which is what will be required for our collective liberation. this version of gender that positions the "gender binary" as the oppressive force as opposed to patriarchy, along with its distortions of feminist theory and aim of ignoring sex altogether, is effectively suppressing feminist consciousness among women.

i'm really only just scratching the surface here but hopefully i've illustrated why i doubt "fluidity" will lead to abolition. in my view the path to abolition would be non-conformity. it would be wonderful if "trans" were really about transcending gender instead of adhering closely to fixed gendered categories. but sadly even identities like "non-binary" or "agender" seem to conform to sexist ideology, where women have to surgically remove their breasts in order to be seen as non-feminine, non-sexualised neutral human beings. the trans movement presents a false image of defying gender norms & stereotypes but beneath the surface the centuries-old exploitative sexual dynamics between men and women keep on.

the second argument is that of materialist feminism, commonly what tirfs adhere to (male-inclusionary radical feminism is a major contradiction to me but hey-ho). Monique Wittig is kind of the Dworkin of materialist feminism so i'm going to rely on her work to explain it. she writes "for there is no sex. there is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. it is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary." essentially taking De Beauvoir's "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman" to the extreme, Wittig argues women are a social & political construct, an ideological "myth". we exist in language—we are marked as women, seen as women, thus we are women. but there is no natural category of "woman", and any recognition of a natural division between men and women amounts to a naturalization of women's oppression. she argues that just as "Blackness" evolved to justify racial oppression, women too were "rebuilt into a natural group" to justify our oppression. women should refuse the category of woman, as lesbians do, who by defying heterosexuality position themselves as "a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society."

sound familiar? despite its so-called materialism, and history as an offshoot of marxist feminism, materialist feminism holds to the same postmodernist deconstructions of sex & gender as Judith Butler's gender theory. they are not exactly one and the same, Butler differs from Wittig in lots of ways, but they both share the stance that sex is just as constructed as gender. if Wittig had made the distinction between womanhood that is femininity and womanhood that is our neutral state of being, as many radical feminists do, as De Beauvoir does, i would probably find myself agreeing with many of her statements. but as i sit here breasts aching, menstruation imminent i find i am not convinced oppression has created the female sex. it has created a sexed order, a sexual hierarchy of men over women, sexual labour and exploitation, a sexual ideology of male superiority—but not sex itself.

what made me pause and consider this perspective was that it was abolitionist. but materialist feminism is abolitionist in that it fights not only for a genderless society but also a "sexless" society. i disagree with this, and with Wittig's accusations that feminists protect the category of our own oppression. we are not saying that sexual oppression is the inevitable consequence of our natural traits when we say women are female, that our oppression stems from our being female. we are attacking a status quo that wants to invisibilize female people and silence the female voice so that it is better able to extract and exploit all that it can from our suppressed female selves. "there is no nature in society" does not align with marxist thought, wherein human nature and our interactions with the external natural world form the bases of dialectical materialism. my material reality as a human being is also dependent on the reality of my body, my sex, which in turn produces my social and political reality. my sex does not oppress me, men as the sex class in power oppress me. nature does not oppress women, patriarchy and its ideology contaminating the sciences, philosophy, religion, culture, media, politics, & so on and so forth is the power that oppresses women.

the "woman is a social construct" chanters have no way of explaining how femininity, or womanhood to them, came about if not in relation to the female sex class. society does not for no reason require there be a category of people who walk about in high heels, dresses and makeup. this behaviour is what society requires of those who are female, specifically in order to mark us as female. the social roles of women are not there to be performed by anyone who can do so, they are to be performed by those who are female. women's social roles involve the use of our female organs, this at least is acknowledged by Wittig, referred to in her words as "...servitude, a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation ("forced residence," domestic corvée conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.)". so, if we use the word woman in this way, to mean everything that a woman is in society (with no separation between womanhood & femininity), then even according to their own theory it is not correct to simply say "woman is a social construct" and stop there. woman is a social construct of what it is to be female. even if "woman is a social role", she is a social role developed for the human female.

i think it's important for feminists to claim our being female and to investigate for ourselves what that means. we have lived for centuries dominated by the male idea of womanhood and the suppression of female authenticity. it seems harmful to our own interests to try to separate the female body from women when it is our female bodies that are violated and exploited. Black people, like myself, do not reject our race as a way of combating racism. we are better able to combat racism by coming together as Black people. but the comparison Wittig makes with race is very limited since race is not biological the way sex is. what we have here is a similar error in thought to the leftists who support the "sexual freedom" of pornography, where abuse and degradation are so welded to their idea of "sex" that opposition to pornography is opposition to sex itself. in the same way, all of the ideological lies taught about women's nature and biology have made many feminists now oppose nature and biology themselves. both camps are not accounting for the fact it is not sex, nature or biology that is the enemy, it is the ideology of patriarchy that has so infested them it almost seems there's no possible separation. but separate them, & most crucially reinvent & rediscover them, we absolutely must.

[stonebutchery]

i am very tired and the first trans circles i have encountered online (having had none irl because there weren't any where i live when i was growing up) had things like this happen all the time (you don't have to believe me i guess but i did see things like this happen regularly) but i'm trying to wrap my head around this because everyone is arguing about it all the time and i don't understand half of it because i have a cognitive disability and nobody explains and i can't even tell if anything anyone is talking about is related to this. if a group of trans women are actively celebrating that a teenage transmasc committed suicide and claiming other transmascs should also do this because "all men are oppressors and should die actually", this is acceptable behavior that should not be discouraged because they are oppressed and transmascs are not? this is the general idea i have been getting considering the environment i entered into and the arguments i've been seeing. i am having trouble accepting this as fine because it doesn't make sense to me for it to be okay to do to people under any circumstances.

hi, i got your other ask and answered it but i do still want to publish this response, anyway, and i hope that's alright.

even if this did happen, it still would not be an example of "transandrophobia," and i can assure you that no one is asking you to "accept it as fine," but we need to address the imbalance of power. sure, there are men who are oppressed. but they are not oppressed by the people who have significantly less structural power than they do, nor are they oppressed for being men. trans men are oppressed because we are trans, not because we are men. trans women are oppressed because they are trans and because they are women; transfeminine people are oppressed because they are transfeminine. thus, transmisogyny.

this example you've given, here, sounds like either a hypothetical or a very isolated and/or deeply online incident but, in any case, a few people who happen to be transfem saying mean-spirited shit about another trans person still doesn't have anything to do with transfems, like, as a whole. you understand that, right? no one gets a pass to use isolated incidents like this as an excuse to demand that 'all transfems everywhere' uplift transmisogyny-exempt people. transfems still aren't 'perpetrators of transandrophobia' who have to 'atone for being transphobic', not when transmisogyny-exempt people, including some transmascs, are out here perpetrating, allowing, and encouraging transmisogynistic violence and rhetoric to spread freely, widely, and unchallenged.

arguments like this are tantamount to complaining that "transfems aren't 'doing their fair share' in the queer liberation struggle," which i find completely absurd.

we need to recognize that transfems venting their frustration about men (even if it is in poor taste, even if they say things that are genuinely unacceptable about other trans people) or even just transmisogyny-exempt people in general does not magically stop transmisogyny from affecting them and having structural power over them. <- this is just a fact. this is not me, in any way, apologizing for whatever this alleged handful of transfems you're referring to may have said or done. it's just a fact. transmisogyny still affects them, full force. it's not a blank-check excuse, it's just true no matter what.

there are thousands of transmisogynists of all stripes: terfs, politicians, and fascists, who routinely celebrate and endorse the mass slaughter of trans people with a laserbeam focus on transfems (most characterizing transmascs and tme trans people as women and girls that have to be saved from 'the gender cult' while publicly advocating for transfems and tma trans people to simply be exterminated 'to protect 'real' women and girls' from them). i'm not saying that there aren't the stray few transphobes of this ilk that also endorse violence against trans men, transmascs, and other tme trans people but we have to look at the facts: transfems are disproportionately targeted by transphobic violence and are still the sole direct targets of transmisogyny.

so, yes, there are some very bitter and jaded transfem folks who are angry and upset at the world, and who very desperately want transmisogyny-exempt people to step up and fight for them and help them and be their allies... who say things in their anger about other trans people with more structural privilege than they possess because, at the end of the day, they may be thinking "what does it matter, the moment i say anything perceived as even remotely 'unacceptable', i'll be turned on and ostracized," and feeling defeated, because of the transmisogynistic double-standard that affects them at all times.

i think it's important right now, more than ever, to remember that conditional acceptance is not acceptance. that applies to our intracommunity relations as well. we need to be showing transmisogyny-affected people patience. i know that a lot of us (transmisogyny-exempt folks) might want to believe that we're being as equitable as possible as a queer community but transfems are still being forgotten about, spoken over, ignored, and are not being shown any grace when they make mistakes. a trans woman saying misguided shit about other trans or queer people does not make them less deserving* of our solidarity. it sucks that they said or did the misguided thing, that may even have caused hurt or pain to other trans or queer people, but we do not just get to write them off and abandon them, and we certainly do not get to use the mistakes of a single transfem, or even a group of transfems, to judge all transfems.

but that is exactly what is happening, form what i have observed of the 'transandrophobia truther' community; the transgressions of a few transfems becomes, to them, the collective responsibility of all transfems everywhere. and that is transmisogynistic.

*and i would also please ask that no one misconstrue this... i am not referring to actual traitors like buck angel, caitlyn jenner, or blaire white who have placed their grifting and pursuit of capital gain ahead of the safety of other trans people. i'm talking about your comrades, here. i'm talking about your trans sisters.

while my original post mentioned a desire i have for some kind of apology (that, frankly, i know will probably never come) from exclusionists for the trend of exclusionary harassment that specifically/primarily affected asexuals, aromantics, bisexuals, pansexuals, polyamorous and nonbinary folks, etc., those other queer people are still members of my community and are still my comrades even if they say and do petty or shitty things.

the thing about queer liberation being "queer liberation" and not "just-the-queer-people-who-are-nice-to-me liberation" is that we still fight for the liberation of all queer people, even if there are individual queer people who might not be fighting for ours. that's how this works, that's how this has to work.

transfems are already fighting for our collective liberation. they have been doing most of the work for the longest time and receiving less than no thanks for it. transfem people are being murdered in the triple digits nearly every year and facing disproportionately higher rates of violence simply for existing. imagine how isolating this is.

so i sincerely don't feel that it's helpful, at all, to scold or call-out transfems for 'not doing enough' when they have done so much for this community only to be scrutinized, demonized, ostracized, attacked, and excluded over and over and over again. we are failing—some of us outright refusing—to support and listen to and protect and show up for transfems, only to turn around and demand that they uplift and protect the people that are not supporting them or protecting them or showing up for them, and that absolutely cannot continue.

you don't have to forgive the individual trans people you've encountered, who have maybe said transphobic shit about other trans and queer people, but you do have to understand that being a reactionary about it, pointing fingers at transfems and concocting a make-believe concept like transandrophobia, is not the answer.

[not-available-for-comment]

Just going to circle this excellent addition back around to the connection to radfem TERFs in op’s posts. A lot of radfem and proto-radfem rhetoric that I see posits this “universal” female experience that trans women are supposedly inherently excluded from (and that trans men are misguidedly trying to escape). This is obviously bullshit in some superficial ways—even just normal variation in family dynamics can give two women from similar class and cultural backgrounds different experiences. And there’s a strain of radfem rhetoric—usually aimed at trans men—that tries to claim that all women secretly hate being women or feel indifferent towards their gender but bioessentialism traps everyone in their AGAB and it’s best to just accept that. Which is uhhhhh NOT true and makes me very 👀 about the gender feelings of the people who try to claim it is.

But I really feel most radfem rhetoric falls apart instantly when the lens of race or class is applied. As OP says, an awful lot of radfem rhetoric is just “angel in the home” benevolent misogyny reskinned for a slightly different audience. But, as @mountaindwellingcreature points out, almost all of the supposedly “universal”, “essential” female experiences and traits posited by this strain of thought have NEVER been applied to women of color and Black women especially. And working class women of any race are frequently left out as well, as are many disabled women. Not only do women in these groups but especially women of color experience a totally different type of misogyny in their day-to-day lives, but their experiences of their gender in general are shaped by the fact that the basic assumptions of the people around them will be radically different.

In non-radical white feminism this is a reality that is only just beginning to be very hesitantly and haltingly addressed. Black women of all classes have been writing for some time about just how much of their reality remains unacknowledged by feminist rhetoric and activism, and that’s why it’s important to integrate Black voices like bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Mikki Kendall into any formal study of feminism. (For a very accessible discussion of the ways that feminism could help everyone more by incorporating the concerns of poor and working class Black women, see Kendall’s book Hood Feminism.) In previous generations, many Black women subscribed to a more Black-inclusive strain of women’s empowerment called womanism, largely because the main feminist movement was so intensely dismissive of their concerns.

All of this leads to my point: Radfem ideology doesn’t even remotely make sense for most cis women. It requires a model of femininity that has only ever been applied to white middle class able bodied cis women in the West. I have seen people on this very website try to universalize their experiences of girlhood or womanhood to vast unifying archetypes and while I’m happy they’re enjoying their gender that does not work on any kind of activist of political level. The only way to carry actual for real women’s empowerment feminism forward into the future is to expand our definition of womanhood or else. And yeah, I include trans women in that but I also include Black women. I include working class women. I include Latino women and Asian women. I include women who don’t even live in Europe or North America. I include women who do but have precarious immigration status. I include women who can’t be caregivers because they need to be taken care of. I include women who are always considered default caregivers even when they SHOULD be the ones being taken care of. I include all queer women who don’t happen to fit the narrow definition of “acceptable” queerness allowed in radfem ideology. Radical feminism is an ideological dead end because its definition of womanhood is a bankrupt and weak-willed concession to a version of feminism that was incomplete and self-defeating when it was established, and one that many brilliant women have been systematically working to dismantle for decades.

The way to “save feminism”, if that’s the sort of thing that keeps you up at night, is to make it big enough to apply to and uplift many kinds of women, not by locking it down to the kind of humorless weirdo who breaks out the calipers on every woman they meet to ensure they meet a country club’s definition of womanhood.

We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Anyway I guess that sums it up, if you are looking to TME/TMA as a way of saying trans men are oppressing trans women, without having to own saying out loud that you think trans men are oppressing trans women...

If you are using TME to mean everyone except amab trans women, or trans women in general, there is no way to couch that in social justice language enough to disguise that your core intent is to use TMA as a way to say "trans women and no one else"...

If your underlying sentiment is that bigotry can always distinguish between trans men, trans women, intersexed people and masculine cis women [everyone is clockable to everyone], so no one except trans women can be subject to trans-misogyny...

You have fallen for it.

You have fallen for the disc horse pitting trans men and trans women against each other. [And for the TERF idea that all people are clockable, which seems deeply embarrassing for a trans woman]

And you are just using TME to frame your assumption as basic fact, when what you actually mean is to say trans men are always trans-misogyny exempt and are oppressing trans women.

TME and TMA were originally meant to acknowledge that non-trans-women also fall subject to trans misogyny [that's why we needed a term more inclusive than just saying 'trans women']. They were originally terms of inclusion. So if you are one of the people using them to draw a circle around just trans women, excluding everyone else, you are the one co-opting the term. You are part of the movement that has been doing that for so long that TME is now a loaded accusation instead of an explicit term of inclusion.

"trans women" is the term you are looking for to refer explicitly to trans women. "Trans men" is the term you are looking for to describe trans men.

If you mean to refer to people assigned female at birth, the term is already 'afab', if you mean to refer to people assigned male at birth the term is already 'amab'.

TME/TMA were explicitly to allow for people to identify themselves as either trans misogyny exempt or trans misogyny affected.

Putting the label TME on someone else is inherently cyclical logic, because you won't say the quiet part out loud. "You are TME because I decided you are on the basis of you being TME", where the second TME there is replacing 'afab' so you don't have to say it, or own it and all that it implies.

If you are using TME as a stand-in so you don't have to say trans-men or afabs out loud, you are WHY people are treating these terms like they have come to be bioessentialism 2.0

And it is a shame to lose these terms because they were useful.

I never meant to even get on this disc horse, but gosh am I a sucker for "good faith" questions :/

Unfortunately for everyone, I am generally patient and articulate.

[mocury-moto]

Rant time but. Every time I see somebody on here say something along the lines of "Why are there so many TERFs following me? What about my content would attract TERFs to my blog?" I can't help but wonder how many jokes they've been making about hating men. Because I hate to break it to you but. It's that.

See, when you make that sort of "joke," I'm sure what you expect to happen is that horrible men will get upset and leave, and that men who are more reasonable people will recognize it's not talking about them and shrug it off. Unfortunately for literally everyone involved but especially you, that doesn't happen at fucking all.

What DOES happen is that the douchebag men you are talking about are the ones who will shrug it off and assume they're not who you're talking about. and at the same time, every single trans man, every single person attracted to men, and every single man who ISN'T a douchebag now feels INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with you and your content.

Great job! You just pushed away every single ally you could possibly have in this situation! And, of course, by getting rid of every actually good man in your space, did you know what you did? You not only opened the door to TERFs in your circle, you actually also put a big neon sign out front saying "ALL WOMEN ALLOWED" which, oops! Includes all the trashiest and douchebag-iest women in the goddamn world! Congratulations! You are your own downfall!

You can put as many "TERFs DNI" banners on your blog or your posts as you like, but none of that is going to change the fact that you are saying the same drivel that they are. And no, being queer does not make you exempt from this. Do better.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[blackafemmetalks]

One thing I don't like about transandrophobia truthers is the way they say "a lot of us are poc so stop calling us racist". Like yeah there are tons of transandrophobia truthers who are poc, but that doesn't mean it's not racist. That doesn't mean that very popular white truthers have done awful, racist things from using racial slurs, to misgendering and being transphobic to black trans people. A racist group having poc doesn't make it not racist, especially if those poc in those groups allow their white friends to be racist. When the loudest and most popular people in that circle are white and white passing (YES because being white passing even if you are poc gives you privileges and impacts how you interact with visible poc and how you experience racism), and they are being racist that is an issue. I'll never forget how one of them who was black, literally said that black women spoke over black men when it came to blm and that black women were worse to black men then white women were and everyone shared that, or when voc was talking about civil rights issues on her page and tons of nonblack truthers print screened her posts about racism and civil rights and took them out of context. Having poc in your community that is known for being racist doesn't stop the racism. Also terfs have a huge community that is poc and they are still racist. Also the fact that most of the truthers rad fem/terf pasts are being revealed?

This. Because just because there are Candace Owens and Be Carsons doesn't mean the republican party isn't racist.

Yes and I know who you're referring to-dobb@rbuts who for some reason has the worst takes about black women, and women in terms of BLM.

That hurt more than anything I've seen the truthers share

[radicalcoffeeclub]

The further along I read The Great Cosmic Mother, the more I see trans women as a natural end result of patriarchy.

With the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of science as the dominant patriarchal religion (...) materialism becomes the dominant and manly ideology (...). But still, matter is viewed as dumb and inert; materialism does not glory in matter, but in the male's ability to manipulate it. "

(Sjöö&Mor 1987, p. 233)

To me, this echoes the male/TRA worldview where material reality is denied its significance, while at the same time human bodies are just a site for acting out social roles, often through extensive medical intervention. A male body can be made a woman's body through "the male's ability to manipulate it" with hormones and surgeries.

One of the strangest, and bitterest, facts of later male domination over women is that the major tools and industries of this domination were the inventions of women, and first given to the men by women. The ceramic, textile, and clothing industries, the medical and healing professions, farming and the food industry, animal domestication, writing and calendric science, numbers and chemistry, religious symbol and ritual - all women's creations - were taken over by men and then closed to women's entry, except under slave conditions. In the same way men took over women's menstruation and childbirth rites, and then kept women away from these rites under taboo of death.

(Sjöö&Mor 1987, p. 239)

In the same vein, males are now taking womanhood from women, and redefining actual women as cis women. We are not allowed our own spaces anymore, and if the trans women find out we still do have them, they will not hesitate to threaten us with violence, even death. Trans women are celebrated, while "cis women" all around the world are still relegated to a more or less slave-like position.

As Enki (male god in Sumerian myth) boasts, "Enki perfected greatly that which is woman's task." Men had indeed coopted all of women's craft and "improved" upon it - and, as Enki demonstrated, he's trying hard to do the same with childbirth and motherhood.

(Sjöö&Mor 1987, p. 245)

"Cis women are just jealous because trans women are better women than they are!" Sound familiar? Trans women are coopting womanhood itself and brazenly claiming to improve it - saying their surgical approximations of vaginas are better than women's actual vaginas, that trans women are more feminine and therefore more womanly... on and on. From Neolithic to modern times, man takes what is woman's, claims to own it, claims to do it better than women, and then banish women from it, in this case by redefining womanhood itself.

For most of the millennia of Christian (and Jewish) history, the biblical God Yahweh and his immaculately begotten son, Christ, have always and only been represented at the altar by a male. Quite often these males have worn skirts. And always, in all times, they have been the givers and upholders of dogmatic laws regarding women - laws telling women how to dress, how to move, how to behave, how to relate to our bodies, how to reproduce, when to reproduce, how to have sexual activities, when to have sexual activities, how to relate to our menstrual periods and our childbirths and our afterbirths, how to bow our heads, cover our hair, keep our eyes modestly averted; how, in general, to be pliant and submissive and unquestioning handmaidens in the holy back-halls, kitchens, and bedrooms of the Lord. Indeed, this strange urge of "holy men", of all patriarchal denominations, to stand there, wearing skirts, giving sermons to the world's genuine females on what it really means to be a woman... is a propensity that needs deep pondering.

(Sjöö&Mor 1987, p. 346-347)

Men in skirts telling women what it means to be a woman... sound familiar?

With this in mind, the phenomenon of trans women openly admitting they used to be nazis/traditionalists/incels/misogynistic neckbeards/conservatives/etc, i.e. steeped in extremely patriarchal ideologies, takes on a whole new significance. Intrinsic to patriarchal thought is that males can grab whatever belongs to women, claim it as his own, "improve" upon it, and banish women from what was theirs. This sets an obvious precedent for trans women, who are in a sense the culmination of this phenomenon, because they do this with womanhood itself. Then, as trans women, they do the same with feminism: going from fascist to liberal feminist the moment they realise they can twist the latter to their advantage - making feminism all about them, "improving" it again to suit their interests and bashing real feminism in the process to such an extent women stay far away from it lest they be labeled TERFs, to finally... kick women out of feminism altogether, make it into a useless all lives matter movement, and forbid women from speaking about our own, real, female experiences, under threat of violence.

Ideologically, patriarchy has gone full circle. Now, if only patriarchal industrialists and capitalists render the earth uninhabitable, the quest of patriarchy will be complete. Total dominion over women and life itself.

To end this on a less grim note: if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the flame of women's power can never be put out completely. It's always right under the surface, waiting to be rekindled. Women's resistance and sisterhood is invaluable, and by being a woman radically, by being a roots feminist, you make a change, and you matter.

[mogaimom]

Disclaimer: I am not a lesbian. Please tell me if I’ve said anything lesbophobic.

I’ve noticed how a lot of cis lesbians will talk about how they have to fight to be able to label themselves properly and people are constantly trying to steal their terms and what have you, and they’ll frame this as a struggle unique to lesbians. But what they seem to forget is that gay men and trans people have also had to fight not to be called slurs or medicalized, pathologizing terminology. Or that mspec people are constantly erased and have our labels misdefined and misrepresented.

And I feel like the general attitude of gatekeep-y-ness within cis lesbian circles — the attitude that only specific people with specific experiences are “allowed” to identify as lesbians/butches/femmes/etc. because they’ve had to fight so hard for their own terms — is largely left over from the influence of TERFs. Exactly how much harder (than everyone else in the community) have they had to fight that their labels must be guarded so strictly?

Now, I will be the first to say that comparing every person you don’t like to a TERF is transmisogynistic; trans women’s suffering should not be used as a measuring tool for how bad someone is. This is not an invitation to start using the term “BLERF” or call anyone who tries to invalidate nonb/mspec/ace lesbians a TERF. REGs are bad regardless of how “TERF-adjacent” they are.

But when I look at this overall trend of “preserving the purity of the lesbian label,” I can’t help but be reminded that that is exactly how TERFs talk about trans women (“preserving” lesbianism, “preserving” womanhood); and I can’t help but wonder where exactly it comes from.

I feel like the idea, that this term specifically has to be “protected from outsiders,” is the legacy that TERFs have left behind within cis lesbian communities and activism. I’ve seen a lot of cis lesbians calling out transmisogyny within transmasc and TME nonbinary communities, but I never see cis lesbians talk about the transmisogyny within their own communities. I see so many cis lesbians rebut accusations of transmisogyny with “How can the lesbian community be hostile to trans women when trans lesbians exist?” As if even the trans community isn’t hostile to us.

And I think this is just another facet of the overall goal that TERFs imprinted onto cis lesbian activism: “Continually narrow down the definition of lesbian and draw strict lines in the sand between us and the rest of the LGBT+ community.” Whether it’s “woman exclusively attracted to other women,” “binary woman exclusively attracted to other binary women,” or “cis woman exclusively attracted to other cis women,” it all comes from the same historical desire to exclude trans lesbians and their allies.

And I don’t think every cis lesbian who excludes nonbinary/mspec/aspec lesbians knows that it’s rooted in transmisogyny. But what other goal is being accomplished by distancing the lesbian community so much from other LGBTQ+ people? Why are they so afraid of (or disgusted by) even the thought of other people using a term that they feel describes their experiences in a different way? Why do they think they have the right to define other lesbians out of existence? It’s the skeleton of transmisogynistic rhetoric left over from when TERFs dominated the discourse (and which TERFs still widely work to uphold) that has thoroughly permeated lesbian-centric activism. It’s the attitude of lesbian separatism without any clear purpose or direction.

The only term I know of which is policed in a way at all similarly is “transfem,” and that’s only because many transfems feel it should only be claimable by those who are affected by transmisogyny (with the exception of transfem alters in TME systems). Transfem “separatism” and the desire for terminology specific to us comes from the fact that all TMEs oppress us; we need the language to talk about ourselves (as the transmisogyny-affected class) and about our oppressors. But binary/mono/allo/cis lesbian separatism (from other wlw) doesn’t come from that same need, as nonb/mspec/aspec/trans wlw (obviously) don’t oppress them. If anything, it comes from the desire to not recognize the struggles which other wlw deal with, whether that be exorsexism, monosexism, aphobia, or transmisogyny.

I am not a lesbian, so it’s not my place to tell people what it “really” means to be a lesbian. But it’s not my place to tell self-identified lesbians that they’re wrong about their identities either. No one gets to decide someone else’s identity for them.

(Btw, if you’re a TME nonb/mspec/aspec lesbian, feel free to share about your experiences with exclusionism, but please don’t mistake this for me saying that you’re transmisogyny-affected, that you have a place to speak about transmisogynistic oppression, or that exclusionists are the same as TERFs.)