#i hate calling them feminists because their rhetoric is not about helping women its about hurting trans people

[jumpyrope]

Terfs would rather see a trans man kill himself as a girl than live happily as a man.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

i have left

hey everyone this will probably be the last thing i post on this blog albeit im keeping it up for resources.

im eternally grateful for how this community has helped me through prostitution and everything, i have amazing mutuals and i have learned so much 💜

but it has become toxic. many of yall cant handle disagreement and default to being as condescending and obnoxious as possible. one of us calling out a post is not enough, we have to dog pile everyone with a slightly shitty opinion. some of yall have severely lost the plot if you ever had it in the first place. not everything is that serious, especially when it comes to online drama.

im sick of it. so many engage in the same bullshit we accuse online trans activists of. this is an echo chamber. so many just mindlessly parrot slogans and arguments. what im very sick of is seeing single tweets or posts by a nobody, usually anonymous, being spread as receipts and shit. you know how annoying it is when everything a self proclaimed terf somewhere on social media says is taken by trans activists at face value and representative of the community when theyre not even radical feminist, just transphobic? yeah. yet a lot of yall do the same by saving and sharing „receipts“ where some random person who claims theyre trans (or not even) says some fucked up or out of pocket shit. you will always find people like that online, from any politicial „camp“ or ideological alignment!

a lot of yall seem to think that debate is about winning and not like, having an exchange of arguments and let the audience come to their own conclusion

and i just dont hate trans people. in fact i feel kinship to any female or homosexual trans person, anyone except heterosexual males. many of yall dont even realise how male centered you are when you more or less equal the trans community to heterosexual men who have a fetish for humiliation and forced feminisation or whatever. who exist and are an issue and i do wish the trans community at large would distance themselves from those men, but its not all there is to it. yes i agree that we need to protect vulnerable young people, girls and especially lesbians and gay boys, from being pushed into transitioning, i think the age of consent should be put at 21 or something, but we have to acknowledge and consider that there are people who have already transitioned and will transition in the future and i just dont understand how you cant have any empathy for them. no matter what you think about transition, many trans people ARE vulnerable and marginalised. plus consider how many detransitioned women are in this community yet yall talk about trans people as mutilated and shit its gross. in the end we can only try to establish structures that keep people from self harming, but an adult of sound mind has the right to do so anyways, including plastic surgery and trans surgeries. and i want to keep my arms open to them; but a lot of rhetoric around it spread on here will only alienate them further.

right now im saving all my essays in notes so its out of my mind. i have missed the community a lot so maybe i will return at some point but i have also been feeling better since i stopped being on radblr. i miss the rare valuable input and thoughts by other women but overall i have felt unaligned with how things have been handled on here. it has been mostly negative instead of constructive and pragmatic. ive had the impression some of yall enjoy the „being in the in-group“ community aspect more than actually being here for feminist exchange. lack of nuance, lack of empathy, lack of reason. it pains me but i have more and more come to understand why people just block us without engaging on general suspicion because ive also come to be annoyed with some of yall engaging with posts - and im on „your side“.

anyways im doing okay, im going to drug counselling regularly now and am trying to establish a stable life for those of you who inquired, and i hope anyone reading this is self reflected enough to know whether this applies to her or not. bye

[feminist-furby-freak]

about this post of yours:

https://www.tumblr.com/feminist-furby-freak/741545317484347392/even-from-the-same-sources-nhs-and-cdc-mens?source=share

why are TIMs not advocating for "people w prostates" and "ppl w testicles" language too? cuz isn't that also "misgendering"? (maybe im misunderstanding the point of ur post though. like I get that they call "ppl w cervixes" inclusivity, and by them not doing it w men too, it's a double standard. is it abt controlling women, and how we identify ourselves as a group? I don't fully understand what their goal is for this "inclusivity" to be one way?

again, maybe im j misunderstanding the point of your post but I don't get -- if its abt being inclusive of misgendering -- it doesn't apply to both?

or is it not directly TIMs and instead like cis-identified males only caring abt using "inclusive" language when it doesn't interfere w what they want to do (call themselves men too and not "ppl w prostates")?

it j feels weird being yelled at all day (I'm exaggerating ofc) abt girldick, so why would TIM be okay w other stuff being j called men? (I'm assuming they are not okay w it, but I see it doesn't matter practically as people are still saying men and then "ppl w cervixes")

sorry for the long ask!! thanks for your help!

Ding ding ding. Yes this is a lesser discussed point. The double standard is proof that it is not about being invalidated or inclusivity. TIMs know that they are men and know that “men should be screened for prostrate cancer” applies to them. They whine about everything from not being included in period campaigns to individual lesbians not letting them rape her. They don’t complain about being included in men’s health because they don’t actually care abt inclusivity they just want to insert themelsves into women’s spaces. Not to mention, they have never had barriers to healthcare because of their sex so they don’t care. Removing the word women from medical language is about further breaking down the category and meaning of “women” and making it harder for us to organize and talk about our issues. That’s it.

TIMs hate the idea that there are some (now, very few) spaces and resources that are not and will never be accessible to them. The last remaining one is gynecology and obstetrics. That is why they have this campaign against “Women’s Health” as a field. As someone pursuing graduate education in the field yeah my degree is still called Women’s Health and Midwifery but in most academic spaces we do this stupid dance around language. My undergraduate women’s health journal changed to “gender minority to health” and said I couldn’t use a picture of a uterus with my article about childbirth because it’s exclusive. This is actually why I left. In a country where more women die every year from complications of birth, “activists” are campaigning to make it harder to discuss and research women’s healthcare. Soon it will be practically impossible to talk about women’s health at all. A few years ago when the gender movement had a shred of common sense the rhetoric was include trans women in everything except for women’s health because obviously that doesn’t apply to them. Unless people start speaking up in a few years they will probably rename the discipline entirely. TIMs are now showing up to OBGYN offices/clinics expecting to have their “neos” treated because “it’s practically the same.” I can assure you they are not and regular women’s health providers do not have training to provide care for those surgical creations. Anyway that’s my rant.

[gay-otlc]

(no sure if my previous message got sent so i’ll just retype a shorter version here)

Hey, I saw that you hid/deleted my comments and blocked me, so I want to apologise if my arguments came as too harsh or agressive. I did not mean to hurt you and I mean you no harm. I was just really upset that agreeing with an anti sexist rhetoric caused me to be called transphobic when this is something I am completely against. Not sure you read every replies I wrote because I was also discussing with other folks in the section but I was saying that even if Terfs may use that rhetoric against trans people, we shouldn’t give it to them and allow them to reclaim it.

Your argument can be turned around by saying that on the other hand, both trans men and trans women can be victims of misogyny based on how they are perceived and can suffer from sexist violence. The bear thing is purposely exaggerated and extreme because its point is to catch attention and to be shocking. Of course it can lead to deeper conversations and reflections later on, but the priority is to point out sexism and violence against women. At the moment, men are the oppressor, since our society is patriarchal, and women are oppressed. Asking women to stop hating or fearing their oppressor will do nothing to help them stop being oppressed. I understand your sentiments and it’s great that you are fighting for trans people to not end up with that rhetoric used against them. But this was not the idea behind the original topic. Of course we can open up a discussion about this but it shouldn’t be overstepping on women’s attempts to denounce what they go through. Terfs are terrible people and will hide behind feminist arguments but we can’t let them reclaim all of these arguments and let them turn them into transphobic ideas because we would be giving them what they want by letting them become some spokesperson for feminism. Most women who agreed with the bear thing were not carrying any ill sentiment against trans people. Because that wasn’t what the topic was about. But I appreciate that you added another post and explained yourself more, and I am sorry that the discussion became a heated argument and that I got a bit too emotional.

I wish you well and hope you have a nice day.

I don't think I got your previous message (Unless you were this person? But you're a lot politer than them so I'm going to guess not)

I was also very upset at the time, which was definitely hindering my ability to have a productive conversation with you. I apologize for that.

To be clear, again, I don't think saying "bear" makes you as an individual transphobic- just that the sort of rhetoric present in the "man vs bear" discussion is very similar to the rhetoric that gets used against trans people.

I fully agree with the idea that too many women, and too many people in general, have been victims of violence from men. That it's horrible for so many people to have been traumatized in such a way that they don't feel safe around men. My problem is that this conversation frames men* as the worst possible threat. Not everyone who says "bear" feels this way, but a majority of them do

*or really, people who are presumed to be men based on appearance, because no one is going around asking strangers "excuse me, what's your gender identity?" before they decide whether or not they feel safe

even if Terfs may use that rhetoric against trans people, we shouldn’t give it to them and allow them to reclaim it

The thing is, this perception of men (or "men") as the ultimate threat isn't something we are "giving to" TERFs- it is already a foundational part of their beliefs. You can read further about some common TERF talking points here.

Your argument can be turned around by saying that on the other hand, both trans men and trans women can be victims of misogyny based on how they are perceived and can suffer from sexist violence

Yes! Absolutely! Both trans men and trans women, as well as other sorts of trans people, very much do suffer from sexist violence, and this might cause them to feel unsafe around (people they perceive to be) men just like many cis women do.

That doesn't contradict my point that trans people also suffer from anti-man rhetoric.

Of course it can lead to deeper conversations and reflections later on, but the priority is to point out sexism and violence against women.

Pointing out sexism and violence against women is absolutely an important thing! I do think it can be done without treating men/people perceived as men as inherently dangerous though.

Asking women to stop hating or fearing their oppressor will do nothing to help them stop being oppressed.

Obviously we shouldn't stop fighting misogyny because everything will be solved if women just stop hating men, or anything. But I do still want women to stop hating men. "Misandry, as I see it, can never reliably be prevented from collapsing into transphobia." (Not "misandry" as in a form of systemic oppression equivalent to misogyny, but as in the literal "hatred of men.")

Most women who agreed with the bear thing were not carrying any ill sentiment against trans people. Because that wasn’t what the topic was about

Even if the topic wasn't directly about transphobia- "man vs bear" is closely related to the belief that men/perceived as men are the worst possible danger, which is closely related to transphobia.

I don't think all women who say "bear" are transphobic, consciously or even unconsciously, or that they need to change their answer or else they hate trans people.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable to act people to reflect on their internal biases, and on how the way they perceive men may relate to transphobia.

Thank you for the chance to have a civil conversation about this, I wish you well too

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Morgan Jerkins at Mother Jones:

Last year, despite minding other people’s business online, I didn’t know what a “trad wife” was. Now it seems like every time I log in to Instagram or TikTok, there is another video of a beautiful woman cleaning her home or making an extraordinarily long and needlessly difficult meal. These trad wives, short for traditional wives, are women who post online content showing themselves adhering to patriarchal gender roles while keeping house and raising children—and making it look easy.

[...] I wanted nothing to do with her or any self-identifying trad wife in my own small piece of digital real estate, but their immense popularity (and algorithmic dexterity) had allowed them to trespass, and I find myself unable to turn away. Chances are, neither can you. But while it might be easy to write off the trad wives as a silly meme or a guilty pleasure, they should not be taken lightly. Given the misogynistic messaging and white-centric ideals some of these influencers peddle, they are indicative of larger forces at play—henchwomen in an ongoing effort to functionally erase modern women from the public sphere.

To fully understand the rise of the trad wife phenomenon, it helps to look at its origins. In some ways, trad wives resemble the mommy bloggers of the mid-aughts to early 2010s. Back then, momfluencers like Dooce’s Heather Armstrong and Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother commanded massive audiences through confessional posts about breast pumps and postpartum depression. As writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton pointed out in a 2020 New York Times piece, mommy branding was different back then: These bloggers were messy; they did not hold back in revealing all of the stickiness and ugliness in their matrescence. But then the vibe shifted. In 2016 and 2017, when Seyward Darby was doing research for her 2020 book, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, she noticed an ominous subculture gaining prominence, one in which women were performing this highly curated image of wife- and motherhood. “It was aggressively anti-feminist, anti-diversity; some of it was proudly pro-white,” Darby says. Trump’s rise helped give these women a larger megaphone.

Of course, many influencers bragging about being stay-at-home moms are not white supremacists, but, as Darby points out, “it is a slippery slope—and sometimes there’s no slope at all—between ‘I’m just a nice woman who wants to be a wife and mom’ and having a very white nationalist agenda. Whether they realize it or not, those are the waters they are swimming in.” Watching trad wife content can pull viewers into territory they didn’t expect. “What’s scary is that there is a subtext in all these videos,” Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz tells me. For example, a trad wife might advocate for “natural living” or homeschooling, and then veer into anti–birth control rhetoric or religious indoctrination. “When you engage with these videos, because they are so adjacent to fascist, far-right content, you are quickly led down a rabbit hole of ­extremism.”

Not all trad wives have direct links to the far right. But what unites them is a romanticized vision of domesticity, or, as Darby calls it, “June Cleaver 1950s cosplaying.” As self-proclaimed trad wife Estee Williams, who rejects any associations with white supremacy, declared in a 2022 TikTok video, “We believe our purpose is to be homemakers.” It’s not simply about looking pretty. Their aestheticizing of housework is a throwback to the mid-20th century, when women weren’t even allowed to get a credit card or a loan. Publications such as Ladies’ Home Journal were responsible for promoting a certain kind of wife as a way to reestablish social order after World War II, when many women had entered the labor force. As Ann Oakley puts it in her 1974 book, Housewife, “a good wife, a good mother, and an efficient ­homemaker­…Women’s expected role in society is to strive after perfection in all three roles.” Most trad wife content is marked with this desire for perfection.

[...]

So why are many millennial and Gen Z women an eager part of the trad wife audience? Here’s my theory: We’ve given up. The popularity of the trad wife content is demonstrative of a psychological resignation. In the past several years, we’ve experienced a pandemic, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the end of the Girlboss­­ Era. The rise of the trad wives marks what Samhita Mukhopadhyay, author of the 2024 book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning, believes is “a response to the failures of a neoliberal workplace feminism” stretching from the 1960s to the present day—one that focuses on individuality. “What women fought for was an entry into the workplace,”­ Mukhopadhyay explains, but “being a mother in the workplace was almost untenable.” Even after decades of supposed progress, she points out, “we’re still not paid equally, and most women still don’t have resources commensurate with how hard they work and how they contribute to their families.” According to a 2023 report from the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress, women were 5 to 8 times more likely than men to work part time or not at all because of caregiving responsibilities. Maya Kosoff, a content strategist and writer who admits to me that she has become obsessed with trad wives herself, says their popularity is “a reaction to perceived systemic failures” that seem like they “can be easily solved by turning to the simpler life of homesteading.”

And look, escapism isn’t anything new. When life gets harder, it’s only natural that one would daydream about a different time. But fantasies are dangerous when the stakes are so high for American women right now. We have only started to feel the effects of the Dobbs decision. “We have not seen how bad it’s going to get as women are pushed out of public life over the coming years,” journalist and MeToo activist Moira Donegan tells me. “Our main educational institutions, our workplaces, our elected officials are going to start to look more male.” Sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom similarly argues that attacks on reproductive rights represent an erosion of women’s place in a democracy. “Women only get to be full citizens if they have control over when and how they have babies,” she says. “When that changes, your citizenship becomes vulnerable, so you attach yourself to a citizen: men. I think this reclaiming of being the traditional wife is here so long as there’s a threat.”

Mother Jones does a solid report on the explosion of tradwife culture in the wake of the Dobbs decision, in which abortion bans serve as a tool to drive women out of the workforce.

Tradwife influencers romanticize the 1950s aesthetic, and most of them tend to have far-right political views (especially on gender roles).

Read the full story at Mother Jones.

[traumascumathena]

it is very hard for me to be nice about this. it really is. I have extensive trauma with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, to the point where I have lost almost all pride in my identity as a transfem and to the point where I had to choose between my physical safety and the well-being of my family over my identity. my ma is a trans woman that does advocacy for inmates, particularly lgbt inmates, and shes received death theats from TERF groups on the basis of her being a trans woman. Ive gone back in the closet and pretend to be a genderconforming cis man just to keep selling my art without getting threats from TERFS. they’re very present in our lives. Ive changed the entire way I live in order to survive their presence. 

And when I see posts like this. I know they dont come from a place of understanding this present trauma. These people dont know what its like to have their name and face dragged through the mud on pamphlets and fliers and “feminist” gatherings. they see TERFs as an abstract enemy and not a real one. they see TERFs as a general bad guy to be applied everywhere. and not a specific type of transphobia applied by a specific type of person. they see TERFs as traumatic but they dont see who is traumatized by them. 

a TERF is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. nothing more and nothing less. Trans Exclusionary: they want to exclude trans people, predominantly trans women, from society. they want trans people to cease existing, or if they should insist to exist, that they be content with the bottom of a social ladder. Radical Feminism: liberation of women from the patriarchy in a method that focuses solely on sexism, without regard to other forms of discrimination, creating a new social ladder with cishet white women on top. 

so tell me, where does being against endogenic systems fit into this? what is trans exclusionary about being anti-endo? what is radically feminist about being anti-endo? 

and dont fucking tell me its “rhetoric.” everyone fucking says the rhetoric is the same, but no one explains in a way that matters. “just change trans with endo!” except, when you change the words in an argument, its meaning changes. is it TERF rhetoric for me to say watermelon is the worst fruit, because if we replace watermelon with trans women and fruit with type of human being, it is exactly what a TERF would say? 

honestly. you people only say ideologies you dont agree with are TERF rhetoric because its an emotional appeal, because youre out of strong arguments. everyone agrees TERFs are bad, and so if you can paint the person youre arguing with as a TERF, then you automatically win to people who dont take more than two seconds to think about things. and in this age of low attention spans, thats everyone that fucking sees this! 

listen. I do believe in endogenic systems. despite the url, despite other mods opinions, I believe endogenic systems exist. Ive seen arguments for their existence that make sense. Ive seen arguments against anti-endos that make sense. saying anti-endos are using TERF rhetoric actively degrades those arguments, because flawed logic in one aspect makes the collection of arguments as a whole look flawed. how can I argue for the existence of endogenic systems when the common defense of them is “anti-endos use TERF rhetoric!” my side looks a fool! 

this is why transfems leave system spaces en masse as well. its all “TERFs are bad! TERF rhetoric is everywhere!” but never “how can we help transfems? How can we make transfems feel safe?” 

For YEARS I spoke about being unsafe physically due to TERFs, and I received no help. my family received no help. I have given up being out and proud because of TERFs, and in this depressing fact, instead of getting help from the LGBT community, I am isolated! we are isolated! and yet, and yet, you all simply cry out hatred for TERFs and never love for transfems! 

what good is hating TERFs if you leave transfems for dead? what good is calling out TERF rhetoric if countless transfems have to be closeted to survive? what good it to paint the enemy as TERFs, if you cant even support your own transfems? 

[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.

[the-feminist-philosopher]

So it has been asked that I put this in it's own post rather than a thread, so I am:

...

Over the last several years, many "rad fem" leaders and organizations have come to ally with LGB &T hate groups and the Christian right because they, "know who real women are." It is these christian right groups like the FRC and ADF who are behind many of the anti-abortion, anti-women movements through the U.S. and Europe. They're also behind a lot of anti-trans policies and legislation.

You can read a bit about who is behind funding these policy initiatives, and how much money goes into these campaigns below:

European Parliamentary Forum

Southern Poverty Law Center on the ADF

Southern Poverty Law Center on the FRC

And you can read about the connection between these groups and trans-exclusionaries and radical feminists below:

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Far-Right Anti-Trans Laws

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Anti LGBT Campaigns

Political Research Associates on Partners with the Christian Right

An "Unlikely" Ally

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), for example, accepted a $15,000 grant from the religious freedom giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom. They also co-authored an anti-trans parenting guide with the Family Policy Alliance, and then partnered with them again to release a homophobic press releases decrying how LGB labels "sexualize" children because no child thinks about sexual orientation (so couldn't possibly know they're gay for any other number of reasons). They've also held conferences and panels with Christian-right organizing groups, namely, the Heritage Foundation.

We've also seen countless radical feminists appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight and the Ingraham Angle, two Fox hosts well-known for whipping up anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiment in America's Christian Nationalist movement. Speakers included: Meg Kilgannon, Kara Dansky, Tammy Bruce (and here), and Julia Beck.

The term "gender ideology" even has its origins in alt-right Christian circles. And don't even get me started on the use of "hygiene" to describe cis people and the fact they co-opted the idea that certain people-in this case, trans people- have "contaminating" genes from literal eugenics movements. TERF complaints about the supposed existence of "cancel culture" and "woke culture" even echo conservative and right-wing rhetoric.

But it gets worse.

White supremacists and white supremacist organizations (See: Richard Spencer’s Radix for primary example) are trying to turn TERFs into “race realists.” And they're actually having a lot of success because 1.) the movement is chronically white, 2.) the movement is built a lot on social fears, and 3.) the movement often uses crime statistics as a recruitment and justification point (these statistics are used to convince white feminists that there are specific demographics of men they need to be "protected" from). Literal white supremacists are using the TERF's social grievances and crime statistics to "enlighten" these supposed feminists about what they call the "race question." Over-policing and capitalistic deprivation of resources have devastated black and brown communities, making members of those communities the disproportionate victims of incarceration. Simply pointing out crime and incarceration stats without nuance, which TERFs like to do with their "trans women are all sexual predators" crime argument, has actually helped the bottom line of white supremacists.

They're using the standard TERF's belief in the divine feminine-- the idea that natal women have a unique biology which should be protected and venerated-- to convince them that there are "masculine" and "feminine" energies and turn them onto the trad life. And they're tapping into the TERF's unaddressed "benevolent" sexism-- a type of sexism that positively rewards people assigned female at birth for observing their sex-assigned social prescriptions from presentation to roles to a cis identity, and which holds that women should be protected (by the [masculinist] state) and revered, most especially for their unique biology-- to convince them that "modern society" and "modern feminism" is diseased and the antithesis to their liberty. And it's working. It's working precisely because TERFs are so eager to separate people into "biological" castes so that men are men and women are women (and never the twain shall meet), define women as a discrete biological caste ("the sex that can bear offspring or produce ova"), and reify gendered associations, specifically the association that men are Aggressors and women are passive Recipients of said aggression. This ideology actually does quite a bit to uphold patriarchal ideas that define women as a discrete biological category and it also encourages a system whereby men act on behalf of and choose for women (the Aggressor v. Recipient social prescription does a lot to justify rape culture, or men acting aggressively on behalf of and choose for women).

This is why notorious misogynists like Matt Walsh have shown open support for high-profile TERFs and have taken the "Adult Human Female" slogan and run with it. There's a reason these men on the "right" of the political spectrum can't stand the existence of trans people, but will voice support for TERFs and their ideology and use their language. The TERF ideology is sexist and they're sexists, so it follows.

But the bitch of it is that they know this. They openly admit it, but like to play too dumb to know that their movement is collaborating with the alt-right simply to score a political point against trans people. They all hate trans people existing so much, they've allied with the people who'll cut off their hands and gouge their eyes out.

“I do feel kind of nervous about working with the right wing because they have opposed women’s bodily autonomy…”

-Julia Beck

TERFs have put their eggs in the same basket as people passing anti-abortion policies, people trying to pass girl's genital inspection policies for sports, people trying to ban LGB books, people who want to repeal the right to gay marriage, and people who believe that a woman's "place" is in the home- serving a husband and children all to score a political point against trans people.

That is why I always say that in trying to create a feminism that excludes trans people, TERFs have created the very tool with which the alt-right will use to destroy feminism all together.

You can read more about their connections below:

Posie Parker, TERFs Find Audience with White Supremacists

Anti-Trans 'Feminists' Appear at Panel of Right-Wing Heritage Foundation

Tucker Carlson Looks at FPA Partnership with Radical Feminists

Conservative group hosts anti-transgender panel of feminists 'from the left'

The Unholy Alliance of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and the Right Wing

The "unlikely" political alliance against trans care

Introduction: TERFs, Gender-Critical Movements, and Postfascist Feminisms

Unpacking “Gender Ideology” and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement

Call them what they are. They aren't feminists. They're anti-trans activists. They're the latest iteration of an anti-feminist movement.

[tyrannuspitch]

Jumping off @kidrat​ ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy. 

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

[depressedtransguy]

Hi, I I don't want to go back and forth in the tags with you on the feminism including men post, so I'm messaging you here. Feel free to ignore, I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable. I genuinely want to know though, why you feel that feminism's goal of making women equal to men should "include" men in its goals, while groups striving for racial equality does not have to include white people as a class in theirs. Personally, I feel really frustrated with leftists and conservatives alike both expecting women to give up anything they have for themselves, and prioritize every other group, while any group which includes men are allowed to prioritize themselves and their own goals.

well gender extremely complicated

and as a trans man who does not pass, I shall be affected by misogyny and harassment my whole life just as women might, yet I am a man

and my statistics for getting sexually assaulted are even higher than those of cis women

groups striving for racial equality don’t need to include white people because no one is born being called one race when they really are another

there can be exceptions to this with multiracial people who possibly don’t appear too far into one group or another while they still face harassment, but they are not completely white

I am completely a man. I have a vagina and breasts and everyone who looks at me uses she/her, but I am a man and I deserve to talk about my struggles against the patriarchy without being called a woman

And while racism doesn’t hurt everyone, the patriarchy does, and since feminism is about equality between the genders, the patriarchy has to go

plus so many womens issues are intertwined with things that different types of men face like men of color, disabled men, queer men, and neurodivergent men, so saying things like for example ‘women are forced to smile while men aren’t’ isn’t exactly true since black men face the same harassment

the mixture of gender especially along with race is so complicated that if one tries to cut it down to just one group instead of the mass, there’s going to be harmful exclusion. I’ve heard many stories from male-passing non binary people where when a feminist group tried to only include women and non-binary people, they were kicked out, even though they were non-binary because they looked like a man

including men in feminism does not take away from women

I am not saying that we should prioritize men over women

I am saying that if one truly wants to reach equality between the genders when gender is practically inexplicable, everyone needs to be included

especially since I think this would help stop the harmful generalizations of ‘all men are trash’ or ‘all men are dangerous’ that come from radfem rhetoric because while the statistics are scary and women have every right to be cautious, I am a man who will most likely be raped in my lifetime, and I don’t deserve to be called trash and dangerous because of the actions of others

also, and I hate to keep bringing them up because I am the last person who should be talking about race but, black men are already unfairly demonized so saying that ‘all men are dangerous’ is extremely harmful to them too

the fight isn’t women vs men, it’s against the patriarchy

I hope this answers your question and I’m really glad you were so polite when everyone else has been just yelling at me, I hope this comes off as polite too.

[condemning-twitter]

First of all, and to get things straight: I am a biological woman, identifying as a woman and also identifying as a feminist. That being said, let's break this dumpster fire down.

What can be observed in this reblog chain is a bunch of self-identifying feminists (including radfems) stopping by the Tumblr post of a MINOR. Based on Tumblr guidelines, said minor might be as young as 13 years old and based on his own post, identifies as male. Furthermore, he is outspokenly leftist (statistically speaking, he is unlikely to have the mind of a misogynist). All of these can be found out by taking so much as five minutes out of your day to do some research rather than making snarky comments.

In his original post, OP expresses his concerns about the feminist movement and points out that man-hatred is actually counter-productive to a healthy pro women movement; And THAT is a legitimate concern and widely known issue.

While OP's message uses rough wording (to the point of other users framing his words as though he implied that the only natural response to unfair treatment is to exact unfair treatment on others) the core meaning holds true. Young children are IMPRESSIONABLE, in case you have ever wondered why young girls are so susceptible to grooming. Young boys are not deriving their behaviors from the void; they are being taught by someone. Who is that someone? Well, it depends on which group the boy in question feels most at home in.

Which one would you pick? The group that has piled or would be willing to pile roughly 100 hate reblogs on you for saying a slightly wrong thing or the group that is telling you that the other group is inherently stupid? One is invalidating you and offering an unsafe, unpredictable environment. The other is offering a validating and safe, predictable environment.

Teens are on a search for identity and connection. This usually causes them to search and find labels and groups to identify their own person by. Perhaps it doesn't ring any bells but "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth" and this applies here as well. The group that doesn't accept you is the enemy by default. This is why misogynists WANT boys to believe that feminists are anti male or male sexists; if one group is alienating you, you are left with the groups that don't. Preferably, you will then seek out a group that validates your (perceived) experiences of alienization. And that is the first step. The rest is a pipeline. Once you have identified with a group, your mind is fertile ground for their rhetoric.

You think being mistreated is no justification for being a horrible person? Neither do I! And neither did OP. The problem is that there's a certain cause and effect at play that's driving men away from us and to misogynists like Trump and Tate. Not exclusively, but it sure fucking helps. And considering your reaction, all of you either seem oblivious to that fact or too self-absorbed in your frustrations to care.

"If mean words are turning you into Hitler 2 bla bla" rich words considering there are likely dozens of grown-ass adults piling on a minor on this post and none of them have been called out yet. But no. Bad experiences don't justify bad behavior. Surely.

Even if the alienization is only perceived, it can- Oh wait. It is not actually just perceived, is it? Responses are ranging from "we had it worse and are justified in our anger; you are not" to hopefully sarcastic "men don't even deserve to exist" statements that cannot even be read as sarcastic because everything sounds the same on the internet.

Anyway, even perceived alienization can change a person's political affiliation for the worse. No, this cannot always be prevented. You are not being asked to pander to anybody - you are being asked not to offer young boys to self-proclaimed "alpha men" on a silver platter.

I hate to tell you (actually, no I don't), but we are living in a society comprised of both women and men. Feminism is a joint effort and not a game of Trauma Olympics like what you guys are trying to pull.

Hating on men and claiming masculinity is evil is going to have the complete opposite effect as to what you intended.

Let me set the scene, there's a freshly 13 year old boy, he's been told his whole life that boys don't cry, boys aren't allowed to have feelings. He gets internet access, and what SHOULD be happening is that people tell him that's all wrong and of course boys should have emotions, but that doesn't happen. Instead what happens is he gets met with dozens upon dozens of people claiming men DON'T have emotions. This boy tries to fight back, he replies to a post and he says that it's not true, boys aren't evil and they can be sad and hurt sometimes. What happens? People bully him. They laugh at him for being sad, say he deserves it. They tell him all men are horrible and he's destined to be evil.

What do you think happens? Do you think he's going to put in the effort to be a good guy? Fuck no. He's going to assume that's his fate and be shitty, because he was never met with kindness and understanding, he was told his kind is automatically evil.

[coochiequeens]

The New Gay Liberation Front (NGLF), a new US organization by and for gay men, has launched, as of Monday, September 13, 2021. With the rise of gender identity and its gradual eclipsing of lesbian and gay rights, the NGLF calls for a necessary critique, one that considers the autonomy and dignity of lesbians and gay men as homosexual people. According to the NGLF, it aims “to defend homosexuality, uphold biological sex, and protect single-sex spaces.” The organization has also launched its website, which has many resources covering such issues as homophobia under transgenderism, gender dysphoria, and both desistance and detransition. Readers can find various resources on differing subjects that, in our time, apply to lesbians and gay men, especially gay youth, as a result of gender identity and its widespread institutionalization. The NGLF will be celebrating its launch on Sunday, September 19, 2021 at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/2 p.m. CST/8 p.m. UK.

According to the organization, there are, in particular, three main issues most pressing to lesbians and gay men that pertain to their rights as homosexual people:

”I. Major institutions are working to redefine same-sex attraction as ‘same-gender attraction,’ which posits that sexual orientation is based not on the material reality of biological sex but instead on ‘gender identity.’  

II. Gender-nonconforming children and young people, many of whom would otherwise grow up gay, are being medicalized on a mass scale in various interventions for ‘treating’ feelings of gender dysphoria.  

III. Harmful across the board, especially for women and girls, the loss of single-sex services and spaces harms us as homosexual people, because lesbians and gay men depend on these services and spaces for dating and socializing. “

The NGLF was spearheaded by LGB Alliance USA Content Creator, musician, and desister Kurtis Tripp, because he saw the need for a group that advocates specifically for the rights of lesbians and gay men as homosexual people. According to Tripp:

“NGLF maintains that homosexuality is defined as being sexually attracted solely to persons of one’s own sex, and that it is not bigotry to maintain exclusive same-sex attraction. It Is okay to be gay. Gay is good! “ Some of the other NGLF members include, as seen in its press release: 

“NGLF has partnered with the founder of the Boxer Ceiling, a project which documents homophobic abuse from gender identity ideologues who demand that gay men convert the basis of their sexual orientation from biological sex to ‘gender identity.’ The Boxer Ceiling also exhibits anti-gay hate speech expressed in the name of ‘trans rights.’  

“John Worth: A 22-year homelessness advocate, who has worked in the nonprofit sector for over two decades, John’s focus is the importance of single-sex services and spaces, as, over the years, he has witnessed them becoming dismantled in the homeless shelters housing the people he helped.   Zinetta Hope: An LGB Alliance USA Content Creator, radical feminist, and a lesbian activist, Zinetta has been subjected to silencing, over and over, for speaking about her lesbian experience. Zinetta will not stop fighting back.   Donovan Cleckley: A women’s rights and gay rights activist, Donovan’s research, mostly in social movement rhetoric, has critiqued misogyny and homophobia, two main traits seen in the modern transgender rights movement. He believes that the boundaries of women and girls, as well as those of lesbians and gay men, matter.   Belissa Cohen: A lifelong progressive and former journalist, Belissa brings with her a fierce energy and lifelong passion for gay rights. With a propensity for scathing writings that get to the heart of the issue, she makes it clear to everyone: It is okay to be gay. “

As the organization adds:

“With these newer methods of homophobia in mind, unity between lesbians and gay men for gay rights has come again, as it did for the Gay Liberation Front in the aftermath of the Stonewall rebellion of 1969. Conversion therapy, hate crimes, gender identity ideology as a new dominant ideology ― all of these harms to our community have necessitated a return to our roots: gay liberation. The NGLF is working to defend the autonomy of gay people, uphold the importance of biological sex, and preserve single-sex services and spaces. And we will not be backing down any time soon. As we should have never forgotten, we must remember, again, for our bodies as ourselves: Gay is good. “

At the roots, for both women’s rights and gay rights, sex matters to human rights ― as the recent systematic erasure and erosion of it, both in law and in medicine, has revealed to us, a result of gender identity and its political capture of social institutions. Among other newer organizations, the NGLF brings to attention our need, collectively, to acknowledge and address the real damage being done to women’s rights and gay rights. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nglfusa

Follow the NGLF on Twitter/IG/TikTok: @nglfusa

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl_SfgffDqgBa4OH-Bpdovw

Website:

[getoheaven]

some information on TERF dogwhistles — TW: transmisogyny, transphobia, s*xual abuse mentions and s*icide/baiting mentions

i’m going to use this short and concise guide on spotting TERF ideology as a jumping off point. from Cambridge university’s women campaign:

HOW DO WE SPOT IT?

Terf ideology uses a lot of the same phrases and tropes, which often seem innocuous on the surface but are actually being used as dogwhistles for transphobia and transmisogyny. Overall, terf ideology hides itself in feminist language, often claiming to support trans rights while actually working to undermine them.

“Gender critical”, discussed above; terfs also often dub themselves “biological women” or “adult human females”, and frequently highlight biological and anatomical signifiers such as “XX” (denoting chromosomes) and parts of reproductive anatomy.

“RadFem”; terf ideology calls itself “radical feminism” after its origins in parts of the feminist ‘second wave’ and its opposition to what it sees as “liberal feminist” positions of trans inclusion, although in reality there’s nothing “radical” about biological essentialism.

Certain waves of terf ideology have attempted to separate trans people out from the rest of the LGBT+ community, so you might see references to the “LGB community” or “drop the T”.

Terfs often dub trans people and their allies the “transgender lobby” or “cult of transgenderism”.

They tend to dislike the term “cis” (non-trans), and often argue that the term ‘terf’ itself is “hate speech”, or a “misogynistic/lesbophobic slur”.

Current terf discourse places a lot of focus on trans children, perpetuating myths that children are being given surgery and hormones (“transing children is child abuse!”).

Another terf trope is painting trans women as predators who want access to women’s spaces so that they can harass and sexually assault cis women.

i’ve also compiled a list of a some other dogwhistles you might want to take into account:

on tumblr or twitter look out for URLs with heavy allusions to genitalia/uteruses/wombs/xx chromosomes

concern trolling - statements such as “we just have concerns” used to filibuster and put roadblocks in the way of genuine conversations about trans people. they are not concerns that will ever be appeased, they also divert the topic away from the issue at hand to purposely muddy the waters of the trans “debate”.

following on from the last point, referring to the issue of trans rights as a “debate” or “discourse”. it both delegitimises the urgency of trans liberation, reducing it down to a debate on a level playing field as well as dehumanising trans people.

“genital preferences are transphobic” - this is a phrase that supposedly originated within the trans community itself. it’s often used in TERF circles as an example of how unreasonable trans people are. it’s also been used to smear the trans community and say that this belief is a very common one amongst trans people, when in reality most of us take a much more nuanced position. to illustrate my point, these stickers were put up by TERFs who then claimed that trans people had made them:

“lost lesbian sisters” - usually in reference to trans-masculine people. the implication being that trans men are not really men but are actually lesbians “brainwashed” by the “trans agenda”

TRA(s) - stands for Trans Rights Activists. obviously there’s nothing wrong with being an activist for trans rights, this is just a specific abbreviation created by TERFs. this also goes beyond simply being an ally, it implies that trans activists are part of a well-funded and organised conspiracy.

41% - this one is really horrible. the National Centre for Transgender Equality surveyed 6,450 trans people and found that 41% of them had attempt s*icide, often due to being harassed and bullied because of their gender identity. TERFs will often weaponise this statistic to suggest that “choosing” to live as a gender other than the one you were assigned is bad for a person’s mental health. in more extreme cases, TERFs will use it as a blunt instrument against trans people suffering with mental illness and egg them on to “join the 41%”. source

TIM /TIF - TIM stands for Trans Identified Male, referring to trans-feminine people. TIF stands for Trans Identified Female and refers to trans-masculine people. i feel this doesn’t need much explanation, it’s simply misgendering.

i think i’ve exhausted most of the big ones, if anyone wants to add on to this it would be much appreciated. lastly i’d like to link to Katy Montgomerie’s youtube channel- she’s a trans woman who regularly talks about and debunks TERF rhetoric, particularly on twitter. her videos have been extremely helpful in compiling this list and getting to understand the ways in which the ideology perpetuates itself.

i highly recommend her series “TERF wars”, which is where she goes through all the transphobic nonsense she’s seen on twitter in the past week. also check out The XX factor, a podcast/stream where she and Christa Peterson discuss the rise of the gender critical “movement” in the UK. i especially recommend this to anyone who is confused about how the conversation around trans rights became so deeply toxic over the past 5 or so years.

thank you for reading, i hope this was as informative as i intended it to be.

[armillary-spheres-lover]

Hey

Idk if you ever got the answer to your thing. But I’m a person who is queer but regularly uses the term lesbian to make things simpler. I can tell you why I hate the phrase monosexual- it feels transphobic to me- I am not attracted to men at all, but I am attracted to women, non-binary folks, gender queer folks, and agender folks. If I was with a partner and they transitioned to be a man I would still love them. That wouldn’t change. Sexuality is fluid and calling someone monosexual seems to erase that and really put people in boxes. Everyone has exceptions. And as someone who has identified as bisexual and pansexual in the past and find those not to suit me and fit right (especially since I am not sexually/romantically attracted to people physically/based on appearances- it’s more about personality and what I could do with a person)

I don’t mean this in an antagonistic way, I really hope it doesn’t come off that way(I’m bad expressing myself sorry).

(I’m sorry, I know you’re not trying to be rude. My answer, however, will sound rude and upset because you touched upon some stuff that needs a lot of unpacking to me lmao. Just know this anger is not necessarily directed at you but at biphobia in general.)

Why do bisexual people may need to use the term monosexual?

A. It is descriptive

I see what you mean but as you said you're queer and lesbian is a term to make things simpler, right?

So I wouldnt call you monosexual because you’re clearly not attracted to only one gender (but if you want to who I am to stop you?). Monosexual is someone who is almost exclusively dating/is attracted to people of one gender. There are plenty trans people that are straight or gay that would NOT date a partner if they realized they were a different gender. For real: kat blaque made a video (here it is if youre interested) on youtube about this - she’s trans and she wants to date men and wouldnt feel comfortable on continuing dating if a partner of hers realized they were actually a trans woman all along. She wants to date guys not girls and that's FINE it just means A. She actually recognizes the girl gender, obviously B. She's straight af and that's wonderful! It’s not a box if that’s how her experience is and she likes it that way!

Also how is being monosexual transphobic? Cant a girl just like guys exclusively (both cis and trans) or like girls exclusively (both cis and trans)? It's not even enbyphobic since you dont need to be attracted to a person to support their rights. (Gay men arent attracted to women but can be 100% feminists.) Being open to fuck somebody is not the same as supporting their rights: fetishization is a thing. Again, I refer to the video Kat Blaque made.

Sexuality IS fluid but to some people (like me and you) it is more than others. Some people don’t feel comfortable dating people that dont fall into the gender theyre usually attracted to and thats 100% okay.

B. It helps in talking about biphobia and panphobia in society

Biphobia and panphobia are for the large part based on the assumption that you cant be attracted to more than one gender (not even non-binary and so on) and that if you do you're weird/disgusting/mentally ill/a sexual predator. I can tell you 100% that's the narrative both straight and gay people can and may perpetuate since I struggle w this kind of shit every single time Im attracted to someone no matter their gender (YES, EVEN IF THEY'RE A GUY, BECAUSE THE OTHER DAY I WAS ATTRACTED TO A GIRL AND NOW I FEEL LIKE A FUCKING ANIMAL THAT CANT CONTROL ITSELF, even though it makes NO sense because if it was two girls or two boys the actual number of people my hormones activated to wouldnt change, but it would make my experience not subjected to biphobia!). I’m not saying gay people are the same as straight people. But I do feel alienated BOTH from heteronormative society AND from (subtly biphobic) gay spaces because of my bisexuality. I costantly feel like I’m outside both of those worlds and you know how humans are: I just need a term to encompass it all easily, to say “I don’t identify with any of this” (which is both straight and strictly gay spaces: ie, monosexual). To me is literally the same as saying non-bisexual/non-pansexual.

I dont mean to say lesbians or gays have it easier or are just like straight people. But we do have different experiences and I need terms to express that. It honestly doesnt matter to me if you identify as lesbian or queer (though I think you’re implying you’re more queer than anything). But I do need a term to talk about how society at large treats sexuality; ie, as a monosexual thing. Another concept that’s been thrown around is bi erasure. A strictly monosexual society is bound to view a girl dating a girl (or girl presenting) as if theyre both LESBIANS and erase a queer person the moment they’re in a m/f relationship, because people cant COMPUTE that it may not be the case and that the girl dating a cis straight dude isnt betraying her queerness.To think so is basic biphobia.

In some ways, I think it’s the same as when transgender people started using the term cisgender - which is applicable to both straight people and queer/gay people. They simply needed a term which meant “not-trans” as they were saying “I dont identify with this” (ie the cisgender experience). Does it imply that cisgender people, no matter if queer, have something in common? Yeah, yeah it does. Does it imply that queer people are just the same as straight people, or face no oppression? Of course not. Seeing people being offended upon being called monosexual feels like people being offended upon being called cis to me.

Also, saying that the terms bisexual people use are transphobic is almost implying that bisexuality is inherently transphobic? Or reeks to me of that kind of rhetoric. I use the terms I need to use, just like any other marginilized group does, and nobody outside of that group has any right of denying me that. It’s like I’m trying to create a safe space for myself and people like me and yall come around to judge us YET AGAIN. And I'm just tired of hearing this bullshit. I could accept this kind of criticism only if it came from a trans person themselves, I guess? But it’s not usually trans people who accuse us of being transphobic, in fact, many trans people identify as bisexual and use bisexual terminology lmfao.

“Hearts not parts” rhetoric

Finally, about personality being superior to physical appearance. That's amazing but I do want to note that, not you necessarily, but many people who are into the “hearts not parts” rhetoric are, how can I say this. Slut-shaming people? I’m not sure if you are doing this but I feel it needs to be said just to be sure. A lesbian trans woman can be just attracted to a girl for her physical appearance and just want to fuck her - and THAT'S OKAY. That's fine. I am a sexually attracted to people and that doesnt mean I have to form a deep bond first. Sex positivity is about accepting that people can feel like this and not shame them for this. "Hearts not parts” rhetoric has in the past infantilized, sanitized or outright shamed other queer experiences. It's fine if you feel that way but dont start acting like you're morally superior because of that. That's catholicism with extra steps. My bisexuality its not the symptom of some predatory and animalistic thing that should be purified into something more palatable and less sexual. That’s the same thing they used to say about gay people and now gay (biphobic) people are using this against us. That’s also the kind of thing trans women (especially if they’re sapphic) constantly hear every fucking day. Queer people have a good part of their discrimination rooted in the shaming of purely sexual desires. Forcing ourselves to be more palatable and less sexual is just respectability politics. I’m tired of it. (This is obviously different from being on the asexual spectrum: but you dont see ace people going around pretending they’re morally superior than everybody else, and many are actually very sex positive)   You would still love your partner if they were a different gender: that’s great, but that’s not how some (most) people feel, and they aren’t superficial because of this, just different from you.

Also, I think you’d really benefit from hearing a trans person say they don’t care if someone has genitalia preferences. Here it is. This obviously doesnt mean that every trans person will feel like she does, but it does mean that we can’t generalize trans experiences/preferences/what they feel transphobia is. Just like straight people dont get to say what’s homophobic or not, cis people dont get to say what’s transphobic or not. The definition of those terms relies entirely on the community that is targeted by these things.

I hope this wasnt excessively confusing but I wanted to make my point clear.

[deliciousscaloppine]

Hot takes galore 2: A brief overview of fandom backlashes that influenced fanfiction writing traditions as I have personally experienced them.

In this segment we examine...THE INDOMITABLE MARY SUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, as I was entering fandom in 2008 (Bleach, a manga by Kubo Tite), the hottest, sweattiest discourse pertained perhaps to Mary Sues. I thought the hatred of Mary Sues had completed its cycle and it was dead and gone in our days, BUT I happened upon a post that said that we are all stanning Moxiang Tongxiu’s OCs (original characters), in a sort of admonishing tone, and I couldn’t help but smile.

For back in the day, OCs, were termed self-inserts at best, and if they were a female protagonist that would sideline the canonical cast of characters then they were Mary Sues. And there were as many people hating original characters, and Mary Sues in particular that I remember sitting up all night thinking on whether I should post or not this fic that had some OCs in it that were there to just deliver some messages.

And of course this bled into accusations of writing canonical characters as basically “original characters” or “self-inserts”, by use of the term “ooc” (out of character). Personally, I thought this was over, but recently Riri accused me of disregarding the existing characterization and turning the CQL characters into my own original characters...for KINKY HAVOC IN VOLCANO PALACE!

An unjust accusation, I feel, Riri, because I do my damnedest to maintain characterization even under the wildest circumstances. 

People were looking to extend their enjoyment of the existing characters and story, and for some reason fanfic authors could come under fire for not catering to that, and writing for their personal self-fulfillment. 

And there were as many people writing oc’s and Mary Sues as there were people hating them, and the writers for it. It was chaos, there were journals (i was in livejournal) devoted to roasting mary sues, laughing at authors etc. If you came in fandom after me, you live in much much gentler times, and perhaps you have the Mary Sue to thank for that, because the Mary Sue kickstarted a lot of fandom feminist discourse.

Back in the day they usually determined “Mary Sue” as an overpowered, female character, whom everyone loved even though she might not be particularly charming (by whose standards?), who was adept at everything, knew everything, felt everything etc. 

The thing is that Mary Sues did not seem to exist only in fanfiction, but everywhere around us, whenever there would be a project film/show/comic/book that had a strong female protagonist.

And that was because fandom and male nerd culture were intertwined. Anime, games, comic books were heavily “invaded” by swaths of girls who were not quite fulfilled by corny pop stars, or saccharine rom coms, and seeing that there were no female power fantasies available in these media, they created their own.

It was a very interesting time because if you remember, Marvel Movies started getting made around that time, riding on that convention power, which was dominated by male nerd culture - and that is why they gave so little screen time to female characters, because the demographic was pretty thoroughly examined and they were found to dislike any and every female character that was not there to validate the male character’s cishetero sexuality (YEAH BABY)

I mean women, actresses, female characters had a good portion in media, and the marvel cinematic universe and its imitators pretty much sidelined all these people very aggressively. Male stories started exploding and taking over during this time, exploiting that very vocal male nerd demographic. 

But where is the backlash you ask, because so far we’ve only seen the oppression. 

I saw a lot of writers struggle with the validity of the female character, and then the validity of female writing. They conflated writing female characters, as writing without examining themselves, or attaining a neutral voice and a role of representing accurately reality (lol). Writing Mary Sues was bad writing, and at some point all women were Mary Sues.

...So can you guess what happened?

A lot of these people turned to male slash in order to cope. Before the Mary Sue hate, male slash was a considerable but not dominant piece on the fanfic pie, which was mostly dominated by main het ships. Male slash was already enjoyed by female heterosexual audiences, but it started gaining more and more traction until a term was coined (shipping goggles), and accusations were once more flung: that fangirls will ship any two white dudes - not untrue. 

This audience was not very friendly to actual gay people. There were all sorts of strange views passing before my bespectacled eyes at the time. People proclaiming that they loved yaoi (i was in manga, so this was the term used), but would not watch gay porn, and thought gay people were gross. And in the case where gay people were in fandom these people often complained of not being included/invited in fandom activities, or having minimal readership from groups that promoted male slash, but not gay writers.

This is why I often say fandom is not a friendly place for lgbtq people, because this type of audience still exists, even if it had to suppress their discomfort and assimilate the rhetoric of allyship at some point. And sadly a lot of people who dominated these early discussions about fandom becoming more lgbtq friendly since it consumed such relationships in media, managed to set this climate of dishonesty where everyone is pro-lgbtq in theory, but not in action.

Meaning a lot of stereotyping that is not endemic to actual lgbtq communities. Like top-bottom (most people are verses), whiny bottom, subby bottom, violent top, aggressive sex, hypersexual gay characters, almost complete erasure of bisexuality, lesbians what are they?, a complete and absolute fear in portraying trans characters, suppression of genderfluidity, accusing people of writing male gay characters as female characters as a form of wish-fulfillment or supposed homophobia.

A while ago I saw this article asking why lgbtq people are so mean to each other that confused me thoroughly, until I remembered this call out phase that happened a while ago and still goes on, where everyone blames everyone else of abusing and gaslighting them, friendships falling out etc, which is not at all the reality of older lgbtq scenes, because these were not formed online under this climate. 

And because fandom is a vehicle for self-exploration a lot of people to this day conflate consuming lgbtq relationships through media as being lgbtq themselves, or these “actual” relationships being set as these other fictional “idealized” relationships. Whereas in older lgbtq scenes a lot of people come into them by realizing their attraction to actual, real, live people and not characters, or hot celebrities.

I am not saying that current lgbtq people who discovered that about themselves online are lying, or lying to themselves, but they definitely came out in an environment of fake acceptance, and have a hard time reconciling reality with that lie of acceptance through no fault of their own, of course, because they never developed the language and the understanding that language brings in order to communicate amongst them. The characteristics were set by a group outside of them that might be pro gay marriage, and having a cool gay friend, and the inherent tragedy of homosexuality or something, but are not really for it - as a very wise queer eye contestant once said. 

And so every trespass by their own people, becomes a proof of this generalized rejection with tremendous consequences for young people’s mental health. YOU ARE BEING GASLIT IT’S TRUE - but not by your own people, it’s just a miscommunication going on there.    

BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MARY SUE. She changed. She stopped seeking love, sex, and power, or at least pretended that she did not want any of these things, or did not understand them, she stopped speaking, and became more stoic so people wouldn’t judge her opinions, and finally one day she went on to accomplish great things, because women seeking representation was also a pretty set demographic, and somebody could and would exploit that!

The Twilight Saga, Fifty Shades of Grey, even Hunger Games, are the media progeny of the Mary Sue powering through the entirely of male nerd culture. In a whole decade where people wanted Marvel to release a Black Widow movie, there have been three major spy/action girl movies that did very well in the box office, and since producing and releasing a movie usually takes three years, i’d say the audience was heard loud and clear - even though not by Marvel. 

And the side girls in these Marvel movies, or other action movies, became more and more badass - they all went from damsel in distress, to saving the hero, and of course the male characters were subsequently “queer-ified” until everyone was finally happy, and nerd culture was exposed as having been infiltrated by neonazis and that’s why it was making those unreasonable demands for no women ever in the first place.

And everything was right in the world, except that it was not. Because...girls had also been infiltrated by “neonazis”. A lot of these media, and a lot of these “white” Mary Sues, fall under many conservative criteria. Conservatism being a nice word for fascism. 

A few examples is the person of color always dies, or is brutalized, or is admonished constantly even as they shadow the protagonist in order to reinforce their inherent radiance. Characters who might be poc in books or in the anime (hur hur), are whitewashed in the visual media. The women are almost never comfortable with sex or romance, always thinking about the future and amassing power, not for themselves, but for the benefit of the resistance, or the family, or any other entity they belong to. And of course they are forever incredibly flawed - as opposed to idealized versions of male heroes always on the side of good for the right reasons! Also a minimal cast of women, with one woman being the protagonist, and the rest functioning as side characters or mostly antagonists.

So every time you feel a slight trepidation for not being the right type of lgbtq for writing something that is not strictly anal, or fear to include feminine characters, every time you erase yourself from the narrative it is it, the spectre of the Mary Sue coming to haunt you with a “We won, what more do you want?”  

[zm-sc]

On the racism MJ/Zendaya (still) faces

So, it shouldn’t be too long before the new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer gets released. Therefore I’d like to humbly try to provide help to fight the racism these ladies are victims of, by pointing out what I think are the most reccuring patterns in the commentaries MJ/Zendaya receives. This idea came to me as I remembered I had fun screen shoting messy comments at some point and keeping them in a file just in case I’d need to prove a point, and I guess this time has come

Disclaimer: Sadly, these are in no way edits. Real people, type this stuff online. I'm aware a bunch are just really dying for a redhead, fiery and all that, Mary Jane on big screen, and that a bunch are just jealous fangirls thinking they stand a chance with someone who doesn’t even know they exist, but also none of these are reasons to be borderline, or full on racist. Some usernames are masked because I thought it wasn't that deep but still dumb, some are lucky they didn't appear, and some appear because I think that if one has the nerves to make these kind of statements, probably some exposing can not hurt them

Here we go.

1. Racism:

2.  Rationalization of hatred:

NB: A spot on response to this post

I have no screen shots for this, but the reactions to MJ saying “Therefore I have value?” in the first Far From Home trailer. In which the NEXT second she says she is joking, but you know, gotta make this an issue.I read with my own two eyes that it would "put Peter in a bad mood", or "I hate how feminist she is, makes me hate her and the actress". For this latter point, notice, Brie Larson has been getting the stupidest hate for saying she wanted her press tour to not only be white as men interviewers and being a feminist

But still, let us not be delusional, this remains about race.

3. Language: Let’s see: "Gross, "ew", "too black", “woc aren’t attractive”, “sick to my stomach”, “no chemistry”, “ (bonus: letting a single character ruin your whole love for Peter…..) Oh and bad attitude” “rude as fuck”, “basic-ass negative”, “forced”, “NO Chemistry”, “she made fun of him”. I could go on but it’s not in these posts, but you get me. Like what is gross? What is the standard for chemistry? Is calling him a "loser" truly the end of the world or is it all a reach because MJ doesn't cater to hegemonic feminity, so it makes her rudw? (S/O to Brie Larson again, who is having her whole body language analyzed to prove her co stars hate her/is being compared to every actress who has played a super hero to prove that it's ok to dislike her because she is not "nice" compared to the hegemonic standard these x other actresses correspond to.) Btw, “I love Zendaya but” is a classic too, usually prefaces nonsense

4. "I love x character who is a poc/x black character so this take is invalid”. Wrong. Not being racist towards one race is not a stop from being anti black, furthermore in this case, it is not a stop from not falling into mysoginoir. Very simply, “mysoginy directed towards black womenwhere race and gender both play roles in bias.” It’s all systemic. Loving Ned doesn't prevent you from being anti black. Men are privileged over women and then it’s race coming into play, always. Zendaya/MJ is a black woman, so she is less worthy of everything, and so it makes little sense in these people’s minds that Peter would like her, let alone that he’d want to date her. Ned is a man, so he is not a threat to fangirls’ fantasies, in which you’ll also notice they treat Ned/Jacob Batalon better than MJ (well, whatever "better" is when you aren’t a skinny white boy….).

5. "Liz was better". (Very often is the pov of, wait for it, white girls (often male fans would rather not even have Spidey in a relationship all short, so yeah). Because she was a fleshed out character absolutely not solely designed as a plot device to the Toomes reveal, or because she embodied the behavior that is deemed as THE one women should have if they want a man's attention and so it is easier to project yourself into her than it is to do so with MJ? That was rhetorical. Gender socialization. Hegemonic feminity. Be white, nice, docile, so very sweet and ready to please, or you won't find a man/job! But men can be shitty and yet will be called badass or witty. Think here for a sec, how many people who dislike Michelle for being rude, are into TONY STARK/Irondad? And God knows I love Tony, but as if he is a saintl? From his pre cave antics to the way he was with Peter in Homecoming and some other stuff in between. Also, he would fucking love MJ lol? What differentiates them so much at the end of the day, from the constant sarcasm to the obvious need to hide their feelings behind it? And that she clearly loves Peter, as did Tony but it took him until Endgame to show it. What makes it ok for him to not have shown it from the jump but makes MJ undeserving of character developpement and of Peter falling in love with her in Far From Home after an obviously planned character developpement? The fact that Tony is white and male. That's it

Candice Patton/Iris in The Flash, hell, Serena Williams in tennis, are all examples of this

6. Another thing that does not appear here but that exists, related to MJ or not, is attempting to erase Zendaya’s blackness to deny these reactions could possibly be racially motivated. “She is half white”. Or whatever headass take of the likes. But we know those 50% are not the reason why she is “Not the real MJ”. So which is it? Is she too black or not white enough? The answer is: Both. And both are racist statements, period. The people saying “they should have just named her Mary Jane” are also the same who were all up Zendaya and Marvel’s ass when her casting news dropped, bet

In conclusion, racism has many more faces else than explicitly using the n word, exactly like these microgressions above

They are not ok, because they stem from systematic racism and oppression, including negative stereotyping. This idea that black women are aggressive, not desirable, and not beautiful enough etc is nothing new but it still does not make it tolerable. Nobody who is racist or using a microagression, consciously or not, will actually ever admit it when called out on it. So dare to open that can of worms if you can. And for those who have been called out, please actually listen to why this statement is being made, especially if it's by a POC. That way you should technically never face this accusation again because you'd have listened and learned, instead of not listening and learning and finding yourself getting called names every turn, because you refused the lesson you could have gotten at the last turn

Spider-Man: Far From Home comes out on July 2nd and its press tour is starting today. I'd like to encourage everyone to above all, provide Zendaya/MJ the support she is going to need online, as she will this time get more to chew in this movie than in Homecoming, and yet people will still find reasons to complain, but also to not forget to pay attention in the future, to the frequency of use of these patterns when talking about MJ/Zendaya and to not let them stop you from defending these ladies. Let Z (and Marvel too while at it) know you have their back. She is a very attuned to social media lady, she would not miss the memo, nor would Marvel

A cute edit: We love racism and disrespecting drug addicts for no reason. Carry on though, idiots