#radfem terminology

[cigaretteparfum]

ey mates. i found this post from a terf talking about their commonly used abbreviations and terms. i'll copy-paste it here, unedited (except the formatting for easier read), so yous know better what to look out for + how they think/justify the use of these terms. i'll put an archive link later in case the read more link breaks. also, this post is full of anti-trans and anti-nonbinary bullshit so ... just be aware of that.

post source is gendercriticalthinking. am not making a whole blocklist bc ... would you believe me if i say that i tried but gave up after the first, like, dozen names bc it got too depressing? lmfao. (feel free to click on the link and peruse the notes yourself though. whenever you can take it.)

archive link.

* TIM and TIF stand for "Trans-Identified Male" and "Trans-Identified Female". Basically, TIMs are what others usually call "trans woman", and same for TIFs and "trans man" (although these terms also cover non-binary-identified and neo-gender-identified people as well).

TIM/TIF are used instead to more accurately reflect the reality of the people in question without sidelining their beliefs/identities: we understand you identify as trans, but calling males "women" and females "men", even if there's a "trans" in front, does not accurately convey reality, and we oppose that.

* OSA and SSA stand for "Opposite-Sex Attracted" and "Same-Sex Attracted". Therefore, the label OSA people covers straight and bisexual people, while SSA covers gay and bisexual people. Basically, SSA women/men are what others usually call "wlw/mlm".

Because people who believe in gender identity and use "mlm/wlw" consider some males to be women and some females to be men, the "men" and "women" in "mlm/wlw" do not accurately convey the reality (similar to the above) of the sex and sexualities of the people in question, as a male who is OSA but identifies as trans would be considered by some to be a "wlw". However, OSA and SSA place the emphasis back onto the sex and sexuality of the people in question, which is, again, a more accurate description of reality when talking about people and their sexualities.

* TRA stands for "Trans Rights Activist." However, this is mostly used to mean "people who agree with/support gender/trans identities/neogenders/etc" rather than "people who are engaging in actual activism for those beliefs." The term gendie is essentially used the same way (although it has more of a connotation of "trans/nb/neo-gender-identified people" rather tham "people who support gender identity but may not necessarily identify as trans/nb themselves") and it has been used frequently more recently, although I and others feel like it's a bit juvenile and derisive.

* Gender ideology refers to the beliefs above, e.g. the validity of gender/trans/non-binary/etc. identities. This is usually used to refer to the beliefs about gender that are exclusive to liberals: that you can change gender/sex, that gender/sex are not binary, that everyone has a gender identity, that misgendering someone or pointing out their "biological" (a redundant word) sex is at best highly offensive and at worst a hate crime, etc. Whereas, gender or gender roles/stereotypes are usually used to refer to the more historical/"classical" concept of gender which lines up with conservatives' beliefs: you know, the whole "women like pink and should wear makeup and are naturally submissive, but men like blue and should be muscular and are naturally dominant" crap.

Although they seem different, they're actually one and the same, or at the very least the liberal/new gender ideology is firmly founded in classic sexism. Both conservatives and liberals believe wholeheartedly in gender: that it applies to everyone without exception ("all women must be feminine and all men must be masculine", and in gender ideology's case add on "feminine women and masculine men are cis while gnc people are trans, you must be either cis or trans" aka you must either enjoy your gender role or want to transition because you dislike it), that it must be rigidly enforced and supported to maintain order and understanding ("A girl who likes boy things?!? That's an affront to nature and must be corrected, girls should like girly things!!!" or "A girl who likes boy things?!? That's clearly a sign she he must be trans, because boys like boyish things!!!"), that it's genetic/inherently true rather than something that is imposed upon people due to misogyny ("Women are submissive to men because God made them that way to be men's servants" and "Everyone has a gender identity, it's something you were born with in your brain, and how you feel about your body [which you can change] and your gender [which you cannot change] determines if you're cis or trans. You must be one or the other."), etc.

* GNC stands for "Gender Non-Conforming", aka what technically applies to most people on Earth, to the dismay of the gender fandom. It's usually used, however, to refer to people who are very noticeably/starkly/deliberately GNC in almost every way and proud of it, such as butch women.

* Gender critical (oftenshortened to "GC" ) is an adjective that most-accurately describes how people like me view gender/gender roles: they suck. Get rid of them. We are, you could say, "critical" of the concept of "gender". Not all gender critical people are radical feminists, but because rejection of the misogynistic concept of gender is a defining belief of GC people, we are nearly always some variety of feminist.

This means we don't really fit in with either of the two most-common/vocal "sides" of the trans debate: conservatives who see a male person in a dress and makeup go "This is disgusting! Stop wearing that right now! You're a man, so dress like one!", liberals who see the same guy go "This is so gender! I'm sure you're a trans woman because of how you present yourself! You're dressing like a woman, so that's who you are!", and gender critical people who see him go "This is awesome, keep being you! It's wonderful that you enjoy being a GNC man! What you enjoy or wear does not define who you are, and who you are does not define what you should enjoy or wear!"… or at least we would more often if the previous two groups didn't end up causing most GNC people to either be closeted/repressed, or believe they must be trans and therefore not a GNC man/woman but instead a gender-confirming trans woman/trans man (or some type of enby, same difference: "you don't obey the gender stereotypes belonging to your sex so you must not be that sex/gender" instead of "gender stereotypes are stupid, and your sex is your sex").

* TWAW is short for "Trans Women Are Women," a common chant and circular-logic-nonanswer from gender ideologists, the popularity of which in stark contrast to the lack of saying "trans men are men" (something only ever said after first saying TWAW, never on its own) surely has nothing to do with the coincidental fact that the beloved, supported, face-of-the-movement group are males and the forgotten, neglected, secondary-to-men group are females.

* While these are of course words used commonly by everyone, I think it would be helpful to lay out the gender-critical definitions of gender and sex here: "gender" is short for "gender roles/stereotypes" (see "gender ideology" above) whereas "sex" is used to refer to the biological realities (chromosomes, gametes, hormones, secondary characteristics, etc.) of being female or male.

Basically:

- Conservatives believe gender and sex are the same thing (or at least use the words interchangeably, as well as believe your gender should match your sex) and therefore believe "female = woman = feminine" and "male = man =masculine".

- Liberals believe gender and "biological" sex are different things (yet often confusingly use the words interchangeably or subconsciously believe they are the same [as seen in their frequent slips of the tongue when talked to] but claim to believe they are different because they want to be good allies) and therefore use "woman" and "man" to describe gender (because they believe "woman = feminine" and "man = masculine") while using "female" and "male" to describe sex (but again they often and confusingly use male/female as synonyms of man/woman, and again likely because they want to be good allies and believe anything that might contradict TWAW is horrific and transphobic).

- Gender critical people believe gender is an archaic, misogynistic system that is long overdue for being tossed out while sex is an accurate, scientific term (therefore making "biological/birth sex" redundant, it's like saying "meat-eating carnivore") to describe the reality of being a human. Women are adult female humans and men are adult male humans. "Feminine" and "masculine" are outdated, arbitrary, sexist concepts and should not be associated with anything: not clothes, not behaviors, and especially not one's sex. Your sex is just biology. It should never determine your behavior and lifestyle: neither to say your sex and behavior/lifestyle must match with gender, nor that if they don't match then your sex/gender must change to make them match.

[niiwa-angel]

Hi, I came across one of your posts at random and had a question. TIMs is a new term to me. Can you tell me what it stands for?

It stands for Trans Identified Male. So any male who identifies under the trans umbrella is a TIM. Nonbinary males, trans women, whatever else they have, as long as they are biologically male, they're a TIM.

Similarly, TIFs are Trans Identified Females. Trans men, nonbinary females, etc. any female identifying as anything under the trans umbrella.

I know Radfem terminology can be really confusing to understand when you first get into it, feel free to message me if you need any more clarification 💜💜

[tervencherries]

btw i’ve started using the term “intimate partners violence” (IPV) rather than “domestic violence” (DV) when referring to women being abused or murdered by their hookups, boyfriends, and husbands, because IPV is more likely to be accurate in the situation than DV is.

DV could mean anyone that lives with you, like your parent, your child, your sibling, or a friend or roommate, but never someone that you don’t live with. IPV means someone that you are either in a romantic or sexual relationship with, irregardless of whether or not they live with you.

IPV is taking over in legal circles as well, to the point where, when taking a criminology class in Pennsylvania, USA, you learn about IPV rather than DV.

just wanted to let y’all know why i’m using IPV instead of DV!

[glitter-soda]

TRAs heard about how “biological essentialism” is bad, then proceeded to make up their own definition and wildly throw it around at anyone who makes them mad

The actual definition, from Oxford Reference:

Or more simply:

[schrodingersgirlboss]

having friends who don't know i'm a radfem is so frustrating sometimes as much as i love and cherish them because every once in a while they'll say something so damn stupid and you can't really fight them much on it without outing yourself

[radicalkhaleesi]

One of the absolute basics of feminism is that women don’t need men.

The BASIC of BASICS. is that women don’t need a boyfriend or husband.

The fact that so many of you seem to think that every straight woman’s life will be loveless, lonely, diminished in some major way if they don’t have a boyfriend or husband, is INSANE.

You call yourselves radical feminists?? You’re not even liberal feminists at this point. I don’t care how much theory you’ve supposedly read or work you’ve done, you’re still a fucking idiot who has learned literally nothing, clearly.

I’m a bisexual woman who only dates women, and so most of the time I’m single. In your tiny brains do you think my life is loveless, joyless, and lonely because I don’t have a man? What the fuck lmfao

[anxietyshota]

So many anti's on the 'kink-critical' tag are so afraid to admit their a rad-fem yet will share the same exact opinion's and view's as them. It's complete and utter BS.

[multiversegideons]

Anyway new blog. If you are a gender critical or radfem-friendly lesbian positivity blog I want to follow you please like this so I can find you

[rayarainbows]

also when are yall gonna do something about the terfs and nazis everywhere

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

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Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

[l-cereta]

I need more online transbian friends who I can bitch abt shitty takes to

[biracy]

I think it's like. pretty important discursively to realize that "transandrophobia truther" does not describe any coherent sociopolitical framework and you can't write off anyone and everyone as "just radfems, not MRAs" OR "just MRAs, not radfems" because depending on the guy you'll really see examples of both. "I am ontologically incapable of harm due to being a female socialized female afab + trans men will never be seen as men ever by anyone so if you think about it I'm actually the real transmisogyny-affected" is obviously Terf Shit, as scholars say, but you really can't apply that to "everyone hates me for being on T and passing way better than you fags because the woke left hates masculinity too much." It depends the most on whether the guy in question is trying to suck up more to cis women ("butches and transmascs are sisters <3" type shit) or cis men (this like, "dudes rock stop being so mean to our boys let men be masculine I'm just a dude that heckin loves duderinos" type shit). While both types of people will unite under the increasingly vague terminology of "transandrophobia," you really can't conflate the beliefs of "guy who believes in 'sex-based oppression' and is constantly one bad day away from calling trans women Male Predators Who Wield The Oppressive Penis" and "guy who actually just believes misandry is real and that it affects cis men too like Actually."

[camomileapplesyrup]

today i got into a heated argument with two TRAs over the twoXchromosomes subreddit. i made a post about the woman-centric subreddit now being overrun with men & MRAs who harass women that share their traumatic experiences with men. from SA, to spousal abuse, women found a space where they felt safe discussing their experiences in life.

posts expressing feminist thought, traumatic experiences & general fear of men were met with downvote bombings & harassment.

men pretend to be underage girls pretending not to understand masturbation and acting they don't know how to wash "down there", asking for advice for sexual gratification of course.

men CONSTANTLY adding their two cents to posts that absolutely do not need it.

the subreddit is now uncomfortable & stifling, mods do absolutely nothing about it. so i made a lengthy post and so many women responded. over 500 comments of women responding positively, and thanking me for calling out an ongoing issue.

well, apparently i am transphobic and i am acting "sussy" with saying; “every time i come here and a woman makes a post with the most MINUSCULE feminist intent, or sharing her trauma, or difficulties in her personal experiences, it doesn't just get downvoted to oblivion, but filled up with comments of dudes adding their two cents, tone policing, making sexual & or fetish comments or "not all men"ing her. this is a woman centric community. two X chromosomes. we aren't going to make our tones softer, be gentler and tip-toe around our individual experiences to make YOU, a dude, comfortable.”

all it took was this for two TRAs to gang up on me & call me transphobic. saying this is why they don't trust cis feminists, and patronising me with expressions like "you must be so brave for calling yourself a radfem". they claimed that i cannot call myself a radical feminist because it's just bigoted towards trans women, despite me living in a 3rd world country where we don't even have working woman's shelters and proper laws against spousal abuse. "im sorry your life is hard as a woman living in a misogynistic country, but that is here nor there with regard to the terminology we're discussing" i'm sorry, what?

most of us aren't privileged enough to be libfems. i wish pink fucking girlboss they/she queen xenogender discourse was what my country could be doing, but life is not fair for everyone. if a woman here gets abused, stalked, or raped, she has nowhere to go. no phone number to call. no police to call. no prosecutor to trust in. and i went through this, personally.

by the end i had to block them, because they were derailing the conversation. but fuck, even when i literally do my best and try to be inclusive to everyone, i get spat in the fucking face.

[idwl]

i keep seing anti subtliden folk in the tags ; it seems like there's been an uptick , recently

so here's a reminder that the term nonman has racist history

here's a reminder that anti mspec lesbian and anti mspec veldian rhetoric often aligns with radfem rhetoric and gold star lesbian rheotric

here's a reminder that being anti lesboy and anti turigirl is anti multigender people and exorsexist

here's a reminder that being anti BAF (born as female) transfem and BAM (born as male) transmasc is often bioessentialist and anti baf transfem + bam transmasc rhetoric is intersexist and aligns with exorsexism and transmed rhetoric

here's a reminder that all identities that do not impose hate or perpetuate discrimination are inherently neutral and identities do not inherently cause harm

here's a reminder that queerphobes hate all of us, from the most white allopericis he/him conformist bisexual man, to the "weirdo" bi lesboy alt emo xenogender girlboy who uses he/she and arson/arsons pronouns

here's a reminder that other queer people are not responsible for our systemic oppression, or any kind of discrimination against us; other people are responsible for their own hatred

here's a reminder that queer people have been using "unconventional" and "contradictory" terminology since before most of us were born

here's a reminder that you don't have to understand an identity to accept it

here's a reminder that exclusionism harms the queer community

here's a reminder that it's all of us or none of us

here's a reminder that it's all of us or none of us

here's a reminder that it's all of us or none of us

[velvetvexations]

Some tma/tme advocates: it's just a necessary term, it doesn't do the very radfem thing of making one axis of oppression The One Real and Important axis of oppression

Me: cool are transfems gonna en masse label themselves transandrophobia exempt? Binary ones exorsexism exempt? Perisex ones intersexism exempt? Or is affected/exempt terminology only "necessary" to transfeminism for one specific axis of oppression, almost as if you view it as the one real and important axis which ultimately leads to false heirarchies, lateral aggression, and lack of intersectionality in these discussions 🤔🤔🤔 are white transfems going to loudly proclaim themselves racism exempt? Transmisogynoir exempt? Cause I'm pretty sure race has a lot more to do with life outcomes for trans people than whether one is transfemme or transmasc

Exactly.

[juliesque04]

The terf-TRA beef is so ridiculous to me because at some point we're just arguing over terminology.

We both know that there's male and there's female humans (and intersex, not the point rn) but the difference is literally just how we define the WORDS "woman" and "man."

To them, those words are just adjectives that describe someone's "essence" or personality traits (identity,) while to us it's the most literal definition of the word and a biological categorization that says nothing about a person besides their physical body.

It's like they're so close to getting it, but refuse to acknowledge it because they think terfs/radfems are fucking nazis or something

I kinda get their hesitance to agree with the movement because very few people refuse to discuss it civilly, but at some point it's just their ignorance keeping them from it

[0w0tsuki]

It really is disheartening to see how desperate transmisandry bros are committed to find SOME WAY, ANY WAY to call transfems who disagree with them TERFs. Like when it first started off it was lazy, dismissive, and just showed that they really had no idea what they were talking about. But then they doubled down and kept attempting to rebrand to try and spin it as progressive. Like it's this Holy Grail of trans andro theory that if they unlock it then they will be able to win all arguments forever and be able to shove any Transfem they don't like out of being able to describe her own oppression.

Like first it was drudging up the term beaddel from nearly a decade. A long dead group of "the one time a group of transfems were genuinely being awful" and mystifying them to warn about secretive "trans lesbian separatists" (literally a term based on "lesbian separatist". A term coined in the SCUM TERF manifesto) trying to sell you "radfem koolaid"

Then they thought "well it might work if we changed the E to an I" and started saying that any transfems using TME/TMA terminology were sex essentialists (even though it's not. Cis men and women are also TME) and "TIRF's" when literally no self respecting trans woman calls themselves that. The few people that do identify with the term TIRF are TME'S who think the trans people who are made with them "don't know how to read" instead of you know, recognizing their ideology is still rooted in bio essentialism.

Then they tried various tactics of redefining TERF. From "all trans people are equally targeted by TERFs and it does harm to say their primary target is trans women" (They see trans men as lost little girls and they want them to detransition and be "saved". They see trans women as violent predators, a threat to women by virtue of existing, and want us DEAD. These are not the same) to "actually their bigotry stems from a hatred of men!" (Actually most TERFs are trad wives. They constantly ally themselves with anti feminist movements. And one of their most prolific members posie parker infamously asked "fathers with gun" to walk into women's restrooms to kill trans women)

Then it was trying to delineate radfeminism from TERFism. Even though just referring to themselves as "radfem", just the same as "gender critical" was a part of a rebranding effort by TERFs themselves when the term TERF got widely recognized as a member of a bigoted hate group. Any "cis radfems who aren't TERFs" that they talk about are just TERFs who think the term is a slur. But that doesn't matter to transmisandry bros because it allows them to hold those terms as two separate things and more importantly as "something separate from TERF but functionally the same to label trans women as"

And now apparently it's "radical transfeminism"? Which come on. You aren't even trying at this point. It's honestly sickening how devoted the group that sells itself as being for "TransUnity" and "stopping the infighting" is so determined to find a term that will allow them to shut out and exclude any Transfem they don't like.