#radfem terminology

[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.

[rouge-the-bat]

when i see people against using the term transandrophobia its all "just men trying to steal the spotlight from women again" "trans men just keep bandwagoning on things trans women are already doing" "they dont experience things as badly as trans women do" "terfs focus more on trans women so we should be talking just about that" "theyre just using this to say that TRANS WOMEN are their opressors!! its just transmisogyny!" "a bunch of TME people and theyfabs trying to say they have it worse"

then i see people that actually talk about transandrophobia and theyre just. in their own communities discussing the problems they face, trying to get people to not completely ignore their issues, and that they deserve to be treated decently and not as evil or that theyve become worse or betraying women for transitioning into their proper gender.

i think yall who hate these discussions are just falling into queer terminology discourse and oppression olympics and infighting (and radfem juice for sure), all of which we say again and again does nothing but help people that want all of us dead. this shit is stupid as fuck

[tirfpikachu]

for me the term tirf is actually a means to an ends -- if i hadn't seen the term tirf i 10000000% would've NEVER orbited radblr. and radblr genuinely saved my mental health unlike anything else.

i legit thought it was pure evil, like incels or white supremacists. but the term tirf turned a gear in my head and made me go... huh...? is there more to radical feminism than i thought? the term, the label, is a hook to show nuanced tras, tras who are on the fence about many things, that we have the complex feminist conversations in here that they have always been craving. for me being a tirf means being a mediator between radfems and the trans community. it means making accessibility for dysphoric folks WITHIN REASON without stepping on female & homosexual rights. it means acknowledging the oppression that some transfems may face, and calling out the ableism (against dysphoric folks) & gncphobia rampant within radblr, while also openly calling out how fucked up the tra movement has been to female/ofab ppl and homosexuals. it also means often using terminology that tras understand and combining them with radfem terminology so that ppl understand what radfems ACTUALLY mean, and not the version they see in tra text posts misrepresenting radblr.

as a physically & mentally disabled detrans woman, my tirf activism is also my disability activism. it also involves my strong alliance with gnc folks as a soft butch woman - including with gnc people who are dysphoric, or even just personally enjoy trans/nonbinary labels as a gnc subculture. i still want to call out their much too common sexism, misogyny, homophobia (especially lesbophobia) and other bullshit. i want to be a haven for freshly peaked trans allies orbiting radblr.

if you are a radfem, you do not need to become a tirf. that is not my goal at all with this. we need all kinds of radfems, including strictly female-focused radfems who i really do highly respect. with my own personal brand of tirf activism, i am merely appealing to people who are already orbiting both tra and radfem spaces. people who are already emotionally invested in both trans activism and female activism. slowly peaking misogyny-affected ppl, especially homosexuals, who are still wary of radblr. i'm also appealing to trans-identified people, those affected by misogyny & gncphobia who can benefit from having a corner of radfeminism to speak on their unique experiences and can strengthen the radfem movement. i also reach out to ppl who don't identify as radfems but are disillusioned with mainstream feminism & mainstream lgbt activism. a lot of us have been harmed by tras. we desperately want to stop the tra movement from harming more female & homosexual people and work hard to limit more painful detransitions... yet some of us also need trans accommodations and support due to their dysphoria to participate, and topics may often include trans issues and trans experiences.

this does not need to be something you are involved in; i know it can get frustrating. but for those of you who are curious, who are new to radblr, who are maybe dysphoric or trans-identified or just want to both support trans people and do real feminism, my inbox, DMs & discord server are open and we're waiting with open arms for you.

[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

[cepn]

a lot of people online are finally finding their backbones re: feminist issues like porn, prostitution, kink culture, etc. and it's kind of encouraging but i would love for people to stop pretending the average internet leftist/liberal did not voluntarily flee from basic feminist principles into the open arms of men's rights activists and the like at the slightest provocation. everyone likes to say "the terfs pushed people away from feminism..." no lol. liberal feminism did that by pandering to patriarchal norms that insist women are the property of men (whether we're considered private or public property being a debate between the mainstream left or right, at this point). worse, a lot of well-meaning people were pushed away from feminist theory by liberals conflating every single feminist argument, theory, or writing older than the last ten years with "terf rhetoric" if it challenged you to think about your own choices or to question your values around porn, entertainment culture, day-to-day interactions with other people, etc...

the only reason someone might think that terfs are a huge and influential faction of feminists is because 1) people have decided that holding any feminist belief more radical than "let women do porn if they want! :)" means someone is a terf, 2) people have decided that every transphobic person is a terf, and 3) a lot of women are scared to go against the grain or talk openly about having feminist values because they will be deliberately misunderstood, rallied against, and ostracized from their online communities. and this is made worse by most internet "theorists" refusing to actually create and utilize consistent, meaningful terminology. instead of addressing transphobia thoroughly, people would rather fling around words like "terf" and "radfem" to create implications about a person's beliefs and values and shut down discussion. criticizing patriarchy in a thorough or materialist way makes you suspect because nobody apparently has the capacity or desire to read closely, discuss their thoughts, or engage with actual theory. the existence of the pejorative label "swerf" and the subsequent uprising of violently misogynistic rhetoric says everything you need to know about what "happened" to feminism between 2012 and now. but of course it's easier to just blame women for it, again.

[genderqueerdykes]

Hello, yesterday I tried posting something to you but was met with a lot of setbacks. I'm a trans woman who wants to give her ideas on this trans infighting between trans men and women. Before I start I want to say that one of your prior asks said how porn of trans women was in the "#transmen" - literally the only people I see who see that and actually like it are chasers who don't know any better (or just don't care). It invalidates gender for both trans men AND trans women (I mean if these people were bigender, that's another story but...it's clearly not as I don't think chasers are THAT into trans terminology, we're just "chicks with dicks" or "boys with clits" - if even THAT is the nuance taken). Especially as the hastags on the post are normally anything to do with being trans, including TERF shit. I wanted to reply to that ask but...Tumblr must hate me for some reason. This may be perceived as a "simplistic" take from all the posts and asks but...to start with, I don't think it's right to paint all men as being beneficiaries to patriarchal society. Many of them just aren't. Those who fall down Tate and Incel pipelines aren't secure, thriving men. They're struggling with their own bullshit. Now there are plenty of women who also have little groups that fall into that category (Tradwife and Radfem). We all have the ability to fall down those pipelines though. We all have the ability to be shitty people to eachother (if you're an adult, chances are you ARE someone's "shitty person" in a story). The thing is we need to recognize our similarities over our differences. In some respects...yes I would say we need to do this for said groups I mentioned. It'll probably take years but...I don't see it as impossible (one of my toxic traits is believing people can do better) Also, just a quick note - Trans rights are clearly on the chopping block and will be for the next 4 years. This infighting will ONLY be an easy distraction for that to happen.

thank you so much for stopping by!

tumblr keeps randomly restricting who can and can't respond to my posts. it's not me. i do not watch my posts that closely. i will delete replies and block people if they're being shitheads and i notice it but generally my posts are kind of free reign for people to have discussion on because i literally cannot control everyone who interacts with my blog that would be impossible. thanks for sending an ask though!

Before I start I want to say that one of your prior asks said how porn of trans women was in the "#transmen" - literally the only people I see who see that and actually like it are chasers who don't know any better (or just don't care). It invalidates gender for both trans men AND trans women (I mean if these people were bigender, that's another story but…it's clearly not as I don't think chasers are THAT into trans terminology, we're just "chicks with dicks" or "boys with clits" - if even THAT is the nuance taken). Especially as the hastags on the post are normally anything to do with being trans, including TERF shit. I wanted to reply to that ask but…Tumblr must hate me for some reason.

agreed, wholeheartedly. many people have pointed out it's bots doing this, but it doesn't change the fact that it's very upsetting for anyone to see this kind of thing overwhelming their tags when they're just trying to talk to people and find community. even if it's bots doing this it doesn't change how dysphoric it is to go into a tag for your given gender and feel unrepresented in your own tag, somehow. it's not right.

and i have noticed like. i'm not sex or kink negative. far from it. but it really seems like people do not understand how to appropriately tag fetish content and por n. like it's really getting out of control at this point. i have another ask about this that i'll answer as well. trans sexuality is so important. like so, so important. it's holy, it's beautiful. it shouldn't be censored. however there's a problem with por n and erotica being just about the only text + photo posts in SO many queer tags. people seem to be trying to use tumblr as a queer erotica sight at this point and it's very uncomfortable

what you've mentioned is something i've noticed. it's one thing to have a fetish and to use fetishizing language in a private space but people are not doing a good job of keeping their content out of general queer tags. like the transmasc, trans man, transfem, trans women, butch, lesbian and nonbinary tags really do not need to be this full of por n and erotica, y'all. it's getting out of hand. i'm talking about just the general tags for these things. there are a lot of people wanting to connect with other people who identify this way who do not want to do so sexually or do not have a kink relating to their gender

also nobody really seems to give a shit about asexuals, either, and anyone else who is sex repulsed. it's frustrating as all hell.

i appreciate you for taking the time to send this! thank you very might! i really appreciate your insight!

[tirfpikachu]

wassup gyns! call me lay :] ✨️✨️

☆ 27yo detrans gnc dyke

☆ tirfy nuancefem ✌️

☆ crazy bunny lady (3 buns)

☆ wheelchair user & adhd/autistic

☆ french, living in ontario (gta) (hmu!!)

☆ i get a lot so i'm slow to answer, but i love DMs/asks!

& if you use ableist slurs pls block me.

ask to join my nuancefem discord server!! you can also check out my youtube & tumblr community too. my messy diary is @laysplaining

#ponderings (my thinkpieces)

ao3 (planning out my sapphic bodyswap novel)

@spangechu (cartoons-themed memes/shitposting)

@scorbunmy (fandoms & my art/fics/ocs & my insta)

@pokegyns (collab blog with fellow nuancefems!)

wanna support my activism? here's my kofi - i take writing commissions too for fics/stories/articles, so hmu anytime! i am also always looking for more zine staff. if you can do art, writing, research, blogging, graphic design, zine formatting or anything at all lmk <3

more info about my activism below

tirf = trans-inclusive radical feminism. if you face misogyny irl, i care about your pov on feminist issues! and i care about anti-transfem oppression as well. as a detrans woman with reverse dysphoria i am never uncritical, but i refuse to add to transphobia and gncphobia. i love fellow gnc people very dearly, trans included. i tend to use ofab/omab with o meaning observed, since afab/amab terminology is for intersex experiences. manhood & womanhood are not always the same as maleness & femaleness. trans experiences are complex. gayness is wonderful, including exclusive same-agab/sex attraction like transfem4omab, transmasc4transmasc, and any kind of gay experiences someone has risking homophobia in the world. if you don't risk tangible experience irl of homophobia or misogyny, please be a good ally and don't talk over those who do. same thing if you don't risk tangible transphobia or gncphobia.

cis/bio/non-trans women, transmasc people, transfem people and intersex folks are all oppressed under the patriarchy in unique ways, especially if they're gay/bi as well. being a nuancefem means exploring every single side of this, and not putting one experience as inherently worse than another. it's all about what the specific person is actually experiencing. you can be oppressed on one axis and privileged on another; all of us are both in some way or another, and we all need to speak up on our experiences and boost voices of those going through things we aren't. i am against creepy "cotton ceiling" rhetoric, misogyny, homophobia and detrans stigma in trans activist spaces, and against racism, intersexism, genuine transphobia and ableism in radfem spaces. i boost the voices of misogyny-affected people of all kinds on this rad-leaning feminism blog. my experiences as a gnc woman in a wheelchair who had chronic dysphoric for 13+ years affects my feminism very deeply. i love my trans gyns <33 i know the struggle, and i will fight against trans stigma tooth and nail. i am also post-gender without being trans, and i believe more cis women should be! gender is fake, we should all be free to express ourselves under the heteropatriarchy however we want to.

as an ex-camgirl who was traumatized and exploited in the industry, i am very critical of the sex industry but care deeply for those who must rely on it to survive. selling access to your body is risky. you can never take back those pictures/videos/acts, and disgusting cis men can share those around even if you quit, and often will weaponize those against you even years later, possibly ruining your chances at future work or personal relationships and irl reputation. your consent cannot be removed. the internet will most likely keep those forever and old creeps with disgusting ideas of female/ofab people & transfemmes will get off to it. it is not a safe industry. so many videos out there are genuine sexual abuse and coercion. no porn site is ethical. i am critical of the industry, not its victims and the people who use it to survive. i want a better world for us all. please reach out if you're in it and trying to get out, or out of it and still traumatized. it's not your fault that your consent was purchased. you deserved better.

btw, reblogs aren't an endorsement of every reply in the post or the op of the post. i tag any potential misgendering in other people's replies to insightful posts - often the op will have deleted their blog, and only a shitty reply remains... so i reblog to use it in later writing - as misgendering cw. i'm reblogging less and less content like that, but i used to rb a bunch early on when i needed more topics to dissect. so be careful scrolling too far, especially if you're trans!!

[pokegyns]

zoroark seems to have failed to grasp (or more likely ignored) the baeddel theory of radical feminism's degeneration caused by cis privilege, which prevented cis radfem theorists from fully grasping the patriarchy. thusly the torch of true radical feminism was picked up by early queer theory (for focus we shall ignore queer theory's petit-bourgeois degeneration, caused by spontaneous habits creating vulnerability to rainbow capitalist co-option, creating a de-link with feminism, thusly losing its holistic grasp on patriarchy). the transandrobros is incapable of true radical feminism due to internalization of maleness, & therefore unsuited to grasping baeddelism's (that is to say true modern radicalism's) expanded theory of internalized misogyny, which majorly builds on theories of gender performativity

baeddels are fucking cuckoo. i kept opening this ask in the inbox & kept changing my mind whether i should answer this or not, but your case is truly to be studied & i believe people should see your true insanity to its’ fullest so……

the audacity to say that female people are “unable to fully grasp the patriarchy” really tells me that you people believe female people to be “unsuited for truethink”– thus needing to be “guided by the clearer truth of the male’s mind”. that’s way too close to the christofascist ways of thinking, but you’re way too scared to admit that you might be aligning with extremist christian ways of belief! yet you’re over here talking about “de-link” with feminism, ironic lmfao. your usage of intellectual terms, specifically marxist terminology, tells me that you’re trying to imitate the anti-capitalist corners of feminist theory. but can you truly proclaim yourself to be marxist if you cannot even comprehend basic marxist concepts such as the family, commodification of female bodies, capitalist exploitation of female people on the basis of [tangible sex], reproductive labor & marginalization of the female reproductive system? you use a bunch of word salads to further prove your heavily misogynistic, specifically transandrophobic in this instance, belief that male people are somehow more capable of defining oppression that they don’t even face. it’s screaming entitlement at its’ finest.

baeddels are not “true radical feminists”. baeddels take up the worst corners of “radical feminism” (gender essentialism, transandrophobia/antitransmasculinity, the entire concept of a “gender traitor”, pure hate & no actual activism whatsoever), a.k.a they twist radical feminism up & down, switching & turning it upside & downside to their own liking, they modify it to fit their fucked up view based on a very specific & niche form of idealist metaphysics. they take the worst section points of the worst & most unhinged corners of radical feminism, and then expand their beliefs to be trans-inclusive. their views are based on pure hatred, negation of reality, and a very specific hatred targeted at transmascs.

if i am somehow “unfit” for feminism because i “internalize maleness” as a transmasc– then i am sorry to break it to you, but your right to talk about feminism should be revoked in the first place, as your maleness is externalized.

– mod zoroark

[imabraineatingparasite]

please don't stop using "incel terminology" youre based as fuck for that. more radfems need to be unapologetically rude tbh

[ftmtftm]

Apparently I'm an bad faith alt-right troll for questioning why someone would generalize "a lot of trans fems as 4channers / ex-4channers" and then use a "trans inclusive" version of "sex based oppression" to describe transandrophobia — like I'm sorry but to me that does scream subconscious transmisogynist bias at best, active radfem infiltration at worst 🙄

"Sex based misogyny" — just say sexism. Sexism isn't a dirty word and trying to create terminology with the phrasing "sex based [ x ]" is always going to make you sound like a gender crit to anyone with any passing knowledge of radfem rhetoric.

[kiefbowl]

Are radical feminism and gender critical ideology two separate things?

probably depends on who you ask lol

radical feminism is a movement born out of 1960s western feminism, some people say it's interchangeable with "second-wave" but I've seen others argue those two phrases aren't interchangeable. Radical feminism is anchored on the idea of addressing "the root" of female oppression, and identifies that as male supremacy. This is why radical feminists (among other feminists!) talk about the "axis of sex" - it understands that there is a hierarchy of male over female, and that this is oppressive and wrong. In my experience, you can find this idea throughout feminism...plus it's worth noting that not every feminist text specifically identities what "ideology" it's "meant" to belong to. A good thing to keep in mind.

When it comes to the phrase "gender critical," I personally don't find this phrase all that useful. I've written a couple posts about this, but I'll never find them so I'll try to quickly outline some thoughts here. In my experience, I see the phrase gender critical pretty much exclusively online. I see it used pretty much one of three ways: 1. interchangeable with "radical feminism" 2. describing radical feminism 3. as a name for an ideology. I honestly don't know where this phrase originates from, so if it really does come from a specific era or text or something like that, I'm happy to be corrected, but I have a suspicion that it originated online in loosely "radfem" spaces and has now been accepted as terminology despite no cohesive definition. "Radical feminism" and "gender critical feminism" both have wikipedia pages, and only gender critical feminism immediately references "TERFS" with a HUGE list of sources I find suspicious, despite its short length. The wikipedia page says "Originating as a fringe movement within radical feminism mainly in the United States" up front with three sources, and those sources are published in 2021, 2022, and 2023, (suspicious). I just don't buy it, I think this a misappropriation of casual feminist parlance that took place online while those feminists navigated talking about trans critical ideas in the aughts and 2010's. In any case, I've never considered myself "gender critical" as something specific. I find myself critical of gender in so far as I consider gender part of the system that enforces the sex hierarchy, and I'm critical of, like, being oppressed for being female lol. I just find it a sort of loop-di-loop sort of phrase, and not particularly clarifying to what gender is. I suppose I see the use at least at first to say "critical of gender ideology" as a way to say "critical of ideas of inherent gender identity", but now that it's understood to mean many incorrect things outside the in-group, I don't see how it continues to be useful when discussing outside the in-group. I also don't find the idea of "gender abolition" particularly helpful in many the same ways: gender only exists because of female subordination. I want female liberation, and with that gender will be eliminated. I also think this idea of "gender critical" and "gender abolition" is why radfem tumblr will go in endless circles about very superficial beauty standards as if they're the crux and not the flavor. If we eliminated make-up, it would be nice but it wouldn't do much to address female liberation, imo. That's just one example.

So, if I were to answer the question, and zoom out as far as I could, I would say no they aren't the same thing, but not for the reasons most people would assume.

[jewishvitya]

TERFs will go "when I hide my opinions in terminology that non-radfems don't see for what it is, they agree with me! It just shows my ideas make sense and they're only against me because they got convinced I'm bad for no reason!" as if that's not the exact same logic that neo nazis use.

[silurisanguine]

There are some things in a person's bio that are instant strikes for me to block them -

Harry fucking potter

Any Radfem terminology

Anything pro gen ai

The Israel flag

Anything pro trump/ muskrat

Anything purity cult/rabid censorship

Anti lgbtqa+

Anyone who has this shit, thankyou, it makes it so much easier to know I don't want you seeing my blog.

[lilliaace]

Stop fucking erasing LGBTQ history, y'all would have had a god damn heart attack at how lesbians identified (and other queers) during get 80s and beforehand.

I'm fucking done with having this conversation to death with literal fucking children on this hellscape site.

Our lesbian sisters didn't die in the streets for y'all to be blindly repeating radfem and terf rhetoric.

I also personally abhore the term sapphic now because you little shits keep trying to force us away from an identity we feel most comfortable in. Stop trying to force fucking binary terminology on everything. Multigender lesbians exist. Hijira lesbians exist. Two spirit lesbians exist.

Go fucking read

"stone Butch Blues"

"the Stonewall Generation"

"pomosexuals challenging gender and sexuality"

Talk to real life gay people outside the sanitized spaces that is the internet and school clubs. Go experience fucking life and stop being a god damn keyboard warrior.

Your "erm actually 🧐" attitude reeks of gold star lesbian toxicity and is inherently anti-butch. It's creating artificial barriers BECAUSE OF YOUR DISCOMFORT.

Lesbian is not equivalent with "ew masculinity/man/penis."

I am begging y'all to understand that life, sexuality, and humanity is so much more god damn complex and fluid than your baby brains can comprehend and I am fucking done having this conversation.

Fuck y'all hate rotted brains.

Lesbian phot history dump