#terfs vs biology

[supermauswithagun]

behold a WOMAN

adult human chicken is still the greatest contribution to society terfs have ever produced

[spacelazarwolf]

what do you think of that man vs bear thing that’s been going around on tiktok?

i think it’s just yet another social media stunt to try to normalize radfem rhetoric in broader society.

people are trying to normalize the idea that men are inherently violent and dangerous, and with the way trans discourse has been headed over the last few years i hope people can understand that the idea that men (whether they mean “males” and are including trans women, or they mean “people who identify as men” and are including trans men) are inherently dangerous (because of their biology or the hrt they take or simply because of the word they use to describe themselves) is very cut and dry radfem rhetoric. it’s rhetoric that has been a huge motivation for a lot of the anti trans laws we’ve been seeing. not to mention the way racialized men, including cis men, tend to be targeted for violence because of this rhetoric.

so yeah i think people are falling head over heels for terf propaganda yet again and as someone who’s been the victim of misogynistic violence at the hands of several men, i’m tired of having to tiptoe around (particularly cis) women’s feelings while they normalize rhetoric that is getting me and my trans siblings and my poc friends harassed and killed.

[genderkoolaid]

Hi. You always post a lot of info so I'm wondering if you might be able to help me. Is there a difference between radfems and TERFs? Are they both bad? If so, why are they bad? Are there any dog whistles to look out for when it comes to these groups? Please ignore this if it makes you uncomfortable. I've seen a lot of people pointing out that they're bad, but never really saying why. I want to make sure I follow intersectional feminism and not those groups.

Radical feminism is the name of a branch of feminism. It originally got its name because it advocated for extreme changes to society to address female oppression, but developed into a specific worldview which I (off the top of my head) would define by certain traits:

Oppositional sexism. Men and women (or "males" and "females") are fundamentally opposed. Oftentimes this is bioessentialist, arguing that this opposite comes from biology, but it may also be framed as a political necessity; a radfem might argue that gender and sex are fake BUT we need male vs female as political identities in order to identify our "allies" and "enemies". Regardless, males and females are physically distinct and political enemies. You can tell a man from a woman, either from their body or their behavior, the two categories cannot overlap, and no other gender/sex-labels are relevant.

Fatalistic perspectives on patriarchy. Not only are males and females opposed, but this cannot be changed. This may be bioessentialist (the opposition comes from something in our nature, which cannot change) or gender-essentialist (the opposition comes from socialization which occurs as a child due to outside pressure and/or internal gender identity, and cannot change.) Focus is not placed on an ideal future where men and women are equals and social partners. Instead, there is a sense that there is no way to truly have a society with men and women where males do not oppress females, or try to. Sometimes this is more implicit and other times you have people who explicitly believe in creating & enforcing female-only societies.

Misogyny as the source of all oppression, or at least the most important & the one people should identity themselves as before anything else. Those who call themselves intersectional generally only really care about other issues to the extent that they affect women in some way. Part of the downfall of the original radical feminists was the fact that the dominant groups were upper-class white women, who ignored racism and classism and silenced poor women & women of color, insisting that anti-racist and anti-classist action distracted from The Movement & that calling out other women's bigotry was anti-feminist.

A general suspicion of sexual desire and sex, often expressing itself as whorephobia (anti-sex work) and anti-kink attitudes, specifically under the argument that they are inherently misogynistic and abusive. Sex is associated with men and maleness, which again, are inherently the enemy. Sex WITH men, or with a person or object that could be construed as male, is especially bad.

The impetus to make your personal life As Feminist As Possible– "The personal is political." That isn't a bad slogan on its own (it's true), but with radical feminists it expresses itself as a high standard of Radfemmaxing. You should be celibate if you are attracted to men, or become a political lesbian, you shouldn't be masculine OR feminine (anti-butch & femme sentiment), you should reject makeup and shaving, you should cut off male relatives and even abort male fetuses– and you must identify with womanhood and femaleness, while rejecting any identity related to manhood and maleness. It's not just that you should examine your desires and choices and question why you feel the way you feel (again, this is a good thing). Radfems have the belief that they already know the correct answer to that Introspection, and if you come to any other conclusion than theirs (I like wearing makeup because it's fun, I want to be a man because it fits me), then it's taken as proof you are still brainwashed.

TERFS are trans-exclusive radfems. They believe that being trans is not real, or at least not healthy or an acceptable feminist stance. TERFs tend to use the language of "sex" and "males vs females." Many use the term "gender critical," meaning they see gender as fake and damaging, while sex is real and the proper platform for feminist analysis. I once saw a TERF define her stance as "it's not degrading because its feminine, its feminine because its degrading." They believe in things like autogynophilia and rapid onset gender dysphoria, and attribute transgender identity with sexual trauma, internalized homophobia and internalized misogyny.

TIRFs are trans inclusive. They believe that transgender feelings are natural and should be listened to and followed, and that feminism should take gender identity into account. However, they still have a "male vs female" worldview. They may argue that transgender men's internal gender feelings led them to internalize male socialization, while trans women internalized female socialization, meaning that all trans people's experiences with gender and misogyny align most with cis people who share their gender identity.

In both cases, anti-nonbinary exorsexism and intersexism are unavoidable. TERFs will label intersex people as "males/females with a disorder" and attribute nonbinary identity either to internalized misogyny (FTX) or to avoid being held accountable for male privilege (MTX). TIRFs similarly fail to acknowledge how someone's socialization can be affected by intersexism. MTX people are either trans women in denial or flamboyant cis men; FTX people are either trans men avoiding their privilege, or cis women avoiding their privilege*.

Not everyone who uses radical feminist arguments or shares the general perspective openly identified as radfem. There are many "cryptos" who purposefully obscure their political identity to spread radfem ideas in queer & feminist spaces. Other people adopt the general ideas of radical feminism without consciously identifying as one, because of cryptos and how pop feminism often adopts their flashier ideas. So it's important to understand these qualities as on a scale, with some versions being more subtle while others are explicit.

Radical feminism always reduces trans experiences (& experiences in general) to a simple, uncrossable binary, based either in gender or sex. Nuance and cros- or non-binary gender experiences are seen as anti-feminist and aligned with the patriarchy, if not part of a targeted plan to hurt feminist movements.

*the idea of "AFAB privilege" is. a thing in some people's analysis of transmisogyny.

[sapphia]

From my post about how NZ’s far right wanted to abolish the human rights commission but instead installed a gay racist transphobe instead.

…The more [TERF] beliefs became incompatible with core feminism, and the more core feminism became interested in exploring gender, scientifically and sociologically, as an ever-changing construct informed by but not limited to base biology, and the more radfems became consumed with their “cause” of getting trans women out of their spaces and away from “LGB resources” (actual argument that used to get propagated), the further away TERFs pushed themselves from mainstream feminism until they found themselves on the same side as the groups to which they were once fundamentally opposed: anti-feminists, homophobes, conservative religious groups, anti-abortionists, and neo nazis. Thus, radical feminism is perhaps one of the few true demonstrations of the horseshoe theory, where a group became so radicalised it jumped the iron gap and travelled all around to the other end of the horseshoe.

TERFs were great boons to the cause, and came with a huge inbuilt advantage for the right: many of them are lesbians, giving them a rare LGBT ally and a demonstration of the ‘harm’ trans people were causing.

The reason why so many TERFs are lesbians is partly because of queer intracommunity politics, and partly because the academic and social roots of TERFism originate in the UK and from UK academic feminism, led by their universities and which was always particularly ‘anti-men’ in its approach, producing student movements back in the 80s and 90s that discouraged women from dating men, encouraging them to remain celibate or to date women instead, and it’s this separatist ideology where radical feminism finds its roots. If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because there is currently a South Korean feminist trend based on similar ideals making waves in the West.

In fundamental ways, radical feminists and the far right are well matched: they’ve always shared a particular lack of complex understanding of varying structures of oppression, as I remember very vividly from online discourse back before radical feminism devolved so much it fully segregated itself from the mainstream.

Radical feminists were obsessed with working out who had privilege over others, or who were less privileged, and this resulted in complicated and very flawed calculations of compounding oppressions. For example, does a gay black man have more or less privilege than a straight white woman?

Boiling this down to its essential premise of how much is a marginalisation “worth” is what aligns the mindset of radical feminists with that of the far right. Neither group truly includes a full variety of perspectives to contribute to demonstrating and explaining the complexities in the ways our society treats marginalised groups. Such transgressive thinking is antithetical to their worldview and contrary to the norms they are invested in enforcing.

You don’t have to be highly educated or culturally engaged to see the inherent issues of trying to so distinctly define people into categories. Common sense would also tell you different groups have different privileges, different concerns, and that these would reveal themselves in different ways and need addressing with different solutions. Both a black man and a woman may be disadvantaged in finding a job vs your average white man, but one would have more reason to be worried accepting a drink from a stranger in a bar while the other might be more worried being pulled over by the cops. These real-life concerns can’t be differentiated down into a finite value.

(Not that either of these situations aren’t a threat to the other individual — women have plenty of reasons to fear the power of cops, and gay men who are victims of hate crimes are regularly picked up in gay bars.)

Common sense also would make you wonder how much it matters. If you want to add up all the different ways people can be disenfranchised, you’ll soon end up with a checklist of -isms too long to be of any use and able to find ways to fit anyone inside at least one of them, which is sort of the whole point. And in checklisting everything you’ll still be managing to ignore any nuance and the entire concept of classism, probably.

This was roughly the outcome of discourse between the left and radical feminists: “Your math doesn’t work out.” And like a true ally of the right, the TERFs said, “Doesn’t matter, we believe it anyway.”

Comment

Like the right, radical feminists struggle to conceptualise and explain the effects of compounding marginalisation, usually because they themselves tend to be quite privileged. Radical feminism was born from those first generations of women able to attend universities, and their demographic reflects that. Most radical feminists (actual radical feminists and not just people jumping on the transphobia bandwagon) were white women, able-bodied, on the richer side of the poverty line — and in fact, the exclusion of black women in the UK from feminist studies in universities has become a recent subject of criticism from black feminists, as Western concepts of norms have been drastically affected by the narrowness of the perspective of the field, and so in this way, defining ‘male’ and ‘female’ as distinct categories with distinct traits particularly disenfranchises Black people and other people and cultures of colour who maintain different ideals and norms, who have different physical features, and who resultantly find themselves alienated from a conversation dominated by the white voice.

Although their views on how gender should be divided in society are transformative, TERF positions on gender themselves are regressive and conservative, leaning into anti-scientific understandings of sex, gender, and the wider world that have steadily put the movement more and more at odds with academia and also, sometimes, with reality. TERFs, both women and lesbians, are members of marginalised groups who feel their space is being encroached upon by people who, by their own rubric, are evaluated as more ‘privileged’ than they are, yet are seen as ‘more harshly oppressed’ by others within their community, threatening their status and position within established movements. Having quite literally been the subgroup of feminists attempting put a value on oppression in order to determine who is “most oppressed” or navigate oppression dynamics, anti-trans feminists were women who found their position threatened by new groups and by their transformative ideas around the structures upon which their shared oppression was based.

Thus, the response of TERFs became to deny trans people, and particularly trans women, a position within the rubric in an attempt to stymie the growth of a group and ideology who threatened their position, authority and, they felt, their identities.

Conservative branches of movements formed by attempting to uphold outdated, unscientific ideals were ever-branching offshoots in leftism at this time. In the 2010s, within the LGBT community, radical feminist lesbians found allyship with ‘Truscum’ — trans people who believed that only people who experience clinical levels of dysphoria can be transgender. This movement almost entirely died by the end of the decade, but those sparse people and ideals remaining from the movement too have become very valuable allies to the far right. Like detransitioners, these rare examples of trans people holding non-normative subversive beliefs around gender and transness are frequently referenced, presented and paraded by anti-science fringe groups like the Free Speech Union as examples that prove their points and that some minorities support their ideas.

Truscum groups too were a response to new ideas of gender and sex threatening established science, identities, and ‘power structures’. Truscum-identifying trans people were generally individuals with a personal belief in the gender binary, were deeply affected by self-directed transphobia, and invested in the medical model. Truscums upheld the medical model of transitioning (that would eventually leave them behind), the gender binary, and then positioned themselves as scientifically-verified “outsiders” relative to that binary, a position that became threatened by the growing self-identification of non-binary individuals who signified a shift in thinking within the trans community away from gender as immutable and based in science, and instead used science to further question the sociological underpinnings of our concepts of sex.

I explain this to give you a cause-and-effect, psychosocial explanation of how these reactionary movements and beliefs spring up within movements in an attempt to demonstrate where positions like Stephen Rainbow’s come from — people in a marginalised community who turn on what many of us would see as a fellow marginalised group and what some of us (and many more bigoted or distant perspectives) would see as the same marginalised group.

Lesbians and feminists were not the only groups to have conservative social elements that felt threatened by encroachments of new marginalised identities within their community of marginalisation; it was demonstrated by gay men as well, just more bluntly and without them really forming an identity or body of academia or psuedoscience around their discomfort. But it’s through this ostracisation from their own communities caused by their unfavourable perception of, and then bigotry towards, new-entrant groups threatening the status quo, that groups like TERFs and gay men like Stephen Rainbow are pushed towards the radical right.

I also explain this to so you can get a sense for the categorical thinking that underpins these shared philosophies, and the way both groups put ‘value’ on these distinct categories of marginalisation. Radical feminists do put value on oppression in pretty much the exact way the right believe the mainstream left put such value on oppressions, and this has morphed into TERF ideas of status that the right think dominate left-wing thought.

The right count the monetary value of affirmative action initiatives and reparations, note the attentiveness of the public to marginalised issues, confuse the raising of diverse voices with the raising of status, and hold that the effects of these actions are a sort of ‘privilege’. The actual reasons behind these groups getting different levels of money and attention at different times is complex and much more to do with equity or recompense than value, but in dismissing this complexity, the right are attempting to ‘solve’ an unsolvable equation asking which marginalisation is worth what value to the left, while using entirely the wrong variables.

Because the far right are very strong believers in the value these marginalised identities must hold, ACT see appointing a gay human rights commissioner as “justifying” itself through marginalisation “points”, expecting him to be more acceptable or palatable to the left and to the public. They believe his oppressions qualify him or make him suitable, or somehow shield him from scrutiny, and they believe they can select by marginalisation in the same way Clarence Thomas was a Black Republican placed on the Supreme Court. They fail to recognise the way the majority of the LGBT community has embraced and incorporated the social, scientific, and gender theory behind current demographics and understandings of trans people and that, for the vast majority of the LGBT community, this is a point of unity and understanding between groups and identities.

Right now, gay men are frequently targeted by homophobic hate crimes, but that is not necessarily going to make them any more grateful to see an anti-trans gay man as Human Rights Commissioner because while it doesn’t affect his ability to advocate for gay men per se, his advocacy for queer rights ad a whole is likely to be compromised due to not truly sharing the same perspective as the community he supposedly serves.

This will not stop some conservative, privileged gay men from viewing any attempts at Rainbow’s removal as further alienation from their own community by “the left”. Rainbow’s placement in this position is a victory for the right either way.

In appointing Rainbow, ACT entirely miss the irony of what they are doing; they are the ones appointing people to positions entirely because of identity. The left, the wider population even, genuinely see the value and perspective different relevant minority groups can bring to these positions, and that is the basis for which minority identities can “favour” applicants for such roles. It is the right who have themselves boiled someone down to what “label” they can bring the role in order to better disguise their corrupt, bigoted appointment implicitly placed to further their race war.

Who’s playing identity politics NOW, Seymour?

[rainclover]

Tarantulas are not ticks. Apes are not human.

Thats what you sound like LMAO

Like yeah no duh wasps arent bees 😂😂😂😂 youre comparing two different species 💀💀

Lets not forget that gender is a societal construct! And that in nature animals will regularly swap roles and even change gender to survive and live their lives. But why would you care about real biology 😂

Both your & the original terf’s argument fell apart as soon as it presented itself as biological essentialism.

Male and female humans are both, you guessed it! Human. There is only so much we can vary in terms of differences. An amab person cant get stabbed 10 times while a afab person can only get stabbed 3 💀. You are clearly not educated in the true variations of sex and biology. Signed, someone who is ☺️

This is actually hilarious because:

Wasps are not bees. They are both members of the Hymenoptera order, which also includes ants. You wouldn't say that an ant is a bee just because they're both members of the same order, so why would you argue that a wasp is a bee? Would you argue that a camel and a giraffe are the same species because they also share the same order (Artiodactyla)?

Out of the some 20,000 species of wasp, NONE produce honey. There is a genus called "Brachygasta" including 17 species that keep stores of nectar and honeydew in case of food shortages, but none produce honey. And certainly not from meat.

So yet again, you have a TRA blatantly lying in order to turn something into what it's not. "The wasp is right, and the bee relies on untrue myths to explain itself," is such bullshit.

Sadly, this post got something like 2,000 notes. People will blindly believe what a TRA says, especially if it's a lie constructed to undo a radfem point. So many logical fallacies.

Wasps are not bees. Men are not women.

[androphagy]

when i say "cis men are inherently more dangerous than cis women, trans women, and trans men" the "inherently" is because those are the cultures we're usually in when speaking on trans issues online, especially on tumblr. it is NOT BIOLOGICAL, it is centuries of sociopolitical patriarchal-dominated grooming. it's not biology that makes cisgender men "more dangerous" whatsoever it's the literal historical context of cismale entitlement being funneled through decades and decades of "you're a man so do whatever you want."

this isn't applicable to trans women and trans men because trans women lose that "privilege" the second they're anything other than Good Cis Male Archetype. femininity is punished in people who are viewed as Supposed To Be Men to all different degrees and pretending like trans women have any form of oppressive status over cis men (which is a take i've seen from terfs fairly regularly) is fucking insane. tell me what does a trans woman GAIN from putting herself out there and becoming something societally people, even other cis and trans women, will punch down on at first opportunity. she doesn't!!! she gains nothing but another target on her back!!!! trans women and transfems are seen as this nebulous "other" waiting behind every bathroom door to attack poor random cis women and children and if you can't see that and how prevalent that ideology has become eurocentrically you may just be completely out of touch beyond what i can tell you here.

trans men don't have that same context because unless they were born into a family that raised them fully in the way today's (and im speaking specifically on western/eurocentric ideals) men are raised and don't acknowledge their anatomy at all aside from positively, which is a fairly large part of misogyny, they're going to see misogyny for a good long while regardless of (if they ever do!!) passing status. and that passing privilege can be yanked out from under them if they're outed, medical misogyny is rampant no matter how masculine you look - if you still have a vagina, you will never be seen as male in the eyes of most people. trans men and the transmasculine are consistently erased, correctively raped and abused, and subjugated so they can't "identify" as male in the first place. the swept-under-the-rug-edness of this issue isn't the fault of trans women though!!!! visibility isn't a cake where it'll run out if someone takes more!!!!

the intercommunity "axis of oppression/lateral aggression" theory is specifically to pull apart internal biases surrounding the beliefs and behaviors of queers who are on varying levels of othering dependent on their own personal situations and externalization vs internalization of harm/support. for example its not calling out YOU, specifically, for being wary around people with penises; historical context, as i mentioned earlier, coupled with personal trauma and modern sociopolitical theory contribute to the unconscious bias against sharing the women's room with a trans woman regardless of how much of an ally you claim to be (as a transmasc, cis woman, newly-out transfem, etc.) it doesn't make your beliefs right in being anxious about going to the bathroom while a trans woman is in there too, but it gives you a starting place to begin to work on not having those beliefs. it is not a moral failing to have more privilege than someone else!! you can use that privilege to help them or at the very least see where they're coming from and deconstruct your own internalized bigotry!!!!

don't turn every conversation specifically about trans women's struggles into a "but all trans people --" because that's not what the post/conversation/etc is about. you can make your own post. when a trans woman is talking about how she's been affected and targeted in the bathroom by cis women and refers to them as AFAB, she's probably NOT rubbing her hands together and thinking how she's also "taking a swing" at trans men and transmascs. believe people when they say what they mean especially on a public and largely anonymous forum!!!

trans women have every reason to be afraid of cis men that people AFAB do. are there risks such as pregnancy which can increase that fear in people AFAB? yeah, absolutely. no one is arguing against that. trans women and trans men are arguing that they see bigotry and targeted aggression outside and inside the community, and the inside is on mostly personal-to-clique levels...which happens in every community regardless of it being queer focused or not. a trans woman snapping at a trans man for being entitled online isn't her saying "all trans men are like this and they're basically not even trans because they chose to be men", she's angry at the entitlement, not the trans status. she's viewing it from the extremely trodden-on status of a woman who's being attacked relentlessly for something she has no control over (just like how trans men have no control over being born with anatomically female parts!) just like how trans women can unlearn patriarchal entitlement, trans men can not internalize it and inflict it onto others with the misguided belief of that being how they're going to be seen as a man/that that's just what men do.

personally i think there's been a massive schism intentionally driven by terfs, transphobic queers, and cis people (men and women) between transmascs, transfems, trans women, and trans men because it's easier to break down communities once you sew enough discord and make everyone think no one else understands them and is out to get them at first opportunity (and my hypothesis on hyperindividualism running parallel to modern identity politics goes further into that.)

if you make everyone in the same demographic believe that the other has no way of understanding or relating to one another, then what's the point of having the community to begin with? bigoted groups -- cis, trans, conservative, leftist -- utilize that to really dig their claws in with their "divide and conquer" stratagem, and no one is exempt from being a potential transphobe because of their status of being trans.

compassion for those hurting in a system designed to hurt them will carry you so much further than getting aggro the second someone disagrees with you.

[piosplayhouse]

I’m sorry in advance for sending a cursed ask, but this has been rotating in my mind since you made the post but I can’t keep it in anymore.

You know the thing about ass-birth omegas and the terf that showed up?? I have to confess that I am non-binary and I *also* didn’t think of having a womb attached to the intestines. All this time, every time there was only one hole, I thought the logical conclusion would be the baby covered in shit and growing in the intestines. When I thought of ass-birth, I imagined it like if you were just REALLY constipated, and needed to push out a big poop.

I’m having a crisis now. Is the womb theory something everyone just naturally assumed? Did I miss a memo? Is this a thing that everyone else has been aware of all this time, and I just never caught on??? Have *I* been the weirdo all this time?

I’ve been so mean and judgey toward people who didn’t write vaginas in their mpreg, oh god. (Not to their face, but. behind their back.) I’m so sorry. They actually did know what they were writing. There is ACTUAL SCIENCE supporting ass-babies. This has been an earth-shattering revelation.

Thank you for your work on the poll btw. You have brought so much knowledge to me that I wouldn’t have been privy to otherwise. I’m sending this anon partly as a way to get rid of my shame, but also to thank you for altering the course of my life in such a way. It has taught me to never underestimate biology.

Ok so I'm just gonna put all of this under a readmore for obvious reasons

You know what anon I respect you 😭 I guess it's somewhat of a medium thing, I remember reading a fair amount of omegaverse manga that actually had pages at the beginning of the story devoted to explaining the basic anatomy of the dynamics. I can't find any actual scans of those but googling "omegaverse anatomy" gives you diagrams like this (and also like ?? Extremely professional looking diagrams that I kind of wonder if they were drawn by actual medical illustrators??? But I will allow you to find those on your own)

It looks like there's somewhat of a divide between whether or not there's a separate vagina in there connected to the rectum or whether its just a cervix there separating a rectum from the womb but yeah I have to say I think the womb thing is pretty much agreed upon 😭😭 I can only really speak on the breeding side of fic things but the majority I've seen at least do definitely specify the existence of a uterus/cervix (mostly for horny reasons but yk). Very much separate from the intestines though...

Also I have to be the bearer of bad news here I guess for real life anatomy again but apparently giving birth with a vagina is also just like being really constipated. It's actually super common and normal for people to have bowel movements while giving birth (this actually is a big element of the v-birth vs c-section infant microflora development debate). Things are a lot more squished down there than people realize I think, especially when there's a whole baby there too

[mommy-issues-haver]

sex and gender vs sexuality: why sexuality is a distinct category

i’ve been thinking about the idea that the way terfs view trans people is the same as how homosexuals were viewed 60 years ago in wider society. but i think there are some pretty important distinctions to make:

1. sex is the single truest impulse of any sexually reproducing species. and while this impulse is derived from the fact that reproduction is necessary for survival, homosexuality still exists and has similar sexual drives. the sex drive may have become part of our physiology in order to reproduce, but that doesn’t mean that sexual desire = a conscious desire to reproduce. this demonstrates the homosexual sex drive is innate to biology and not socialization.

2. nothing in nature requires gender roles. gender is not mandated by nature. yes, there are sex-based tasks (ie breastfeeding) but the concept of gender is not an inherently natural concept. there is nothing in nature that requires gender roles. again, i am speaking of gender here and not sex. there are certain divisions of labor that were ability-based and tended to therefore be sex-based, like hunting vs gathering or child rearing (ie one woman may breastfeed multiple children, not all of whom were hers) but this in itself does not constitute gender or gender divisions. on a small scale, pre-agriculture, we cannot say there is gender-based systemic oppression because there simply is no system. there may be cultural and generational sex-based oppression, but not gender-based. the gender hierarchy, of which women will always be on the bottom, is what must be abolished.

i don’t have strong feelings about the lgb alliance or the idea that the T should be dropped from lgbt, but i do think that there is a reasonable argument against all so-called “queer” identities being grouped together that isn’t rooted in malice towards trans people. our wants, needs, and challenges are very different. in the end, it is difficult to separate anything we do from the society we live in (need i remind you that the personal is political) but i do think it’s easier to separate sexuality from society than gender.

[tepehkwi]

Help. Some girl posted a stuff about trans girls nog being allowed to play bc ""hormonally and biology said they were stronger" (total bullshit) on her tiktok

and now I'm fighting with that girl and others. I told her that transphobia is rooted in colonialism, and I gave an example of two-spirit people and native Americans, and girlie said she was native American but she never heard of it. She asked "Which tribe uses that term" I answered "Oijbwe." I'm not listening to someone who takes the ideology of a culture that claims to not exist, or if you mention another tribe, girlie managed to say "But they made the women stay at home and the males go hunting".

I fucking can't with the transphobia and oh lord, idk what to say. I need to find more science arguments to win over that transphobe bitch (the girl in the video was white and the other she said she was native american so idk )

hi! i'm sorry this is kinda late. hope this answer can still help.

"science" arguments aren't necessarily going to "win over" anything, in my opinion. something everyone needs to understand is that most indigenous gender was understood as socially constructed, as role-based. unfortunately terfs/gcs and other reactionaries really don't care about that, they would rather use colonizer enlightenment era phrenology-esque bullshit to discredit indigenous knowledge, indigenous history, and the progressions/evolution of our traditions throughout history. especially when, as you mentioned, this transphobe is claiming that "see? ojibwe culture is still patriarchal" like unfortunately i just don't think that these people can really be reasoned with.

"two-spirit" was specifically intended to be pan-indigenous. and most comprehensive explainers talk about the coining of the term as a broad english-word umbrella under which ojibwe* labels like wiŋkte/wiŋkta, short for wiŋyankehca (*i also know the dakota/lakota use wiŋkte as well, or at least i know of dakota and lakota individuals who use it) and ikwekaazowag/ininiikaazowag can fall under

The term Two-Spirit originated in 1990 by Myra Laramee (Cree) at the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in Winnipeg. It is a translation of “niizh manidoowag” or “two spirits” in the Anishinaabe language. (source)

but people like the woman you're describing in your ask are the kinds of people who aren't going to take this sort of thing seriously. they're going to disbelieve actual science, because they are committed to pseudoscience. i don't personally respect most of the social sciences but they are still more correct than pseudoscience about sex/sexuality and gender, and unfortunately people like this aren't going to believe anything that the social sciences put forth to discredit their pseudoscience arguments either. transphobes like her will use anyone serving as a disruption of their echo chamber to either point out or make up contradictions or other facts they can misconstrue as logical flaws.

and i could also go on about dealing with potential pretendians vs. people using their indigenous heritage as an excuse to 'speak for' us all... but at the end of the day, people like this MIGHT listen to reason if you're able to do a bit of digging? i'm afraid i'm not the best person to ask about where to source articles.

i also have really mixed feelings about people using twospirit (also other nonwestern cultural genders and/or intersex people) as a device for disproving transphobic arguments. twospirit is, despite being a combo of english words, a placeholder for concepts that are utterly un-translateable into english or any western idea. it has to do with gender and sexuality and sex, or all at once, or one more than others, etc... and the thing is, the history of third-gender or twospirit people who can't be categorized by colonial standards of sex/gender is mostly irrelevant to the argument that needs to be made and needs to be focused on, which is trans liberation.

even if transgender people were a recent phenomena, the point of this shouldn't be to find all these historical examples to prove legitimacy. i mean, i'm therian, earthgender, and a furry as well as being ndn. and therian and otherkin, noun-gender labels, and other stuff like this doesn't really have a ~robust history~ except in online communities. but we still exist. and we still deal with a lot of judgement. and my ~weird~ xenogender labels are still descriptors of a non-cisgender identity, i'm still a trans person through a western lens whether i identify outwardly with the centuries-old menôkênâwa ketti-onôkênâwa two-spirited concept belonging to my culture or as the 21st century inventions of earthgender and skygender. history is not end-all be-all, here.

the entire point is that gender variance is oppressed, and we who don't conform are in need of liberation, and we are demanding it now. on the basis of bodily autonomy and rights to self-determine one's own gender identity and sexuality, this is what needs to be argued more, in my opinion.

this might be a little too much ranting on my part but idk... like, sometimes trying to debate these people stokes their fire :(

[flfverse]

I love reading your worldbuilding posts! It’s so fun to have that extra context for the story. Your recent post about sub-circling got me thinking about the issues trans-oriented subs might run into trying to join something that is designated Strictly For Subs in such a deeply-rooted biological and cultural way. I guess I wanted to poke you for your thoughts on like, HOW ingrained in biology and instincts that kind of thing is, bc I think it’d be kinda fun to examine the particular nuances of that kind of inter- and intrapersonal conflict 🤔 It also got me wondering if there would be any anti-trans orientation movements who see that as like a predatory endangerment to sub spaces? I guess I’m just recreating terfs tho lmao. Er sorry if that’s too heavy or invasive of a topic? You can feel free not to answer that one 😵‍💫

Also not related, but it was such a treat seeing Aizawa in your recent chapter and I love how you write him! I was curious if you were ever thinking about writing an erasermic fic in this verse, since their relationship is so unique for your au! 💓

ahhhh thank you!! i usually dislike worldbuilding bc it feels so overwhelming, but i’m having fun with it here so far

i….actually had not thought about trans rights vs the sub-circle tho, THAT’S a thought. i will say chapter 8 of Free Falling will have a little bit about sub circles in it, and i did include a line where someone asks twice (trans switch, bio dom in this au) if he’s going to stay. twice declines, but the offer is there. HOWEVER, that is the league and not society at large, so in a less trans-accepting space it would probably be different.

i haven’t written about it directly (and probably won’t, tbh? at least, i have no plans to rn, never say never), but i DO imagine there are both run of the mill transphobes and a terf-adjacent group in this ‘verse. hm. like actual terfs they’d probably be very “submissive rights” but be so transphobic that it loops back around to oppression.

i’ve done a fair amount of waffling on how biologically ingrained stuff is, because on the one hand it’s fun if the answer is “very,” but on the other hand, i’m trans and i’m wary of bioessentialism.

so my current stance is that it’s not as biologically ingrained as subspace/domspace itself, but it’s still important for things like social development. think of it as a kid growing up isolated from their peer group for whatever reason. they’re probably going to have trouble connecting with people their own age, they might pick up some strange habits, they’ll likely have gaps in their knowledge like not knowing pop culture. but overall (assuming nothing else bad happened), they’ll be okay, physically and mentally. not to trivialize that experience as i’m sure it’s very difficult, but there’s nothing life-threatening about it. and like i mentioned, a sub circle takes some level of intention; it’s not something you can trip into or be forced into against your will like subspace.

that said, it is Very culturally important. not something enforced, but if you told someone you never had a circle as an adult they’d probably give you a “wtf” look. a lot of the importance comes from the defensive aspect and how dangerous it can be to break a circle up. they’re respected because not respecting them is a good way to get attacked.

so anyway all of this is very long-winded and a bit stream-of-consciousness, but in conclusion i don’t think most people would welcome a trans sub/switch into a circle. like women’s bathrooms, except there’s no cultural expectation of politeness/not rocking the boat (also since when are women’s bathrooms some super culturally important place….but i digress). i feel like a trans sub would also have a lot of internalized Feelings about it even if they were allowed to join bc of all the messaging about how a dom near a sub circle is the Worst Thing Ever.

…..and now i’m thinking that would be fun to write. hm. back burner.

but!! yes!!! very cool questions defo a lot of food for thought. and to answer your last question about erasermic—i definitely want to write about them in this au!! i don’t have any specific ideas at the moment but i do adore their relationship and i very much want to delve into it. since they’ve adopted hitoshi i could also explore what raising a teenager in this world looks like….very fun

[rametarin]

Just thinking about this twitter post. Hm.. Don't think I agree.

You know, it would be a clever zinger, but unfortunately, we gotta deconstruct the post a bit.

Radical Feminists/TERFs demanded a separate sports league for the same reason that intersectional feminists demand separate consideration for transgendered people's rights from just human rights. Because, "minority status." With women being considered an oppresed minority vs. the Oppressor Class status of men. This jab is kind of bad faith because it relies on the recipient being so unaffiliated with the discourse that they mistakenly believe feminism before intersectionality was ONLY based on gynosupremacism and openly so.

That isn't 100% true. Radical Feminism was just juxtapositional and gynosupremacist, but it used the same beliefs that intersectional feminism does now, and they inherited it from socialist/communist arguments and takes on justice and shit before them. The idea that The Minority (a political science concept) is oppressed just by virtue of being the minority, as a class, and thus requires restitution and to be put on a pedestal separate from The Majority in order for their needs and desires to be considered.

Radical Feminists weren't going, "Women are inferior so they need separate leagues." They were going, "If you put females in the same league as males, women will be marginalized and abused. And that is unacceptable. Women need their own leagues so more women can dominate and be superior, free of the oppressions of men."

Class based discussions of equality do not care about the objective realities, they only care about the on-paper political science theory. They do not care about the realities of the relationships of different statesor objects, they only care about the aughts and shoulds of different social groups. So to radical feminism, it simply made no sense to have gender integrated sports leagues, because women could not dominate in those.

Just the same way they did not just want sexual equality of access in politics and business, they wanted obligate positions in government and business specifically so women could own part of those institutions as women. On behalf of women. They didn't just want women to be candidates for government, they wanted guarantees that if there was a Mayor, there would absolutely also be a Female co-mayor. With a male mayor being possible but not guaranteed by democratic votes. They wanted female exclusive leagues and equal opportunity normal leagues, for sports, so there would be no "men's leagues."

They just made careful use of language to obfuscate this around phrasing it in other ways that sounded better.

And 20 years from now, maybe more open transhumanists arguing that the human species should not limit itself to our DNA or use species as a hard biological definition to describe the human animal, will argue that "transgendered people believe they're not really the gender they claim they are because they still see humans as defined by our biology as a species." Like that's a win.

They demanded separate opportunities and political/class consideration specifically because of the same imagined inequities and inequalities that the transgendered say they experience just by virtue of not being born as the desired biology of their chosen gender identity.

And the very minute you remind them that pursuit of specific guarantees and societal protections to sanction and finance transgender reproductive rights, such as the right to make the state hire a surrogate because a transwoman cannot gestate a baby and a transman cannot produce sperm, thus forcing society to subsidize what they believe are their rights as men and women, they'll dial that rhetoric right back about arbitrary political class assumed rights.

The same logical mechanism that would protect a the argument that society should fit the bill for a transgendered reproductive right to surrogacy and sperm donor services in the name of justice, are the same logical and social mechanisms that argues the female class needed its own league where the "oppressor class" wouldn't dominate them at every turn.

By sneering at the logic of radical feminists in the name of being female, they shit all over the logic being used, by them, to protect what are the assumed "rights" of people on the basis of being transgendered, today. But they think it's okay, because "ciswomen aren't an oppressed class lol."

It's hypocrisy to operate under the absolutist logic of "oppressed/oppressor" classes, and then be so willingly ignorant like this. The same protectionist class struggle theorist logic that went into, "defeating sexism means putting the whamans on a government protected pedestal and giving them first dibs on everything, and intruding with that is inherently male chauvinist and patriarchy," is the logic behind, "it is the transgendered persons right to make society pay for their ability to get around their gender identity and biological incongruence so they can reproduce," among other considerations they consider to be rights.

I'm just saying. Is class struggle theory correct, or not? If you believe so, when shitting all over TERFs (and please do shit on radical feminists) at least don't make this bizarre argument against women and then validate it for the transgendered. It's the same logic that argues for the same blanket protections based on class identity politics in the name of "justice," for both." You can't shit on TERFs wanting their own separate protectionist leagues to ensure they can win these prizes for the interests of their own group, and then not also shit on transgendered people wanting rights and protections on the basis of the same things. Consistency.

Personally I find turning things like sex into class struggle discussions to be disgusting and utterly miss the point of the discord and how to possibly resolve the issues and disparities, so the most offensive thing to me about this is the hypocrisy and witnessing this Golden Child syndrome in action. It's now acceptable to hate on TERFs solely because the guardians and teachers have a new posterchild of oppressed demographics they like better than ciswomen.

[cryptometaphor]

(We're arguing trans with some terf)

Me: The vinear of feminists too Nazis has been around for decades. Deep down, Nazis and terfs really are just Karenocracy.

Terf: Better a Karen than dudes beating up chicks in sports and molesting daughters in bathrooms.

Sarah: Trans women are literally women. I don't mean "you should accept them as such" I mean, "advanced biology has admitted that there's neurological pathways that make you a woman just as much as your vagina."

Me: I remember I had a trans ex named Natalie who detransitioned. Claimed it was all butt parasites. Like, how do I even misgender her?! I can't even be petty about it because her own self loathing did her in. She claimed I was just her gay fetish. I was ready to spend my life with her.

Terf: You keep saying her when she herself said he

Me: Well she was being fucking dumb like a woman so it checks out lol. My point being, I would've accepted any pronouns. I didn't care about the pronouns, I cared about her.

Sarah: You'd still love me if I was trans?

Me: Whether it was you were a MtF this entire time and just are super duper passing, whether it was you're FtM and I've been fucking up using feminine connotations with you. Yes, I love you Sarah. I love YOU. Not the concept of a what a man or woman is supposed to be. You make me happy. I wanna make you happy. If I misgender you, I'm sorry.

Sarah: You never could. I always wanna be your girl.

Terf: Ok. I get the feeling you're hinting subtly to being trans.

Me: Niggle me this Bat-Terf. If you can't tell, than what does it matter? She looks like a woman, sounds like a woman, so why you gonna tell her she can't play women's sports or use women's bathrooms?

Terf: BECAUSE SHE'S NOT A WOMAN AND THAT SETS UP WOMEN FOR ATTACKS. Are you stupid?!

Me: She is a danty little flower. You are an ugly bull dike. Therefore logically, you shouldn't be allowed in female sports and gotta piss in the boy bathroom bucket.

Terf: No because I have a VAGINA

Me: A second butthole to compensate for how much of one you act like

Sarah: LOL

Terf: Look, I get it. You're a homosexual and hate women...

Me: Nigga, 99% of my partners have been...

Terf: 99%?

Me: Well there's been a few FtM

Terf: A few?! How many partners have you had?!

Me: Loneliness sucks. I know you don't fucking care about my plight.

Terf: Just admit you're bi!

Sarah: Jim is probs more pansexual than bisexual

Terf: It's literally the same thing

Me: I do gotta admit that much. Like even if we treat gender as a spectrum of masculine vs feminine, pan would just be bi.

Sarah: You're just a very romantic boy and want to love and be loved.

Terf: That's still bi!

Me: I mean, I self identify as heterosexual. I feel heterosexual, therefore...

Terf: NO

Me: Well fuck me. You just wanna tell everyone how to feel don't you? Trans aren't the gender they say they are, I'm not the sexual orientation I say I am, watch out guys. Karen's word is law. Fucking God complex.

Terf: FACTS ARE FACTS you've dated both ftm and mtf trans. Thereby you are bi. I don't care how you look at it.

Me: Ok but like... The mtf were definitely cuter.

Terf: SIGH... You know feminists have a whole thesis on dudebros latent homosexuality right?

Sarah: You're a dudebro Jim lol. I mean you vape enough to be. Like that Chad and femboy series.

Terf: Ok you're still insinuating you might be trans.

Me: WHO FUCKING CAAAARRREEEESSSS I'm the one having sex with her not you. She says she's a woman. I say she's a woman.

Terf: If she punches me in the face I have a right to know if she's really a woman

Sarah: I bet you get punched in the face a lot

Terf: Just two guys attacking a woman

Sarah: Keep your fetish to yourself creep

Terf: That's where YOUR MIND went

[pinkhutia]

Okay to go with every other terf version transphobe tonight I want the justifcation for your content vs trans people? The actual factual justification, you want to sound educated well then explain to me in factual honesty how can you justify your transphobia and content ethically? I'll take silence on this the same as the other two.

i said this in the tags of my reblog but ill reiterate here that i am a believer in dialogue and therefore dont like to shut down discussion when it seems to bear potential. i engage with ideas that i don’t anticipate myself to agree with, and try to keep an open mind. i used to be very liberal with gender ideology but have since shifted away from that. im very sorry that i wont provide sources like i enjoy doing because it takes an effort to make so comprehensive a post that i dont have the energy for (it’s late evening in my timezone)

for starters, “transphobia” is a… well i’ll say it’s an odd term to throw around. i certainly dont hate trans people, though i may express frustration with some of their ideology at times. i use the pronouns people ask me to use because i fundamentally believe in respect for people and their humanity, which contains nuances i may not always personally grasp. i empathize deeply with the struggles that many trans people report

my opposition to “gender ideology” (which i admit is a term radfems and conservatives alike tend to throw around without a clearly consolidated definition) stems from an acknowledgement of the material reality of sex-based oppression. it is the sole quality that unifies the experiences of women worldwide. womens’ expression of gender is not the source of universal female oppression because gender varies so much from culture to culture and from woman to woman

in my time being very pro-trans—which had been practically since i became politically conscious—i was presented with and espoused what was basically the idea of a “gender essence” that people had, which determined their identification with a gender identity. however, since becoming interested in feminist theory, that idea became clearly “problematic” (for lack of a better word) in its perpetration to traditional gender roles which assign “feminine traits” to xx chromosomes and is used to justify women’s oppression. “gender” since time immemorial has been used to tie an immaterial dimension to sex that solidifies spiritual and ideological misogyny. it dissociates women from their material state as humans

there is something very attractive about the promise of gender-fluidity. we can be men one day and women the next, whenever we feel associated with one side or the other. but this is a denial of the historical reality of sex and the material present for so many worldwide. women do not “feel” female, by and large, they simply accept it as a layer of their existence, in the same way i am latina and cannot deny it. “latina” identity may be very nuanced, and i may agree with people who reject the label, but it is an immutable facet of my being that has real implications

i detest gender. i detest the expectations of it, the roles i am forced into by it, and i wish to abolish it. but that does not entail a dismissal of sex, for, just like any other variable dimension of biology, it has implications on my existence. to deny it would be escapist and counter-productive

i realize many trans rights activists wish for the abolition of gender as well (i used to be one, after all). i disagree with their approach to gender abolition, which seems contradictory to me, but i can still discuss that with them as it’s clear so many of us share a common goal

there is much more i could say concerning the material implications of “gender ideology,” especially concerning the predatory nature of “big pharma” (as it’s so lovingly called) toward transgender people. however, like i said, it’s 10pm and im sure youve heard the arguments. i hope this makes sense and familiarizes you with sincere gender criticism, which is truly more nuanced than so many seem to think

[ileftherbackhome]

Let me make something abundantly clear to all terfs and transphobic bigots, your argument comes down to conservatives are right about sex and no matter how much you try and say that your ideology differs from conservative ideology, it doesn't.

Here's why:

There is nothing in our biology that makes names, pronouns, or articles of clothing, length of hair or hormones inherently masculine or feminine. Both sexes have the ability to make both sets of "sexed" items, so really all transition is doing is inverting the balance of the dominant hormone in a person's biology to overcome their final sex chromosome.

If you knew how sex worked in humans, you'd know that it's your last sex chromosome that determines the expression of certain sex organs or features. I think that's how it works in all animals, but don't quote me on that I don't have a special interest in animal biology. But I know for humans, all our "sex" features are found in somatic chromosomes. Testicle production (which is just having external ovaries) is found on chromosome 17 (? I'm highly af right now) which means both males and females have the ability to produce testicles. The X chromosome suppresses the external representation of that gene and makes it internal to make ovaries and the final sex chromosomes determines whether or not gene 17 stays off indefinitely or turns back on to produce the testicle gene.

Evolutionarily speaking, nature tends to evolve in such a way that males have to fight to exist naturally. Like nature really hates having males come into existence and usually if a species is alive long enough, the males become biologically unnecessary. Anyways. Back to basic biology 601.

Nothing in our sex chromosomes is unique to one gender. All our sex chromosomes do is affect the expression of somatic genes in our body. Which means that ALL humans have the ability to present male or female, which is why scientists are classifying humans as sexually monomorphic now. Because they are realizing more and more how our culture affects our sexual expression and how studies show facial dimorphism for ex is location based which means that the only thing that males and females for sure have different in our phenotypical forms is our pelvices and that can be explained by structure function, not mate selection so it's not sexual dimorphism.

Theoretically, all species should have pelvic differences between the sex that carries vs the sex that impregnates because duh that makes sense why it'd be different if u hold a baby versus not. It doesn't mean it was selected by the opposite sex because it's physically appealing ? That doesn't make any sense which is what sexual dimorphism describes btw. PHENOTYPICAL differences between sexes selected through mating.

So, anyways, males are also only 15% bigger on average and many studies show that women can outperform men in gaining muscle mass, especially because of cultural history. Like black women were enslaved and forced to work manually, so they naturally have higher testosterone levels then both white men and women do because there was a genetic need for their sex hormones to naturally deviate from the white genetic needs of hormone levels between sexes. So black women have a greater ability to gain muscle mass than white men do in america especially. But even if we look through a fatphobic lens, black women were sexually selected by their mates to naturally have bigger ass and breasts and so in order to gain a lot of mass in your gluteus maximus muscles, you'd need to have more testosterone available since we know that the two are linked. So yeah, there are many different cultural lens that affect the expression of sex chromosomes because we know epigenetics is real and verifable by the science. And we know colonization was a huge environmental threat to black people but also to poor and uneducated white folks since they get exploited as through via capitalism and the side effects of harmful and restrictful narratives and ideals is that everybody has to adhere to them because we lead by example as a species and these ideas wouldn't have gained traction if people didn't think they were good ideas to spread.

But I've gone too far into sex production and I probably lost a lot of people but oh well, my point is this: nothing in those genes say that a human has to abide by certain group of names, pronouns, words or adjectives, nor do they have to present themselves in a certain way by dressing or not dressing in certain garments. Like, you can pinpoint on what gene testicle production is located (gene 17) but nowhere does that gene say that these testicle must use the name "Mitchell" instead of "Vanessa," or must use the word "man" to describe themselves.

Like, language is inherently abstract and is thought to be the reason for human dominance in the global ecosystem of nature. Often, our ability to self determine is linked to our ability to create sounds that make up words that are stand ins for not only concrete concepts like "grass" but abstract concepts like "atoms" or "sex chromosomes" or "love" or "quantum physics" or "money" or "names". Even clothing is a social construct, animals do not wear clothes and if they did they wouldn't fucking care about the genitals inside the article if clothing lmfao.

But you see where I'm getting at, in order to claim a person with a penis cannot go by feminine names, use feminine nouns to describe themselves or wear feminine things and participate in feminine culture, you are saying that there is something inherently feminine about all of these things, something in our biology that requires us to do these things and ONLY us to do these things.

This is why you agree with conservatives on sex, no matter how much you complain that "actually we believe women can do whatever they want, except for [insert traditionally masculine thing here] because that goes against her biology but other than that, women can do whatever they want."

Except for use the name Michael, use man to describe themselves, or cut off their boobs because they don't want them apparently? Like WHY can't a person with a vagina do these things? What makes it off limits for them to do these things?

This is why nobody but bigots agree with you, because your gender ideology isn't radical AT ALL but more of the old regurgitated bullshit we've heard for decades. You're not radical and you don't wish to "abolish" gender because if you did, you wouldn't give a fuck if a vagina calls himself Kyle.

This is why real gender abolitionists hate you, because nothing you're advocating for is radical or progressive. It's more of the same old shit, yall can't give me a reason for why a vagina having person must go by feminine names or feminine pronouns because there is no reason other than "I want them to" if there is truly nothing women can't do that men can, then that includes using the word man to describe themselves.

Like, why do yall care so fucking much about making sure people with penises use penis approved things and people with vaginas use vagina approved things? Why can't all bathrooms be gender neutral? Why can't all sports be divided by weight class instead of gender? Why can't locker rooms be gender neutral? What is so wrong with being naked or pressed up platonically against members of the opposite sex?

Maybe if you stop treating penises like dirty, loaded guns that could go off at any given time and who must be isolated and cut off from the rest of society, then maybe we could actually get rid of rape culture. If you normalize this belief, why would expect little penis havers to grow up and not fulfill the societal expectations set for them?

Like, it's social psych 101 honestly. If you treat a group like a threat, eventually they will become a fucking threat. Like there is nothing in the terf ideology that differs from conservative ideology, except for the fact that yall are implicit sexists instead of explicit ones.

[itsbansheebitch]

The only fundamental difference between male and female humans is a single phenotype. There is no difference between male and female minds (excluding evolutionary psychology, but that doesn't effect your decisions as much as you'd think it does). When there ARE differences it is usually because of 1. Their personality/preferences/etc, 2. The expectations that society places on them, or 3. Their personal life experiences.

There is no meaningful difference between anatomy either. The only differences you can see with the naked eye are usually because of 1. Body type, 2. The size of male vs female pelvises, 3. ethnic features and different facial structure, 4 genetics and evolutionary differences (Example: people who come from ancestors who drank milk to survive famine are less likely to be lactose intolerant), or 5. surgery or the way clothes fall on their body.

If you say that men are "animalistic" in any way you deny them accountability. It's saying "that's just the way men are" or "they can't help themselves" just in pink wrapping paper labeled "totally a feminist."

We are pretty much all the same so it makes no sense that you would take away the ability for someone to be held accountable just because they have a different (or same) phenotype as you.

Actions have consequences and consequences require accountability. If you strip someone of their humanity, they can't take accountability. To strip someone of their humanity is inhumane and counterproductive AT BEST.

This is coming from someone who has trauma associated with men, btw. I feel your pain, but it's always better to learn how to be kind to the good men in your life instead of stripping away their humanity. Just like all women are different, all men are different also. You take the good with the bad. They are fundamentally inseparable. You can't pick and choose other people's behavior, so you might as well be as kind as you can.

TERFs hold and go to nazi rallys, I scrape together cash to go to therapy. We're built different

Kindness is "just biology."

Freindly reminder that you can't hate men without being queerphobic. You can't think men are inherently more dangerous, violent or sexual, or any of the other things people say about men without being inherently queerphobic.

You can't think these things about men without branding mlm as outsiders who will always be unwholesome and dangerous without women to "civilize" them.

You can't think these things about men without thinking of wlw who are more masculine as being inherently lesser for being like men.

You can't think these things about men without making most transfems seem suspect for having masculine traits, or forcing trans women to prove themselves female enough to be valid.

You can't think these things about men without telling transmascs that they are inherently degrading themselves by transitioning, or forcing them to deny their transition to be supported.

You can't think these things about men without basically calling all enbies female, and then calling all masc enbies dangerous.

You can't think these things about men without easing aspec men and/or calling their identities into question.

You can't think these things about men without basically telling intersex people they don't exist, and making intersex women feel lesser for having male traits.

If you hate men you will hate every letter in the LGBTQIA for having traits in common with men. Feminism that views men as the enemy will inevitably be Feminism only for cishet women.

[renthony]

May i ask what types of things were different that you found in intersex vs trans spaces?

I say all the following with the caveat that this has been my personal experience. I don't intend to make "everything is always like this in every trans and/or intersex space" blanket statements. There are perfectly lovely trans spaces, there are intersex spaces with a long way to go. It's not black-and-white. It's complex, and I'm only one person with one person's lived experience.

That said:

The biggest general difference I've experienced between trans spaces and intersex spaces is the fixation on birth assignment.

Trans spaces get a very frustrating laser-focus on "AMAB vs AFAB," even toward nonbinary people, and there's a big trend toward ranking the different "kinds" of transphobia. There's been a lot of discussion around tumblr lately on the topic, but I haven't seen very many people point out that it is extremely, aggressively, inherently intersexist.

There is an entire category of discourse circulating tumblr that seems to boil down to "one sex is more oppressed than the other sex, and we're going to argue endlessly about which one it is. Also there are only two Real Sexes and intersex people are actually part of whatever sex they Look Most Like. No, I don't know what the phallometer is."

Meanwhile, my experience in intersex spaces has been much more, "we really don't care about your AGAB, because it was incorrect and doesn't have any inherent bearing on your biology or lived experiences in the slightest." Far, far fewer assumptions get made about my anatomy in intersex spaces, and I've never felt like I'm being passively ranked according my (assumed) AGAB, unlike in plenty of trans spaces where my AGAB gets treated like it should be on my nametag right beside my pronouns.

I've also seen a major difference in the way dysphoria gets discussed. Any sort of "born in the wrong body" narrative is incredibly alienating to me, because I wasn't born in the wrong body, I was just born in my body. Obviously that narrative is alienating to a lot of trans people as well, but it feels doubly alienating as an intersex person in a way I struggle to articulate.

In general, any sort of "transfemmes experience this sort of body stuff, transmascs experience that sort of body stuff" is alienating. I have a mix of traits and experiences that don't match either binary sex, but people try to use "biology" to cram you into a binary even in trans spaces.

If I ever speak up and talk about ways I relate to transfemme people, suddenly it turns into "shut up, theyfab," and if I talk about ways I relate to transmasc people, I start getting misgendered and crammed into the "transmasc" label against my will. I'm not transmasc or transfemme; I'm intersex and nonbinary, and my AGAB tells you absolutely nothing about my anatomy.

I've had trans guys taking testosterone give me "advice" because they assume I'm on HRT when I'm not. I've had trans women do the exact same thing. Even in trans spaces, it is a persistent problem that people hyper-analyze my body to figure out which binary box to cram it into. This happens even in nonbinary spaces, because "AFAB nonbinary" and "AMAB nonbinary" have been set up as yet another rigid binary, even by other nonbinary people.

In trans spaces, I have the experience of other trans people trying to guess my AGAB based on things like my facial hair or my shoulders or my hips or my feet or my neck width or any of the other tiny minuscule attributes that, to be perfectly honest, are the same things that terfs like to point out when they climb into my comments to call me slurs.

(Notably it seems to be only other white trans people doing this. I have never had a trans PoC do this to me as far as I can recall. So it's worth noting how much of this is specifically grounded in white Eurocentric ideas of gender.)

Basically, trans spaces have a real problem in the way they weaponize AGAB discourse. Intersex spaces, less so. I won't say it never happens, it just seems way less common in my experience.

Though BOY HOWDY is there some rancid discourse in intersex spaces over "what counts" as intersex. But that's another post entirely, and a topic I ain't touchin' with a ten-foot pole.