#topic: terf ideology

[sweetfessions]

ngl a lot of the popular editblr people are lowkey parotting terf ideology but idk thats probably just me

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[ex-foster]

Story time.

When I spoke to the Vancouver rape crisis center (Canada's longest standing rape crisis center that got defunded by trans activists because they exclusively hire women), they told me that the majority of the women they service there had histories in the foster care system (just like myself).

This very same Vancouver rape crisis center was vandalized by trans activists repeatedly. Trans activists wrote death threats to "terfs" on their walls. On a separate occasion there was a dead rat nailed to their door.

It is absolutely essential for women to be able to escape male violence.

What really makes me angry about trans activism is that it is so painstakingly obvious that dangerous and sexually deviant men are prioritized over vulnerable women.

Although people who subscribe to trans activism tend to believe that they are protecting some of the most vulnerable members of society, women who aged out of foster care are among the most vulnerable members of society and the general attitude towards us vs trans identied men is abhorrent. Women with sexual trauma (a characteristic that often overlaps experiences in foster care) are gaslit into believing that they are irrational for fearing men who openly pose a threat to women. Not only do these men demand access to our vulnerable spaces but they threaten us with graphic assault which often takes on a sadistic sexual theme. "Terf" is simply a witch hunt and it disproportionately targets the most vulnerable women - like women who need access to rape crisis centers or domestic violence shelters.

I'm so done with "TERFs" being outed everywhere and excluded from groups we SHOULD NOT be excluded from. Everyone picks trans women over women who want the world to be a safe place for us. How ironic is that?

[hestiasroom]

About six months after I stopped identifying as transgender, I waded into the discourse on Twitter. I began by following other “detransitioners” and expanded from there. When you speak as someone who is critical of sex-trait modification, you end up attracting all different kinds of people. 

You attract radical feminists, who have been railing against the concept of “gender identity” and discussing its impact on the rights of women for decades. 

You attract parents of trans-identifying children, who are desperately seeking answers regarding an intervention that is being pushed on people younger and younger. 

You attract concerned health care professionals, who see something dangerous happening within the medical system and want to correct it. 

You attract social conservatives, who want to maintain traditional values that have guided society for many years. 

You attract people whose values come from religion – also traditional, but with perhaps more of an emphasis on morality and spiritual well-being. 

You attract gay men and lesbian women, whose orientation is challenged by an ideology which posits that “homosexual” can mean attraction to both sexes (so long as the opposite sex has a special identity). 

And you attract what might be termed old-school transsexuals, who tend to frame sex-trait modification exclusively as a treatment for “gender dysphoria” and who are discontented with the mainstream trans rights movement.

(...and I certainly haven’t named every kind of person you may attract.)

Together, these people make up what social justice leftists have taken to calling the “anti-gender movement” (e.g., see Wikipedia for a biased explanation). They tend to give the impression that everyone in the “movement” has a common goal and common values. This simply isn’t true. Many of these people don’t even consider each other allies. Radical feminists often won’t work with social and religious conservatives due to conflicting opinions on abortion, for example.

I was fresh out of social justice culture when I joined Twitter and highly critical of what I’d just left behind – not just the ideology around transgenderism, but around leftist identity politics as a whole. I’d watched as people with certain “marginalized” identities were given credibility and authority, and bad faith actors weaponized those identities in order to gain power and abuse others. The result was a movement full of narcissistic leaders who could not be criticized, lest you be deemed a bad person and ex-communicated. (Note: I’ve observed the same dynamics in parts of the “anti-gender movement.”)

I was still calling myself a leftist at this time, though. I was simply a dissident leftist instead. To me, “left” was progressive (and therefore correct), and I still wanted to be seen as a “good” person. I didn’t want my friends to think I was “transphobic,” just that I had concerns that should be taken seriously. I also wanted to remain in touch with my friends who were still transitioned; I hoped that if they ever changed their minds one day, they could come to me.

If your goal is to reach the left on the topic of sex-trait modification, then using identity politics to your advantage might be a decent strategy. Because of this, I was quite willing to work with heterodox transsexuals early on. These are primarily people who were satisfied with their own “treatments,” but believed that medical professionals needed to re-adopt the restrictions that once existed, particularly for people under the age of 18. They also tended to emphasize “gender dysphoria” as a medical condition in need of treatment rather than the mainstream emphasis on “gender identity” as a natural human variation.

I believe this remains what is considered a “moderate” view for most: that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their sex traits chemically and surgically modified and who must live in the “gender role” of the opposite sex or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

This is now exactly as convincing to me as the idea that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their legs amputated and live as disabled people or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

That is to say, it is no longer convincing to me at all.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post during which, in part, I defended transsexuals in the movement. I described the concerns people had — “the very act of existing as an ‘out’ transsexual is seen as ‘promoting’ an unhealthy lifestyle” — with some reservations. I also argued that “detransitioning” isn’t accessible for every person and that “having transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement is — I think — important.”

I no longer have reservations about those concerns (I now agree that being an “out” transsexual is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle), and I disagree with my former beliefs (I think “detransition” is often more accessible than people are willing to admit, and I don’t think it’s necessarily “important” to have transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement).

Because this is a departure from things I’ve said in the past, I think it deserves a well-thought-out explanation.

I also want to acknowledge that there is no way to write this that will not be taken as condescending to “happy” transsexuals, in the same way that telling people who believe they have an incongruent gender identity that they are wrong will be taken as condescending, and in the same way that telling someone who is reliant on alcohol that they need to go to rehab will be taken as condescending.

My intention is not to force anyone to “detransition.” I have a right to my opinion about someone’s actions (in this case, their choice to medicalize and present themselves as the opposite sex). That is not the same thing as imposing on their behaviour. We all have free will.

My intention is also not to force anyone to disassociate themselves from individual transsexuals. My criticisms are primarily with medicalization and secondarily with how transsexuals try to justify it for themselves. I believe these people are victims of “gender medicine” as much as I am — not necessarily “bad” people, but people who are fundamentally self-harming.

My intention is twofold: to provide an opinion on a specific medical and psychosocial intervention and its effects, based on everything I have seen — not only in the past three years, but since I started “questioning my gender” fifteen years ago; and to explain why I have changed my mind about presenting “happy” transsexuals as role models just because they’re telling minors to wait.

You may have assumed that, after three years involved in the discourse and a lot of exposure to dissident transsexuals, I would have begun to accept that there were indeed people who truly benefited from the intervention. The opposite is true. The more I met, the less convinced I became. Many give the outward appearance of “successfully” living in an opposite-sex “gender role” while quietly having difficulties in their personal lives that have been caused or exacerbated by chemically and surgically altering their bodies and trying to live in an opposite-sex “gender role.”

But it wasn't only meeting transsexuals that changed my mind. It was also meeting detransitioners.

My personal story is very much one born of social influence. I was a tomboy my whole life (save for a feminine phase in my teens), but I did not have any distress around my gender when I was young. I was different from other girls, but I was also different from other children in general. Not like the girls, but not necessarily like the boys either.

When I stopped identifying as transgender, I very quickly stopped believing that anyone was “born in the wrong body,” but I did think it was possible that some people were benefiting from medicalization — perhaps some rare cases who have had persistent dysphoria their entire lives, as most of these “old school” transsexuals said they did. 

Then I started meeting detransitioners whose stories were literally the exact same… and who still realized the whole thing was bullshit. I also met people who had what could be termed childhood dysphoria but who were managing it without medicalizing.

And I just can’t ignore it anymore.

I have framed sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism for a long time. Medicalization does not “cure” one’s distress around being male or female in the same way that antidepressants don’t cure depression. It may alleviate distress, but if you can never stop medicalizing, the problem has not actually been resolved.

One of the traps of sex-trait modification, though, is that you often feel more distress the further into it you get. A TikTok video recently made rounds on Twitter of a man explaining exactly this: that every step he took in changing his body fed his desire to change more. (“Some things I have dysphoria about now that I never had before.”) At first, he only wanted his face to change, but the feeling of being “affirmed” spurred him on. He used to be okay with being androgynous, but now he wants to be able to “pass” seamlessly as a woman.

He frames this as having his experience “evolve” through the process when, if you take a step back, the treatment is clearly exacerbating his distress. First, he is convinced that he is not a man. Then, as he begins obscuring his biological sex (e.g., softening of skin, growing breast tissue, etc.), each step he takes that makes him look more “female” (to him) gives him a little thrill. Then the thrill wears off, he becomes more anxious and desperate regarding the traits giving away that he is male, and he starts looking for a new “embodiment goal.”

If that sounds a bit like an addiction, it’s because it is. He is psychologically reliant on being affirmed in his delusion that he is a woman. It’s masking something else for him. Whether it’s internalized homophobia, a paraphilic disorder, or something else entirely, I don’t know. But it is not healthy for him.

The transsexuals who boast that medicalization “worked” for them are, essentially, high-functioning addicts. They may have gotten lucky with surgery results; they may be holding regular employment; they may still have their families; their lives may not have fallen apart. But they are still psychologically reliant on being affirmed.

They’ll try to convince you they’re not, though. They may claim they don’t care what pronouns you use for them… then become upset or accuse you of being “disrespectful” when you use sex-based ones. They may acknowledge they aren’t actually the opposite sex… then continue to use the opposite-sex washroom.

Some seem to think that, if they say the right things, they will be entitled to special privileges. And other people are indeed falling for this! If someone says “use whatever pronouns you like,” they will often get their preferred pronouns. (“I respect her pronouns because she gave me a choice.” No, you got manipulated, and he knew exactly what he was doing.)

They often try to separate themselves out from other people who identify as “trans” by pointing out those who have clearly been socially influenced as “fake,” condemning over-the-top bad behaviour, and mocking people who don’t “pass.” This is all done to create the illusion that there are “real” transsexuals: the ones who were not influenced online, who behave appropriately, and who blend in seamlessly. (And by the way, mocking people who don’t “pass” often coerces them into medicalizing if they haven’t.)

Ultimately, they want to be coddled the same way TRAs expect to be coddled. They won’t insist that “trans women are women,” but they will insist that there are “true” transsexuals or that transition “works” for some people, and if you don’t agree with them, well, you’re transphobic — or at least an extremist of some kind. I mean, it’s a black-and-white take, isn’t it?

But “men can never be women” is also a black-and-white take.

Sometimes the truth isn’t “nuanced.” And sometimes it is very uncomfortable.

I don’t believe there are “real” transsexuals. I don’t even believe “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate condition anymore. Distress is merely a symptom with varying causes, none of which is “incongruence” between one’s sex and one’s identity, and none of which should be “treated” by helping someone dissociate from their body and denying reality.

What there are, are people who altered their bodies and decided it was worth the risks. I’m not saying they aren’t happy; I’m saying they aren’t healthy. Messing with your endocrine system and removing healthy body parts to assuage your troubled mind is objectively a bad idea. 

So what’s the draw here? Why are “happy” old-school transsexuals so invested in the “anti-gender movement”?

I don’t believe most of them are primarily interested in stopping harm from happening to others. Instead, I believe they’re scrambling to try and protect themselves. They don’t want to lose access to their addiction, whether it be exogenous hormones or their ability to quietly enter opposite-sex spaces, and the complete insanity of the mainstream trans rights movement has put that access under threat.

Most of them focus almost exclusively on criticizing pediatric sex-trait modification, because anyone with half a brain knows that chemically altering the sex traits of children, sterilizing them, and/or cutting off their healthy body parts in service of a psychiatric condition is entirely unethical. Restricting access until the age of 18 is the easiest position to take while still ensuring that medicalization will be available to them as adults.

This doesn’t make them good role models, though. How can they be? “Hey kids, transition was the right thing for me, I can’t live without it, but you have to wait until you’re 18.” Like telling kids not to do drugs while smoking crack.

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Claiming that sex-trait modification “worked” for you is still proposing it as a viable option. It is still marketing for the gender industry. Telling children to wait until they’re 18 is not solving the problem. If these kids think there are “real” transsexuals, they will be convinced that they are one themselves. It is doing nothing for children, except maybe guaranteeing that they’ll show up at a Planned Parenthood looking for hormones on their 18th birthday — and some of the transsexuals in the movement quite openly have no problem with that. It doesn’t matter if the kid’s been brainwashed their entire childhood.

Indeed, many of my clashes with the purported “good ones” have been over the fact that I don’t believe sex-trait modification should be offered as a medical treatment at any age.

One seemed surprised when I got hostile with him after he told a detransitioned woman that there was nothing wrong with the fact that she’d gotten a testosterone prescription from Planned Parenthood after a single 30-minute phone call as an adult. (“I support detransitioners; I’m on your side.” If you’re in support of doing away with safeguarding for adults, we are not on the same side.)

Some have conceded that there appeared to be negligence in my case, but others have thrown the good old “take some personal responsibility” line at me when I said that what happened to me simply should not have happened. 

Perhaps unsurprising to many, a couple of these “reasonable” transsexuals have come off as manipulative narcissists after I got to know them privately.

And one more inconvenient fact to point out before moving on…

Most of these transsexuals are same-sex attracted. This inadvertently pushes the message to young gays and lesbians that medicalizing our gender non-conformity is “good” for some of us.

One of the strongest messages we have is that medicalization is often “transing the gay away.” How do we square that with putting mastectomized lesbians and castrated gay men up as examples of “real” transsexuals for whom medicalization “worked”?

We don’t. Absolutely not.

As someone recovering from medicalization, I have struggled to process while around people who are actively engaging in and singing the praises of the thing that irreversibly altered my life for the worse. It’s annoying, to say the least. For others, though, it’s dangerous.

Those who have acknowledged sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism and are trying to figure out how to disengage with it as much as possible are, essentially, addicts in recovery. Whether the addiction continues to affect them, and how much, differs from person to person. The detrans subreddit often has people saying that they’re “jealous” of those who continue to medicalize or that they’re constantly thinking about “re-transitioning” (in other words, relapsing).

By definition, “high-functioning” addicts are rather stable. They make medicalization look good, but it’s a false front. They give off the impression that everything is fine even though they don't have control over the addiction and are creating health issues for themselves. (This false front doesn’t only influence young people who think they are born in the wrong body, but also influences people in recovery. It’s tempting to plug yourself back into the Matrix rather than face reality.)

Contrarily, those newly in recovery are extremely unstable. They recognize they have a problem, their worlds have been pulled out from under them, and they are often trying to completely rebuild their lives from scratch. If they seem more erratic than high-functioning transsexuals, it’s because one of these groups is upheaving their lives to live in reality and restore their health, and the other is not. 

If a “transsexual” and a “detransitioner” held mirrors up to each other, we would both see ourselves.

Every “transsexual” is a potential “detransitioner.” Every “detransitioner” was once a “transsexual.”

I am done with the pretense that the “good ones” are separate and apart from everyone else who has undergone the same intervention. My story may not be your story, but your story is invariably the story of one of my friends.

I said at the beginning that I cannot tell anyone what to do. But if your question is actually “well, what would you have me do?” this is my answer: stop going by a name that traditionally invokes the opposite sex; stop requesting “preferred” pronouns; stop presenting yourself in a way that explicitly intends to deceive others about your sex; and stop telling people that sex-trait modification is “good.”

I have compassion for every person who has irreversibly altered their body and does not know how to move forward. Some people will continue to be mistaken for the opposite sex for the rest of their lives, and not every moment has to be a teaching moment. I don’t expect anyone to be “correcting” strangers every single time. I certainly don’t. 

My alternate answer, which I imagine people of all stripes will not like, is to stop being “out” and go stealth. You might not be living in reality, but you shouldn’t be influencing others to do the same.

I was originally willing to work with transsexuals because I thought it would be more convincing to the left. I thought if I could reference “reasonable” transsexuals who believed the same thing I did, that people might listen to my arguments. It turns out that identity politics doesn’t work that well for dissident transsexuals. They just get accused of being self-loathing instead of being taken seriously.

It didn’t matter that transsexuals agreed with me. I didn’t convince anyone to listen. I made compromises that both disturbed my recovery and alienated people who would have otherwise agreed with me, and I still ended up losing my existing friends.

Many moderates have decided that they must work with transsexuals on this matter for the same reason I did. They think it gives legitimacy to their arguments. Again, I recognize that this is a strategy some will continue to employ and that I will not be able to stop them from doing so.

The curse of being "moderate" is that you end up alienating both sides of the debate. The "moderate" orgs I've been involved with have a high turnover rate. It's not hard to figure out why. Trying to compromise with extremes is very stressful. Even people within the orgs can't agree on which compromises to make.

It's certainly not an enviable position to be in.

I'm solo from here on out.

My writing will always be free to read. If you’re interested in supporting me financially, please donate to my fundraiser, which will allow me to cover costs associated with my legal action: https://www.givesendgo.com/michellealleva. Thank you.

[velvetvexations]

Hey, legit question from someone trying to approach transandrophobia discourse in good faith. It seems to me that a lot of the disagreements on this topic are centred on the idea of whether or not trans men and transmascs have male privilege. I get where the pushback on this comes from, as many transmascs have lived a good percentage of their lives in the closet, where society treated them like cis women.

However, if we say that they don't have male privilege because they were raised to be women, aren't we implying that trans women do have male privilege because they were raised to be men? Cos that's terf ideology 101.

Acknowledging that gay men have privilege over gay women isn't saying that gay men have it easy, or that they aren't oppressed for being gay (I assume you don't disagree with this?) So why is saying the same thing about trans men different?

Trans women don't have male privilege on account of them being trans women, They grasp for what trans men are tainted with from birth. It's super not that complicated but people keep not getting it because they see someone say "I like pancakes" and read "I hate waffles."

Misogyny affects women and people perceived to be women. I can't vibe with this bizarre alternate universe other people live in where someone just has to say "I'm a man" to get others to stop treating them misogynistically! People will really come out here and say that transitioning towards manhood is looked upon with reverence, as though men oppress women until one decides they'd like to be on top themselves at which point they roll out the red carpet and pop bottles congratulating them on choosing to be the superior gender.

[euniexenoblade]

Anyways, baeddel is a slur against trans women.

Yes, there once was a weird group of girls who ressurected this long dead word for representing an ideology (I'm not getting into it but it did suck, just not cuz they "hated" men). This group self destructed before ever getting that many people. It was small. A tiny group. Their ideology wasn't popular either.

But, truscum, anti-sjws (conservatives by another name) and hate sites like kf would start to use the term to refer to any trans woman that they decided wasn't "trans enough" or "woman enough" or more importantly, was "too political" (ie talks about transmisogyny, talks about feminism, talks about leftism, etc.). Baeddel became a stand in for "tranny" "faggot," it's the trans woman stand in for the "nasty man hating dyke" sentiment.

Now, a small niche group of trans mascs on Tumblr dot com have created this concept that the baeddels didn't self destruct, apparently they actually are this insanely popular group whose ideology has spread into modern LGBT politics and has "poisoned" everything. This is just a lie. The baeddels group never had enough members to spread that much, the group didn't last long enough, and it was almost entirely located on Tumblr. The people with "baeddel" in their url or bio or whatever these days have no connection to the political group of old, it's a reclaiming of a word used against them, as explained in the third paragraph.

If someone is calling trans women "baeddels" or talking about baeddels in their posts or whatever, they're just calling trans women faggots. It's "gay agenda," but for the transmisogynists. This is a small bit of why I can't take the "transandrophobia is real" crowd seriously. I knew actual baeddels, the ideological ones, they are not the women they're referring to. They are using a slur to refer to trans women they don't like and are trying to hide it behind some dead ideology that most of them don't even know.

Baeddel is meant to be a scary word, it's meant to silence women. Just like, 5 or 6 years ago, claiming a trans woman was a baeddel was enough to effectively get her "canceled," no matter what she said. But, that doesn't work as easily now. And now these trans masc people are getting information from terfs and lesbophobes and violent transmisogynists about how violent trans women are, about how privileged trans women are, about how transmisogyny is actually fake ("we all experience transmisogyny!") and they did this by lacing it with actual trans masc issues. They present an issue trans mascs do actually face, that could use discussion, and then in the very next post talk about the scary baeddels, the mean baeddels, trans women are so terrible. And these people assume this person can't have an ulterior motive, reblog it, file it away in their brain, so when trans women come in and are like "hey no that's bigotry" these trans mascs froth at the mouth to eviscerate her. It's the dreaded baeddel. Here to oppress me.

I'm going off topic but I digress, if you're calling trans women "baeddel," stop it. You don't know what that word means.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I know everything that can be said on this topic has been said to death and no one but Jews will ever acknowledge it but it is still absolutely infuriating how every brand of gentile from every part of the political spectrum has collaborated to turn the word "Nazi" into a generic word for "fascist" or "bad person" or "person I don't like." Nazism isn't just fucking fascism and it isn't a synonym for bad person. It's a specific ideology that is centered at its root around blaming Jews for every problem in the world and wanting to exterminate them.

No, generic racist Republicans are not "Nazis." No, TERFs are not "Nazis." No, your crappy corrupt European leader is not a "Nazi." No, cops are not "Nazis." You know why they aren't Nazis? Because their entire ideology and behavior, as harmful as it may be to certain groups, is not centered around hating JEWS.

Nazism is an ideology centered around hating JEWS. Other people and groups may be caught in the crossfire, but ultimately, a Nazi's goal is to exterminate Jews, and you cannot just ignore that! I read a 12 paragraph essay yesterday written by a gentile analyzing the reasons people in Nazi Germany flocked to Nazism, and antisemitism wasn't mentioned as a motivation even once! They thought it was all because of gender norms and sexual repression! Oh my god!

The comfort with which gentiles have near universally divorced Nazism from antisemitism in colloquial speech is a direct precursor to the separation of Nazism from antisemitism in academic discourse. It's a direct predecessor to the rise of institutionalized antisemitism that we are seeing happen in real time now, because you have all gotten so used to appropriating Jewish trauma and Jewish oppression to the extent that you have convinced yourselves it isn't even uniquely real. That antisemitism doesn't exist as a specific bigotry that stands on it's own, that antisemitism is always some kind of footnote tied to some other, more important form of oppression. Do you think that Jews don't see what is happening here, that we don't see the deliberate generalization of Jew hatred and appropriation of the language we can use to refer to it? Jewish trauma becomes everyone's trauma, Jewish oppression becomes everyone's oppression, and soon enough the world at large has stolen the language of Jewish oppression right out of our mouths, until huge swaths of people can say "Jews are the new Nazis" and not see anything absurd about that at all.

Because you won't. Fucking. Acknowledge. What Nazism actually is. You won't fucking acknowledge that any ideology is specifically targeted at JEWS, and not YOU. Stop it!! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out. Nazism cannot be divorced from antisemitism and the insistence that it not only can be but MUST be by gentiles just shows how deeply ignorant and biased against Jews most of you really are.

[communistkenobi]

this might make me sound ignorant but is the radfem part of term not about hating men? they hate trans people, they hate men and they view both as predatory, obviously men are not their primary targets but I feel like it would be incorrect to say that they don't hate men, especially since many of them believe in gender separatism (which is bs for numerous reasons). it's wrong to bring up men every time someone talks about the transmisogyny terfs spew bc that would be derailing the conversation but can men (trans/cis/whatever) not express how they've been hurt by terfs in their own posts or conversations? apologies if ive completely misinterpreted what you were saying I just want to understand the topic better

I’m not disputing that terfs hate men. However, I think it’s an error to highlight their hatred of men as ideologically significant. Sure they talk about hating men, but their political alliances reveal that dismantling patriarchy, or a desire to oppress men, is not a concern for them, given that they support the criminalisation of sex work, the state enforcement of sex as biologically determined, and are allied with the same right wing groups (such as the Heritage Foundation in the US) that want to criminalise abortion and reinstate “traditional” white western gender norms. If you view terf political goals through the lens of hating men, then their political efforts have overwhelmingly been a massive failure. Which I don’t think is very useful analysis!

A hatred of men is also not politically useful in general, because there is no money to be made or political battles to be won hating men. Hatred of men is not a systemic issue because men are not oppressed as a social group on the basis of their manhood. There is no political or financial infrastructure built on the foundation of hating men, nor is there infrastructure dedicated to maintaining a systemic hatred of men. Hating trans people, however, is extremely financially and politically lucrative, particularly hatred of trans women/transfems, because of how transphobia and misogyny intersect with and reinforce one another. There are ample political, financial, medical, and social institutions that operate on the maintenance of patriarchy, many of which terfs share a political platform with. So terf hatred of men is clearly not that big a deal given how willing they are to ally with right wing groups and fascists, who are the last people on earth to tolerate the oppression of men as a political goal.

This is why people (myself included) take umbrage with the continued insistence that terfs hate men as a central foundation of their beliefs. It’s not incorrect to say that they hate men, but hating men is not the problem with terfs. Hatred of men is not an inherently reactionary position anymore than hating cis people is. The problem is the way terfs conceptualise gender, and the political goals that flow from that conceptualisation, which affects all trans people but primarily affect trans women/transfems. The spectre they raise about bathrooms, about sports, is always the age-old transmisogynistic conspiracy of “a man in a dress” “invading women’s spaces” because the historical legacy of transmisogyny looms large in public consciousness, and reinforced by medical/psychiatric institutions in particular, in a way that hatred and fear of trans men does not (autogynephilia exists as a mental illness but autophallophilia does not, for example. Julia Serrano talks about this in Whipping Girl if you want to read more on the subject). Terfs don’t care about trans men in men’s sports, they don’t raise the counter-spectre of trans men being mass assaulted in bathrooms by cis men who discover that they’re “really women” - these are not rhetorical moves that are interesting or useful to them, because it does not position them as victims. Trans men are hurt by their transphobic rhetoric, suffer under transphobic laws that are passed, and face transphobic discrimination from people in their lives as a result of how mainstream transphobia is (and I am speaking from significant and traumatic personal experience on this front). We are not, however, the face of the transgender boogeyman, and we are not the primary target of terfs. We are targets because we are trans, not because we are men. To be dismissive of the claim that terfs hate men is not a dismissal of the pain and violence transmascs go through, because our oppression is not founded on our manhood.

So when you see terf political efforts and terf rhetoric, their obsessive focus on trans women as arch villains who need to be destroyed, and you come to the conclusion that a hatred of men is the animating force behind terf political activity - that is a transmisogynistic conclusion, both because you are framing their transmisogyny as something that is primarily informed by a hatred of men, and because “terfs hate men” is a non-sequitur in discussions about the political and social damage that their beliefs cause. If terfs hate men, they do so as a hobby, and I don’t really give a fuck about their hobbies

[genderqueerdykes]

Could you explain what being detrans is to me? I can’t find anything besides terf bullshit on the matter. I’m probably looking at it incorrectly but I genuinely don’t understand how someone could fake their gender for years and randomly decide to switch back, from my perspective as someone who’s known their (trans)gender identity since toddlerhood.

hello! yes i can!

detrans people are not "faking" their gender during the time they are transitioning. generally speaking, what happens is a person who thought transition was right for them finds out it is not. not every person who wants to transition or takes HRT finds out that it's right for them- there's no way to predict the changes that come with HRT, even if you're familiar with its effects. hormones affect everyone differently, and maybe someone starts undergoing HRT only to find out that it does not give them the effects its looking for.

many people socially transition and find that they do not being addressed the way they thought they would. many folks find that dressing, sounding and acting certain ways just aren't for them. again, nobody can predict what will happen during transition, and nobody can predict exactly how they would feel if they are seen or addressed by a certain way. sometimes transitioning to a gender that doesn't suit them makes them find an appreciation for another gender that they perhaps previously felt dysphoric or neutral about

many detrans people are actually still trans- many of which being nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, multigender, and more. there are so many reasons why someone may transition, some people even detransition to avoid transphobia. some people transition in very transphobic areas and find the pressure too much, and go back to being stealth or closeted. try not to assume that the person is "faking" anything- it feels real to them at the time. just because someone changes their mind does not mean they were faking anything

identity can and does change. i didn't know i was trans until i was 18 or 19 year old. not everyone figures out they're trans during childhood. i had to be told what the word transgender even was at my local college's pride group. i had never heard it before. this doesn't make me any less of a trans person, nor anyone else. detrans people are human just like anyone else. just because someone doesn't figure out their identity right away doesn't mean they're faking anything. just because someone changes their mind after finding out something wasn't right for them doesn't mean they were faking

there is nothing wrong with being detrans. the terves you see online are a small, vocal minority. in reality, i know many detrans people who are still trans or gender non conforming, way more than i've ever met who have detransitioned and become hateful towards trans folk. the topic deserves to be approached with grace, kindness and respect- it may be worth reading into these subreddits, as opposed to using tumblr for this one. these two subs do not allow transphobia, terf or gender critical ideologies:

r/detransition_support

r/actual_detrans

[hersoftembrace]

Hello. I have never really used tumblr before. I apologize if I have misused tags, or am doing something I shouldn't be, but I need help. I am reaching out to radical feminists / terfs because I need a different opinion for once in my life. I have always avoided these topics or opinions because I grew up with the side of the internet that say radfem ideology is harmful and bigoted, and I carelessly took those opinions. I am only now realizing I should be getting my own opinions, which should've been obvious, but it is difficult for me.

I am AFAB, diagnosed with autism and gender dysphoria, and have ID'ed as a trans man throughout most of my teen years, but now as an adult, I am questioning my transgender identity. I am terrified to admit this to my trans friends, who would likely despise me for even considering asking the opinion of radfems. I have no one to discuss this with in a healthy manner. I am worried my gender identity stems from wanting to escape womanhood, just wanting to start a new life, or to get rid of self-hatred. I notice I often 'wish' I could be a cis lesbian, as if I couldn't, because of the way I chose to identify. I am worried and I am scared I am making wrong decisions. I am worried I am not listening to enough different opinions and making my own. Is there anyone I could maybe talk to? Am I welcome here? I am very sorry.

[superdillin]

Gender! At the Strip Club

How Sex Work Transed my Gender

(but also it's far more complicated than that I just love a punchy headline)

It’s tricky to have a conversation about the realities of sex work in a world that sees things too profoundly in a binary. Admonishing certain realities of it may be misinterpreted as siding with TERF ideology but romanticizing it ignores the complicated intersection of labor exploitation and bodily autonomy inherent to the industry. Because I want to talk about an ultimately positive experience I took away from my time within the industry, I feel that it’s important to start by saying that when people say sex work is work, we mean that it is labor, and needs the support that all laborers need. The workers need organizing power, ownership of the fruits of their labor, and protection from their clients and employers.  

Recognizing the impacts of sex work on my life has been a delayed reaction because ultimately, it was a traumatic time of survival. I spent nearly a decade in Fight or Flight, with no time to analyze what I was experiencing while it was happening. I’m not even blaming the industry for that, because as problematic as it can be, poverty was the true villain, as insecure living situations, unstable work, and working multiple full-time jobs will keep your nervous system in overdrive 24/7. 

So years later, every so often, I find myself with a new lightbulb appearing cartoonishly over my head, drawing another connection from who I am and how I interact with the world today, and how said behavior ultimately originated in a place called Nite Moves, of all things. Some of those behaviors have resolved with time. How I interacted with all cis-men during those years and for a time afterward was undeniably disordered. I inherently distrusted every single one, yet felt like I needed them around at all times for a feeling of safety and security. I kept dangerous men in my life for no good reason. But that went away with time and therapy. Now I distrust cis-men an appropriate amount. (ba dum-tss)

Other things did not resolve with time. My ire for how club owners (often in tandem with security staff) exploit workers and prioritize clients and profits over the safety of dancers? That ire was justified, and all that’s changed now is that I know more about labor organizing, leftist politics and have more context in my belief system to explain why the system is wrong. The other thing that did not resolve is how it made me view myself on the gender spectrum. 

All sex work involves a bit of gender performance, but stripping as a whole is the most hard-line, binary-adjacent area of the industry I’ve dabbled in. Because everyone in the strip club is performing. The dancers are obvious, but if all a client wanted a hot woman to ogle, pornography is cheaper and easier to access. Cam girls can offer you a completely tailored and personalized experience. And no one is more discrete than a full-service worker. Part of why men go to strip clubs is to be perceived in a strip club by other men. It’s a whole gender ritual, even. Half of the men who get taken to these clubs on their birthday or bachelor party have told me in the privacy behind the curtain that they wished they had gone to play pool, camping, or whatever their friend group’s shared interest is. But outside the champagne room, they’re pinching asses,ordering bottle service and getting high-fives for how good they can play this role. 

So, on the converse side of this gender performance, strip clubs tend to encourage the most rigid portrayal of a culturally-accepted femininity, often to the point of a very bad homogenization. On that topic, the lack of racial and body diversity in strip clubs is something people with a better perspective have talked about before, including the Portland Strippers who recently unionized, and the Black Feminisms blog, check those out for more on that perspective. 

So getting ready to work at the average club is not a matter of dressing down and dolling up. You’re trying to fit a very rigid expression of femininity that, if I were a gambling man, would likely not line up with most of the dancers own personal definition of femininity. And the more “high-end” the club, the stricter and more rigid those rules. I’ve seen clubs have restrictions to what the owner thought were the “most feminine” nail polish colors. Hair length mandates. One manager inspected my midsection to make sure it “passed”; if it hadn’t I would be restricted to wearing corset-tops on the floor. 

But for me, it unlocked something personal that I did not expect. I’ve never felt particularly attached to femininity, even when I identified as a woman. Then, I began to appreciate the ritual of putting femininity on as a costume. Once I did, I instantly had an easier time enjoying it. In my subconscious it was clear that this was not me. It was a role, a gimmick I was playing at, and thereby I felt so comfortable indulging in it. The best part, though, was the other ritual at the end of each shift. Taking off the costume, and tucking it away. The blissful comfort I would feel in my own body for the several hours after a shift - no matter what happened that night, no matter how dreadful or dry - I would be reenergized. I literally got to put femininity on like a costume and then take it off again. 

I also found that it shed a light on something interesting about my relationship to girlhood, not just femininity. There are things about girlhood that have always resonated with me in a homey way, sleepover delirium and bar bathroom camaraderie, but those resonances don’t make me feel like any more of a woman. In the strip club, girlhood feels like having an army of girls meet you in the dressing room without you having to ask because they saw how ‘that guy’ was acting, throwing a separate funeral for your friend because none of you would be allowed in at the real one, boycotting a patron who hurt one of you because security refuses to boot him.

I am not a woman. I am trauma-bonded to girlhood from my time spent in the trenches with it. 

I am not a woman. I am whatever is left is left when society’s vision of femininity is shed and packed away.

I am not a woman. But I play a pretty good one when I need to.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

it's annoying how often the progressive response to the topic of inceldom (and misogynistic RW violence as a whole) ends up capitulating to vacuous, aimless encouragement for compassion and self-help. it's so obtuse that it may as well be intentional ploy to further their cause. right wingers are not selling disaffected misogynists a community or a form of self-help, they are nourishing an existing ideology. an ideology that many of these men already see the benefits of in their day to day via the continued existence of patriarchy. a misogynist proclaiming that women's rights have displaced men is stating, in plain terms, that men must consolidate power once more by dominating women. it is not a mere naive and clueless expression of one's alienated social standing. the /ourguy/ shit that allegedly connects these guys exposes itself as entirely superficial when you look at how quickly figureheads and affiliates are dropped for showing weakness. compassion and kindness is something that you can exert, but to actually change someone you need to crush their poisoned ideas about social order that empower them to act as they do. "how do we make leftism more appealing to young men?" beyond being a ridiculous question is an attempt to infuse patriarchal domination into leftist politic by framing politics as lifestyle.

most people tend to see how sheepish the cries for "be kinder, they're struggling" are, but it's near rote repetition when the subject of The Lonely Misogynist come up is nauseating. it's practically asking people (namely women) to forgo the sense that keeps them safe and alive by refusing to call this behaviour out for what it is. what if we extended this much good will to terfs? who by comparison are much more vocal about sustained sexual and interpersonal violence than incels are about the loneliness that many allege they suffer? it would be ridiculous, because they are ultimately weaponizing perceived innocence and victimhood to harm others while advocating for more streamlined systematized violence. as all right wing types do.

[eve-made-the-right-choice]

You know, I get blocked a lot by genderists, and every time they block me, they always send me a me a message specifically asking why I, a “terf,” am following them (in addition to “telling me off”). But I can’t answer, because they blocked me. So I’m gonna answer here:

It’s because you made a good post. Because you said something that spoke to me, or you have lots of good opinions on many different topics, and I want to hear what you have to say. Or because I like your art. And it’s quite likely that I didn’t know you were “queer,” because I don’t obsessively vet blogs before I follow them. And if I DID know that you were “queer,” I was okay with that. Because I believe that it’s healthy and good to expose myself to the opinions of people I disagree with, so I don’t get trapped in an echo chamber. It’s quite likely that I agreed with a lot of the things you had to say.

And I’m gonna be honest, I really don’t understand why you’re messaging me when you’re blocking me. When I block people, it’s because I want to become invisible to them. Say (for example) I blocked a user because I discovered they were a neo-nazi. I know that nazis are dangerous. If I go to their messages and tell them that I’m blocking them, I’ve accomplished three things:

1: I’ve informed them of our conflict, which they may or may not have known about;

2: I’ve made it personal, therefore motivating them to obsess over it, and

3: I’ve drawn attention to my username and helpfully saved it in their messages for them, thereby making it easier for them to stalk me and/or harass me through other accounts, or even even dox me to their nazi friends.

Whereas if I simply block them without messaging them, they may not notice that I’m not showing up in their feed anymore and gradually forget about me. Which is ideal, because dangerous people hold grudges and act on them.

So if you’re messaging “terfs” before blocking them, you’re either:

A) naive about internet safety because you’ve never experienced harassment from dangerous people either personally or through a friend, or

B) simply don’t believe that “terfs” are dangerous.

And let me tell you, as a long-time radical feminist who HAS had friends who were harassed and stalked by dangerous individuals, giving them your attention is a sure-fire way to fuel their hate. Arguing with them makes their hatred worse, and you will never get the last word in because stalkers are fueled by anger. It energizes them, and they like it.

Now don’t worry, this is not a threat. If you’ve sent me a message before blocking me, I’ve already forgotten about you. I don’t have the energy to hold grudges, and I never hated you to begin with. I genuinely believe that most people I disagree with are just average people who are trying to get through their day, and arguing is usually not worth anyone’s time. I’m telling you all of this because, even though I disagree with gender ideology, I don’t want you to endanger yourself by getting the attention of a dangerous individual.

However, if you have been messaging “terfs” before you block them for years and never once experienced retaliation or been afraid of them retaliating, you should take a few minutes to really, I mean really think about why that is.

Best of luck, even though you would never wish me the same.

[euniexenoblade]

Transandrophobia has a major terf problem and frankly that shows that at its core, transandrophobia isn't about "trans men's problems." If it were, it wouldn't have so many terfs at the ready to defend transandrophobia and talks about transandrophobia would not be so heavily dominated by topics about trans women. I'm really imploring transmascs to get out of that community. It is not that your problems do not matter, it's that you're being lied to by grifters. They are feigning interest in your issues to sell you a terf-lite ideology.

[nothorses]

I'm curious, what do TERFs think of TIRFs, do we know? Especially TIRFs who are themselves trans?

I actually asked this same question of an ex-radfem in this post!

What they said is (paraphrasing heavily) essentially that the topic is contentious in TERF spaces; most view them as a detriment to TERF ideology and efforts, and/or just hate them because they tend to be trans women. Some view TIRF ideology as a step along the TERF recruitment rabbit hole.

The person I spoke to for that post also said they personally think that regardless of how TERFs themselves feel, they've seen the way that TIRF ideology spreads a lot of TERF posts within the queer community, and how gleeful TERFs are when that happens. Regardless of how TERFs themselves feel about TIRFs, it seems like TIRFs are helping them anyways.

That said, I recommend reading the full post! It was a super interesting interview, and I learned a lot from it.

[thecolorblockcurator]

I want to talk a little more on this topic of TERFs in art history.

Back a couple of years ago when I came out as trans on here I was surprised at all the hate messages I received. From terfs calling me the usual gender traitor, a confused woman- too old to be trans lol & a lot of other worse things. & a bunch just flooded my inbox announcing how they were disappointed in me & were unfollowing. 🙄

And I was confused why there were so many following me in the first place - after all I was queer- I loved & supported trans folks like how could they have found a home here?

But I unknowingly had been entrenched in terf & radfem ideology in art history I couldn’t see through it. I realized very quickly that Art History is home to a ton of TERFS.

My beloved professors (a few but not all) told us without a doubt that women artists were abused, they were denied, they were ignored, because they were women. They women artists were innately better artists, they had more complex things to say in their art and were more talented at saying them. They were pure, perfect, their stories mattered more than male artists. And history forgot about them so it was our duty to learn and share their work.

These professors would also say that male artists were innately violent, and their art could only ever objectify women. That you could tell an artists gender from heavy aggressive brushstrokes (if they were cis male) or if they were reclaiming their feminine voice with powerful strong brushstrokes (if they were a cis woman) - despite looking like the same exact brushstrokes

How women in art had an almost mystical like understanding of color and form in ways that her male colleagues couldn’t understand

One of my professors who was the loudest radfem taught feminist art history, art in the mid-century, and a couple other classes I forgot. (It’s been like 10 years now) She gave lecture after lecture that the art world was a boys only club. And therefore innately bad and malicious towards women artists. She worked for Helen Frankentaller!! Of course I was going to believe her!! I was paying to learn things from someone who should have been a trusted source why would I have to question them

It wasn’t until I critically listened to what I was repeating that I understood how wrong her views were. How deeply seeded terf ideology was in the art history world.

So those of you persuing art history- think critically & know that the field has unfortunately been a magnet for terfs for a while.

[redditreceipts]

So this is the answer to an ask that @wild-wombytch has sent me, and I chose to answer it in this format because the original ask contains a link to a post that I'd rather not share, to maintain respectful of OP.

Thank you, I'm fine! and cool that you like the cat pictures ❤️ I'll make a separate post for you just containing cat pictures

and thank you so much for saying that! ❤️❤️

yeah, so @wild-wombytch refers to a post that deals with a person who got a tumor from HRT. They have made a post in a mainstream trans subreddit and the people on there got mad at them, because they didn't want to recognise the downsides of HRT:

So this is just a whole other level. People hating on OP because they got a brain tumor is so despicable. These people can rot in hell

(Also, if you want to use my post to make fun of OP for having a brain tumor, enjoy getting blocked 🥰 I try to make this a welcoming place for people who are transitioning, detransitioning or having problems with their medical transition. If you can't handle that, please fuck off)

The specific kind of tumor this person is talking about, a pituitary brain tumor, is (as stated) probably linked to HRT in trans women. This reminds me of the myriad of posts by trans women talking about galactorrhea. Galactorrhea refers to the spontaneous lactation without having given birth or breastfeeding a baby, which can occur in women and men. And what is the most common cause for Galactorrhea?

the most common cause of galactorrhea is a benign tumor in your brain. Even though benign tumors are not as dangerous as cancerous tumors, they can still cause severe dysfunction over time, because they can still grow slowly and compress vital areas of the brain. It's definetly not a topic to be joked about.

I was able to find a ton of "I am spontaneously lactating as a trans woman, is this normal"-posts in the span of seconds. Remember: Galactorrhea, a condition that is most commonly caused by a brain tumor. And what are the responses?

keep in mind: this person probably had not only been lactating, but even had blood in their nipple discarge. Up to a fifth of women who have that sign of discharge have a malignant cause for it - I can't imagine that the prospect for biological males on HRT is much better.

so yeah, instead of telling them to go see their doctor or anything, they link them to r/AdultBreastfeeding - it's a fetish subreddit for people who have a lactation fetish and want to induce lactation.

I mean, a large amount of the stuff I post here is kinda funny and absurd, but if you get a bit deeper in these online echochambers, it gets really dark real quick. Where did we go from "everyone should live their lives as they wish" to "downplaying brain cancer to own the terfs"? And this doesn't mean that every trans woman should immediately stop their HRT just to prevent that from happening. That's not what I'm saying here. I'm just saying that these people genuinely don't seem to care about anything other than their ideology, and even medical professionals are seen as "lying" and "bigoted", and people with brain tumors are accused of "attacking the trans community". How is this not a cult??

Also, I wish the person who made the original post all the best :) I hope they find people who support them and help them heal