She sure does seem to have a hard-on (
) for trans women. Maybe we need a female equivalent of JAQ. Perhaps: “Just Innocently Learning” or something.
Some people just enjoy their terf wars.
1 2 3 4, I declare a TERF war
This issue was, as far as I can tell, the reason she started posting here. Given her other statements, I don’t think she’s a TERF at all–she’s a right wing transphobe. She’s the type of person that the TERFs partner with even though they disagree on all other issues besides trans people. They’ll side with those who are okay with bigotry in general as long as they also attack trans people.
I also note that the reason for this thread was that I wanted to reply to something DemonTree said elsewhere that my arguments about transmisogyny being just like any other bigotry weren’t convincing. My point is that I don’t think she actually thinks bigotry itself is an actual issue, which is why pointing out the similarities doesn’t faze her. She lacks the desire to eliminate all bigotry, instead constantly arguing why bigots should not face any consequences for the people they harm.
I’ve seen her make a grand total of one post that wasn’t about these issues, BTW. I was actually expecting her to wind up Warned for being a one-trick pony before she’d get Warned for her repeatedly disingenuous arguing style and threads based on false premises.
That thread is bullshit from the start. The op-ed piece it’s based on is bullshit. The well-poisoning (“well, no one cares about women’s sports”) is bullshit. And, I’m pretty sure DT doesn’t even live in the US, so I have zero idea why she would care about NCAA sports.
She was fooled, or wanted to be fooled by that bullshit op-ed into thinking this is a real thing. Why anyone would look to The Federalist is beyond me, and why a non-American would do so is really, really beyond me.
Look for other cites for this EO – there is no place else that this issue is mentioned. It’s not like an EO is some obscure thing that other news outlets wouldn’t notice. It’s not like the NCAA or ESPN wouldn’t notice if an EO essentially destroyed women’s sports.
DT is certainly bigoted, and easily gulled at that.
Are any great number of TERFs really “Radical” in the sense of being far-left leaning? I understand that’s what the “R” in TERF is supposed to be for, but it seems like “Reactionary” tends to be the reality more often than not.
ETA: Oh, and there should be scare-quotes around the F: TER"F"
Far left? No. But my experience with the ones I’ve encountered before is that they tend to be at least liberal. They tend to think of themselves as “woke.” She, on the other hand, seems to be mostly regurgitating the alt-right talking points, using certain strategies from the Alt-Right playbook.
Radical in this sense refers to radical feminism not a generalized concept of “left-wing radicals”. Though all radical feminists are at least loosely left in that sense almost by definition, they needn’t be “radical” in any other sense. There are several well-known radical feminist academics that are trans exclusionary, so those folks in fact exactly fit the definition.
But I think the time TERF has now to some extent been generalized to include any trans exclusionary feminist, radical or not.
I was under the impression that “Radical” in this initialism modified “Feminist”, rather than being a standalone ideological-compass identifier. As in, taking a radical approach to how they’re feminist-ing.
(But is it really the case that “Radical” must by definition mean “radical leftist”? I thought that had changed, did I miss the memo again?)
Ah, mercifully ninja’d by Tamerlane! So I was not having a senior moment after all…
“Radical feminism” is a subtype of feminism, and is generally very hard left. “TERF” originated as a self-descriptor adopted by some radical feminists who were opposed to the recognition of trans rights, to contrast themselves against radical feminists who supported trans rights. So, it was already a term that referred to a subculture of a subculture of a subculture. At the time, trans rights in general were almost exclusively a far left ideal, so it was considered noteworthy that women who identified as being out on the fringes of leftist ideologies would be opposed to it. As trans rights became a more mainstream idea, the term “TERF” started referring to more and more mainstream opponents to trans rights. These days, it basically just means, “A woman on the left who is opposed to trans rights,” and I’m already seeing it start to shift to simply mean, “A woman who opposes trans rights.”
An alternative designation I’ve seen is Feminism-Appropriating Radical Transphobe.
I think the former is fine (especially since the vast majority of left-wing women are also feminist or mostly agree with feminists), but I think there is value in keeping the right wing and left wing separation. The reasons behind the transphobia just seem to be different. One is scared of anything different (right wing), while the other is convinced that they’re a threat to women’s rights (left wing). They overlap and work together at times, but they’re not the same.
For one thing, right wing transphobes are more likely not to just be transmisogynist, and will go after trans men as well. The focus of TERFs is nearly always trans women.
IME right wing transphobes are much more scared of trans women too. Either because they are afraid of “accidentally” sleeping with a trans woman (which would be GAY11!!!1) or because someone who was born male but wants to identify as female is challenging the traditional assumption of male superiority.
I don’t disagree, but their rhetoric seems to more often be about how all trans people are mentally ill, about how trans people are overturning the natural order, how it’s against God, and so on.
They use the transmisogynist narrative that TERFs use, too, but I don’t really encounter many TERFs doing what is in the above paragraph.
I feel like the implication here is that these women are not really feminists. While I think TERFs are pure nuttery, and oppose them on principle, we feminists should own that shit. There are some crazy people who consider themselves feminists, and I don’t think they are more or less feminist than anyone else who identifies that way. Radical feminism, as I understand it, has embraced a lot of problematic beliefs, chief among them the idea that males are inherently dangerous and should be feared. This whole transphobic argument is predicated on that assumption. And we can say, ooh, that’s radical - but you will see echoes of this in mainstream feminism. And personally I’m fucking tired of it. I don’t think we can reject TERFism wholesale without also rejecting the idea that males are inherently dangerous. I’m not suggesting we abandon narratives about toxic masculinity or rape culture - on the contrary, I don’t think we can really address those problems until we recognize why certain men (and women!) behave the way they do and dismantle the culture that perpetuates it. We are all, in one way or another, both victims and perpetrators of the patriarchy. Until we all realize this I don’t really see a path forward.
I didn’t know where else to put this, so… there you go.
The argument I read from one TERF years ago (who doesn’t necessarily represent all TERFs) was that she was angered at how MtFs were considered to be real women while not actually having to pay their dues in the sense of having to suffer through menstruation, childbirth, pregnancy, and the various other disadvantages that women experience. Getting all the perks of the “women label” without any of the drawbacks; so her statement went.
Similar to the anger of how some black people might feel about Rachel Dolezal posing as black, for instance.
Yeah, they get the drawbacks of being trans women, which is arguably worse.
I guess I don’t see womanhood as some sort of suffering pissing contest. I’ve had women who identify as feminists tell me they are right and I am wrong on the basis of their trauma, as if I could never understand unless I had trauma of my own. And I certainly do have trauma of my own. So that pissed me off.
The problem with that is that you just described a lot of cisgender women. Many women never get pregnant. And not all cisgender women experience menstruation.
But, even if they did, that’s not what women’s rights are about. Women don’t face discrimination because menstruate or get pregnant. They get discriminated against for being women. So the relevant issue would be whether or not trans women also face misogyny. And they very much do, so any feminist should be against that.
I also note this isn’t the argument that DemonTree is making in the current thread—it continues to be a variant on how accepting trans women causes actual harm to cisgender women—the same argument that every bigot makes to justify mistreating the minority.
But she has made that argument elsewhere