So this is why I’ve never liked the term “TERF.”
Earlier today someone linked me to an interview someone did with a well-known terrorist who was planning to host some hate rallies in New Zealand. I’m not going to link to it, because it does have a genocidal monster shouting hate speech, and I really don’t like putting that sort of thing in front of people (I feel bad enough with the above link for context). I will say though that the interviewer was someone who knew what she was talking about and was constantly calling her out on her utter BS, and the tour itself was cancelled when the very first stop on the tour had people throwing stuff at her on stage and she just kinda ran off. Nicely done New Zealand!
At one point in the interview though, the interviewer started to press her on just why she thinks it is that full on card-carrying neo-nazis keep showing up to her events and supporting her, which is, you know, a factual thing that happens, because she shares 100% of their ideology and all, and along with a lot of other random BS and denial that this is even a (very well documented) thing that happens, she blurted out a true statement to my surprise- “nazis would never support feminism!” This is true, as is the fact that they support the hell out of her, and everyone else in their movement, and a lot of people really do need to stop and solve that logic problem.
Now, I don’t like to bring this up, there’s a lot of other hats I wear that I’d much rather be seen with, but I’m an actual expert on modern fascism. Like, I’ve done tons of research and had findings published by recognized anti-fascist organizations and written about this for multiple publications, prepped materials for proposals to major corporations, the U.S. Congress, and the U.N. so what I’m going to get into here isn’t “random person on the internet has a hot take” it’s “this is what I’ve learned doing serious research on the subject.”
So, this woman who was going to speak in New Zealand is part of this... cult, frankly, which people refer to as the “TERFs.” They keep rebranding what they actually call themselves, but I’d like to focus on “TERF” because it’s an accronym, for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” and that’s worth breaking down a little. The “Radical” is in there because, well, they’re a weird cult who spends every waking moment of every day whipping each other into a frenzied desire to enact plans to bring about the death of every trans person in the world. This also covers why “Trans-Exclusionary” is in there, but the actual noun modified by those adjectives is “Feminists” and like... not a single one of these people is a feminist.
I’m not painting with a broad brush here. It’s honestly a shockingly small group of people. You could fit them all in one room, people have done so several times, and new faces aren’t ever present at their meet-ups. It’s not especially hard if you’re so inclined to look into them one by one and get a handle on their beliefs and yeah, I do mean every single one of these people. I’m also not doing some kind of “no true Scotsman” thing here and saying they don’t qualify as feminists because they’re hateful monsters.
I’m saying they don’t qualify as feminists because they are actively opposed to every single agreed-upon tenet of feminism I’m aware of. Now granted, I don’t think there’s a specific list of bullet points everyone, or even like 95% of everyone are going to fully agree with, so here’s what comes immediately to my mind:
The most fundamental concept with feminism is the idea that people aren’t defined and limited by gender and should not be discriminated against along those lines. TERFs are constantly ranting and raving about how women are inferior to men when it comes to strength, endurance, speed, tests of skill, the ability to win trivia contests, and any other situation where they can claim women to be lesser in order to scaremonger.
I’m not going to give the time of day to any “feminist” who isn’t an intersectional feminist, extending this general ethos to all forms of discrimination. TERF discussion groups are a shocking hotbed of just absolutely shocking racism, classism, harping on people’s appearances, and general xenophobia. In particular they routinely come up with conspiracy theories about non-white women being “secretly men,” but they also regularly engage in full-blown “Jews control the banks and media!” conspiracy nonsense, your standard garden variety racism, and come out in vocal opposition to things like programs to give people free access to tampons/pads.
Surely though these people have a “my body my choice” sort of stance on abortion though, right? Why no! TERFs quite famously came out in force to oppose Ireland’s recent decriminalization of abortion.
OK, but what about de-stigmatizing sex-work? Yeah people also often refer to them as “SWERFs.” They all spout of baffling nonsense about “selling bodies” and “prostituted women” and crap like that.
Treating women as actual people and not just vessels for the birthing of new humans? Yeah no. This is like their ENTIRE thing. They define womanhood in terms of motherhood so dogmatically they’d cling to arguments that mean you stop being a woman when you hit menopause and a pregnant child is “a woman.”
How about queer rights in an explicitly cis context? We all generally associate lesbians with feminism, right? Well, funny thing about that. One of the many other terms TERFs use to refer to themselves is “political lesbians.” But they define that not in a way that has anything to do with women, but with “hating men” where of course “men” is acting as a code-word for trans women. They’re plenty fond of actual men, with most “political lesbians” having husbands and all, and they are, you guessed it, broadly repulsed by thoughts of two women being in love with each other.
OK, how about this. Just as a last ditch bare-minimum standard- the basic notion of being kind to women and supporting women’s success. Oh no, absolutely not. These people absolutely go for the throat of any woman who isn’t a member of the cult. Hell even internally they keep tabs on each other with spreadsheets policing language and such. They regularly refer to cis women who don’t actively hate trans people as “handmaidens.” Like as a reference to The Handmaid’s Tale. Specifically the women in it forced into sex slavery. Who they apparently see as the villains because, well, see the above bit on being called SWERFs.
Now as all of the above positions also line up neatly with the politics of Nazis, like the ones who work security when some of these people do public speaking gigs, or the husband of one of them who set up their personal social media site, piggybacking off the one set up for out and out neo-nazis, is it fair to refer to them as Nazis? I mean... it fits close enough that in most practical situations yeah, go right ahead with that. There IS the distinction though that even though they are anti-feminist as all hell, the majority of TERFs are themselves women, therefore your average Nazi thinks of them as sub-human and doesn’t really want to give them a seat at the table. There’s also the friction that Nazis are very much anti-intellectual, and while TERFs are all about denial of basic science, into fake journalism, and all-around disconnected from reality, they’re way way into presenting themselves as intellectuals, which is another big wedge there.
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Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".
The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?
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