#rad inclusionary

[transirfanon]

Why are trans men expected to behave like patriarchal ideal woman?

[namesetc]

I'm confused, wdym in your dni by "rad exclus/inclus?" How can someone not be one or the other? 🤔

by not choosing a side/being neutral or just not being radically inclusionary to everything (accepting anything and everything without at least questioning it) or radically exclusionary to everything (gatekeeping and policing the community and identities/terms)

its very possibly not to be on two sides (that are kinda extreme at times btw) and instead be a third party. you dont have to be all inclusive or all exclusionary.

why do you think someone has to pick one side or the other? im gonna give someone the benefit of the doubt not outright say no but im also going to be critical and skeptical at first because if theres a chance harm could be done i should at least be aware but still open to things y'know?

sorry if that doesnt make sense or sounds confusing /g

[sapphia]

An unfortunate side effect of terf-ism is that feminism has, for quite some time, reached a stalling point where you must either be mainstream feminist or you must be a radical feminist - except in this day and age, being a radical feminist means that you believe 100% in sex or gender essentialism and therefore are inherently transphobic.

And that's true now. But it wasn't always. I know because I saw it happen. I watched radical feminism become terfism. I watched the discourse go from "violence against women is perpetuated by the patriarchy" (reasonable; some good points to be had) to "trans people are the greatest enemy we face" (which just... what the fuck).

Radical feminism was once a useful extension of mainstream feminism. it asked important questions and followed them to interesting conclusions. If women are oppressed in all walks of life, don't men benefit from that oppression? Example, if a woman is socialised to be demure in a workplace, is her male colleague not benefitting from that socialisation? And if a woman fears violence from a man because of the prevalence of violence in our society, then do men not benefit from the violence committed by other men? Whether or not a woman has been raped, it is something she has been taught to fear - might all men not benefit in some ways from that threat that hangs over every woman?

And those are all interesting questions that entire books could and have been written on. But the issue that we now face is that radical feminism took these arguments and streamlined them all into one particular direction: that men are violent/aggressive as biological imperative and benefit from the oppression that they perpetuate against women. That men are the enemy. That they must be overthrown.

One half of the problem is that the exclusionary nature of their new direction is directly hostile to trans people; that this flawed ideology has been used to focus all their resources against a fight against a group who, even if they were an enemy to feminism (which they're not), it just would not be worth fighting against. The idea that trans women are men trying to hustle in on women's spaces is incorrect, but combatting it is also a huge waste of resources given the much more serious problems that women and feminism actually faces.

Which leads us to the other half of the problem: the resources. Because for about 5 years (in the public eye - about 15 years in feminist circles) feminism has been at war with itself. Rad fems are wasting so much time and energy arguing that trans people aren't real, and of course feminists have to argue back. There's so much less room for discourse when half your discourse is just asserting the fact that transwomen are women and transmen are men. It pulls focus away from the radical right, and it waters down discussions of other feminist issues. And it's correct that we do argue this, and trans people deserve their time in the spotlight, of course, but it's so incredibly frustrating that the attack on trans people is coming from within feminism, from the very people who should be allies to the cause. In fact, I would argue that a large part of mainstream awareness of trans issues comes from radical feminism; I don't think radical feminism has helped trans people or their acceptance, but it's certainly brought the issue to the forefront and into the sphere of public debate.

And while we're busy arguing over the right of trans people to exist, extreme rightwingism and fascism are gaining in popularity, and actual radical discourse of feminist ideals are being left in the dust. WHERE is the mainstream discussion of the predatory beauty industry and how it's disguised itself as feminist when actually it's anything but? WHERE is the shift away from the non-tradition, non-nuclear families and relationships? WHERE is the push within radical leftism to marry radical gender ideals with those on race, sexuality, disability, etc? There are a lot of "formerly radical" racial discourses that have made their way into the mainstream in recent years, especially regarding colonialism and it's lingering effects, and feminism is lagging behind because without radical sects exploring new ideals, it is very hard for new concepts to trickle into the mainstream!

I've seen some stuff around tirfs and the tran inclusionary radfem movement, but so much of it is still gender essentialist and so much of it is still trans exclusionary in many ways - and the tirfs that aren't either of that are consumed with infighting just for their right to exist and be considered trans-inclusionary. so again, no extra resources to deal with non-trans issues. It's a hangup of the direction the discourse has gone recently, and I'm not surprised to see it. I think tirf ideals are flawed to begin with - they've been heading in a bad direction basically since germaine greer went mainstream - but there's some concepts there that could do with working their way into the general leftist consciousness because there's some nuggets of truth in there that I'd like to see debated by a wider audience. But I think radical feminism is now just always going to be too closely associated with transphobia, both in people's mind's and in the idealogical base on which their beliefs are founded. It's a poisoned chalice.

What I really want to see is a new near-mainstream movement of far-left extremist feminist discourse unassociated with radical feminism; not because I think I'll agree with them but because I think it's healthy and needed for feminism in general and for the progression of gender equality towards a better future.

[homokommari]

Terfs are a subsection of radical feminists, so yes wanting to eradicate queer as a personal label (one you may not agree with which is fine. But it should exist for others) is related to terfism and trans misogyny. Maybe you don’t see it but terfs view queer as all inclusive, and it’s a term favored by trans ppl who aren’t binary which is why they hate it. They use the slur as an excuse, while they freely reclaim dyke. Radical feminism is harmful, and you can’t be a rad fem without being a terf. It’s not mutually exclusive. It’s like how every bourbon is a whiskey but not every whiskey is a bourbon.

you very much can be a radfem without being a terf, u can't be a terf without being a radfem. radical feminism is about believing that men and women have inherent traits, women being kind and submissive and needing to be saved not by men, who are evil and exploitative, but by other women. trans exclusionary radical femisim then extrapolates on the radfem view on gender that trans women are the most evil and exploitative as they try to hide themselves among women. trans inclusionary radical feminism is just going "oh but except trans women i guess" when talking about how all born men are born inherently abusive and evil.

and imo how u are trying to tie not using queer to terfs is shaky. if it's about non-binary people, how does is relate to terfs binary world view?

also im fine w ppl using queer as a personal identifier, my wife loves being queer, but like as an umbrella... im under lgbt. and im non-binary!

[lesbiankermit-moved]

are you defining radfem as just straight up radical feminist or under the umbrella of terf??

bruh radical feminism is it’s own thing and it doesn’t fall under the “umbrella of terf”, like terfs are a subset of rad feminism, not the other way around. even the woman who coined terf was a (trans inclusionary) radfem, bc it was easy shorthand when specifying the trans exclusionary crowd among them,,

[girl-debord]

this might be a dumb question, but is every person who calls themselves a radical feminist a TERF? i don't interact with anyone who calls themselves rad fem, so idk who to ask, and i want to be sure before i write off everyone using that term as a bigot.

they might not all focus on trans women all the time, but chances are their takes on trans women are... not good. most "trans inclusionary" radical feminists I've seen are just transmedicalists on their way to full terf ideology

[gaygalaxys]

Like I appreciate the uptake in trans inclusionary radical feminism, but unfortunately that doesn’t drown out a lot of the terfs, so I feel like a lot of people tagging things ‘rad fems do interact’ with good intent should be wary of that

[byrneing]

Radfem doesn’t equal terf, I’m a rad fem and trans inclusionary, coralline being a radfem just means she wants women’s liberation from men 😊

thx for this but the tags on that post were literally #trans exclusionary radical feminism #terf positivity and #terf safe and OP is a terf,,,, I fully realize that radfem didn’t start out as being based in transphobia but I personally would be careful using that label on tumblr given the amount of transphobic hate in the community and the growing number of radfems who are proud terfs.

[betterthanaphobes]

Are you a Tirf? (Trans Inclusive Rad Feminist) ((Like it? I thought that since terfs wanna ruin everything we like, we should at LEAST ruin their acronym))

im trans inclusionary and a feminist but unlelss u mean rad as in “super cool” i am not rad