#radfem lite series

[freedom-of-fanfic]

how radfem lite rhetoric echoes the social effects of misogyny

@rainbowloliofjustice wrote a quality post about absurd and condescending it is to judge women for their life choices, as if they didn’t actually choose those things for themselves. and it struck me that the things they described shared a consistent message.

(vocabulary note: 

‘women’ means ‘women’ - trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise

‘(perceived) women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone that others - radfems, etc - mistakenly perceive as women (nb afab, sometimes trans men, etc)

‘women and/or people presenting as women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone of any gender who chooses to present as a woman for whatever reason, not limited to genital arrangement.)

so ….

you know how I’m always on about radfem lite rhetoric? as in: people who don’t even like non-intersectional radfems, much less their subgroups (terfs & swerfs), will say this stuff without understanding the buried connection to radfem thinking?

the examples rainbowloli used are all that kind of rhetoric - or closely tied to it.

‘f-o-f, you’re trying too hard. it’s women looking down on other women for their choices because of internalized misogyny.’

well the funny thing is, nonintersectional radical feminism totally encourages (perceived) women to look down on other (perceived) women for their choices.  The difference is only that:

radfem rhetoric judges (perceived) women for what they see as ‘catering to men’/’the patriarchy’ too much*

misogyny judges (perceived) women for not catering to the patriarchy enough(or not doing it ‘the right way’).

(*’catering … too much’ should be read as ‘doing something that might conceivably please men, even if it also pleases the (perceived) woman doing it.’)

In short: both radfems & patriarchal social structures try to control and police the behavior of (perceived) women.

That’s why radfem rhetoric can easily flourish among the unaware: the behavior it encourages replicates the behavior encouraged by patriarchal/misogynistic social structures. It’s only the reasoning that’s changed.

Let me demonstrate:

“Wow, I feel so sorry for women dating ugly dudes like girl you can do so much better.”

this is closest to internalized misogyny. In general, when a woman is seen as significantly more beautiful than her partner we assume the guy is somehow buying her affection, and we judge her for being bought off. that’s internalized misogyny.

But lop off the ‘ugly’ in the middle of that sentence and you’ve got word-for-word radfem rhetoric. ‘I feel sorry for women dating dudes like girl you can do so much better.’ because dudes are always hopeless, self-centered trash and women are always attentive, woke angels. That poor silly woman. she needs to find a good wife who will make her happy. Dating men is an act of catering to the patriarchy.

and no: neither misogynists nor radfems consider that maybe the woman is happy with the man she’s dating, nor are they willing to respect her choice to date whomever she likes, for whatever reason she chooses.

“I feel so sorry for girls who spend hours doing their makeup and they can’t catch a break from the patriarchy.”

as is often the case, there’s a grain of truth in here. Dress codes & appearance standards for (perceived) women in client-facing jobs are often more strict than those for (perceived) men, and certainly more expensive to maintain (jobs that require women and/or people who present as women to wear makeup should have to pay for it. just saying). Plus, those standards are often set by (cis) men who are in positions empowered to make those calls. There’s also plenty of internalized misogyny involved in the social perception that anyone who is and/or presents as a woman must maintain their appearance at a certain standard to attract a (male) mate, whereas men are seen as capable of attracting a woman via qualities other than appearance.

But the idea that all people who present as &/or are women are forced or brainwashed into a makeup & beauty regimen purely at the behest of men/patriarchy is both an insult to free will and too narrow a look at daily primping. Plenty has been written by others about how applying makeup often isn’t about men/attracting men at all. and men and/or male-presenting people are also under social pressure to meet certain beauty standards to be seen as attractive (though perhaps not to the same degree).

‘women are forced to do [thing] by the patriarchy/the only reason women do [thing] is because of patriarchy,’ where [thing] is something that women and/or female-presenting people choose to do for many reasons, is a radfem dog whistle. 

The underlying assumption is that any (perceived) woman who says they do [thing] for a reason other than ‘i’m forced to do it for the pleasure of men’ must be a brainwashed victim of internalized misogyny; the only way to truly free oneself of patriarchal brainwashing is to submit oneself entirely to a husban– I mean, the radfem worldview.

And the third statement has the same energy:

“I feel sorry for women who enjoy [insert thing] because they’ve been socialized to enjoy it.”

Here’s another statement that presumes that women only do [thing] because they were tricked or brainwashed into it. Here, the word ‘socialized’ stands for ‘taught by patriarchal society’ - i.e. (perceived) women only enjoy [thing] because men & misogyny taught them to enjoy it.

and hey: our society is patriarchal. and hey: that totally does influence how women are socialized and how women think about themselves and others in negative ways. but this statement once again takes it too far: it posits that women functionally have no free will and are more or less mind-controlled by the influence of patriarchy into all their likes and dislikes.

If you’re having a hard time seeing the radfem influence, insert ‘giving head’ for ‘[insert thing]’, and ‘taught by men’ for ‘socialized’: ‘I feel sorry for women who enjoy giving head because they’ve been taught by men to enjoy it.’ because to a radfem, (perceived) women doing anything that gives pleasure to a (cis) man cannot possibly be a pleasure to herself as well. It’s impossible for a (perceived) woman to choose such a thing of her own free will.

And no: radfems do not respect that some people they see as women enjoy things that they find reprehensible or disgusting. instead, they see that perceived woman’s enjoyment of what they hate as traitorous to the cause of womanhood. These traitors - who are also victims - must be rescued from their own desires, even if that means screaming at them daily about how terrible they are and how they’re hurting and betraying their fellow women and how they’re harming themselves. (because screaming at (perceived) women about how terrible they are isn’t at all a carbon copy of the behavior of misogynists towards women.)

The takeaway is this:

When you see a blanket statement about how women* are forced, tricked, coerced, trapped, etc by patriarchy, men, or misogyny to do [thing], please consider whether or not it respects autonomy/free will before resharing or agreeing with it.

It’s true that patriarchy influences the lives of people of all genders, and that much of that influence isn’t for the better. it’s true that it particularly harms anybody who isn’t a cis man (and even cis men, if they don’t perform masculinity to satisfaction). but arguing that patriarchy robs people, particularly (perceived) women, of all their free will is a step towards trying to control the actions of those (perceived women) for their own good - and that’s gateway radical feminism in a nutshell.

*in this context, ‘women’ often means ‘afab’ (as in, exclusionary of trans women + erasing trans men/afab people off the binary). Sometimes it means ‘afab people & trans women’ (erasing trans men & afab ppl off the binary. radfems usually consider trans men as sharing the disadvantages of women b/c of presumed genital configuration & afab nb people to be misguided GNC women.)

if this sounds transphobic & gender essentialist ... that’s because it is. b/c radfem ideology naturally points towards becoming a transphobic exclusionist.

[old-school-butch]

I'd like to ask..

As a radfem, how do you negotiate being butch so to speak, considering the history between the lesbian feminism of the 70's and butch-femme culture? I feel so connected to butch-femme but at the same time I feel like an outsider as a radical feminist when the limited butch-femme community I've seen has been very "progressive" and anti-terf. I feel saddened by the fact that the people who share my political views are the ones who denounced what I hope(d?) to be my way of loving.

And also.. reading Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold recently kinda hurt my heart because.. although I'm strongly aware that the idea of butch as a type of male privilege or oppressor role is completely false and flawed, reading about the violence towards and control over femmes that butches started to cultivate in the late 50's makes me feel so conflicted as a radfem. How can I know myself as being part of butch-femme culture and embrace the history of those before me without excusing the violence that the butch identity once encapsulated?

I found it so difficult to read the nonchalant accounts of partner violence from butches of the bar-scene and it made me feel ashamed if that makes sense.. how do you feel comfortable and proud identifying as butch when historically this was linked to violence, while being a feminist? How could a femme lesbian have historically identifed as such without being complicit in her own pain?- not for staying in an abusive relationship but for supporting and being proud to be part of a framework in which she was almost required to be submissive and treated like her partner's property.

And of course there were likely to be "bad apples" who did these things on an individual scale, but for butch history to include a period of time where control was glorified and expected feels so horrible. Even though things aren't the same now it's difficult to think about and acknowledging/denouncing what happened doesn't make it better. At my age I do not know anybody who calls themself a lesbian (too old-fashioned), and so I'm looking to the past rather than the present for community and for lack of a better word, validation. I am finding it hard to have pride in this past as radical feminism seemed to have ridiculed femme, and femme seemed to have "allowed" herself to be treated with inferiority (can provide examples if needed from BLSG).

( note: please excuse any typos as I'm on mobile, and sorry for the long ask/vent, I didn't know who else to ask this and it's been on my mind a lot since reading BLSG. finally to clarify, this is not a call-out post against butch-femme, rather a call for help. thank you for reading! )

-please only publish if anonymous, am using alt account-

I haven’t read BLSG, but it’s based on interviews conducted in 1993 with 45 women in a narrow demographic, and with a specific agenda of using these narratives to support the researchers’ thesis that working-class, American butch-femme couples were the ‘roots of gay and lesbian liberation‘. Take everything in there with a good amount of salt. May I suggest some more primary source reading for you? Try anything by Joan Nestle, and the deliciously melodramatic Beebo Brinker series by Ann Bannon. These works provide some more authentic snapshots of people being people, in an era where being the kind of people they were, was very difficult.

I’m not saying that women aren’t complex and sometimes abusive, or that we don’t internalize our societal values - of course we do. And lesbians in that era were often out of work, living in fear, with horrible rates of addiction and mental illness - I can well imagine life was less than ideal and relationships were strained even on a good day. But in an era where there was no national gay or lesbian media, where gay people were socially invisible... there was - by definition - no gay culture per se. Even as visibility increased in the 1970s, that publicly-facing community still would have represented a tiny fraction of the overall population. There’s a reason that the ‘coming out’ story is the single, common thread of narrative in our culture - it’s the only near universal cultural experience.

It’s true that radical feminism has a long standing critique of butch-femme culture, it always struck me as a bit pedantic when the official ‘right’ way to be was ‘androgynous’ - which looked a lot like butch-lite to me. But they are correct with the overall critique of gender - and I’m actually somewhat surprised that fewer radfems today critique butch and femme identity. In some ways, they laid the groundwork of some of the gender nonsense we see today. However, radical feminism has it’s flaws too. We echo society’s scorn for women when we denigrate women who enjoy feminine aesthetics and can fall into a form of victim-blaming and over-critique. The calls to take self-defence classes and work in trades got much more play than the movement to pay wages for housework. The feminine values of caregiving and empathy are so thoroughly exploited that feminism itself struggles to accept them as essential to human society.

Anyway, I call myself butch because it’s what stuck from all the many things I’ve been called, most of them unflattering. If I describe myself as butch and then meet someone IRL, they aren’t surprised at what I look like. However, it’s not prescriptive to me, just descriptive. Not ‘a way of loving’ as you had hoped for. At the end of the day, you have to find your own path, and let other people lay their labels at your feet without confining where you leave your footsteps in the sands of time.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

radfem lite(tm) and tumblr discourse

identifying radfem dog whistles: that is, radfem ideology when it’s not obviously and blatantly transphobic or anti-sex worker

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nobody likes TERFs or SWERFs - or so we like to think, even if we don’t entirely know it means to be a terf or swerf. but the truth is that radical feminism - the overarching worldview that contains within it both TERF and SWERF ideology - is fairly widespread and even popular here on tumblr. it’s just that most of the time it’s not identified as being radfem/terf/swerf rhetoric unless the transphobia (or anti-sex-worker sentiment) is blatant and open.

this is the first of a series of posts intended to help fellow people on tumblr identify and understand what I call ‘radfem lite’ - radfem rhetoric that is not obviously transphobic or anti-sex-work, but naturally points one towards becoming a radical feminist (that is, abandoning intersectional feminism, eroding belief in free will (particularly in regards to consent), embracing binarist thinking & gender essentialism, and denying or belittling all forms of societal oppression that are not directly related to misogyny.) 

radfem lite rhetoric is frequently a ‘dog whistle’ as well - a phrase or word that has more than one meaning depending on who hears or reads it. non-radfems hear one thing; radfems and their targets hear another. those who become radfems or radfem targets eventually become familiar with the true meaning of the dog whistle word or phrase, but the majority of those who spread it have no idea what they’re really ‘saying’. 

some of the things I’ll post about will have overlap with other types of exclusionist thinking, or will have been adopted by those who aren’t radfems so widely that it might seem absurd that it has radfem roots. I’ll try to be clear about why I am attributing a concept to radical feminism when I introduce it. 

some things will also have some grain of ‘truth’ to it - the reason why the radfem lite concept seems reasonable to non-radfems. I’ll try to identify that grain of truth, and dismantle or demystify why the reasoning built around it is faulty.

Why am I doing this?

the first and most obvious reason is the number of ‘OP was a terf so I stole this post’ headers i’ve seen that are followed by a post loaded with radfem lite rhetoric. many, many people on tumblr know that terfs (and swerfs) are bad, but don’t know why or can’t identify terf rhetoric if it isn’t labeled ‘terf rhetoric’. 

but also: because radical feminist thinking - particularly the anti-porn branch, which bends into SWERF thinking - is highly appealing to fannish tumblr, and forms the basis for a lot of fandom anti-shipper thinking and arguments. I hope that seeing the radfem roots of these arguments will help those leaning into fandom anti-shipper thinking avoid falling victim to radical feminist outreach. 

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post 1 / some basics

What is radical feminism?

Radical feminism - which encompasses, among others, subgroups such as trans-(women) exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs/TWERFs), and sex-worker exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs) - is an ideology that holds that the most important and severe axis on which oppression occurs is patriarchal social structure and its inevitable product, misogyny.

By discounting all other forms of oppression and marginalization as being of lesser or no importance, radical feminists (aka ‘radfems’) naturally conclude that those they perceive as men are unable to experience meaningful societal oppression and those they perceive as women are unable to experience meaningful societal privilege. As such:

it is impossible for a (perceived) woman to have a mutually beneficial friendship, business partnership, romance, or sexual relationship with a (perceived) man.  

Further, their perception of how oppression works is frequently concerned only with the binary sex organs one is born with (or ‘closest to’/that which was surgically created for intersex people).

The belief that a (radfem-perceived) woman cannot have a good or beneficial interaction - especially sexual interaction - with a (radfem-perceived) man, which (like misogyny) belittles and degrades the ability of women to make decisions for themselves, encourages activists to focus on modifying and correcting the behavior of perceived women rather than focusing on modifying and correcting societal inequalities caused by gender/perception of gender. This misplaced focus disproportionately harms sex workers* and/or any (perceived) woman having sex or in a line of business that radfems consider ‘degrading’ to women**.

The reduction of gender identity and experiences to sex organs alone leads to inclusion and/or exclusion of people from ‘womenhood’ based on whether radfems perceive a person as ‘born male’ or ‘born female’. This causes disproportionate harm to trans people (trans women particularly), leading not only to misgendering, but accusations of sexual assault/attempted sexual assault, (mostly directed at trans women), exclusion from gendered spaces to which they belong, and erasure.** It also harms anyone who does not identify with a binary gender by reducing their experiences to their agab, and anyone who does identify on the gender binary but does not ‘look’ sufficiently like the gender they identify with (which may include those who identify with their agab.)

(*this is because radfems believe that only people they see as women are sex workers and their only clients are people they see as men.)

(**all this potentially leading to even more severe consequences, such as being assaulted, attempting/committing suicide, or being murdered, among others. the consequences of radical feminist ideology are severe.)

Why is all radfem ideology so dangerous?

if you’re wondering ‘what’s the problem with radical feminism when a radfem isn’t a TERF or SWERF’, this is why radfem ideology as a whole is damaging and harmful to embrace:

because its ideology is, at heart, transphobic, and leads to trans people being harmed or killed or otherwise put at severe risk.

because its ideology is, at heart, anti-sex work, and leads to sex workers being harmed or killed or otherwise put at severe risk.

because its ideology is, at heart, based on the existence of a gender binary created by sexual dimorphism, and leads to erasure and harm of anyone who does not identify on the gender binary

because its ideology is non-intersectional and therefore belittles or ignores many axes of oppression and marginalization that can have as much as/greater effect on any given person’s quality of life

because it flattens societal structures to a single dimension (sexism), encouraging black and white thinking: namely, all (perceived) women are inherently good and all (perceived) men are inherently bad

this harms (perceived) women by putting them on a pedestal, expecting them to be ‘better’ than other genders in every way, only to be knocked off if they don’t appease radfem standards of female behavior

it erases the harm that women with axes of privilege over other women can do to those other women

it erases the harm that women with equal privilege can cause to one another (abuse in a relationship between two lesbian women), and the harm that women can do to those who are not women (predatory women who prey on men/children are erased, for example)

dismisses the victimhood of victims/survivors of oppression or harm who are not seen as women

because its aggregate societal effect is to reinforce patriarchal social structure, misogynistic dismissal of (perceived) women, and magnify sexism, primarily by putting pressure on (perceived) women to perform womanhood to radfem standards while ignoring (perceived) men as being beyond hope of reform.

because all of this hurts everyone, regardless of their gender, and disproportionately harms those marginalized by additional axes of oppression (such as race, sexual orientation, etc). 

Further reading: 

Below the cut, there are (or will be, depending on when you’re reading this) links to posts talking about specific ‘radfem lite’ concepts or dog whistles.

this will never be exhaustive, and my hope is that by illustrating how radfems perceive the world, it will be easier for others to identify radfem rhetoric that isn’t explicitly mentioned.

It’s also important to remember that radical feminism does not exist in a vacuum. it gets its power (ironically) by aiding and reinforcing bigger, much more powerful societal engines: gender essentialism, misogyny, sexism, and patriarchy. (this doesn’t mean that radfems don’t do serious harm as a group or as individuals, but rather that radical feminist ideology and its offshoots should be seen as only part of a whole, widespread societal problem.)

Thanks for reading this far.

Why ‘gender critical’ feminism leads directly to a transphobic worldview

a refresher on why radfem rhetoric is so dangerous and harmful

How radfem lite rhetoric reinforces the effects of misogyny

the radical feminist influence behind ‘enthusiastic consent is the only consent that counts’ 

some stuff i had on my blog before starting this series:

critical thinking is critical b/c radfem lite is not uncommon

‘x-critical’ is a radfem dog whistle

‘kink-critical’ is the shallow end of the swerf pool

‘queer is a slur’, lesbian separatists, and radfems

how radical feminism sneaks misogyny in the back door of fandom spaces

please also take a look at @radicalfeminismisacult, @xenoqueer, and @rfidblocking for some excellent deconstruction and/or illustrations of radfem thinking and rhetoric.

PS - please note that ‘(perceived) [gender]’ refers to ‘those who radfems and/or society perceives as [gender]’. this perception could be for any number of reasons, not limited to agab, and does not mean that a person does or does not identify with how they are perceived. the interaction, especially on an individual basis, between perception and experience is very complicated, and the model from which I’m speaking cannot possibly be exhaustive or illustrative of every experience possible.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Oh, and one last thing. I do think there is some truth to the idea that it's harmful to depict every instance of GNC people as trans. Just like assuming women with short hair are always lesbians, it's not so much about "ew, I'm not trans!" and more about being open-minded re: gender presentation. I really want questioning to come back in a big way. Think it would take a lot of pressure off people to not force them to make a decision.

IMHO: the goal of healthy, intersectional feminism (and LGBT+/queer activism) would be for nobody to make assumptions about anybody’s gender based on their presentation.

regarding the ‘stop erasing gnc women’ thing: like most radfem lite stuff, it’s not always radfem. sometimes it just means ‘stop erasing gnc women’. (the coded radfem meaning is ‘afab people who don’t identify as women are just confused gnc women, stop confusing them by insisting that gender is even a real thing’.)

but yeah: this can be difficult to deconstruct because it is, of course, very much possible to identify with your assigned gender but still express and experience your gender in an 'non-traditional' or nonconforming way.

recognizing that people who identify as a cis man or cis woman (or an intersex person who was assigned a gender they identify with) without strictly conforming to what society deems 'appropriate' or ‘normal’ is just as important as recognizing and making room for people who identify as nb/genderqueer/third gender/etc and/or trans expressing themselves in nonconforming ways. one experience does not erase the other.

Radfems erase the gender experience and expression of nb/genderqueer/third gender/etc and/or trans people and believe them to be identical to that of cis people who wish to be nonconforming. They therefore believe that any expression of support for those who identify off the binary, especially of those that are afab, is erasure of gnc women. 

Agreed that it’s important to not actually do this, or believe that people identifying as a gnc cis person is erasure of nb people (though I’m not sure how common this actually is outside of tumblr? I mean, we have a long way to go in separating gender presentation from the gender binary from gender identity as a whole.)

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Why do you specify nbs who were afab in your definition of percieved women? Nbs who were amab or aiab can be percieved as women too. Is there like a reason for that or something?

(referring to this post about how radfems try to control the behavior of anyone they perceive as women - a behavior they share with misogynists.)

at the beginning of the post you’re referring to, I defined how I was using several terms, primarily to avoid any attempt to define ‘women’ in a trans-exclusionary way. This is because the other side of the coin of gateway radical feminism* is not just trying to control the behavior of those they perceive as women, but also gatekeeping the definition of ‘woman’. 

Typically, this sort of gatekeeping rapidly degenerates into transphobia.

The definition I gave for ‘(perceived) women’ was as follows (bolded for relevance): 

‘(perceived) women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone that others - radfems, etc - mistakenly perceive as women (nb afab, sometimes trans men, etc)

most usages of the phrase ‘(perceived) women’ in the post are referring specifically to radfem (mainly TERF) perceptions of who is a woman and who isn’t. Therefore, in giving examples I specifically referenced what would cause a radfem to perceive a person as a woman, regardless of that person’s actual appearance or real gender identity.

(However, I’d like to note that ‘etc’ is at the end of the list of examples because of course, afab nb & trans men are far from the only people who might be incorrectly perceived as women.)

Furthermore, some people who are women might be mistakenly perceived as men (or otherwise not as a woman). However, women that have their womanhood excluded or erased by the incorrect (or malicious mis-)perception of others are also victims of attempts to control them (by claiming they don’t perform womanhood or exist in a way that meets the standards of misogynists and/or radfems for ‘counting’ as a woman). Hence the first part of my definition of ‘(perceived) women’ indicating it includes all women: because even those that aren’t perceived correctly are still affected.

If you’re unclear on why I specifically mentioned ‘afab nb’ and ‘sometimes trans men’ as examples of those radfems perceive as women, I’ve included a crash course on ‘gender critical’ radfem/TERF definitions of ‘women’ under the cut. you can read the longer version, which explains why ‘gender critical’ radical feminism is the fast track to transphobia and TERFdom, here.

*in the post this responds to, I didn’t address the way that creating exclusionary definitions of ‘womanhood’ is quintessentially radfem behavior and a powerful weapon that both radfems and misogynists use for control. I think was remiss of me. I’ll write up an addition or edit in the near future.

crash course on radfem gatekeeping of ‘womanhood’:

the tl;dr version is ‘they’re gender essentialists who believe all gender-based oppression is based on agab only, so the natural conclusion is that nb & trans people either don’t exist or are oppressed based on their genital arrangement.’ (and yes, it’s as transphobic and nbphobic as it sounds.)

the slightly longer version:

‘gender critical’ radfems - who are often TERFs in practice, or only allow for trans women to ‘count’ under limited circumstances - typically define who ‘counts’ by the appearance of their genitals at the time of their birth. that is: only those declared female at birth (or underwent surgery shortly after birth to create the appearance of female reproductive organs) are women.

Furthermore, afab or aiab->afab individuals are inescapably female: no matter what gender they identify as, a ‘gender critical’ radfem and/or TERF will always see them as ‘basically female’.

therefore, ‘gender’ has no meaning. it’s a ‘special snowflake’ adornment that has no actual impact on your life. The only thing that matters is the ‘F’ or ‘M’ on your identification papers, and what that says about your genital arrangement. all real oppression (or privilege) stems from that alone. and if you believe that, then can you really believe that trans people have struggles of their own? after all, their trans identity is just an adornment with no meaning. 

this is why being ‘gender critical’ leads naturally to transphobia. and in case it’s not clear, that’s some fucked up, bigoted, unscientific bullshit right there.

it’s true some kinds of oppression or violence can only happen to people with clits or uteri or whatnot. biology certainly has a hand in what can be used to hurt us. but not all gender oppression stems from biology alone - and in fact, quite a lot of oppression stems from one’s gender not matching one’s biology, or biology that isn’t traditionally dimorphic.

in short: ‘gender critical’ radical feminism is gateway TERFism, and like all black&white authoritarian takes on reality, it’s blind to the shit a lot of people go through and does incalculable amounts of harm to them.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

‘gender critical’

aka a radfem-paved road to transphobia

(part of identifying radfem dog whistles*: that is, radfem ideology when it’s not obviously and blatantly transphobic or anti-sex worker)

nobody likes TERFs or SWERFs - or so we like to think, even if we don’t entirely know it means to be a terf or swerf. but the truth is that radical feminism - the overarching worldview that contains within it both TERF and SWERF ideology - is fairly widespread and even popular here on tumblr. it’s just that most of the time it’s not identified as being radfem/terf/swerf rhetoric unless the transphobia (or anti-sex-worker sentiment) is blatant and open.

a common radfem dog whistle is describing oneself/one’s worldview as ‘gender critical’. This deceptive phrasing implies that radfems are in agreement with anyone who wants to dismantle gender-based inequalities and binarist thinking, but in truth it describes a worldview wherein one’s sex (which is either ‘male’ or ‘female’ with few exceptions) is the primary or only determinant of whether one is privileged or oppressed.

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Post 2/ ‘gender critical’

‘gender critical’ is a label / train of thought that, like an onion, has multiple layers that will make you cry as you cut through them. the initial layers are benign, but it quickly spirals into gender essentialism and identity erasure. (unfortunately, it is unlike an onion in having a transphobic center.) 

the long version is under a cut to be merciful, but here’s the tl;dr:

‘Gender critical’ radical feminism proposes that gender, being a mere social construct imposed on society by patriarchy as a tool of oppression, is not 'real'. 

Identifying as a different gender than one assigned to you is therefore merely an attempt to either:

escape the expectations, oppression, or privilege one is born to (primarily nonbinary genders), or

invade the spaces of those more oppressed than you (trans women) / co-opt the privilege that you can never achieve of those less oppressed than you (trans men)

also shows up as:

'gender isn't real'

'gender is just a social construct'

'everybody is nonbinary'

'stop erasing gnc women'

Layer One: ‘gender is a social construct’ / institutional notions of gender as a form of oppression

(the social reality that leads to the notion of being ‘gender critical’)

Would a human have a concept of ‘gender’ without other people to bounce off of? It’s hard to know, but doubtlessly the concept of gender is baked into our institutions, our social interactions, our sex lives, and our media/marketing. But as a social construct that influences and describes our lives, our societal notion of gender and what it means can change.

and here in the US, imho, it should change. Built around the concept of gender as purely binary, we have vastly different standards for how we raise and treat those who are perceived as female vs those who are perceived as male. Not only does this erase a multitude of nonbinary gender identities and make life absurdly difficult for those assigned the wrong gender at birth, it also imposes unrealistic behavioral and social standards on everyone based on an unscientific notion of sexual dimorphism.  

This is the setting in which the radfem idea of being ‘gender critical’ is introduced to potential inductees.

Layer Two: ‘gender isn’t binary’ / deconstructing the widespread social/institutional concepts of gender

(aka the ‘grain of truth’ around which a faulty ideology is built.)

When I first heard the phrase ‘gender critical’ I thought it sounded like a good thing. to me, being ‘gender critical’ implied:

critiquing social inequality based on gender/perceived gender, and

questioning the notion of a gender binary.

And it does imply those things. In fact, if you asked a radfem what they mean by ‘gender critical’, they would probably tell you some variant of these points. (But.)

As an end goal, dismantling the social and institutional systems that rely on a binary concept of gender and perpetuate social hierarchies based on gender is, in my opinion, a good thing. Demolishing the concept of binary gender in general is a good thing. So far being ‘gender critical’ seems to make sense. 

But in the process of critiquing gender as a social mechanism of oppression, radfems come to a very troublesome conclusion.

Layer Three: ‘gender isn’t real’ / which came first: gender identities or sexism?

(this is where radfems diverge from reality in ‘critiquing’ gender.)

My experience tells me that gender isn’t binary. I know many people with a variety of nonbinary gender identities and experiences. There’s a long history of multigender concepts in many cultures and civilizations. There are people all over the world who identify neither as a man or a woman, people who have no gender, and people who feel their gender changes. It’s therefore reasonable to conclude that even in a variety of societal/cultural circumstances, gender exists on a spectrum. This is why I am - so to speak - ‘critical’ of modern American/Western institutionalized concepts of gender as incomplete and harmful.

Radfems observe the same harm caused by institutionalized concepts of gender, but the central tenet of their ideology - the belief that (nearly) all meaningful oppression is based in sexism, perpetuated by patriarchy and the misogynists who benefit from it - clouds their ability to see clearly. A ‘gender critical’ radical feminist therefore concludes that the very concept of gender is imaginary: a completely artificial, unnatural invention of patriarchal society designed to perpetuate oppression of anyone they perceive as a woman.**

Deciding that gender as a concept and social experience isn’t even real has wide-ranging implications. Such as ...

Layer Four: ‘gender sex essentialism’ / gender-based oppression as a conspiracy against afab people

(we’re off the rails now)

If gender isn’t real, then what does the word ‘gender’ mean to a radfem?

Outside the gender critical onion, an individual’s gender identity is their chosen description for the complicated, intricate interaction between their sense of self, their culture and its concept of gender roles, their body image, their lived experiences, and more.

In radfem ideology, ‘gender’ merely describes the social expectations and programming that will be thrust upon a person based on their assigned gender (which is itself generally tied to the genitals they’re born with): a patriarchal brainwashing tool used to push those assigned ‘female’ down and raise those assigned ‘male’ up. This social programming teaches afab people to be subservient to amab people and teaches amab people that they have the right to rule over afab people. 

If the (amab) people in charge didn’t benefit from perpetuating the oppression of afab people by institutionalizing this imaginary gender binary, gender probably wouldn’t even exist as a concept.

If this is the case, and ‘gender’ isn't real:

What we call ‘gender-based oppression’ is really ‘agab-based oppression’, because the gender assigned to a person at birth determines their entire social experience, and whether it is an experience of oppression (afab ppl) or privilege (amab ppl).

agab is based on genitals. therefore, it’s one’s biological sex (or the one surgically created/assigned to them, for intersex people) that defines our socialization and therefore our oppression/privilege.***

in short: the concept of ‘gender’ and its attendant social expectations is a misogynistic tool used to control cis women and/or afab people.  which naturally leads - of course - to transphobia.

Layer Five: ‘penis privilege’ / your (trans and/or nonbinary) gender identity has no meaning

(the reason why so many radical feminists are TERFs)

the logical end point of disbelieving gender as a legitimate, real experience is transphobia. It points clearly and easily to becoming trans-exclusionary radfem (TERF) or trans women exclusionary radfem (TWERF): Gender isn't real: therefore trans people, who think they are a different 'gender', are deluded or lying. And if our oppression/privilege experience is determined by our biological sex, then trans women are really privileged because of the genital arrangement they had at birth.

It has more implications as well:

Nonbinary people are also deluded or lying. They’re really ‘gnc’ (gender nonconforming) cis people who don’t feel like they fit the gender role assigned to them by their agab, tricking themselves into believing they’re a ‘different gender’.

it erases gender dysphoria or attributing the discomfort of gender dysphoria to patriarchal social structure/social expectations alone.

it renders self-expression of one’s gender meaningless and empty.

This, then, is the true ‘dog whistle’ meaning of a radfem who says they are ‘gender critical’:

“the concept of ‘gender’ is a tool of the patriarchy used to oppress afab people. Having thrown off the concept of gender, I recognize that oppression is dictated by the genital arrangement that one is born with, which cannot be truly escaped by buying into the lie of ‘gender identity’.”

which, like all central radical feminist concepts, ends up looking a lot like reinforcement of existing (patriarchal) social structures.

Weird how that works.

*a word or phrase which has one meaning to those ‘in the know’ and an entirely different meaning to everyone else. Usually the secret ‘in the know’ meaning is hidden because if understood by outsiders, it would be reviled and rejected.

**the perception of who ‘counts’ as a woman depends on the radfem. TERFs perceive all afab people as women and excludes amab people regardless of the gender identity of those people. other radfems may be less transphobic in categorizing women, but I hope this post clearly demonstrates that it does not make radical feminist ideology less transphobic in aggregate.

***there are atrocities perpetrated on people with afab bodies because they have afab bodies and forms of oppression specifically affecting people with organs dedicated to pregnancy. they are sometimes related to a person’s gender, but can also be inflicted independent of it. the relationship between gender-based and biological sex-based oppression/harm is complicated, but they are not the same.