#someone told me that this question is used by TERFs to identify others in the wild and idk if that’s true but

[radiojamming]

What is your Hogwarts house?

I went to the cooler school for trans people where they taught us cooler spells like RECTUS EXPLODUS and charms for warding off TERFs and antisemites.

[sleepydelights]

about me

This is an NSFT place. Minors are not welcome and I’d prefer to not interact with anyone below the age of 25 (not a hard limit on the 25 thing, I’d just prefer a fully developed frontal lobe)

Ageless blogs will be blocked on sight. This is for my safety and yours.

To expand on that(and I stole this one directly from my wife’s page because it doesn’t need changing):

DNI: minors, TERFs/transphobes, racists, fascists, detrans fetishists, zoophiles (sigh, I hate that this even needs to be said. IF YOU FUCK SOMETHING OR SOMEONE THAT CANNOT OR DOES NOT CONSENT, IT IS RAPE AND IT IS WRONG), anti-SW or "don't pay for content"

For the time being, all but the above are welcome to interact but know that I am hesitant to interact with cis het males. Please do not be offended if I choose not to interact with you.

Sexual RP is by invite only. This invite can be earned through mutual interest and normal conversation. Thats to say, don’t come in to my asks roleplaying without having talked to me first. Enthusiastic consent is required.

This place is meant to be a place for me to explore my sexual identity and find other people that may identify with me and become a part of a community. It also tends to a place where my brain vomits heart thoughts.

There may be discussions of trauma and other triggering topics as I navigate my own story. I will do my best to apply appropriate content warnings and encourage you to DM if I’ve missed any or made a mistake.

Don’t be toxic. Everyone deserves a space here.

Block me if I bother you; you sure would be saving me some work in the future.

A little about me:

I’m almost 35 but I’m saying it now because I will forget to change it when my birthday actually happens. I am certain I have undiagnosed ADHD and autism to go along with my confirmed initialism of cPTSD.

I am married to the love of my life @seradae (she’s wonderful and amazing and you should follow her if you don’t)

I am poly but not actively seeking partnership at this time.

I’m into everyone except cishet men (and minors and other DNI folks obviously)

Pronouns I accept currently: she/her and they/them. You can pick what you’re more comfortable with and it’s okay to use them interchangeably.

I am submissive, I like to be told what to do in the bedroom. I like to be punished for doing poorly and I like to be praised for doing well.

I’m a voyeur at heart. Horny for moots. Not horny for creeps.

I feel like I have too many kinks to list at the moment but this is a work in progress and will be updated as time goes on.

If you’re curious, feel free to ask questions. Put ‘alert’ in the first message to me so I know you’ve taken the time to read the above info and we can build a friendship on trust and boundaries :)

Mutuals, yes I have a crush on you.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m Conna. It will please me to please you.

[weaver-z]

Sorry, but I don't think a tumblr funnyman should be the be all end all of queer terminology. Did anyone even think to ask multi-label people WHY they might actually prefer contradictory terms? Why they don't just want to switch over to a "better" "more appropriate" "more accurate" term? Also, are there actual examples of multiple terms causing real harm? Or is the "harm" just making people confused or "muddying the waters" (the horror)

I'm guessing this is about my old ass posts about my stance on terms like "bi lesbian." I'll keep this quick (and unrebloggable), since we're probably not super interested in arguing this point for hours.

I have talked to multiple people who identify as bi lesbians. In every case, I've found that their definition of "bi lesbian" is one of three things: a) transphobic, b) lesbophobic and biphobic, or c) questionable, but probably whatever.

The transphobic definition is one that says that any lesbian who is attracted to a gender that isn't "binary cis woman" is a "bi lesbian." Yes, this is a definition I've encountered. I've been smugly told that my attraction to femme and woman-aligned nonbinary people makes me a "bi lesbian." This is not true. The lesbian label has historically included nonbinary lesbians, and saying you're a "bi lesbian" if you're into nb people is gross and transphobic. Some TERFs have even used the term as a self-identifier meaning "I am bisexual but I don't sleep with men," which is doubly gross.

The lesbophobic and biphobic definition occurs when bi women identify as a bi lesbian because they "strongly prefer" women. A bisexual can strongly prefer women and still be bisexual--asserting otherwise is wildly biphobic. Additionally, many lesbians are very hurt by bi lesbians' aggressive disregard for the fact that lesbian is the only mainstream label that excludes men in wlw and nblw attraction. "Bisexual" as a term already exists, and frankly, I think a lot of bi lesbians are suffering from internalized biphobia.

Finally, the last definition is my "eh, whatever" definition: bisexual homoromantics and homosexual biromantics. While I question the validity of using the split attraction model in this way, I think this is the most "valid" reason to identify as a bi lesbian, though frankly I think it's a better idea to stick with a label like "bisexual homoromantic" or "biromantic homosexual" (see my point about the lesbian label above).

Look, obviously I can't control what labels someone uses, so if you truly hate that I find this label weird and uncomfortable (even borderline transphobic/lesbophobic/biphobic), feel free to block me and move on. I am not the authority on the LGBTQ community and never claimed to be; I am simply stating my own beliefs on the matter, beliefs that are shared by a lot of other bi gals, lesbians, and trans women in my life.

Hope this clears some things up. Have a good day.

[kanelia]

why are you so cruel and nasty? why is your entire movement just focused on stomping people out and erasing their identity?

i see people like you say the same things every single day. and seeing your post pop up in my feed finally made me snap. not in an angry way, but in a distraught way. that so many people like you will just feverishly hate the friends ive made, who are fantastic lovely people who i adore to death, because you so badly want to dictate what other people feel, say or do. because you feel threatened that someone else is dictating how you feel because they want people to accept them as they are

what a miserable fucking world we live in, all because people like you control it

This just in: It is cruel and nasty to point out rewriting of history because it makes people, who want badly to be the main victims of every possible scenario, sad.

It takes special kind of narcissim to think that not getting to be included into the biggest mass murder of the last century is "stomping people out" like Holocaust was some sort of nice fun summer camp others are gatekeeping you from attending to.

"Identity" is the key word here. I constantly get told that it is hate to refuse to pretend men can be lesbians, or that mediocre male athletes can steal trophies of women in the name of "inclusivity", or that gnc children should be given irreversible treatments when they are not even old enough to get a tattoo, or language describing reality of female people and policies and shelters protecting them from male violence should be scrapped. Just in the name of someone´s identity.

It is very ironic you think I and "people like me" dictate and control how people should feel or what they can do or say, when I see almost daily some trans identifying person throwing a shit fit over someone correctly identifying their biological sex. You can not claim you just want others to "accept you the way you are" and then call gays and lesbians, who do not want to have sex with you, genital fetishists and transphobes for not validating your identity. You can not claim you just want others to "accept you the way you are" and then call women who do not want to take off their clothes in front of males, terfs and bigots. You can not claim to be a movement full of "lovely poor mew mew victims" and then send rape threats, suicide baiting and pictures of murdered women to anyone who questions you.

I do not hate you or your friends. Anyone can dress however they want and call themselves with whatever name they prefer, but they have no right to demand others to deny the reality. And they have no right to demand others to give up their rights. That is not acceptance - that is control. You want to control how others see you or at least force them to pretend they see you the way you want to be seen.

"You feel threatened that someone else is dictating how you feel"

Sorry, but this sounds like such a self own. So, you agree? You think trans movement is about dictating how others should feel? And we should comply in the name of "pity and kindness"?

Of course, I feel threatened by someone who tries to tell me I should not believe my own eyes and ears, that being a woman means that I must be identifying with regressive sexist gender stereotypes or that strange men stop being a threat if they put on a dress.

I don't know in what world you live in, but in the world I live in, it really looks like people like me are not controlling it, lol.

If you don't want to see my posts and posts like mine then just use the block button like a normal person instead of whining on anon.

[majorbaby]

i wanna be objective about this because i do think hp fanon is a wonderful case study considering how old it is and how rich it is and how many people who grew up there are still actively participating in fandom... but i’m caught between that and feeling pretty sore about the whole thing. 

i am on the side of us collectively speaking out against her transphobia but it’s important to note that it was heralded by her other unsavoury behaviour and similarly, i’m amongst the ranks of fans who tried to bring that stuff into the conversation many, many years before we got to this point. 

asian fans spoke out against the tokenism of cho chang and the patil sisters. gay people questioned the convenience of her announcement re: dumbledore’s sexuality. when jewish people said plainly that having the bankers of the hp world be actual goblins was a disturbing parallel to how jews are portrayed in antisemitic propaganda, they were told that actually jkr had based the persecution of ‘muggle borns’ by the ‘pureblood’ authority on nazi germany so shouldn’t they be grateful for that and furthermore wasn’t that reading a bit too much into the whole thing? 

there’s always been that fan who loves the thing just as much as everyone else, enough to point out the people that the thing and the fandom around the thing is attacking or leaving behind and that fan is almost always shouted down or here on tumblr or vagued about disparagingly etc. now, i’ve chosen to curate my internet feed/s enough so that i never have to see a potterhead publicly potterheading in my space, but what i do still encounter a lot from allies is “man i can’t believe the woman who wrote the progressive and beloved harry potter series turned out to be a TERF :(” 

i could go on about how TERF-ism and white supremacy are linked but this post isn’t about that. this post is about how the signs were definitely there. i don’t think i could’ve predicted what a massive fucking transphobe JKR turned out to be but in retrospect, considering her borderline-to-outright racism and antisemitism (and likely other -isms) and her reactions to even general criticisms of her work like... i definitely think the fandom being similarly unwilling to hear such criticisms has resulted in a lot of the incredulousness around her recent coming-out as being a powerful member of the far right celebrity elite. it’s a coming-out because she’s likely held these positions for a long time, she’s just comfortable stating them out in the open now because the far-right has identified and is marketing trans people, specifically transwomen, as a scapegoat for all of society’s current problems, same as it ever was. 

people and fans of hp were pointing out those early signs as they occurred but here we are anyway. it still happens. you’re entitled to have your gut-feeling about someone who is being critical about a thing you love (which is usually a thing that they also love) but later when you’ve calmed down think about where that gut feeling actually comes from. 

i don’t want to point out this ongoing problem without providing any solutions to it but this is partially just me venting about what it is like being a racialized fan. it still fucking sucks. even when the tide finally starts to turn it’s like, k, but i left and/or was pushed out of this fandom 10 years ago because even when i’m not being vagued about or treated like a thorn in someone’s side, whenever we are moralizing content and fandom, it’s done in the most shallow of ways, still. 

[hehimdykesrock]

Hi. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on your reasoning for encouraging the “Bi/Mspec Lesbian” label? I’m not a fan of the label but at least want to try to see where you’re coming from??

Bc as a lesbian who previously identified as bisexual, I honestly find the “Bi Lesbian” label invalidating to both identities. For context, I identified as Bi for quite a while bc I had been told that Lesbians don’t include nonbinary people or trans women. Which is not true!!!

Mspec sapphic people already have the terms Bi and Pan (and Queer, Sapphic, etc.)- Lesbian is the ONLY one that doesn’t include men. Adding it to the Bi label just caters to the fear of not being ‘gay enough’ that society drills into mspec sapphics. Bi women/enbys are still queer. A feminine gender preference can be described just as easily with the term Sapphic. The “Bi Lesbian” term just reinforces the harmful idea that Lesbians ‘jUsT hAvEn’T mEt ThE rIgHt GuY yEt’.

A personal anecdote: in the past few years, I have begun to actively avoid telling men I’m not close to that I’m a Lesbian. Because they frequently want to take it as a challenge. To “convert” me. The “mspec lesbian” idea actively puts Lesbians in danger by just repackaging conservative ideologies under the veil of being *progressive*. (Invalidating the validity of sapphic identities/relationships, and that ‘ALL women are attracted to men/can be converted’. I have also seen mspec lesbians say Lesbians are terfs as a justification for the new label- while the justifications themselves sound transphobic??? The jist of it usually is- ‘Lesbians are transphobic. The identity is defined by not being attracted to men- So why can they like trans women but can’t like binary trans men! Even though I totally believe that trans women are women and trans men are men!!!’)

Sorry this is long and repetitive. I wanted to try to put as much of my reasoning as I could. While I can empathize with why the bi lesbian label was created (bc I identified as Bi for a very long time + thus became heavily aware of biphobia within the LGBTQIA+ community. Even from Lesbians.)- it ultimately implies that Bisexuality isn’t considered “gay enough” and unintentionally perpetuates the idea that Lesbians can be converted into liking men.

My first thought is this sounds like some radfem Gold Star Lesbian bullshit lol. And yeah this is super long and repetitive, so I'm not gonna worry too much about the quality/conciseness of my response. Guess ill try to just take it peice by piece. I usually don't entertain shit like this but I'm bored today so let's try it.

Why do you find someone else having a different experince than you invalidating? Have you considered that this may be a personal insecurity more so than the responsibility of the people who's identities you're uncomfortable with?

The bisexual label has bever been exclusive of trans/nonbinary people, and the misconception that it is is itself transphobia in action. You say you changed your mind about that label after learning that it isn't exclusive of trans people, congratulations. That doesn't mean that everyone else using the bisexual label just hasn't come to that conclusion yet.

Lesbian has historically included bisexuals and etc. It's never been exclusive, but there have always been exclusive people in every queer community.

Do you think there is any true distinction between bisexual history and gay/lesbian history? Why can't we share words? Why are we all obsessed with being unique? Why does it matter so much if we overlap? Isn't that the point of community? To share and to be different and have overlap, to take joy in each other's experiences? Why are you so intent on defining exactly who can be what? Is the point of queerness not to acknowledge our inate and complex humanity, to say "I am unquauntifiable"? It is to me. But maybe that's philosophical, in which case my practical down-to-earth questions are: who gets to make the rules about who gets to be what, who is going to enforce these rules, and what tool of violence are you granting them to do so? Is it you? Is it the government? Is it an organized elected council of queer elders? Are the freaks who don't follow the rules exiled, shunned, imprisoned?

As for these other words we "already have" like sapphic, have you considered that we "already have" lesbian? Lesbian has historically been a word for women(etc) who are attracted to women(etc). Why did we need to make new words to separate each other? Why did we need sapphic when we already had lesbian? I don't feel that making and using new words is wrong and I support anyone who wants to use these labels, I'm just demonstrating that the logic behind that point of yours is identical when flipped. Lesbian has always been here for people like me, it was the only word we had for a long while, so who are you to rewrite its history?

Your personal experience of queerness is not universal. Words mean slightly different things to everyone, that's how languages and humans work. And that's a good thing. That's the point of all this!

The kind of people who harass and assault lesbians don't care about this shit. Are you seriously trying to blame a whole group of queers for ... queers being harassed and assaulted? The straight cis guys who are chasing and trying to "convert" lesbians already don't think of women and lesbians as people. They're not gonna sit there and debate the finer points of someone's identity before they decide if they want to assault them.

The bigots don't care about our labels. They don't even respect whether someone is actually queer or is just someone they perceive as queer. Outside online discourse like this, a faggot is a faggot is a faggot.

I do not have any patience for anyone who believes certain types of queers make the rest of us look bad. Like seriously why are we still doing this? Also you personally right now with this ask have just repackaged dangerous conservative ideologies under the veil of being *progressive*! This is some seriously puritan stuff you've said here! You say it yourself that you have been a victim of being sexually pursued against your will and that you take certain precautions in life to prevent that from happening, and then you turn right around and blame a whole demographic of people *with that exact experience* for bringing that experience onto themselves *and onto you*! What!

Literally nobody is saying all women have the ability to be attracted to men. I have literally never seen or said that apart from this very ask right here. I guess it could happen, someone could be saying that somewhere, but in that situation I'm gonna call them a misogynistic ass and consider them to not be speaking for all lesbians everywhere. And I don't think it's too much to ask that others use the same level of critical thinking skills in that situation.

And as for the people you have seen saying "all lesbians are terfs" those people are lesbophobic. Those are lesbophobes. I don't know what else you want me to say about that, I don't really see how some people being lesbophobic should impact whether or not a whole bunch of other people are morally correct (?) in using the word lesbian.

Ask rating:

4/10 for nonsense and contradiction

[lostandfem]

hey, i just wanted to say that detransitioning doesn't mean you need to buy in to terf-ness. like, i definitely agree that the women who have detransitioned would have benefited from the ideas of radical feminism. and that radical feminism is the only viable path forward to a future in which all people feel safe and comfortable in their bodies and their social roles. however, not all radical feminists are terfs (this is coming from a trans person who believes in radical feminism). the abolition of gender norms doesn't mean we should abolish transness. just my thoughts for you. wishing you all the best

Hey! Thanks for the ask :)

You make a point. Radical feminism doesn’t have to exclude trans people. And I personally don’t exclude them. Nor do I identify as a terf, just a radfem. I personally include any person assigned female at birth, regardless of how they identify. The point is prioritizing the care and protection of females before males, who are the oppressing class. However, the nature of radical feminism questions gender constructs, and the goal to abolish the correlation of gender to specific sets of traits threatens to abolish how many trans people currently identify themselves.

Given my experiences I now feel a need to question exactly how gender identity works in regards to biological sex and how the systems apply these gender constructs irl. I’m evaluating how the patriarchy deals with the concept of a gender identity and if it’s harmful or helpful. I’ve seen too much internalized misogyny from both sexes to believe that some people’s reasons for identifying certain ways aren’t due to that. I need to question how my girlhood experiences have been translated to be signs of trans boyhood. I have to question why does trans need to be a thing?

So far I’m of the opinion that it only needs to be a thing for people with GID. Transition might actually be the right/only treatment for them and that’s okay, and I’m more than willing to accommodate female trans and nonbinary people. But we can have people living as the opposite sex without having any sort of gender ideology. I.e. It’s possible to live as the opposite sex without being “trans”. I believe it’s possible to have a sort of body-incongruence that needs medical intervention, but I’ve also seen a lot of people deciding they’re trans because they better fit for another gender’s roles. Some trans women find out they’re trans women because they like skirts. Some trans men find out they’re trans men because they always hated dresses. That exists separately from just body-incongruence. Though you can create body-incongruence through the rigid application of those gender roles.

I think we need more data on how dysphoria works, because HRT and surgeries shouldn’t be the first option. If you look into detrans stories, a lot of them talk about how their dysphoria was caused by something else entirely. Even so, by all definitions of the word, it still fits the criteria for dysphoria. A lot of us even have dysphoria now. And it makes me a little sad that therapists are either too scared to talk about it or they’re more of the opinion that transition is almost always the answer. Looking back, I could tell my therapist was too unsure to fully discuss the reasons behind my identification. She only agreed with what I said. And because of how deep I was in the sauce, I denied any questions. For example, she said some people detransition and asked me to be careful, and I shut her down. I fully believed detransition was something terfs made up to destroy us, because I was taught that by other trans people I trusted. On one hand it’s nice that she didn’t invalidate my experiences. But she was also afraid to give her own input. Same with my current therapist. He never told me my traumas could be the reason I was trans, he only agreed with me when I figured out that was the case for me. He helped me elaborate. But questioning someone’s gender identity just isn’t something you do, even if it could help them out in the long run. Even if you mean it in the kindest way and genuinely want to help. And gender therapists, as far as I’ve understood, leap to medical transition, too. We think that medical transition saves lives, but we don’t question why they do. Nor do we explore other treatment options.

So I don’t exclude trans people from my feminism, but I do question the nature of being trans. I don’t want to erase the reality of GID, either. The nature of radical feminism requires us to question the constructs of gender because of how they’ve been used against us, and so it makes us critical of current developments in the world of gender, too. I’m not here to force anyone to detransition, either, but I want people to look at the reasons why they want to transition, especially if you relate to my experiences.

Wishing you the best, too!

[tea-and-nuance]

When I was 16 one of my closest friends came out as FtM. At the time trans issues weren't really something most people were familiar with. But as myself and most of our friends were LGB supporting him wasn't something any of us questioned. I was with him when he bought his first binder. I helped him donate and replace his wardrobe. We celebrated when he began experiencing euphoria after starting T and his voice dropped. At 18 when he had top surgery another friend and I took turns staying with him during recovery. We never questioned his journey.

About a year or so later when visiting from college, he seemed different. We talked a lot about mental health and when I asked what was going on he shared he was struggling with his identity again, that he felt more non-binary than masc. that they stopped taking T, and somewhat regretted some the changes it has made to their body. That's ok, it's ok, what can I do to support you?

That's when they shared that while living at home they had been experiencing sexual abuse by their brother, which stopped when he began transitioning. I was completely shocked by this news, and while I could share my own experience with sexual abuse it was different. I encouraged them to seek counseling and therapy, I offered to go with them to the rape crisis center. This was a secret they had been hanging onto, and while it was never explicitly said that the abuse may have informed their transition - with my own experience I could understand wanted to alter ones femme appearance after abuse. Not wanting to have breasts, dressing more masc to avoid the sexualization of being a girl.

I knew puberty was a difficult time for us - my friend and I both had very large chests and experienced inappropriate comments and behaviors at a young age. I had wore double sports bras until highschool to give my chest a flatter appearance. I'm not comparing that to being trans but I know it's not an uncommon experience for a lot of young girls.

We lost touch over time. Last I heard they still identified as non-binary, and had a good relationship with another non-binary person. I really hope they are well.

I never doubted or questioned their transition or identity, but my heart always broke for them that they hadn't received more mental health support when we were growing up. That at 18 they were able to get surgery and T, but how many of us missed any signs that abuse was happening in their life?

Knowing that experience, and watching as transgender issues become more and more popular over the years was when I really began questioning how well it is being handled for every individual. Especially young girls. While I mostly never said anything I watched online and saw that anyone who did question transition for kids be labeled as transphobic.

As far as group opinions, I always found TERF rhetoric too extreme. There are points that make a lot of sense and I wish were talked about more by everyone. I find left trans activism too extreme where any question or concern makes you a transphobe.

Other random thoughts/experiences,

- I've been asked if my kid was trans because they were interested in activities not typically associated with gender. Like what?

- I mostly don't care what bathroom someone uses, but washing my hands and looking up to see a very tall bearded masc person behind me triggered my PTSD. When I explained why I was having a panic attack - I was told I needed to address my transphobia.

- A person in my large social group changes their pronouns often. A lot of times they use neo pronouns. They disengage from and has said unkind things about anyone who accidently misgenders them.

- I've brought my child to exactly 2 Drag Queen Story Times. The first one was fun. The second involved twerking and undressing.

- My lesbian friend has said, "I never want to interact with another penis again-" and then expressed guilt for saying as much, and even apologized to our friend who is a transwoman (who's response was, you're a lesbian it'd be unusual if you did like penis.)

- One of my friends is an ex-cop, now family lawyer. Some people in our social group avoid him because his moderate political views. His girlfriend for a long time was trans. She didn't attend the group because she didn't like the comments she got from a few members for dating him.

- At a kink convention we saw a lot of bare breasts from people who appeared ftm. A few of my female friends decided to go bare chested as well, they were asked to cover up because female nipples bad.

- Someone hit on me at the convention, when I declined they called me transphobic. I didn't even know they were trans or how they identified. The appeared pretty androgynous. I'm openly bisexual I mostly don't care. I didn't want to be hit on.

I'll end it there.

[homosexualprude]

I’m rewatching ContraPoints like I said, and...

[/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTPuoGjQsI&t=29s&ab_channel=ContraPoints “Gender Critical | ContraPoints”

Oh, shit! 

*Before we get into it: I’ll be using she/her to talk about Natalie. I want the focus to be on the ideas, not her own identity.*

“In the past on this channel, I’ve always caricatured TERFs as being like angry, man-hating bigots, whose only real tactic is accusing trans women of being creepy men. And there definitely are some people who are really like that, but I want to be fair, I want to be balanced, so in preparation to make this video, I posted an invitation on Twitter asking people who used to be gender critical feminists to share their stories with me.

And I got hundreds of responses, a lot of them from women who have had traumatic experiences with men and who at one time found comfort in a rigid view of gender where women and men are completely separate species, where women are safe and men are dangerous. And for a lot of those women, allowing trans people into their picture of the world at first challenged their sense of stability and comfort. It was difficult emotional work, work that they needed to do, but still difficult. And that makes total sense to me, like it’s very easy for me to understand why someone would feel that way.” Starting off here, she’s way more invested than ~feminist man-hating~ than transphobia. 

[...]

“You know it’s like you’re not even allowed to ask questions anymore or you’re accused of transphobia. We’re all just expected to conform to this gender ideology that we the public never got a chance to debate. We didn’t vote for trans orthodoxy, yet here we are permitting biological males to run rampant in women’s spaces, foisting penises on lesbians, and indoctrinating our children with the ludicrous dogma that girls can become boys with a change of costume. Oh, it rattles my chromosomes.” Her caricature of gender critical people. The “foisting penises on lesbians” comment bothers me because there’s a very real problem with this in online spaces. I know because I’ve experienced it when I identified as a lesbian. In some online spaces, especially those meant for lesbians, have discourse about genital preferences and whether or not they’re okay. It typically results in shaming and guilt-tripping towards women who aren’t comfortable with penises. 

“And the same goes for people telling me, you sure do like wearing nails and makeup, is that all you think there is to being a woman? Could you define womanhood for me? Like they don’t actually care, they’re just trying to make my life worse for 20 minutes.” Though I understand why she feels like this is invasive of people, it doesn’t mean they’re trying to make her life worse. That’s assigning some intent that simply isn’t there. 

“Listen, sweaty, first of all, my girly voice is very f*cking real. Second, my clothes, makeup, voice, none of this makes me a woman. No trans woman thinks that femininity and womanhood are the same. Rather, we’re using a cultural language of feminine signifiers to prompt others to see us for what we are.” To the bolded: Are you sure? You may not, but there are several people who align with gender on the feminine / masculine spectrum and treat *that* as gender. 

“I think butch or gender non-conforming cis women sometimes side-eye hyper-feminine trans women because they don’t identify with this vision of womanhood at all and they’ve had to struggle since childhood against a society that’s told them they have to be feminine. And I completely sympathize with that. I think there should be more gender freedom, less coercion, less restriction. But also, I’ve had to fight against the same society that told me I should really, really, really, not be this, so, I feel like we should be able to form some kind of solidarity here.” I get what you’re saying but you do realize that you turned it around on those women, right? By going, “Yeah, but what about my pain?” This is starting to go in the direction of “cis women are just JEALOUS.” 

“Like you’re targeting the people who are the most vulnerable under the present system and the leveraging that system against them under the pretense of abolishing it. You know, you don’t see gender critical feminists in Kim Kardashian’s Instagram comments like, why are you wearing a dress, Kim, you creepy misogynist.” Natalie, gendercrits critique celebrities ALL THE TIME. Where have you been? So many people online hold her up as THEE example of patriarchal conditioning. And for you to call trans women “the most vulnerable under the present system” is tone deaf, considering that gendered scrutiny is very much a thing for women who were born female. We just lost a big legal protection of abortion. And back when the video was uploaded (in 2019), it was a hot button issue in politics. 

“It’s almost like when they say abolish gender, what they really mean is abolish trans people. It’s almost like this is a hate movement hiding behind a handful of pseudo-feminist platitudes. But surely, I must be missing something.” No. In the most anti-trans spaces, being anti-trans and wanting gender to be gone for everyone as well is a common perspective.

“But I’ve had cis feminists of my race and class tell me that I have no idea what it’s like to be talked over and interrupted by men. – [Man] Actually, Kropotkin. – Or to experience street harassment or to have to treat every first date like a potentially life-threatening situation and it’s just bizarre to me that they think that. Like, what do you think my experience in the world is? You think men treat me as their equal? You think street harassers are gonna treat me with dignity and respect because I have a Y chromosome?” Only when you navigated society as a man. Don’t play dumb. You were literally a philosophical scholar pre-transition. You were definitely “the mansplainer” more than once in your life. 

“Come on, people, use your heads. When you have Germaine Greer calling trans women it, what do you think the guy on the steps of the liquor store is gonna say? When a trans woman doesn’t pass, it’s not like society simply treats her like a man. No, you get treated as monster gender, pronouns it and spit, and male privilege is not a good description of that experience at all.

Once you start passing as a woman, it’s really a step up, even though women get treated bad, because it’s still better to be a she than an it. Now gender critical feminists are really skeptical of the whole notion of passing. They think they can always clock a tran and they assume everyone else can, too. But that’s just not reality. I mean, I’m only a year and a half into my transition and at this point, I’ve had zero surgeries and it’s been like six months since I was last misgendered offline. I mean, a person with a good eye for it will probably clock me and maybe a lot of people have just been indoctrinated into politically correct gender ideology, but like, you really think the gas station attendant and the nail technicians and the heating and plumbing guy are all calling me miss and ma’am because of postmodernism?”

Gender nonconforming women also experience this. And Natalie, you do realize you were an internet star by this point, right? Your experience with being misgendered isn’t going to be like any random trans woman. 

“I know some of you are gonna sneak off to your shitty little RadFem forums and obsess over how manly and clockable I am, but like at the end of the day, what am I gonna trust, the deranged hate-posting of 25 frothing anons or every social interaction I’ve had for months? I’m so sorry you can’t handle that I’m natural fish. I’m ahi tuna and you’re mackerel sweaty. Take a f*cking sip, babes.” Very strange comment, considering that you’ve never had a vagina. What’s the point of making stigmatizing jokes about a set of genitals you don’t have? 

“Many trans women are feminine and queer before they transition, and have basically always experienced a kind of femmephobia that is rooted in misogyny. Some trans women also identified as women years before transitioning and internalized society’s messaging about women more than society’s messaging about men. Now that’s still not the same as living in society as a girl from birth, but it’s also pretty different from the socialization of masculine cis men.” Femmephobia? 🙄 It’s not a hatred of femininity, but homophobia. They clock pre-trans tw as gay men. Femininity in gay men is hated because it’s viewed as a mark of their gayness. There’s definitely misogyny in it because gay men are viewed by homophobes as dollar store women, and the name brand is hated to begin with.

[...] 

“It reminds me of what in the trans community are called transmedicalists, people who insist the only real trans people are those who experience agonizing dysphoria. In both cases, there is a sense that the essential thing that confirms your identity is pain. What it is to be trans is to despise your body, what it is to be a woman is to be brutalized by men. ‘You didn’t suffer like I’ve suffered. You don’t know what it’s like!’” Not quite. Gendercrits view biological femaleness as the only prerequisite to womanhood. They believe trans identity is a way of appropriating the pain that comes with femaleness, not that pain is an inherent function of femaleness. 

[...]

“But of course, no individual woman experiences all the things women experience and individual women understand the meaning of womanhood in drastically different ways. For some women, having babies is the most essentially womanly experience. For others, maybe it’s having an abortion. I mean, not actually, but you know, TERFs pretend it is to own the tr*nnies.” No, love, they think having a vagina is the most essentially womanly experience. 

[...]

“But in fact, medical language that assumes that everyone with a uterus is a woman erases trans men and non-binary people who menstruate and get pregnant. So saying pregnant women in this context erases them, whereas saying pregnant people includes them and cis women and doesn’t erase anyone except for Cincinnatians because we all know they’re not people. Take your shitty chili elsewhere.” You do realize medical care pertaining to the female sex is a women’s health issue, right? That the lack of maternity and menstrual considerations for women, the lack of research, and medical misogyny are dependent on articulating the issue as a women’s health issue because the state is oppressing female people for their status as female? If we count all of the trans men and nonbinary people with vaginas, most people who get pregnant will still be women. 

Okay, I’m done here. There’s more in the video, but I’m covered the big issues I’ve had with her talking points. “Inclusivity” is erasure if it co-opts the movements of existing marginalized groups. It’s like saying “All Lives Matter” in response to BLM.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[tyrannuspitch]

Jumping off @kidrat​ ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy. 

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

[cisthoughtcrime]

I peaked four or five years ago and I've honestly forgotten which specific thing was the last straw, but I remember many of the things that built up to the peak and I want to mention one in particular:

I had a classmate/ casual friend who grew up in an intensely conservative church community in the US. We'll call her J. J told me about her two other closeted gay friends in that community and how they were the nonconforming outcasts long before it dawned on any of the community that they might be gay. One of the friends, S, came out as a lesbian and was kicked out by her parents, but J's parents let her stay with them. J was also definitely attracted to women and the two had a sort of almost-relationship. J came out as a lesbian and her parents were pretty ok about it, but thought it was S's influence. S and J's relationship petered out and S had something of a breakdown. S came out as a straight trans man and was allowed to move back in with her parents. J, recounting all this to me, laughs and says "that's why it never worked out between us– I was a lesbian trying to date a man!" and within a month of telling me this story was dating a male and identifying as non-binary. She's now calling herself a demi-ace gay man who prefers trans men.

I remember thinking even then that it was ridiculous to claim she sensed S's 'internal man-identity' and that that was what made them incompatible, and later, after J started calling herself a gay man, thinking that if she had always been a gay man at heart like she said and if she had been able to detect S's internal man identity enough to know not to be attracted to her as a lesbian, then the reasoning of it all just falls apart. Looking back at it now, there are so many other aspects of the story that I could point to, but even then at my most gung-ho chest-thumping TRA self, the idea of an undetectable internal identity that is somehow inborn but secret from yourself but not secret from others' sexual attraction had too many internal contradictions for me to hop on board. idk if that's what ultimately peaked me, but asking questions in the community about how that makes any sense did get me labeled a terf. I remember sending anonymous asks to the mogai/queer theory blogs asking if there was a word for only being interested in people of the same "agab" or asking if being attracted to someone before you know how they identify makes you bisexual and being told those things were transphobic to ask.

[homopsychology]

Ways to help if your loved ones are caught up in gender ideology

I was reading about ex-conspiracy theorists and how they got out of their rabbit holes and so much of their experiences resonate with my time identifying as trans and being involved in gender ideology. I know a lot of women have loved ones caught up in the trans movement and I found this post on Reddit about helping Q Anon believers out of their ideas and a lot of it can apply to gender ideology. I’ve adapted the advice outlined in the post about conspiracy theorists to fit trans-identified people and others who are caught up in gender ideology.

 1. Common negative emotions trans-identified people suffer from: Fear, Anger, Helplessness, Hopelessness, Frustration, Delusion. Yes, mostly what you see is pig headed arrogance, that's certainly present, but there is so much negative mental baggage that goes with getting involved in the trans community and taking on this identity. Trans people are constantly told that their life expectancy is 30 years old and that they are highly likely to face physical violence. Realize that behind the obsession, arrogance, and certainty is a lot of repressed fear and hurt. There’s also a lot of emotional problems and insecurities that lead people to identifying as trans, such as internalized misogyny or seeking attention and approval from peers.

2. Help them focus on the here and now that matters. Practicing mindfulness and connecting with oneself does help foster a healthier mindset and a better connection with the real world. Many people who are deeply involved in gender ideology are disconnected from their daily lives (hence our jokes about them being unhygienic), so encouraging them to focus on what’s right in front of them can help them regain their sense of self and control. Gender dysphoria (whether rapid-onset or not) also leads to sense of disconnection with one’s body. Helping them connect to themselves and the world can alleviate their distress and bring them closer to themselves.

3. Try not to get to engage with them too much on trans topics. If the trans person in your life starts going on about gender ideology, just politely reply and go straight back to whatever you were doing. This makes you a stable place for them if/when they move beyond gender ideology. This might be a trickier one to handle if you have a trans-identified person in your life who expects you to validate them. In that case, it might be easier to listen with compassion. I do think that remaining a place of stability will make it easier for your loved one to discard gender ideology because they know you will still be there for them.

4. Realize you likely can't argue the trans-identified person out of their beliefs. This is the hardest thing to admit. The trans community has created an Us/Them narrative of the world with trans people and their allies on one side, and then TERFs and transphobes on the other. People often build their lives, identities, and sense of self around identifying as trans. Being trans also provides a community that your trans person might hold dear. Attacking their beliefs head on will be met with excuses and rationalizations, but likely not honest introspection. My peak trans moment was brought on by tiny moments of doubt that built up over time, not by straight forward critique of my beliefs. The moment someone tried to discredit trans ideology, I would shut down and become defensive. However, don’t think that you challenging trans ideology in small ways isn’t helpful. Those challenges become little pockets of doubt that remain hidden until the person is comfortable confronting the inconsistencies of their views.

5. Explore their doubts. Maybe there is something that your trans-identified person doesn't understand, or doesn't make sense. What is it? Asking questions is not the same as confronting and if done well might have a chance to crack some of their ideas. This is a big way to break down belief in the trans movement. For the general ideology, asking about cases like Barbie Kardashian and Jonathan Yaniv can help. Bring up transracialism. Of course, also asking “what is a woman/man?” is useful. For trans-identified people, here is a thread on the detrans subreddit that discusses useful questions. I particularly liked “What does it mean to "feel like" a man or a woman? Do you think the other gender never has those feelings? If someone of the other gender had the same feelings, would it make them trans even if they were perfectly happy in their birth gender? If it wouldn't, why not?” “If you could change anything, but NOT your primary or secondary sex characteristics, what would you change?” and “If the whole world went genderblind, what would you change or explore?”

6. Love them, be there for them, but set boundaries. If nothing above works, you need to protect yourself, and manage the potential damage and fallout on the relationship. If it's taking a toll on you, you may need to make it clear that you just can't engage with them about this anymore.

7. Recognize and call out Thought Terminating Cliches. This is a phrase or sentence used to prevent the mind from scrutinizing its own beliefs. Common in religions and cults. Examples: Trans women are women. A woman is anyone who says they are a woman. Etc. These are everywhere in the trans movement.

I hope this helps in someway! Let me know if there's anything I should add or clarify. I know from my family and friends how emotionally exhausting it is to deal with a trans-identified person, so please take care of yourself. Best of luck to you!

[tings-and-stuff]

Welcome to ‘JKR, a transphobic history,’ that was spurred on by me getting word of the HBO max HP spin off.

The Introduction

Joanne Rowling, know best as the author of the esteemed Harry Potter series came out as a transphobe and TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) on December 19 2019.

(https://inmagazine.ca/2020/06/j-k-rowlings-history-of-transphobia/)

‘Dress how you please,” she tweeted to her 14.6 million followers, responding to an issue regarding Maya Foster, a woman who got fired due to her vocal opposition to trans rights on Twitter, “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”

(https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/jk-rowling-transgender-women-maya-forstater )

The Continuation

“I grew up as a trans child reading your books as an escape.” One replying tweet detailed, “I would often pick out names from characters to give to myself before I ever felt comfortable in who I was. This decision, to support people that hate me and want to do me harm. It brings me to tears... Why? Why?”

As you might’ve assumed, the Maya Foster support tweet didn't go down very well. Suddenly, JK Rowling, once beloved children’s book author, was facing the backlash of her actions.

Disappearing from Twitter for a good few months altogether, many people thought that would be the end of her then tentatively labelled transphobia. Perhaps she was misinformed, some people thought. Perhaps she didn't know what was going on.

Unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, this was not the case. On the 6th of June, JKR came back to Twitter, once again back to her transphobic tweets.

‘People who menstruate’ she tweeted, mocking trans people, ‘im sure there used to be a word for that. Someone help me out. Wumbend? Wimpund? Woomund?’

Going on to give her opinion of a more equal post covid world for ‘people who menstruate’ JK unabashedly posted said tweet, either unthinking or uncaring of the undoubted backlash.

Unsurprisingly, more and more people were now more sure of her actions and started to call her out for her transphobic views.

“That's interesting,” was one popular Twitter reply “because I have endometriosis and an IUD in place to treat it, and therefore, I no longer menstruate. I haven't had a menstrual cycle since early high school, and I'm 21. I guess I'm not a woman anymore? :/”

Doubling down on her stance, JKR continued on her childish and transphobic tirade. Her response to the criticism? Read it for yourself.

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction.” she responded on June 10th 2020, showing off her very ‘legitimate’ biology and gender study qualifications “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

Meanwhile, she posted an article on her website, detailing why she spoke out on sex and gender issues. The 4000-word anti-trans article in question gave a persuasive yet somewhat comedic argument on her TERF views. It was persuasive, but it also sent people to wonder about her qualifications to talk on this subject. Because she had none.

Instead of the unmoving support from colleagues and esteemed members of society she no doubt expected, she got a rush of criticism not only from fans but also from well-known news sources, including but not limited to Vogue, BBC news, and NBC news.

Even from her crew of colleagues, she was criticized. One notable response was from Emma Watson, a renowned feminist as well as the actor who played Hermione in the original Warner Bros Movies.

“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.” She tweeted on the same day.

The Supportive Response

As aforementioned, many people rushed to criticize JKR, but many others didn't, choosing to instead tweet their support.

Replying to the same tweets that stripped away human rights, teenagers, preteens, and adults were sending messages of support.

“Thank you for everything you do! You are my heroine” One supporter replied.

Many people followed the Terf positive train of thought, either replying to criticism on JKR’s behalf or simply being ignorant.

So many fans agreed with JKR that they sparked the passing of an Anti-Trans Law in the UK.

Even in America, the consequences of her tweets are obvious in politics. Most noticeably, during the vote for the LGBTQ equality act, a senator quoted Joanne before casting his vote to try and block the bill.

The consequences of her transphobic tweet-manifesto are seen everywhere; in children blindly taking on her views, anti-trans communities being donated thousands upon thousands of dollars, and LGBTQ+ positive bills being blocked all around the world.

Miscellaneous and Unproven

Spiralling off from Twitter, many of her ex-fans started to notice transphobic and anti-LGBTQ opinions in her works. For one, the alias that she used for her mystery novels.

Notorious for her meticulous naming decisions JKR chose Robert Galbraith as the aforementioned alias. Robert Galbraith, a real man, was best known as the man who fried gay peoples brains, spent his life researching and participating in many endeavours involving the human mind. One of these endeavours? Electro LGBTQ conversion therapy. He legitimately fried brains in hopes they would turn people who identified as LGBTQ ‘normal’.

While JKR having chosen this name on purpose has been denied, it seems too much of a coincidence, especially taking into account the plot twist of one of the aforementioned mystery books, where the male serial killer had been dressing as a woman to disguise his intentions. ‘Never trust a man who looks like a woman’, she implied quite heavily.

The Conclusion

As we reach the end of this post, you may be thinking, what can you do about this? Assuming you’re not a political leader, in which case what are you doing on tumblr reading this, there is one main thing you can do, stop funding her.

Though her stance in society is a firm source of power, so is her money. Stop watching officially licensed Harry Potter films, spin offs, merch, and don't buy her books. That money you’re spending is going to the stripping of human rights.

In the end, every person can make a difference.

[littlesystems]

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King's It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a trans man? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the trans men who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

[questioning-gender-theory]

So I'm basically making this account to try to come to grips with some of my thoughts about gender, transgender people and terfs. I have grown a degree of sympathy with gender critical views, I have a certain amount of agreement with terfs but still a certain amount of disagreement, and I am open to conversations with anyone from any side of these debates, in fact I explicitly want people to tell me what they think.

EDIT: thought I should maybe say a bit about myself, I am a lesbian, I am a socialist, I do believe in equality and I think that should be the fundamental goal ie I think both sides should be open to the idea that a given action/belief actually reinforces inequality. I also have a masters in physics and consider myself quite well verse in good and bad interpretations of science. A lot of evidence held up as proof on both sides actually isnt proving anything. The reality is there is a huge lack of genuine study into these issues. This is something that actually made me question the trans narrative a bit; it feels like people are almost opposed to research into the more controversial topics because science inherently requires viewing any conclusion as potential finding, and it is allegedly transphobic to consider the possibility the conclusion that would support trans people isnt true.

Areas in which I agree with terfs:

What actually is a woman? This is kind of key to my thought process; if anyone and everyone can decide to be a woman then what does it mean?

Woman used to mean the same thing as "vagina haver". Why is it inherently worse to exclude someone with a penis from "women" than it is to exclude them from "vagina haver"? These are really just words that describe something.

Intersex people are basically irrelevant to whether you can identify as a different gender. Even if we accept the rationale of “sex is a spectrum/there are infinite sexes”, that still wouldn’t mean you can transition from one to the other. We should be questioning why people develop gender dysphoria and what it really means.

The trans rights movement is pushing gender stereotypes more and more frequently. As above, the whole concept kind of pushes stereotypes.

Calling people cisgender and equating trans with gnc, talking as though cis and gnc are opposites (even without saying it outright), and assuming cis means "comfortable with the gender assigned at birth" is demeaning and presumptious.

Trans women are not like, the most oppressed group ever in the way that is implied.

There is no proof that transwomen are socialised like women. Specifically there is no proof that they are less likely to sexually assault than men are.

Being "AFAB" or whatever you want to call it does lead to a distinct oppression. There is ofc stuff like fgm, abortion laws, period stigma etc that is entirely anatomical, and additionally stats suggest that AFAB people are more likely to be sexually assaulted, sexually harassed and objectified, less likely to recieve promotions etc. This does therefore mean than an axis of oppression that is trans v cis does not entirely hold up.

You do not experience misogyny simply by identifying as a woman.

Things such as "wanting to be a woman is the only thing that makes you a woman" (real thing I have seen) is misogynistic and entirely ignores womens oppression.

Misognyny does mean a lot of women will feel uncomfortable with their assigned gender at birth. This doesn't mean they are trans.

Bouncing from the last point, the surge of "AFAB" people identifying as another gender should be looked into, and the idea that these are women suffering the effects of misogyny should at the very least be an option to be considered, if not considered the most likely.

Men identifying as women simply to sexually harass and assault women is not beyond the realm of possibility, and should not be assumed to be.

Lesbians are being pressured into sleeping with trans women. The "cotton ceiling" should never even have been devised and certainly should not be defended.

TERFS are not some mega threatening organisation. The way trans rights supporters talk of terfs reminds me of how the right talk of "Antifa".

Women absolutely are being accused of being terfs left right and centre.

It says something that JKR talking about gender identity (even when she clearly said she was friends with trans women, that she does absolutely view as women) created a much bigger scandal than male celebrities raping women.

There are outright lies being told in the aim of supporting trans people. "Marsha P Johnson was a trans woman who started pride" and "trans women are the most at risk of violent crime" are both untrue and yet common rallying cries of trans rights.

I dont usually like to compare oppressions but really can someone tell me why the same people who think "transracial" is horrifically racist but insist everyone loves and supports trans women.

Areas in which I disagree with terfs:

Its a stretch to say that a trans woman who has "fully" transitioned is like, societally exactly the same as the average man.

Its also a stretch to say that lesbians who date any transwoman has to be bisexual. There are quite a few transwomen who do at least look like women, and especially if you meet them post transition, they would be attractive to someone who is into women.

Calling someone cisgender as in "does identify as the gender they were assigned at birth" is not inherently offensive.

Trans women do experience a significant amount of oppression. Even if you think of them as just very gender non conforming men, this still puts them at quite high risk.

Trans women who do look like women are probably at risk of sexism.

Trans women can pass as women, maybe you can always tell if they are scrutinising someone (I really have no idea) but most people just make a split second subconcious judgement on someones sex.

Transitioning isnt inherently wrong, if people are suffering from dysphoria and this is the only known way of helping then it should certainly be an option

I may add to this if more things to mention come to me, but in the mean time if people have thoughts about this please do let me know what you think.