#terfs are evil there is no point arguing with them

[hippityhoppityyourenowmyproperty]

Seriously though, fuck terfs and radfems who double down on their bullshit and tell other trans people that they're "using the murder of a child" to "further their own agenda", like really Becky?

When we get mad at the abhorrent murder of our own community and try to spread awareness, you tell us that we're disgusting pigs twisting the death of someone into an argument for our benefit, (protecting trans people. How evil, right?) while you pretend to remain ignorant to the fact that YOUR IDEAOLOGY is KILLING CHILDREN ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Make no mistake, they know that accusing us of that makes no sense, but it's the only way for them to argue their way out of being part of a movement that tells others to kill trans people.

They are cowardly hypocrits who need to twist reality to justify their hatred. They will try to gaslight people and shift blame any way they can.

[comicaurora]

I'm sorry that the terfs made their way onto your blog but it does feel good to see you support trans people. Thank you for that

Always.

I think, charitably, that the discourse going down on that post is an extrapolation and over-focus on one element of the point I was making: that for me, determining with certainty that I was cis was a rather fraught process. I was presented with many alternatives, but underlying their imposition on me was the oddly regressive idea that the things I liked, the principles I valued, the parts of myself I was proud of were not permitted of women. My whole life I got smacked with the background radiation that I couldn't like being strong because women aren't allowed to be stronger than men. I couldn't like being loud and boistrous because women aren't allowed to take up space. I couldn't be a math geek because women aren't smart. It was all deeply regressive misogyny from day one, but I started getting hit with it slathered in a fresh coat of paint - all those assumptions still held to be true, but now there was the out that I could do all those things if I just wasn't a woman.

Concluding that the underlying bioessentialist premise was wrong was very important. Absolutely none of those statements were true, and were only ever maintained by cultural saturation, goalpost-readjustment when they were actively disproven, and the occasional bout of lying with statistics to pretend they weren't just Shit All The Way Down. The core premise that certain things were only permitted of or possible for men was bullshit, and I didn't need to surrender the gender I liked best in order to play in the spaces I wanted to. I could simply exist the way I was already existing. I didn't need anything else.

The misinterpretation is the assumption that this being true of me means this is everybody's relationship with gender. I turned out to be cis, so for me, feeling that holding onto my assigned gender wasn't allowed was distressing - just another invocation of the same bioessentialist bullshit I'd been dealing with since the preschool playground. This is because misgendering is fundamentally denying that a person has the right to express themself the way they want. When aimed at me, it says I'm not performing traditional femininity well enough to deserve my pronouns. The same disrespect is the root of misgendering when aimed at trans people. "Perform your gender to my satisfaction or I will confiscate it."

The problem is, bioessentialism is 100% ingrained into the terf playbook, which is why, for instance, all their shitty talking points about trans athletes eventually boil down to "no woman can ever defeat a man in any contest because we are simply naturally weak and stupid and there is nothing we can do about it" and quite frankly nothing disgusts me more than the defeatist acceptance of the very lie that feminism is dedicated to overcoming. Instead of accepting that the paradigm of bioessentialism is a false dichotomy right from the jump, they embrace and weaponize it against the people whose existence proves the dichotomy is a lie. If gender essentialism is fundamentally false, then it is nobody's fucking business what anybody does with their gender. If the lines don't exist, nobody needs to enforce them. And yet there the terfs go, hunting down people whose lives are none of their business and trying to argue that they represent some great and terrible evil, some downfall of society made flesh, something that makes it totally correct and normal for them to spend so much time thinking about strangers' genitalia. They want this to be a noble crusade so badly they won't even examine what flag they're flying.

I love and support the trans people in my life and will always, always stand on the side of your right to exist, but alongside that, terf rhetoric especially disgusts and infuriates me because it is, at its heart, utter cowardice. The world told them they were weak and stupid and inferior and they fucking believed it. And now they think Fighting The Good Fight For Women means turning around and using the same paradigmatic weapon that hurt them to hurt the people whose existence outside the binary proves the weapon is a lie. They're the same shithead schoolyard bullies who made me believe my entire existence was foundationally wrong for years of my life and I will never, ever side with them or the shitty, cowardly rhetoric that contributed to the loneliest years of my life.

Figure out who you are and do it on purpose. Find the real source of the misery in your life and try fighting that instead of the other crabs in the bucket. Trans rights.

[ardourie]

ok cool ig im name dropping then, u are literally making up headcanons about me based on fucking nothing, i didn’t exclusively focus on the flaws of white trans people over cis white people if u actually read anything i posted instead of believing anons randomly accusing me of things you’d see my only issue is white people like YOU because you are white

watering down the impact of racism and pretending that it isn’t as harmful when coming from queer people as if being queer is an inherently purifying or redeemable action, this website is overwhelmingly trans, our circles are majority trans, getting into disagreements with trans people on here is going to happen bc of how many queer people there are on this platform, if the only people you claim i harassed are users like ratliker i don’t want to fucking hear it, i’ve been having people call me a terf for years bc of standing up to her racism and black genocide denial, every single fucking time someone on here does something racist and a brown person points it out ppl around you run to call them transphobic, like ur doing right now! the second sentence of her post literally says i deserve to be called a terf for just talking about the racism happening on the poll, she said that HERSELF

i said hussie has done racist acts and has racism in their comic, that doesn’t make hussie evil or fans of it evil it just means we should actually acknowledge its there and not have viral post going around claiming that none of what hussie did was that bad bc they’re trans and if ur bothered by it ur automatically transphobic, as if that isn’t an incredibly fucked up thing to say, bc u said that urself on ur blog multiple times, here’s my original and ONLY post that made someone go and tell plaidos i sent death threats when that wasn’t remotely what i was saying

plaidos posted this ask that immediately had ppl in my inbox calling me a terf and bigot for harassing a trans girl (hussie) and saying im a horrible person for sending death threats when i NEVER did that, had no reason to, and hussie isn’t even ON tumblr to do that

she also stated that she meant i “started” the death threats instead of sending them which is still a fucking lie bc the poll that i was referencing was posted FOUR days ago and has ppl fighting and talking about death threats about hussie before i even knew it fucking existed, and she would know bc she was arguing under the post four days ago HERSELF

how did i start death threats on a post i didnt find out about until 4 days after people were fighting under it? how the fuck does that work?

she then went on to slip up and reveal that she subconsciously thinks the queer community is only white bc when ppl complain about white queers they r complaining about latent racism, bc brown people exist in ur community and acting like poc criticizing white people (who will always be white no matter the other identities they have) means u hate queers is racist as hell

shit like THIS is what hussie was doing on a constant basis

these are just two examples you could google “homestuck racism” and find much more my only point that i ever made is that it’s insensitive and fucked up to act like anyone who doesn’t like or even hates homestuck for its racism is a transphobe or evil instead possibly someone deeply affected by hussies racism, and plaidos was under the original poll post i referenced arguing with black people calling them liars for saying hussie is racist and has antiblackness in his work:

if you recognize hussie is racist and has racism in their work why the fuck are you arguing with black people about that fact? why are you pretending people are lying and making up rumors when hussies racism has been a known fact for a literal decade at this point, hussie was quite literally responsible for a boom in antiblack racism online in the early internet you cannot be so dense as to not acknowledge this, and i want to clarify im literally a homestuck fan, homestuck meant so much to me as a kid, and bc of that i know that online spaces for homestuck treated black people like absolute shit for complaining about the racism, i was bullied and harassed so much for even being upset at characters in the comic using the n word or mocking black people, im criticizing it bc i care about it being such a large phenomenon responsible for the normalization of my oppression.

not going over the homestuck racism workshop thing bc u ppl r being purposefully obtuse and i already talked about it here

if you don’t believe me, please go ask the people accusing me of these things for screenshots of me sending death threats, ask them to show that i have no transfem friends, ask them to show it bc every fucking time theirs never any proof, stop believing ask u read about me with no proof stop believing rumors, put urself in the shoes of others, would you want hundreds of ppl sharing post saying you did something you didn’t fucking do with no proof? ask yourself why you don’t see many black people speak out on racism on here and ask urself if maybe it might correlate to how we get demonized for it, if you think callout culture is bad why participate in it in a way where you don’t even have photo evidence backing for what your sharing

lastly, u people keep going on and on about the company i keep but are the same ones cropping out the trans girls im friends with and constantly talking to on my blog, you did it with the last situation regarding aaron bushnell you did it with the previous pregnancy callout, yall literally accuse every trans girl around me of being self hating or theyfabs, random trans women who simply shared my opinion have been harassed and accused of being sock puppets, i have a whole post about that in my pinned, but u don’t care, it’s easier to make me a scape goat and deflect criticisms of racism despite you being white and unaffected than it is to simply go “yeah some people are gonna hate media that has racism in it and that isn’t indicative of anything other than hating racism” your fucking white, can we be serious right now, you published ask saying i was sending death threats to hussie when that never happened and accused me of starting the anger on a poll i never reblogged that a bunch of my trans girl mutuals were complaining about 16 hours ago, so which is it? transfem opinions matter to you or they don’t? bc it seems like u just pick a fucking choose which girls to listen to and like randomly going after black people for not liking antiblack racism

[thydungeongal]

I can't remember what time it was exactly but sometime during the past couple of years I was sent an anon which was like "oh hey one of your followers is actually a bad person" and a link to a call-out post concerning some clique of posters and the way the accusations were framed was like "these people are little hitlers making everyone in the fandom uncomfy" when as far as I could see based on the evidence provided in the post their biggest crimes seemed to be that they were just bad at posting. So yeah, bizarre fandom drama framed in such a way that these people were actually ontologically evil for the way they argued about nerd shit. I deleted that ask because I didn't even want to give it the light of day, whoever sent it clearly wanted me to react to it in some way to grant legitimacy to the accusations. I know I'm already kind of skirting that line by simply acknowledging it, which is why I'm vaguing about the person and the nature of the accusations, but since that's not really the point of this post I would appreciate it if people didn't speculate about who this is about in my mentions thank youuu.

Anyway said person who followed me did turn out to be kind of annoying to me and I ended up soft-blocking them, but once again their biggest crime wasn't that they were an evil person trying to do a purge in the fandom, but just kind of being bad at posting and, worst of all, wrong about RPGs, truly the worst of crimes. Nothing worth relitigating or drawing attention to, but I like to have a good time on the internet so I softblock people if they're constantly being annoying or bad at posting in my mentions.

Anyway so that's often, but not always, the mechanism behind call-out posts. People get annoyed by other people in whatever space they have to share, but because "this person is kind of annoying" doesn't carry a lot of weight, so it gets warped into "this person is ontologically evil" and through framing the situation in the most uncharitable way possible and often showing things out of context the person gets painted as the worst and evilest bad person.

The way this relates to recent events: the reason trans women often have it worse when it comes to these things is that due to the way even the wokest of allies can often maintain transmisogynistic ideas, trans women often find themselves having to be really careful in even supposedly trans friendly spaces because should they step out of line for just one second not only are people very quick to look for a reason to explain their annoyance as some moral failing on the trans woman's part, and admittedly this can be even worse in supposedly progressive spaces! Because the person annoyed by a trans woman's behavior can't conceive of them potentially being transmisogynistic, the fact that they're annoyed this specific trans woman has to be a failing on her part, right?

And because society often rewards and reinforces transmisogyny those call-outs often have much graver consequences on trans women. And again, this can actually be amplified in progressive spaces. In addition to receiving garden variety transphobia from TERFs and reactionaries, trans women can often find themselves having a certain warped set of expectations placed upon them by supposed allies. Part of it is having to be a model minority. The other part is sort of a whore/madonna complex but make it woke. Despite the fact that a lot of allies do still maintain a lot of transmisogynistic ideas in they heads, trans women are often elevated (often in an extremely fetishizing way) in progressive spaces but only to such a degree that they behave. Should a trans woman be decreed to have been annoying or cringe the consequences can be very severe because even supposedly progressive people will gladly amplify the message, because trans women are supposed to be perfect angels and this one trans woman being kinda annoying and cringe is a betrayal of that ideal.

And there's no quick and easy way out of this, but at the very least: if you see someone spreading shit about a trans woman on flimsy grounds, call them out. Always assume innocence and be very aware of the fact that even with the most well-documented call-out post you're not seeing the whole story, you're only seeing what's on the surface and even then only what the person making the post has selectively chosen in support of their narrative. And be on the lookout for yourself being willing to accept false narratives out of internalized transmisogyny. There's no need to be hypervigilant, but be willing to second guess your first impulses when a trans woman annoys you: are you annoyed for a reason or because due to internalized transmisogyny you expect trans women to act a certain way? Is your annoyance proportional to the perceived slight or is it once again amplified due to her not conforming to your expectations?

Anyway, trans women rule imo

[transtalesofdoom]

Rambles about TERFs, miscommunications, and echo chambers

Accidentally looked at a TERF blog and by accidentally I mean I clicked on it and scrolled down knowing it was a TERF, and didn't leave the very moment it made me uncomfortable.

Yikes, dudes. I know algorithm-based social media creates echo chambers, but yikes. It's so sad. They call themselves feminists, and I want to believe them. I'm going to believe that they want the best for women. But they've been so misled, so caught up in their anti-trans rhetoric, they've lost the plot.

This isn't something that's exclusive to TERFs, either. Every stance, no matter how well-intentioned, will eventually turn harmful if taken to a strong enough extreme. Let's do an example I frequently fall into myself:

"Gender is such a complex spectrum that applying a norm based on genitals at birth is detrimental." I think, if we sat down and discussed this calmly, TERFs and I could agree on this. There are more ways to be a woman than just one. There are more ways to being a man than just one. Neither is abnormal for not adhering to stereotypes. (Nonbinary identities are a different talking point for now, this post is getting long enough.) "There are no cis people." This is what I say more often. To me, it's the same stance, but I've exaggerated to the point of being reductive. What I mean is the same as the above. I'm trying to say that gender is too multifaceted to compress into a binary system, that the way we've structured the system makes it impossible to find any standardized norm that doesn't exclude a majority of people. I mean to convey that gender is an experience, and no person ever has the exact same experiences in their life. If I say "There are no cis people" to my agender roommate, they know what I'm trying to say. This is because we've had similar discussions. We've gone down the path from "Gender is such a complex spectrum that applying a norm based on genitals at birth is detrimental." together. If I say it to my cis cousin, he looks at me like I've lost my mind and tells me he's worried about the online circles I've been in. He has no context for my statement. I've reached a reductive extreme. If I now go into my local (read: online) trans positive echo chamber, I can say "There are no cis people" and some folks in my echo chamber will understand what I mean and echo it. And some people will not understand what I mean, but echo it regardless. And some people will fully misunderstand what I mean and echo it. I get no pushback for the reductive wording. They don't get any pushback for their reductive wording or misunderstanding. The cycle then repeats, until the statement has completely alienated an entire demographic.

The TERF echo chamber works the same. Every echo chamber works the same. The rift between factions and their respective echo chambers widens and widens. It's near impossible to have a productive conversation with a TERF, not because we're both bad at discussing, it's because we're working on entirely different levels. I'm not going to convince someone that trans people aren't evil if they fundamentally do not believe trans people exist. I can point to as many examples of trans people doing good as I want, but if you believe that the act of being trans is an inherently malicious act of deception, that won't sway you.

I've seen a bunch of discussion between TERFs and trans allies about whether trans identities, rhetoric, people, etc are dangerous to children or women or society or whatever. And it will never get anywhere. Because one side argues that a group of people should get to exist in peace. The other side does not believe this group of people is real.

I wish I had the patience to sit down and explain to every TERF calmly and respectfully why trans people are in fact real. Talk them through the science and the experiences of trans people. Show them why misogyny and transphobia share a common root of upholding the status quo and suppressing minorities. But I don't. I don't have the strength to repeatedly advocate for my very existence. I don't have the energy to explain that my experience with gender is both scientifically backed and valid even without scientific backing. I don't have the patience to convince people that I'm not a threat to anything but the status quo, and that the status quo should be abolished.

I'm a feminist. I'm a trans. I'm a woman. I'm not a woman. All of these are exhausting. And they'd be a little less exhausting if we could stop infighting and focus on our real enemy: Ronald Reagan.

Recommended reading: my post on the connection between transphobia and misogyny.

If you've read this far, and you'd like to engage in discussion, do so respectfully. I will block anyone who completely ignores the point of this post and resorts to attacks rather than dialing it down to find common ground to work from. Good faith discussion only and from all sides. I'm not your battleground. I'm tired.

I also welcome the addition of any comprehensive, accurate, and respectful source.

[generalchelseamayhem]

Really beginning to loathe the way one of the battlegrounds of trans people vs. TERFs is "arguing which Wrong Side MRAs are on"

Trans people and their allies seem to think MRAs are allied with TERFs because TERFs have been known to hang around with Tories, Evangelical think-tanks, and White Supremacists, all of which are indicative of MRAs for reasons I find non-obvious. Like, if you're going to go down that route, you could at least point out where the offending White Supremacist has said anything about men's rights. Even for grifting purposes.

Meanwhile, TERFs seem to think MRAs are allied with trans people (going so far as to call them TRAs just for the acronym association) because, uh, all the laws trans people are fighting for will somehow make it easier for men to rape women, which is something they assume MRAs really want, for reasons I again find non-obvious.

And look, I'm not going to No True Scotsman MRAs, there's probably people out there on both sides of the discussion, and a few people remaining neutral besides. All I can really do is give my personal philosophy of men's rights.

I always start with "men are flawed, and varied, and important". Everything else flows downstream of that. If you can't accept one of those premises, I'm afraid we will not see eye-to-eye. One of the first and most important things that comes after is that men should, fundamentally, be given the freedom to be who they want to be, so long as they are not hurting anyone. That encompasses a wide range of things, but important inclusions in that for the purposes of this discussion are full bodily autonomy over the self, and freedom from expectations of behaviour based on gender.

The reasons given for why MRAs are on the wrong side every time seem fundamentally incompatible with these philosophies, and, if I'm perfectly honest, any functional philosophy of men's rights I can imagine (that isn't just grifting).

Like, okay, trans people think we're on the TERFs' side, and sure, I'm not going to deny that there are probably transphobic MRAs out there. But, if you look at the rationale TERFs, the foundation of their beliefs is most often that all men are evil, and these trans people are just more men trying to be evil in a particularly insidious way.

And yes, this is absolutely a conservative belief, so I can see how conservative men would ally with women who hate them! This is a tactic that religious fundamentalists have used for CENTURIES to suppress the freedoms of women. Even when they are men, they say "all men are evil, so don't go out on your own", or "all men are evil, so wear this special modesty clothing so that you shan't tempt them", or "all men are evil, so save your virginity until a marriage which has been blessed by God". This works because, when you accept this belief, you accept their authority and any doctrines around ensuring your safety that they put out.

But, it's kinda fundamentally incompatible with men's rights activism in any coherent form! Religions will take the hit of "making women fear men" because they typically don't care. But seeing men as evil is specifically something MRAs don't want, and so it makes no sense to ally with TERFs while the belief that all men are evil is their driving force. Like, there's no benefit! Hating trans people is objectionable, but hating trans people for explicitly TERF reasons is actively self-destructive.

Meanwhile, TERFs think we're on the trans people's side because any victory for them is an attack on women's rights, which... alright, fine. I can't dispute it because you're looking at human rights as though it's pie. That's a common thing among radfems, tbh. Once upon a time MRAs were shut down on the basis that victories for feminism were bad for them. Silly men, don't you know that rights aren't pie, and more for women doesn't mean less for you? Now the script is inverted, with radfems viewing every single concession to the idea that men have issues as an attack on women's rights.

I'd love to convince you that I don't, in fact, love to rape women, and want women to be as unsafe in public spaces as possible, but I know nothing I say will get through. I can only say that I've never wanted to rape someone, but I've never looked at the women's toilet door and considered it a greater obstacle to raping women than my own unwillingness to rape. I certainly don't think of intruding upon the space inside the door as a greater crime than rape.

Nah. The reason I break in favour of trans rights is not just because I have friends who are trans, but the trans rights worldview is generally compatible with my philosophy of men's rights. (Apart from the fact that they often/usually hate men's rights activists, but to be fair, they're hardly unique.) I quite like the idea of being just who you are without apology, without caring what other people say you "should" be. I think breaking down the rules that define gender roles in society is a very important thing for everyone.

And, on a purely self-interested level, it is poignant and heartbreaking to hear trans men's accounts of what their lives are like, now that they're living as men.

[lovely-libations]

💀Intro💀

name: Alex

religion: Hellenic polytheist

gender/identity: transmasculine

pronouns: he/him

interests: Modern literature, the Resident Evil series, Stardew Valley, point-and-click adventure-style horror games (I have more but I don't want to make this too long lol)

fav books: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer; Beowulf

fav song: basically any sea shanty to ever exist lol

pet peeves: People who take myths literally and disrespect the gods; People who claim to believe victims, but side with the abusers; People who hate on candy corn just to seem cool; BLACK LICORICE

boundaries:

I reserve the right to block anyone who makes me uncomfortable for any reason. It does not make me scared of reality or confrontation, I'm just tired y'all.

No myth discourse on here. There are too many myths and WAY too many interpretations to argue over even one of them.

No slut-shaming, fat-shaming, addiction-shaming, ableism, etc etc etc.

extra:

I am not strictly a Hellenist, but this blog's primary focus is Hellenism! I would describe myself more aptly as an omnist (which, to me, means that I accept there is truth to be found in all religions/spiritualities).

I also work with and occasionally worship Gods from the Celtic and Norse pantheons.

dni:

TERFs

SWERFs

"MAPs" (aka pedophiles)

Those who are under 18 (only stipulation: you can follow me, but I will not interact with you under any circumstances)

Republicans, conservatives, tories, and basically anyone who thinks the LGBTQ2S+ community shouldn't exist

White supremacists, neo-Nazis pretending to be Heathens/Norse pagans

Ellen Degeneres

banners made by Aterios (@messywitch) <3

[d-parade]

please don’t be like this

useless warning mentions of violence

my original post for context (not at all vicious or rude, just me reacting mildly to a violent comment and explaining):

here are some comments she made. she blocked me, of course, not even giving me the time to respond before blocking to make it look like she has the upper hand. but luckily i have another tumblr account.

she’s not even a trans woman… if you were a trans man before that means you were female. how is it in any way transmisogyny if you’re not a trans woman?

and… we skipped right past transphobia and straight to transmisogyny? whew what a leap.

oh and there’s other comments too. she combed through my account. lucky.

ohhhh so we misgendering now? kinda hypocritical and ironic how you believe in a mindset of respecting everyone’s “identities” until it’s someone who you don’t agree with.

at least transmedicalists misgender because of how they define dysphoria. it’s not like they purposefully want to misgender (when they don’t even see them as trans in the first place) (like if it’s a binary tucute with dysphoria they use proper pronouns). not the same for tucutes apparently. they just do it because they believe they’re the good guys and misgendering is an act of justice against evil…

and funny enough this was my post directly below the one she commented on… which sums up my experience with her nicely. i’m sure she read it too.

i’m not saying this person represents all tucutes and inclusionists of course. like i said in the above pic, there’s genuinely nice people who come from a place of love. i just don’t agree with how their ideas work.

all in all, no matter who you are, what you are, do not respond with violence. and it’s not because i’m triggered or disturbed by it or anything. it’s just straight up immature. you’re also not at all open to discussion or even try to counter argue my points, just straight up “TERF RHETORIC” “TRANSMISOGNY” “KILL YOURSELF”

do you not find it embarrassing?

this is a reminder that your actions determine how someone else perceives the communities you’re in. while it’s impossible to control other’s perception of an entire community, change starts with you. just be a respectful person. no matter how much you hate the other party, maintain dignity. by doing that, you already won the war.

it’s not so much about “being a person you want others to respect”, but more of self respect. don’t ever reduce yourself to plain, mindless hate.

it’s not that hard. so just please don’t do this. you’re only hurting yourself, and the ideologies you represent.

[cupcraft]

Also its funny (and by funny I just mean baffling) that whenever I stumble across a terf blog to see what their arguing about it just surprises me how little terfs actually critique the patriarchy and misogyny at large which again always reinforces my point baout how radfems/terfs really are just parrots of the system and players in reinforcing it.

Terfs will really blame anything that isn't the patriarchy (most trans people and trans women especially). They blame things that the patriarchy also blames. They parrot conservative evangelical christian reproductive arguments, they parrot racism and white supremacy leading to colonialism and bioessentialism arguments which is also linked to eugenics and anti-disability rhetoric, they subjugate themselves to the patriarchy with said arguments (ie women are weaker than men, women are dumber than men, etc. <- basically what you see a lot when they discuss trans women in sports). They support laws that empower fascism and police states, that rid themselves of bodily autonomy and freedom. They critique labor exploitation in the sex work and porn industry by victim blaming the worker and not the system and at the same time they dont see other work as exploitative/under the same system. They reinforce capitalism as Women must be Working and Girlboss in Capitalism and Homemakers are Evil without supporting liberation or intersecting their arguments again with other axes of oppression and understanding how capitalism as a system really again is the arm of the patriarchy and oppressors.

Its just always so tiring and baffling to see how far terfs are willing to go to side with oppressors as if it'll save them. Idk if this makes much sense as im just rambling but yeah

[darael]

Hey, friends. We need to talk.

We need to talk about TERF Shit™.

I've cropped the top of the below image because the person who reblogged it simply didn't know and they instantly deleted the thing once it was pointed out to them and I don't want anyone to think I'm criticising them here.

You see this?

Yeah. This is TERF Shit. It is also not TERF Shit. Let me explain:

Two of the four blogs visible in this chain are TERFs, emphasis on the RF. Second-wave, evil-is-stored-in-the-Y-chromosome TERFs (one has the "men in women's prisons" dogwhistle in her pinned post; the other has a very recent post at time of writing describing trans people having suicidal ideation as them enacting narcissistic abuse). Of the other two, one appears to be a deeply committed trans-inclusive feminist and anti-racist activist, and the other is a #girlboss #christianliving self-empowerment and wealth blog. What might surprise you is that those descriptions are in bottom-to-top order. Neither of the "her"-URL blogs is overtly TERFy.

The tweet, incidentally, is from a suspended account, so I have no idea what Quantum_King_'s politics are.

Here's what I reckon happened.

The original tweet describes something that is a genuine problem that we really should discuss. It does, however, set some misleading ideas in the reader's mind, too. Clubs and events do indeed profit from enabling predatory men; from creating situations that encourage men to be predatory. The "intentionally", however, is misleading. It suggests they're doing it in order to enable predation. The second blogger leans heavily into this idea. And, again, many of the things listed do have the effect described — but again, it's not because the organisers want more men to prey on women. It's because the organisers get more money when they enable men to prey on women. Now, I want to be very clear: this does not let them off the hook. This does not make any of the systems they've set up less harmful. And it does not make the perception of "female privilege" against which puttingherinhistory argues correct. The reason it's worth understanding is that if we misunderstand the aims of the organisers, we will be incorrect in our analysis of both causes and potential steps toward solutions.

Both of these people engaged in good faith. They fell a little into the trap of conspiracy, assuming that there's a grand aim of preying on women, rather than a system of incentives that enables that, but they also pointed out genuine problems and harms.

Then the TERFs found it. And what did they see? They saw a line of argument that played precisely into their ideology of patriarchy-reductionism (for the unfamiliar: this is the analytic lens that assumes that all unjust power structures are some combination of part of patriarchy, tools of patriarchy, and side-effects of patriarchy. It is analogous to class-reductionism in some schools of communist thought), implying that men are inherently predatory, all these systems are set up intentionally to enable/encourage/abet that predation, and so on. They even saw it coming from blogs with URLs that members of their hate movement might use.

So they boosted it.

And now it's on the dashes of people who don't remotely support TERFism.

And this is why we have to be careful. Not only with what we reblog, but with the framing of our analyses — because TERFs, as we've seen, consistently ally with fash, and we do not want to even accidentally phrase our advocacy in ways that appeal to fash and their allies.

[zevranunderstander]

whenever i get a terf on my blog i read their blog and their mutuals' blogs before blocking all of them, like, mostly because i'm a hater, but also because i find it kind of interesting why certain people think certain bigoted things, and terfs are so fascinating to me because they live in this echo chamber that makes them forget how reality works and operates on a larger scale. like they have this small bubble and only ever talk to other terfs, and they feel like they are the only people alive talking about feminism and lesbian rights? and people attacking them thus are always attacking *women* like, the person attacking them is always assumed to be trans or a man, and so the other person is always by definition incorrect and hateful and evil.

like for them, they are this small in-group of the last sane and rational people working against some ubiquitous evil that is trying to eradicate them and get them to "like men" or whatever and they don't really understand the criticism that misandry isn't helping feminism because we are just alienating everyone and that their views on how men in general act are completely unreasonable and theyre so insanely obsessed with this idea that men are inherently evil and manipulative, but even when normal regular feminists try to criticise them, they think all other women are "complicit" in trying to make men the superior overlords of the world and whatnot

and obviously since to them women are these magical, spiritual creatures with divine powers and men are born evil, they think gender is inherently binary, and trans men to them are women who bow a knee to masculinity and trans women are inherently evil men trying to get into the only safe space women have left out of malice. and they do this thing where they only ever view the most fringe opinions that some people hold and try to paint them as these universal talking points they are arguing against. "some people regret having a gender reaffirming surgery" becomes "gender reassignment surgery is predatory, and deeply harmful and ruin your life and basically everyone who ever did it regrets it (because to them, like i said, transness isn't "real"), and "after being really nasty about trans people, a terf got hate mail" becomes "all trans people want to violently assault and murder us and people are cheering them on", and "one trans person somewhere said something that's actually kind of troubling and weird" becomes "all trans people are a monolith and they all think exactly what this one person said"

and like, they are acting exactly like this one genre of racist white people who think that one black person somewhere voicing that they, personally, hate all white people, and feel immediately incredibly threatened and claim that this is proof that "reverse racism" exists, but instead, terfs are convinced that a tiny sexual minority which is constantly being pushed down and ridiculed and questioned for their sanity and has their rights stripped and who gets murdered in hate crimes is somehow *their* oppressor

and its easy to say stuff like "i hate terfs" and whatnot, and they will continue to view this as an attack on womanhood and not as the same thing as someone saying "i hate racists", because they think their hateful ideology and gender essentialism are some inherent facts about the world, but like. genuinely, if you're a terf, or whatever you call yourself, you need to understand that you are not the oppressed group. you are ridiculing a minority that already has it worse enough, and you think you are doing this to liberate women, but I need you to understand that women and men are not innately and uncompromisingly different, and a lot of women who cling to movements like this probably actually had a pretty bad experience with a man, and the patriarchy and the oppression and sexual exploitation of women are real concerns, but you are projecting a social dynamic that makes men more likely to be violent oppressors out to be something that is in a gender's nature, when that is just clearly not the case and such a deeply reductive lens to view people through

[drbased]

People are using the social justice language of less than a decade ago to argue points antithetical to the original goals. The SJWs may have been pro-trans but it was also basic understanding that women should be allowed and encouraged to hate men, that black people should be allowed and encouraged to white people, that gay people should be allowed and encouraged to hate straight people etc. It was uniformly understood that oppressed people need a voice in this world, and that that voice isn't always going to be kind or friendly. And that 'hating' your oppressors has little to no real-world impact outside of hurt feelings.

Now one of the most widespread and oldest oppressor groups in the world we're not allowed to 'hate' because it means you hate their other intersectioning identities. The language of intersectional social justice is being evoked to argue for a hyper-individualistic and flaccid anti-politics.

It's startling to me that you could make this point for hating 'cis' people, able-bodied people, straight people, white people. Why even differentiate 'qu**r' people out if under this exact same logic we're not allowed to hate cis gay people because some of them are black? But that's the point, isn't? We're not allowed to hate person of x oppressor group because they're also of y oppressed group, but then we're not allowed to hate the oppressors of y either because they might also intersect with x. In the end. there's nothing to differentiate what makes an oppressor and oppressed because anyone could be any of them at any time. And, with gender, anyone could secretly be nonbinary and therefore part of the only group that's publicly allowed to get away with talking about the evils of their oppressor class!

The anxieties of the social justice era, of 'pop feminism vs gamergate', of black lives matter, of gay marriage, of increased representation of 'minorities' in the media, is rapidly coming into view. We're in an era of backlash. Like an abuser learning therapy language to be a more effective abuser, the apolitical centrists and worried masses have found an effective way to silence those who truly wish to enact change. Feminists, gay rights activists, BLM protestors and beyond were never going to be given the benefit of the doubt, our movements were never going to be seen as 'fair'. That's part of the whole reason we decided 'actually, we're allowed to 'hate' our oppressors and say 'male/white people tears' etc.' They're stealing that from us. The concept of the terf has been the perfect in-road into destroying all the gains that have been made. Literally every uncomfortable leftist politic will eventually be tacked onto the terf umbrella.

Fortunately, my hope is that this is fundamentally unsustainable. The red scare was a period in politics where being a 'communist' was seen as a catch-all term for anyone wishing to 'destroy america', whatever that means - but in reality, it was anyone who advocated for progressive politics and said things that went against the conservative status quo. The current right-wing have dredged up the same argumentative style with phrases like 'cultural marxism', but the left have found something similar with the 'terf'. If you may notice, even the right wing have started to use the phrase. Right-wingers and left-wingers alike will absolutely use the terf boogeyman when they need to. Eventually, the word terf will be so comedically meaningless whilst trans politics will be so unavoidable that regular people should be able to reasonably escape the term simply by sheer number alone. But that is a while away yet. In the meantime, I simply watch and brace myself for the next braindead post like the above that pops up on my feed due to using the 'radfem' tag.

[deconstructed-damsel]

How to respond to TERFs making accusations disguised as questions

TERFs and associated anti-trans bigots are using a rhetorical trick to accuse trans people of horrible things in a way that makes defending ourselves seem like we're dodging a question (and thus look suspicious).

For example: "Why do you want to groom kids?" is a pretty common one to see.

Now, we know that we don't want to groom kids, but if we respond with that directly - "I don't want to groom kids" - it sounds like we're dodging the question, because the expected typical pattern of answer to a question like that is to provide a reason, and we fail to do that.

Here's the real reason they ask: it is a premature follow-up question that implies the premise behind the question is already proven true.

In other words, by asking the question, they imply that the question needs to be asked. It implies that we've already established that trans people want to groom kids, so the next question is 'why?' The question is a guise, making it seem like we're already past the point of debating whether or not trans people want to do evil shit. The only reason you'd ask that question is because trans people are doing evil shit, right?

We have to directly back up deconstruct that implication, every time.

If they say: "why do you want to indoctrinate children?"

Say: "Wrong question. The question you should be asking is 'do you want to indoctrinate children?' and the answer is 'no.'"

Every single time. Don't let the implication of our wrongdoing being pre-established slide, deconstruct the fuck out of it and drag what they're actually saying out into the light. Be direct about why you're avoiding the question - it's because the question is wrong. Then you get them back to the point where they have to argue whether or not you do want to (and the answer is no), and you can start to interrogate why they assume you'd want to and expose their ignorance and bigotry and shitty false arguments. You can decide for yourself if it's worth trying to educate them or any spectators about what's actually going on at that point.

We don't have to play on their terms when their terms are meant to obfuscate the truth and sneak bigoted accusations under the radar. We haven't done any of the heinous shit they're asking us why we're doing, and don't let them pretend otherwise.

"Why do you want to do x?" - "Wrong question. The question you should be asking is 'do you want to x' and the answer is no."

[my-strange-attraction]

I am a lesbian and I came across Lostryu’s post by way of a mutual of mine. I was curious and wanted to see your response. I have to say your rebuttal contains nothing of merit that could possibly fare as a proper argument. It’s chock full of contradictory statements and straight up lies. I am assuming you’re a USA resident, but the highest university with an LGBT+ population is Brown Univeristy; and only about 20-24% of people reported being LGBT+

As a fellow english major, it was painful to read. Constant contradiction with only half formed ideas; practically agreeing with Lostryu regarding the definition of lesbian only to backpedal…. And words do have meaning, that’s why we use them in our craft as wordsmiths. You can’t simply replace keywords with opposite definitions and expect your manuscript to make sense!

I also want to point out that you degendered Lostryu entirely, refusing to use correct pronouns. That in and of itself is very transphobic. I don’t really trust your judgment as it seems like you didn’t even care about reblogging from lesbian and transgender rape apologists.

I thought you might like to reflect on this, but I truly think you care more about your self-perceived moral superiority rather than actual people.

-🧁

Oh boy. Ok.

Well thanks for being so kind and civil and not attacking my character.

I know you don't trust me, but you gotta trust that a queerer school than Brown exists and I go to it. I can see where the confusion is, after doing a google search myself, because my school is pretty small and doesn't show up on a lot of searches for colleges in the US. I will give you that, after looking up the number myself, it's more like 50-70%, but I will tell you that less than a quarter of the people I know and talk to on a regular basis are straight and cisgender.

I'm not writing an english essay here, it's a tumblr post. If anything, this is a lot closer to how I would format a philosophy paper, which, if you've ever read one of those, are very rambly and have roundabout ways of getting to the point. Also, again, thanks for not attacking my character, here. Thanks for really respecting me and not discrediting my nearly completed degree. Really appreciate that.

I... have no words. I used they/them/theirs pronouns throughout the whole post, which, I cannot stress enough, are NEUTRAL pronouns. I use those pronouns for all people online, and I think most other people do too. Yes, I knew he used he/him and used they/them instead, but I also cut his username out of all my screenshots. I wasn't talking about him specifically, his post was just an excuse for me to explain a concept in depth, and explain why exclusionism such as what he was promoting is detrimental to the queer community as a whole.

I didn't include his username or @ him at all. It wasn't even meant for him to look at, really. He was an example, a nebulous person with an opinion I don't agree with. It wasn't personal, so I used neutral pronouns. I am really sorry it came across that way though, I never want to make anyone uncomfortable and I know pronouns are super important to pay attention to for some people. This is an actual sincere apology.

I don't think I'm morally superior, that's not the point. I don't argue with people on the internet in order to prove my opinions are right and that anyone else with different opinions has made a wrong and evil choice and is unredeemable as a person. Really this whole thing happened because the original post had some terfy red flags and even though op isn't a terf, I wanted to point it out so that people know how to spot it and avoid it.

And do I think it's bad for the community to exclude mspec lesbians? Yes, but I also understand where the frustration comes from. I don't think less of people who have that opinion, I just hope to change their minds, because I think a radically inclusive community is the best kind of community.

[piqued-curiosity]

“There’s a shit ton of homophobic bisexuals (genital preference discourse, anyone?), and some well-meaning, naive gays”

Tbh I find this incredibly disingenuous, I’ve seen loads of gay people on radblr doing the whole “the gay people tanking the LGB community are just poor little confused meow meows and the bi people doing it are evil malicious homophobic cretins” thing and… it’s really not that black and white. I wouldn’t say you could even generalise this as true. I know plenty of bi people who I would say are well meaning and just going along with what they’re being told is acceptable, and plenty of gay people who are pushing this genital preference shit HARD (despite knowing they would never touch a cock themselves as a lesbian) in order to virtue signal how much they accept the trans. There have always been people in any group who are willing to throw other members of the group under the bus in order to elevate their own status.

I also have known bi people who were being shitty, and well meaning but clueless gay people! Of course it can happen this way too. But I see this generalisation all over radblr and it’s ridiculous tbh, because real life LGBT activism is done by mostly gay people. Because the majority of bi people are in straight relationships (obviously) and it’s much easier for them in society to pass as straight. There are more bi people than gay people but most bi people never acknowledge their bisexuality, or make it a public thing. The bi people who are out and involved enough with the LGBT community to be doing real life activism, who ALSO spout homophobic genital preference discourse AND are doing it maliciously are a minority within a minority.

Like, yeah, some bi people are being pieces of shit. But there is WAYYY too much blame here being placed on this one demographic. And I know before you even respond that you’ll categorically disagree with this and somehow think it ludicrous that I’m claiming that it’s mostly gay people who speak on behalf of gay people, and make it a huge part of their everyday life and conversations. But like… come on.

I agree, and I’m definitely generalising. But at the same time, you have to consider the harm that can be done by both and why it’s a bit different.

A homosexual can spew all the “genital preference” nonsense they want, but they’ll never be able to practise what they preach. Eventually, people will see right through them. This is why you see so many (and I did this too) pulling the “SOME gays, but not ME” card. Those of them who lie and say they can be attracted to the opposite sex are causing harm, of course… but they aren’t setting the same sort of example the homophobic bisexuals are.

Said homophobic bisexuals set more of an example because they actually practise what they preach. They claim “sexuality is fluid! You can’t just be attracted to genitals, it’s the person that matters!” And can back up that claim by pointing to their opposite sex partner, or their history of enjoying intercourse with the opposite sex. They can claim to be gay and set an impossible standard for those of us who actually are gay.

Plus, I’m much more lenient towards homosexuals because I know it’s coming from a place of internalised homophobia, as well as being squashed by the overall homophobia in the trans movement. I was there. It was awful to be surrounded by people claiming I was wrong for my sexuality, telling me all the ways I needed to change even though I simply couldn’t. And it was either put up with that and find a way to lie my way through it, or accept that I was an evil terf bitch who deserves to die. I get that bisexuals are facing the same pressure to conform to the ideology…but the difference is that it doesn’t actually demand anything of them like it does gay people. I’d argue that the “genital preference” debate favours bi people, as it positions their sexuality as the moral high ground. I’m sorry, but the conditions for gays and bis in the trans community are not the same. The mental anguish is not the same. One group is trying to survive being fed conversion therapy rhetoric, one is not.

And going back to how it feels to be gay in that environment…it wasn’t the lying gay people who made it worse. Deep down, I knew they were lying just like I was. If I saw some lesbian reciting the inclusiveness script, sure it would make me feel bad but I’d always have a little voice in the back of my mind telling me she was doing the same shit I was. What hurt more, was seeing bi people claim to be gay and rave about their trans partners. “I’m a lesbian and I love my trans girlfriend!! I love sucking her girlcock!!!”, that sort of thing. That made me feel like something was wrong with me; why couldn’t I be like this lesbian? Why is what she describes being so happy with, so disgusting to me?

Again, I agree it’s not true that all bi people doing this are evil and all gay people doing this are innocent. Like you said, it’s not that black and white. But personally, looking at the situation from a lesbian perspective, I can’t pretend there isn’t a difference.

[menalez]

as a bisexual minor, i follow mostly only other radblr minors and every. single. one of them that's a lesbian has either reblogged or made their own posts about "lesbophobia" this or "lesbophobia" that and it's so frustrating as a febfem to see girls my own age saying things like lesbians have nothing in common with bisexual girls or that our experiences are different or that bisexual girls have the power to oppress them. like hello?? bisexual girls get hated on by both lesbians and straight people, we only have community with each other because we don't want community with straight girls but lesbians act like we're the freaking devil or we're gross fetishists or something and it's not fair just because i was born being attracted to guys despite the fact i will never freaking date a guy ever ever that i'm suddenly this oppressive figure or i'm privileged or this or that and it's so freaking tiring like i'm not even doing anything and i can't help but feel like all the girls reblogging/making these posts somehow hate me like they don't like me just because i'm bisexual despite the fact i only ever relate to lesbian posts on here than bisexual posts. i feel like dionne had a point, elle-aquitaine had a point, you have a point… but like there's no point to all this arguing other than to turn girls against each other for whatever choices they choose to make. radical feminism doesn't and shouldn't exist as monolith, like we should all be allowed to do whatever it is we want to do like for example the girls who date guys, without being treated like they're evil. and it goes the same for lesbians, you should be allowed to exist without people being phobic towards you. all the discourse just feels like it was planned by someone specifically for everyone on here to stop focusing on real matters but it really hurts to see so many girls i follow or like on here being angry about lesbophobia and thinking it's non lesbian girls who are the problem. i don't like the us vs them stance everyone seems to have started to take recently.

i almost completely disagree with you and idk where to begin with it. like

one of them that's a lesbian has either reblogged or made their own posts about "lesbophobia" this or "lesbophobia" that and it's so frustrating as a febfem

?? why is lesbophobia in quotations

hello?? bisexual girls get hated on by both lesbians and straight people

lesbians get hated on by both bisexuals and straight people. we get told our sexuality is close-mindedness, have our sexualities appropriated, are shamed for not being OSA, etc. we get called terfs and exclusionary etc for our innate sexualities, often perpetuated very heavily by bi people.

we don't want community with straight girls but lesbians act like we're the freaking devil or we're gross fetishists

most lesbians i know either dont mind being among bisexual women or specifically have issues with bi women bc of bi women being lesbophobic and indeed fetishising lesbians. beyond that bi women outnumber us like 3 to 1 so like honestly theres no loss for bi women regardless lol

i feel like dionne had a point, elle-aquitaine had a point, you have a point

both of their points was more or less downplaying the reality of lesbophobia bc theyre not lesbians and will never experience lesbophobia.

but like there's no point to all this arguing other than to turn girls against each other for whatever choices they choose to make

i very explicitly stated many times that it doesnt matter to me what women decide to do, whether it is date men or not. my issue is with people being lesbophobic when they very much can oppose separatism or whatever else without being lesbophobic.

radical feminism doesn't and shouldn't exist as monolith, like we should all be allowed to do whatever it is we want to do

thats liberal feminism / choice feminism which very much is antithetical to radical feminism

it really hurts to see so many girls i follow or like on here being angry about lesbophobia and thinking it's non lesbian girls who are the problem

imagine how much it hurts for a lesbian to see people treat us talking about our oppression and wishing for allyship from other women as a bad thing.