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i was kind of arguing with a girl who kept telling me queer is a slur, and i told her its been reclaimed. she told me its been reclaimed but its not fair that nonlgbt people say it and that only the lgbt community should get to reclaim it. i dont know what to say or how to reply?

My IRL university LGBT club is called the queer collective and if it’s reclaimed enough that they can use it as an organisation name without being called up as unprofessional or offensive, I feel like it can’t be sensitive to the point where non-LGBT people can’t say it.

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I have been summoned!

I have a slightly longer summary of what radical feminism is here, but...

Tl;dr - Radical feminism is a broad category that is mainly about women's reproductive and domestic rights. The goal is broadly gender abolition. Individual radfem 'streams' have different ideas on how that happens - for TERFs, that's ass-backwards.

Some non-TERF Radical Feminism for examples:

Firestone advocates elimination of genital distinction, and biological reproductive roles, using technology.

Dworkin advocates free transition care for transgender people as one of the functions of a community.

The conversations project isn't active any more, but has some great interviews with trans-positive radfems circa 2015

And I also once made a chart comparing TERFs, SWERFs, and radfems (+ political lesbians) if you’re interested.

Tumblr stop recommending me radfems, literally not a single one has passed the ‘Thoughts on trans ppl’ vibe check, get em outta here.

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I think one of the things that we dont talk about enough with TERFs is their islamaphobia.

Whenever I start I make 25 posts in a row but Yes and you should say it.

Most of what they dislike about Islam is either strictly wahhabi or conservative salafi practices that are more politically motivated by nationalism than anything Islamic (e.g. no women driving or banking, mandatory head coverings) or tribal cultural practices which are haraam by Islamic rules (e.g. honour killings, forced marriages, no divorce)

But that doesn’t stop them using these ideas and events to claim things like “there’s no place for Islam in a world with universal women’s rights”

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I need help. I keep obsessing over terfs and I can't stop. I sent an ask about ovarit a while ago and you told me to take a break but I can't get myself to. I had this feeling when I checked out 4chan around election season and kept browsing through it and it went away on its own, but it's really interfering with my free time now. How can I evict them from my head?

If you have access to any kind of mental health help online or in person. I’d suggest you consult them, because what’ll work best will be individual for you.

However, essentially: you can’t control your involuntary thoughts or feelings, like obsessing over these things. You can only control the way you think and behave in response to those thoughts and feelings.

Some responses will reinforce the cycle. These include going on the sites that you obsess over, or sites on similar topics. Sitting and thinking about it for long periods of time also reinforces that cycle.

You want to prioritise actions which will break the cycle. If you do that, you can slowly decrease the frequency and intensity of your urges to obsess over it. Generally things that break the cycle are things that purposefully redirect your attention elsewhere.

Some concrete ways to do this from my experience:

Notice the times of day where you habitually do the obsessive thing. Do you go on the sites on your phone while you travel, or before bed? Plan something else to do at these times instead. Maybe if you always go online before bed, plan to read a book instead. If you do it while travelling, pick a podcast to try instead.

Make yourself a list of small simple distractions. Whenever you notice yourself obsessing over stuff, pick one at random and do it. The distraction should be low effort but something you like - some ideas might be things like “do 10 minutes of stretching”, “sketch the first animal that comes to mind”.

Practice radical acceptance. This is hard to explain without a therapist, but the idea is to learn to accept that you feel your feelings, without them controlling your behaviour. You should be able to say to yourself, “I feel like I need to know what this hate group is up to, but I also know that it’s just a feeling. It’s ok to feel this way but that doesn’t mean I should go do it.”

The important thing to keep in mind is that thoughts and feelings aren’t wrong or bad. The behaviour or intensity of the feelings might be unhelpful, but the feeling is only there to be helpful.

If you and I have anything in common, I suspect that your “obsession” is protective. You can’t be unexpectedly harmed by hateful people if you keep up to date on what they are saying and doing. As far as your feelings are concerned this is as vital as keeping an eye on nearby hostile tribes in the caveman era.

But cavemen never had the ability to 24/7 read hateful diatribe by the other tribe. And that is why in the modern times this protective instinct is harmful. But it is there for a purpose and you’re not weak or abnormal for this feeling.

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Do you believe someone should be punished (or owe reparations or whatever) if they believed in terf ideology at some point in their lives, but didn't actually do anything?

No. The only think that causes a person to morally have to “make up for” being a TERF is hurting people, imo. Believing the wrong thing isn’t a punishable offence.

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For the TIRF anon, you should read up about postgenderism and gender anarchy. Gender abolitionism was originally a pro-trans ideology and still is, even if some use the term incorrectly. Vaush also has videos on gender abolition, even though he is a bit iffy (and slightly transphobic) in unrelated ways

^ Thanks anon

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Apologies about the backlog of asks I just dumped...

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I consider myself to be a trans inclusionary radical feminist. Everything makes sense to me- but one thing keeps me up at night and I really need advice on this. How can I believe in gender abolition and in the same breath advocate for people to “be” (transition? I don’t know the correct terminology) trans? I don’t want gendered sex to exist, i want that to be abolished- how can that belief coexist with supporting transitioning when I believe that in a gender-less utopia trans would not be an identity because genitals wouldn’t have ever dictated our self expression? I would consider GNC to be breaking gender binaries, and applaud that, but trans women who seek to pass completely under the patriarchy and capitalism’s construct of being a woman- wouldn’t that just be reinforcing they very standards I’m trying to fight and am against?

I’ve kept firm in my beliefs that trans women can experience trans misogyny ( I believe misogyny is an umbrella term meaning the hatred of women and I include cis women, female presenting women, trans women to be included although experiences greatly vary) and respect pronouns, my partner is trans as well- but I perceive gender dysphoria to be a sort of Stockholm syndrome of gender roles in modern day society. Is that problematic?

I know this has been here for a long time, so I’m sorry about that!

I think it’s important to recognise a few things:

A person upholding the ‘wrong’ gender role still undermines the supposed biological basis of gender roles

Seeking to ‘pass’ is more often based in desire to be safe and not misgendered, not desire to uphold gender roles. A trans person being visible is more radical than a trans person ‘passing’, but we don’t have the right to demand people sacrifice their safety in the name of doing it the ‘right’ or ‘best’ way for feminism.

I actually do agree that gender-based (as opposed to physical sex-based) dysphoria is along the lines of stockholm syndrome by society. A trans person by our definition wouldn’t be anything special and wouldn’t experience anything distressing in a world where gender was abolished, so dysphoria over gender roles would be almost impossible. They would just get to act how they want to.

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i genuinely cannot understand how terfs don't see the irony in claiming to want to abolish gender but still frequently shame women who conform to the standards set for women. especially when they use the excuse that those women don't truly enjoy being feminine.

Step 1: Forbid females from altering their appearance in ways that aren’t ‘feminine’ (e.g. top surgery bad vs. breast reductions empowering)

Step 2: Forbid females from using the ‘wrong’ (masculine) language to refer to themselves and refuse to use terms that don’t emphasise their ‘femaleness’

Step 3: ????

Step 4: Gender is abolished!

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this might be a bit of an odd ask, but a terf rhetoric i see commonly go around is one that claims one cannot be homosexual and attracted to a trans person of the same sex, or a straight person attracted to a trans person of the opposite sex etc. because of genitals is there any way to disprove this? how true is it?

There’s research around the topic but not directly on it. Research shows us one thing that I think is relevant:

The ‘sex-specific-ness’ of someone’s attraction is very individual. Some lesbians, for example, get equal blood flow to ‘arousal’ regions of the brain seeing suggestive photos of men as women. That doesn’t mean that the lesbian in question who has less sex-specific attraction would be compatible in a relationship with a man, but it does show that not all lesbians will have the same focus on physical features.

In practice, a person simply doesn’t know another person’s genitals before they decide they’re attracted. Judgements are made on appearance, including secondary sexual features like fat distribution, way before that.

Then it comes down to relationship and sexual compatibility which is again, very specific. The trans person in question might have surgery or hormonal effects on their genitals. The trans and non-trans person will both have their own preferences which impact how they interact. TERFs are the ones claiming that all lesbian preferences will be totally incompatible with every variation of trans sexuality... they are the ones that have to prove that claim. There’s many lesbians like myself who say that they personally don’t have an issue in many scenarios.

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Hey, I love your blog! I just wanted to ask what you would say to TERFS who say that trans identities are misogynistic and uphold the patriarchy because they enforce gender roles. I try my hardest to counter TERF misinformation on my feminist blog, but honestly I don’t know how to counter that point. Any insight?

There’s 2 problems with that idea that I can think of:

It assumes all trans people are gender conforming - e.g. hyper feminine trans women, hyper masculine trans men. That’s just not true.

It also assumes that fulfilling the ‘wrong’ gender role has an identical effect to fulfilling the ‘right’ gender role in patriarchal terms.

Its usually safe to assume in feminist arguments that the purpose of gender roles is to identify, segregate and control the behaviour of the binary sexes among humans. We can also say more specifically that gender roles are also justified with a biological basis - women are supposedly inherently more emotional, gentle, nurturing, etc., vs. men are inherently more aggressive, stronger, unemotional, etc.

One simple example of this misogyny in action: Yes women earn less than men, but no that’s not a problem. That’s because men are inherently more driven, and women inherently more nurturing and family involved. Women will want to be pregnant and have kids, meaning they work less hours and less hard than a man, who inherently won’t be as nurturing and have as many family responsibilities. So it just reflects the amount of work put in, right?

Anyway, if a person fulfils the ‘wrong’ gender role, they’re directly undermining that argument about the unavoidable, inherent nature of the difference between men and women.

Interestingly, many radical feminists that weren’t TERFs totally recognised this as an issue - Andrea Dworkin called it “the radical theory of sex similarity”.

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Many terfs are also materialistic as in they don't believe in any internal self or even mind, and that everyone is exactly their bodies so that losing apart of your body is like losing apart of yourself.

That is an interesting take that I haven’t seen before directly, but it is implied in a lot of TERF arguments, so that makes sense.

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except that terf is wrong and is buying into the misogynistic reality that girls and women with autism go mostly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed with something else. because the criteria for autism and its symptoms are so outdated in all psychology books and they only or mostly apply to boys/men. i finally got diagnosed with autism after years of doctors not knowing what i have and having major troubles in school. i got diagnosed 5 months ago - i'm 24. a lot of women get diagnosed with autism even later in life, if they're lucky to find a decent enough doctor. even my own doctor agreed that although i show clear symptoms of it, it's astounding that my previous doctors never even thought about testing me for autism!

I did skip over that topic but yeah it’s pretty stupid to use the official diagnosis rates as ‘evidence’ of women being healthier when women are chronically underdiagnosed with that specific condition.

Doctors suck at addressing women’s and girls’ health problems. Even women’s heart attacks are missed, let alone things that aren’t imminently deadly and have no measurable physical component.

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Anyway as an ex-TERF I can confirm a TERF's promise of "just wanting the best for women" is complete bullshit. I'm traumatized from my time as a TERF... it felt more like a cult than a progressive movement.

I just tend to point out... when was the last time we had any TERF involvement in actually helping women’s rights? I never saw it as a TERF.

Also you are not alone on that front. I have heard from more than one person that they found the experience of being a TERF traumatic.

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So they are! Because nothing is as persuasive as a copypasta accusation of homophobia lmao. Thanks @fynnkaterin

@theoneandmolly has the best response to it really

How are you comfortable being so openly misogynistic and homophobic? Aren't you embarrassed about being a disgusting bigot?

[citation needed]

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So in the terf arguments document there's a section on the bottom for sources on why natal females are "biologically superior" and one of the sources is that autism is more likely to occur in boys

In the which document?

However: ew way to slip some eugenics dog whistles in there

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How are you comfortable being so openly misogynistic and homophobic? Aren't you embarrassed about being a disgusting bigot?

[citation needed]