Bitch's Stitches

just so we're very, very clear:

knitting was not invented by white people

knitting, while historically most commonly practiced by people in cold climates (namely europe), does not belong to the quote unquote "west"

except for extremely brief windows of time in very specific locations, knitting was not considered "women's work"

knitting is not a symbol of rugged individualism. in fact, throughout most of history knitting was considered a social activity, inextricably entwined with community

In a lot of more progressive-leaning hobby spaces, terfs are generally told to get the hell out, which is great - but in many cases that just means they've gone crypto. They hide their most obviously rancid ideas until they think you could be convinced to agree with them, or at least write them off as harmless. Same kind of thing most fascists do. Usually they don't get caught until they slip up and make a public post on the wrong blog, or until someone with Shinigami Eyes notices that a lot of the blogs they interact with are red, even though...sometimes the evidence is very much there.

Because you all know what they think about trans WOMEN, but very few people seem to understand what they think about trans MEN, so they're perfectly content to let their bile fly in every way short of blatantly misgendering us out loud. In fact, I've seen people claim they're somehow on our side because of the way their hatred of us manifests - that is, it's mostly concern trolling, especially if they think they can convince us to repress or detransition.

It is not out of love. It is out of seeing us as tragic lost lesbians who are "mutilating" ourselves for internalized misogyny, and in the worst cases as sexual resources that they are entitled to and being denied ("fun" fact: trans men are the group most at risk for corrective rape; this is a factor in why). With trans women their whole deal is a plainer and more blatant revulsion and fear, but with trans men their goal is to make us detransition before we """""ruin""""" ourselves, or suffer and die if it's "too late". Fandom and other adjacent hobby spaces where a lot of young transmascs hang out are places that they really want to get their shitty little claws in.

Red flags to look out for:

Refusing to believe historical trans men exist; claiming any of them only transitioned for career purposes even in the face of an abundance of evidence that their career was a secondary motivation at most (e.g., Dr. James Barry)

Related to the above: transmasc exclusionism. Claiming that trans men ~aRen'T rEaLly OpPreSsEd!1~, often citing cases of AFAB people who definitely did publicly live as men at least partially for a career as "proof". Refusing to believe that we don't have accurate violence statistics because violence against us is usually reported as violence against women - what they won't say out loud is that they agree that this is correct.

Fearmongering about FtM medical transition - "testosterone will make you just so angry all the time", exaggerating the dangers of binding (no, an even halfway decently fitted binder will NOT break your ribs or suffocate you), trotting out botched surgery horror stories, really going hard about how "tragically incomplete and obviously fake" FtM bottom surgery methods are and implying that no one who gets such surgery will ever be truly satisfied, etc.

Fearmongering about appearance in FtM medical transition. This is a big one. Remember, they see us as sexual resources that they are losing. For us to become "ugly" is for us to be beyond """"saving"""". Anything about how testosterone will make you lose hair (which in reality is less likely in trans men than cis men; in fact it's common for trans men to get thicker hair on testosterone), negative remarks about what it will do to your body hair, saying it will make you "stink", calling potentially unwanted effects of transitioning "damage", etc. If this is despite also doing anti-makeup, anti-shaving, anti-beauty industry talk, you have almost certainly found a terf, note the obvious hypocrisy of the body hair stances.

A strong emphasis on detransitioners - conspicuously, always on AFAB detransitioned people. Positioning them as a group who are at odds with the trans community, implying that we are at fault for their "tragic mistakes". Some may claim to be detransitioned themselves - most of them (though not all, There's Always The One Guy) are lying or stretching the truth in order to sound like they know what they're talking about when fearmongering about medical transition.

Body-shaming men, whether trans or cis - this is frequently a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-"you don't really want to look like THAT, do you~?"

Any oversimplified feminism that boils down to "man = oppressor and bad and therefore anything we could do to them is harmless; woman = oppressed and innocent and good and therefore incapable of truly harming anyone" and implies or even states that intersectionality means different forms of oppression that a single person faces are the sum of their parts (it means the opposite, in fact), is never to be trusted. Especially if they vocally include trans men in the "evil bad oppressor" category. Especially if they do so and DON'T vocally include trans women in the "innocent perfect sad victim" category. (Not that radfem ideology becomes good if you make it trans inclusive, it's rotten to the core, but this is a post about how to specifically spot someone who's trying to get around your DNI without catching a block.)

More examples of how they may hide in plain sight in fandom, some less transmasc-specific:

Claiming to be all for trans headcanons but then finding a way to insist that any they see is ~super problematic~ - often to the level of "it is justifiable to ruin the life of anyone who likes this headcanon"

Especially objecting to trans headcanons in gay ships because that somehow makes it Less Gay and thus Less Revolutionary

Calling any fan work in which a trans male character is happier and more comfortable with himself after transitioning "unrealistic"/"overly idealized" - a crypto-terf will never say the true reasoning out loud (read: that they don’t think trans male happiness is real, and that it shouldn't be), but their arguments are likely to feature their common transition fearmongering

Of course, this list is incomplete - it never can be complete, because even if I SOMEHOW managed to make an exhaustive list now, they'll change up their act once they see people catching on. It is very beneficial to terfs if the only thing you know of their ideology is the seething rage against trans women, because that way they can just sweep that part under the rug until they've got you believing the "transtrender social contagion" "lost lesbian" "poor tragic 40-year old baby with internalized misogyny" "ROGD" "testosterone-poisoned tragedy" "becoming the enemy" narrative they've spun, and from there they can drag you into all the rest of their crap. Again: beware oversimplified black-and-white "feminism".