Radfems use a lot of dog whistles to catch the unwary. Hereâs an incomplete list, to help you identify radfem lite in the wild:
Aphobia, particularly of the âaces are cishetsâ and âaces are trying to shut down sex discussions in our spacesâ varieties, along with acting like âallosexualsâ is a slur (itâs not, any more than cis or neurotypical are slurs)
This is really rich considering how anti-sex most radfems are, but logical consistency of argument always loses to âtruthinessâ, or so Colbert tells us.
Deliberately and repeatedly refusing to understand what the terms ace and aro mean is also a dog whistle. (See âQuestioning why people need new labelsâ below)
Truscum rhetoric, which is used to encourage transmen to turn on other transmen or nonbinary individuals who flaunt gender nonconformity
âI donât want to share my community with my oppressor!â
This is so classic radfem I canât even tell you. Itâs just recycled from their desire to remove âmenâ from âwomenâs spacesâ, but extended to any person they see as not performing woman-ness correctly. You will see this recycled over and over, with a new âoppressorâ named each time.
Remember that intersectionality says that almost all of us have some privilege over everyone we ineract with, and vice versa. This is why radfems hate intersectionality; they like to believe that all privilege is solely gender-based.
âQueer is a slurâ and other queerphobia, including severe pushback against any effort to work out a general term for the queer community that isnât âgayâ or an ever-shrinking basket of letters
âDrop the Iâ rhetoric aimed at convincing young intersex people that their bodies are medical problems that need medical solutions, rather than that our society medicalizes bodies that fall outside very rigid gender norms and we need to stop doing that
Protip for anyone confused: radfems donât understand biology, to an extent should be embarrassing in any adult. Radfems define intersex people as cis women who require surgery and/or other medical intervention in order to have âfemaleâ bodies. They are unwilling to understand that human bodies come in a wide variety of forms and that our definitions of binary gendered genitalia and sex characteristics are arbitrary.
Seriously, if I see any of yâall reblogging that stuff weâre going to need to have a serious talk about the western (particularly US) medical communityâs outright sexual and medical abuse of intersex children. No blame on the people who grew up with that - itâs a nightmare to get out of. But in no way do we need to be reinforcing the attitude that intersex bodies are âbrokenâ and that intersex people donât need the queer communityâs support and acceptance and resources to fight that label. They do.
Yes, this includes reblogging posts written by intersex youth whoâve drunk the kool-aid. Donât spread that poison.
Biphobia of all the usual flavors but particularly of the âbi people are only oppressed due to their homosexual inclinationsâ and âbi is a transphobic termâ, because nothing says radfem like encouraging two groups they hate to turn on each other
Calling bi women traitors to their gender is old school hardcore, but Iâve seen it popping up again lately.
Kink-shaming, particularly by telling victims that they contribute to their own oppression by having kinks or talking about them (false!)
Porn-shaming, by saying that porn permanently damages people and makes them either a) not able to enjoy sex irl (false!), or b) inclined to hurt other people sexually irl (also false!), and sometimes both of these at the same time, which doesnât even make sense (see âtruthinessâ point above)
Throwing sex workers to the wolves because how dare they have a job swerfs donât approve of, blah blah purity blah sexual policing blah oppressing themselves blah blah I canât even with this bs
Poly-exclusionary language
Any attempt to turn pan folks against bi folks or vice versa (see âTruscum rhetoricâ and âBiphobiaâ above)
In general, trying to pit one part of the queer community against another part. Theyâve been using this tactic for at least 15 years. They keep using it because it works.
Constantly equating the entire queer community with homosexuality and defining the community based on homosexuality, which is so ahistorical I canât even
Policing the term lesbian as being for homosexuals only
Seriously, I never saw anyone try that outside radfem enclave-type contexts until I got on tumblr, what even is this bullcrap.
Quick history lesson for the kids: in my own lifetime and for decades before I was even born, âlesbianâ has always been a self-chosen label and has always included a lot of people we today would call nonbinary and explicitly included lots of openly trans and bi and ace and aro women. Lesbian is a community and/or a behavior and/or a preference, not some medical term with scientifically sharp borders.
Yes, you can absolutely use wlw or sapphic if you donât want to use lesbian. I know that radfems have poisoned the term for some of us, and some folks just donât want to deal with the attacks. Use whatever words youâre comfortable with.
âDrop the [insert letter here]â - basically, exclusionists
âInvasionâ rhetoric, that some identity is suddenly âinvadingâ the queer community and doesnât belong, and is going to suck out all the resources and/or make us all conform to being like them
If you think this sounds like Fox News talking about immigrants, youâre right. Itâs the exact same line used in a new context. RADFEMS ARE HARDLINE CONSERVATIVES. They are NOT progressive AT ALL. They use progressive words to press a far-right conservative agenda but with white cis homosexual women in charge instead of white cis straight men.
âYou will not replace usâ is a shared rallying cry between radfems and white supremecists.
Questioning why people need new labels at all, denying that specific labels should exist, denying people the right to label themselves, making fun of labels people have chosen for themselves, refusing to understand or simply accept the labels people have for themselves
âLESBOPHOBIA!!1!â - There is real lesbophobia out there, just like there is real pedophilia out there. Radfems like to redefine âlesbophobiaâ from its actual meaning to include such gems as:
being nonbinary, trans, or gnc in general;
existing as an intersex person who does not believe they are âbiologically femaleâ (a category that doesnât exist anyway);
existing as a bi woman in the lesbian community;
existing as an ace or aro woman at all;
asking for some attention to be paid to intersectionality involving race, religion, disability, class, etc. within the queer community;
calling attention to transphobia, biphobia, or aphobia within the queer community;
using the words terf or swerf;
basically holding radfems accountable for their behavior in any way.
Made up straw men nobody ever actually supported or argued for, such as âmonosexual privilegeâ (what even?)
Any kind of purity test or moral pollution rhetoric
This is their basic ideology, which is organized around cis womenâs purity that will somehow come pouring out of our vaginas to heal the world of all its messy complications, as soon as enough of us are pure enough. Purity rhetoric makes the word âproblematicâ into the worldâs greatest sin and also conveniently tears down any real person whoâs actually trying to make the world a little better. Because if the world got better, what would radfems have to rail against anymore? Especially if the world got better because of people who didnât follow their incredibly restrictive rules.
Not everyone who reblogs posts like the above is a radfem. Tumblr has a unique structure that disassociates posts from their contexts, making it very easy for radfem lite rhetoric to go viral outside of radfem circles. Radfems love to take advantage of this fact (and of us).
A few years ago, I was following a radfem I had met through other channels, where she had kinda mostly behaved like a reasonable person (at first). Most of the tactics above were in her tumblr-side basket of tricks. Iâd been warned about her by other people. Totally should have listened.
Her rhetoric started mild but got worse and worse. I watched her target multiple teenagers and groom them to parrot radfem lite rhetoric and think of their oppression solely along gender binary and âpureâ homosexuality lines. If I tried to intervene at any point to address actual queer history, she shut me out with illogical but unanswerable comebacks (the one I remember most vividly was âif you believe in monosexual privilege unfollow me nowâ, which is a weird af answer to âbiphobia is not the same as homophobia, for a variety of reasons, and homophobia is not the font of all queerphobia, and some homosexuals (her, in this case) are biphobicâ). Her behavior was disturbing as hell and I nearly stopped logging into tumblr at all because of how much I couldnât stand watching what was happening. I finally unfollowed, which I should have done from the start. To those kids she was grooming: Iâm sorry I didnât fight harder for you.
The sad truth is, giving up and conceding the field to radfems is exactly what they want. Terfs want all of us to be too burnt out to fight back. Theyâre like those handful of assholes lying down at the front of London Pride, secure in their belief that we wonât actually remove them no matter what they say or do because itâs too much trouble to deal with the fallout. If that attitude doesnât reek of privilege, I donât know what does.
I see a lot of people say theyâre tired for The Discourseâą. I get that - hate is exhausting to deal with. But do we call dealing with nazis/the alt-right/white supremecists âdiscourseâ? Of course not. Itâs survival, because they consider us sub-human and want to strip our rights and protections as people. How about pushing back against MRAs/Incels/PUAs? Thatâs literally survival for women and nonbinary folks, and basic human decency for men.
The same applies here: itâs not âAce Discourseâ, itâs terfs targeting aces & aros and literally trying to get them ejected from the community so that they wonât have community resources or access anymore. Radfems literally objected to the Trevor Project having scripts for aces; they demanded everyone stop donating to the Trevor Project to punish the non-profit. Literally, they objected to suicide prevention for aces and were willing to cut off prevention for other people to force their point. Thatâs life or death.
Similarly, itâs not âQueer Discourseâ. Radfems donât object to the word queer because itâs been used as a slur, or they wouldnât identify so heavily with dyke and gay, both of which also have long histories as slurs. No, radfems object to any inclusive, overarching term for the community. As long as there are letters, they can play drop the letter games and pretend people donât belong, simply by ignoring one letter at a time until weâre down to âLGâ. They canât do that with a big word like queer. Similarly, theyâve objected to a lot of other terms - MOGAI, GRSM, and other acronyms have been proposed and roundly mocked or rejected as âlesbophobicâ. Itâs not the word they object to; itâs the big tent approach. (Seriously, google âMOGAI hates lesbiansâ and boggle with me at the sheer hubris.)
Arguing with a radfem is not Discourse, because Discourse assumes everyone is arguing in something vaguely like good faith. Discourse is something we do with colleagues we may not agree with but who we see as fellow humans and our equals in terms of rights. Any time youâre debating with someone who doesnât even try to see you as fully human or their equal, itâs not Discourse or Debate anymore - itâs survival.
tl;dr: Radfems are hyper-conservative extremists who have infected tumblr (and other sites - light a candle for AfterEllen yâall) with a flood of bald-faced lies and hate in an effort to fracture the community into the parts they consider acceptable and the leftovers (most of us). They want us to be too scared to speak up, afraid of being attacked by them and the young people theyâre grooming in their image. Their goal is to create closed communities of mostly white, all cis, middle class, ârespectableâ homosexual women, who will then change the world so that they replace white cisstraight men at the top of the pecking order; fuck the rest of us because weâre not pure enough to deserve âtheirâ resources, even if we contributed most of those resources ourselves. We may be suffered to exist as long as we defend their utopian ideal. The moment we protest, we will be exiled.
So basically, thatâs why Iâm queer. The people in our community matter more to me than any concept of purity or perfection ever will. If the people in our community matter to you, learn how to spot these attempts to snipe us off one sub-group at a time; learn to stand united and support all of us.
