When I was a libfem I was always told that âTERFs hate gnc women! TERFs think all women are hairless and pretty and donât accept anyone who doesnât fit that picture of a woman! TERFs exclude women who donât have an uterus anymore or canât birth children! TERFs hate intersex people! TERFs love gender so much! TERFs are all white!â. While these arenât the wildest takes (they are pretty wild lol), they are the ones Iâve seen the most. The weird thing about this is: The above mentioned claims are just plain false. As soon as I began reading some radfem posts I knew that those claims were false. They are not even close to what radical feminists want or think, not even in the slightest. So I wondered where these assumptions came from. Because from what I had seen by then radfems/rad leaning activists or other people who get pushed together under the term âTERFâ just never fit this description. Quite the opposite. Gnc women are supported and loved, being what society consideres gender non conforming is encouraged and celebrated. Gender is a social construct attached to the material reality of our female sex and itâs used as a tool of sex based oppression against women. So radfems hate gender and want everyone just to be themselves without having to choose a new gender label to be that âtrue selfâ. We aknowledge and love differences in women. We fight different injustices different kinds of women face. If you are born female you are a woman and we will support you. Doesnât matter if you are gnc, intersex (yes! intersex conditions are sex specific!), fat, hairy or unable to bear children. Black women or indigenous women face unique and horrifying misogyny and thatâs part of our activism too. Born female? Thatâs all the criteria needed. You are female and have gender dysphoria? If you want to we will still welcome you and help you however we can. This is exactly what radical feminism on tumblr IS. This is exactly the community TRAs are addressing with their false claims. I always circle back to my observation of how the TRAs function like a cult and this is another of these things that point into that direction. Itâs known that they never want their followers to fact check anything, itâs the golden rule of trans activism to never âengage with TERFsâ. Never read their blogs, never read their sources, never read their books. This is already scary (no radical feminist would ever say that you canât read trans activists posts/blogs/books) in itself. But these kinds of arguments just add another layer. Because those are the things that keep most libfems who would be interested in radical feminism away from reading into it. âTERFs are violent towards trans people and literally kill usâ doesnât hold up for too long because people will notice sooner or later that thatâs just⌠a lie. So they add some more spice to their accusations. âTERFs actually hate YOU too! They hate that you are a gender non conforming woman and they will kick you out as soon as you are infertile or look too much like a guy!â Because yea⌠thatâs what kept me from looking into radical feminism the most at first. Thinking that thatâs a group of people who hate me. When in reality itâs quite the opposite. Instead of the âGender is good, you just need to find the right one for you. You must be a guy if you are gnc. Forget about sex based oppression, that doesnât exist.â from TRAs I found a feminist community that tells me âItâs society and itâs gender norms that are wrong. You are right the way you are and donât need to change a thing about you. Itâs the way we perceive sex that needs to change. Sex is real and the oppression you faced needs to be addressedâ.
I love this post. One thing I was told as a woman with a facial deformity is that TERFs were horribly ableist. If anything, Iâve found more acceptance in radfem circles than I did in libfem circles. I learned about body neutrality and about self-worth, and that helped me way more than shallow body positivity or liberal feminism. Radfems arenât that bad, and Iâm really glad I realized that.
i second this. through reading radfem theory and meeting radical feminists themselves, iâve become far, far more comfortable with my gender non-conformity/androgyny, not even to mention my own bisexuality/SSA - and, by extension, learning about the possibility of being a febfem. since âjoiningâ the radfem community, i have to say that my confidence and self-image have improved massively, especially for a rather chubby teenage girl. genuinely, i cannot stress how good for my mental health this community of women-empowering-other-women has been. if youâre a liberal feminist, an âanti-TERFâ or some other sort of lurker reading this, please just talk to a few radfems. talk to me, if you want to. just know that youâre welcome any time.























