the safest road to hell is the gradual one

TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.

Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn't know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn't see a problem with it.

I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn't think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn't-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.

If TERFs "only target trans women" and "only want trans women gone", if that's the one and only problem with their ideology and if that's the only way we'll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.

As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the "dangers" of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they're hurting every single one of us.

The entire point of this post is that because I didn't know what TERFism looked like outside of their hatred of trans woman (which was, at the time, the only reason I cut ties with any of those people), I continued to exist in radfemmy spaces and continued to unknowingly associate with people who promoted lesser-known aspects of TERF ideology in an effort to groom me and others into accepting their more overtly transphobic ideas.

Let me be clear: most of the people I was talking to at the time were trans. One of them was a trans woman who came out during this period, and her transition was met only with support by those around me. This was even framed as "removing a man from the world" by some.

What I'm referring to are people who existed on the fringes of these circles, injecting radical feminism in an effort to eventually lead individuals down the TERF rabbithole.

If you don't know what that looks like, it doesn't matter how much you love and support trans women. It doesn't matter how much you hate TERFs. There are other aspects to TERF ideology that are dangerous, that have nothing to do with trans women, and you can and will make yourself vulnerable to them if that aspect of their ideology is all you think is important.

If you think sexism ends by addressing the problems of women alone, you have partaken in radfemmery.

If you think it's a shame to be attracted to men or to be a man, you are thinking radfem thoughts.

If you think men should refrain from talking about issues that impact them because they're taking focus off the real issues, this is also radfem.

At its core, these are the beliefs that some people are inherently better than others because of their gender. Take a while to sit with that. There are plenty of trans inclusive people who have bought into these beliefs. Radical feminism is dangerous, period. But people can recover from these beliefs.

Give me the burden, give me the blame / I’ll shoulder the load, and I’ll swallow the shame