piepryzc cię

Hey there! Thanks for telling me. to be 100% honest I am so far removed from how tefs operate in this site that i didn't even know those were tags I had to block. I am also not that familiar with how terf terminology and specific rhetoric works in english. 99% of my experience with feminism and feminist politics applies to my real life experiences, to the militancia (there's no real translation for this term, i guess activism is close) feminista of my friends, my school, my country in general. every book i've ever read about feminist theory is in spanish. i am very familiar with how terfs talk and post and say stuff that seem innocent but are actually not, in spanish and specifically argentinian Spanish. So I can spot them right away. But honestly I know very little about how they operate outside of my political sphere, much less in other countries that aren't close to mine even less in another language.

“can’t?” literal cult mentality

A thread. 🧵

Last month, a blogger named Catherine Bouris started a multi-piece called Babes in Terfland discussing the radical feminist movement. I will analyse it and give my opinion based on my honest experiences within the community to give my own insight and accuracy. I will outline what the author got right and where she got it wrong.

Part 1 (LINK) Ovarit:

Ovarit did indeed start due to the crackdown on /r/gendercritical - one thing the outside observer does not realise is that while Ovarit is radfem run it is not a radfem or even leftist exclusive website.

The intention for Ovarit is for it to be a space for women to openly discuss their issues regardless of political alignments - radfems have their own separate exclusive subs (circles) for themselves. Because of this, it really is the reddit of women, what people tend to do is go for the lowest hanging fruit for posts and ignore the more intellectual discussion that happens on the website. While Ovarit isn't my social media of choice there's better subs and better discussions if you look for them.

Part 2 (LINK) Giggle:

I tried Giggle once, generally I get the idea of wanting a feminist talking space free of men, however there is truth that facial (or even voice) detection is not 100% reliable, masculine women (including detrans) or very feminine trans people can often not produce the intended results. The way I see it however, is that it very sad that an oppressed group of people has to resort to such measures to just stop a privileged group from sabotaging their own ability to talk in a safe space where they can express their feelings. The overall userbase I can't comment on, since I do not frequent it. Part 3 (LINK) Tiktok:

The algorithms the author (Cathy) gets here are interesting, mainly because these are ones shown to young female teenagers (weight loss and anorexia). Many people in the young radfem community as young teens heavily affected by eating disorders and body dysmorphia caused by the patriarchy.

They became radical feminists due to how society has affected them, not the other way around. Mainstream feminism tends to put out messages like "body positivity" but still has no problem upholding unrealistic beauty standards when it really matters (IE: In porn, sex work promotion, ads, only tokenising other body types). This is why pro-ed things are not common in radfem spaces - many radfems are survivors, so these ideals are not promoted, and many are still in recovery - Radfem communities are sometimes where they get support without being blasted with contradictory views. As for Russia and conservative content - the implication here is that radfems are inherently conservative and we've "cracked the code" on what they really are, I wouldn't say this is true. A more accurate take would be that conservative or centrist people watch radfem content without fully understanding because it validates their existing anti-prostitution and anti-trans views, though they tend not to be interested in the theoretical thoughtset behind these stances or care about women, or how they arrived to that conclusion & how it differs from conservatives (IE: critique of gender roles). When the content become more intellectual beyond "transies in women's bathrooms", they tend to zone out. The "aesthetic" radfems you find on tiktok tend to be sometimes softer on things like pronouns and not mis-gendering - mainly because they are younger (late millennial and gen z) and they come from a generation where a lot of them were groomed so so-called safe spaces for queer people (so have a different take on sex things than us millennials), are dysphoric, were nonbinary or trans men themselves - and remember these times, and this affects they approach the issue. There is a huge young detrans and desister community on tiktok. These communities are growing significantly. Though like any feminist community it's not perfect, I admire a lot of them, as many of them are young millennials and gen z feminists who actually rid of gender indoctrination and are able to verse their arguments about it much better for people within their own age bracket, and usually coming from a more progressive len than their older counterparts. Part 4 (LINK) Discord:

This is one I'm more versed in, since I am active in discord - here, my community (RadLeft Unity) is featured here.

Cathy attempts to infiltrate one of the other servers that does manual voice verification. Regardless, the point is correct that this desperate attempt to keep men from infiltrating women's spaces does have margin for error, and again, it is sad that is has to be a thing at all on female exclusive spaces.

No one would have an issue in leftist circles from black people wanting to keep white people out of their movements or spaces, or gay people trying to keep straights out, but women somehow are pushed to such lengths due to a lack of respect for feminist issues.

Not to go on an unrelated tangent here - but one thing TRAs seriously need to stop doing; summoning black women into trans related convos.

We get the gist of why they do it; it's an anti-racism gotcha, and black women's femininity does not come off in the same as white women's femininity due to racism and eurocentrism, but this is what it is. Nothing else.

It is not because black women are more objectively masculine or man-like than white women (thus transphobia) is it because racism only allows white people to perceive womanhood and femininity in proximity to whiteness, not blackness - with no regards for variation in culture. Femaleness has conditionals (see: sex differentiation in humans), but the sex characteristics (IE: voices, breast size, height) within femaleness is a spectrum - TRAs try to utilize this by adding males into that spectrum, but we do not allow them to redefine femaleness because the criteria for femaleness is already defined and does not need to include oppressors (we'd just find a new word for women even if they did, because you'd still need a word to describe individuals within this set of characteristics).

Tokenizing black women as "pseudo-trans" people who experience transphobia by proxy actually harms us, it does not help us dismantling, it does not challenge it. We do not want to be seen as "inherently more manly women" to make trans women feel better, we want to be seen as another version of what femaleness is - black femaleness/womanhood. White women and black women have in common is that they are both female sexed, and experience sex based oppression regardless if they're perceived feminine or masculine by cultural norms, trans women do not. Trans women are marginalized due to being trans, but are privileged by belonging to the male sex - this is a completely different catagory. Tangent over.

RadLeft Unity:

During this convo we were actually talking about non-binary amabs (males) and the fashion around them, not trans women, but I digress - there is overlap. While one of the users may be generalizing here (please find one online political space that doesn't have this), there is a grain of truth here. There is a huge issue with privilege denial in the transgender community, particularly with amabs.

Privilege denial is common amongst transfemmes, as many that you see terminally online deny that they have ever had male privilege (because being raised and having opportunities as a male somehow is completely nullified by dysphoria somehow?).

The average non-transitioned trans women who "boymodes" at work and life can likely "pass" this test with flying colors because privilege is not only your current state but how you lived during your childhood and upbringing up until the point of your transition and after. Women are likely to have never had these options in their lifetime. There is a reason why women struggle to get into STEM by capita while trans women (by capita) are overrepresented in it.

They forget how intersectionality works, that they (trans women and male non binaries) can benefit from being born and socialised as the male sex. Just like how being a gay male does not cancel out male privilege, neither does being trans. Trans men earn less than trans women and trans men in their childhood have been more likely to be sexually assaulted. Why? Because they are female sexed, sexism is enforced by sex, not identity. Pastel queer aesthetic that non-binaries tend to like as a in-trend sometimes tends to be highly infantilising and often cringe, but that's another less important topic for another day.

Beyond the Veil:

This does seem to be a more mainstream type radfem community - there isn't much ideological policing beyond the basic radfem tenants, so I can understand how some of the comments look on first glance, though I can tell this scenario has been cherrypicked. As an ex-muslim, I will offer some nuance here on the islam comments - many radfems are not white, and many of them are ex-religious people and are commenting on the patriarchy in their own communities - so a lot of it can be a punching up moment for them they cannot get out of libfem spaces. There is more freedom to critique religion openly in radfem spaces, which I am grateful for - but depending on how white it is (which varies from community to community) it can change a lot.

The problem with the immigration comments however is that some women do see a problem, IE: misogyny in other cultures and people being affected by that - or heck people who are in those cultures are currently victims of that, something that is very not-talked-about in liberal spaces because liberals want their cake and eat it: Be feminist and keep religious allies have no critique of religion and other cultures in fear of messing up and saying something racist, but somehow also be effective in making feminism relevant for WOC in other cultures? That's where it fails. In a way this has deboosted the least privileged women in these communities and boosted the voices of more western or westernized privileged ones who can proudly said "my scarf my choice" because there's no external threat from not having it on.

On the flip side, without a leftist/marxist analysis of religion and how it is used as a vehicle for classism and patriarchy while simultaneously being a status of which people can be discriminated against, and how it is anti-dialectical/materialist and so on - people default to a status quo view on these things once they are disillusioned, which is often tinged with racism/nationalism. This is what leftist spaces like mine in the radfem community aim to prevent.

While I am very familiar with how immigration and religious critique can get xenophobic. the lack of talking about it in general actually makes it worse. I grew up in a very strict sunni family, experienced islamophobia most of my life, when I apostated there was no support from my local leftie communities because they did want to alienate liberal muslims (they were too busy trying to get revisionist islam hijabis into girlboss feminism) by offering any critique of the social effects of islam applied literally. Without a space for these women, conservatives will exploit the struggle of women in these communities, or women who have witnessed oppression from these communities for radicalization. In the convo where a woman confessed to having rape fantasies (towards men) - I have been informed that she is actually called out by radfems in the same convo for having those fantasies despite it not being a pro-male space. That said, in a more BDSM, "sex positive" and "pro-kink" environment, this would actually have been encouraged if she worded it differently - after all in those communities "non-consent and bdsm fantasies are harmless unless you act them out for real without safewords", which is an interesting discussion to have here.

I am not quite sure why young TERFs would be singled out for this. Even mainstream feminist spaces have their man-bash olympics, they just tend to prefix "cis" to it, to make the trans women feel safer.

People often show anger towards their oppressors, and sometimes that anger is messy and can get into topics that sometimes even I wouldn't touch - this is common and not unique to TERFs. On a flip side, if you really compare what terfs say compared to what trans women say about terfs is often more sexually graphic (calling them breeding mares, telling them choke on their dicks - sometimes even to minors, death threats, prude shaming, homophobia, appearance shaming, doxxing, rape threats, etc), you'll find that this kind of thing is common among both parties.

Women are angry at men who are their oppressors the same way you find gays ranting about straights, poc ranting about white people and nazis, and so on. That said, the only reason I assume TERFs are flagged by mainstream feminists, is because the feminist community cannot decide the definition of a woman and thus who is the oppressed/oppressed group between women and trans women to wanton whose anger is punching up or down - and handmaiden to the most popular thing at this current time (TWAW) without properly studying things; which is quite sad honestly.

While I do have concerns about the conservative pipeline in some radfem communities, I'd say the main cause of them are actually TRAs themselves who alienate women from leftist movements, and this is a paternalistic approach to this. Leftist spaces in radfem communities do better than preaching "girls can have dicks too" to vulnerable teens who do not have their rights satisfied or their basic needs met. I hate to say this, but OP (Cathy's) form of feminism is liberal feminism, even if she does not realise it.

When I was a liberal feminist, we called liberal feminism anything to do with "white feminism" aka, as Cathy describes, a centristy girlboss feminism. While this is true, I do not see any stark differences between the average gendie TRA's "intersectional" feminism and liberal feminism. For them, the general philosophy is the same (IE: pro choice, even to a fault - like uncritical views on sex work), but their version of liberal feminism has more brown faces and occasionally pays lipservice to topics like decolonization. While that is nice, this does not mean it actually is effective in prying the root of sexism itself.

For us we are aware of how sexism begins and ends, biology. This may be a old trope for many anti-radfems, but hear me out.

Radical Feminism 101: Everything comes down to one thing - the commodification and utility of the uterus and female body (fertility, childbirth, natalism, sexual intercourse and sexuality for men, inferiority of the female body for male supremacy) by men - this is why you'll often find older radfems wearing uterus hats, not my particular way of getting the message across but it's relevant.

A woman is not her uterus, TRAs claim we believe this but this is not true (sadly some less theory versed radfems will double down on this) but the uterus and the female body is the motivation and cause for women's oppression by men. Even women who don't have uteruses or are intersex will experience the same oppression by virtue of being a woman and "not having one as she should" and simply because she has a female brain which by patriarchal theory is less capable than a male one - trans women are exempt from this, they often wish for this oppression but they do not truly have it.

Women are seen as inferior because of their biology, and because of that, feminism is anti-sexism. It is seen as an anti-sex discrimination movement, that's why sex cannot be erased or reformed by TRAs with gestures like, "sex is a construct" and "people being oppressed for femininity" - while this is true, you cannot erase the material reality of people with certain traits in common.

When a woman is discriminated from a job because employers believe women are too stupid/emotional/illogical (in their brains) because of how they are naturally - this is discrimination by sex.

When single mothers are economically disadvantaged because men aren't obligated beyond being "seed bearers" and that the "womb bearer" is expected to be the responsible parent of the child, and that the state has no functions for people who are pregnant, just given birth (poor maternity leave), raising kids (no affordable childcare - women should stay at home clearly), etc because women's role was designed to be a family maker for a man - is sex discrimination.

When a majority of women are sold into sex work because heterosexual men desire biological women - this is discrimination by sex.

When a majority of sex trafficking victims are young females, why? Because they are targeted for their sex.

When the wage gap affects trans men more than it does trans women, this is because employers and society know what sex they are.

When lesbians and even "straight trans men" are not taken as seriously and corrective rape is performed more than any other group because men assume all people with vaginas belong to them - this is sex discrimination.

When women are raised as little girls and groomed socially into being brides for men, at the expense of their exploration of becoming independent human beings because men predominantly like girls - well, with vaginas - this is sex discrimination.

When women are catcalled because heterosexual men want to have access to them sexually and feel entitled to them because they feel women are there to be consumed by design (even gay men don't typically do this to straight men, as comparison) - this is sex discrimination.

When afab NBs and trans men still have to suffer from tampon tax, period discrimination, and anti-birth control and abortion legislature like women do - their gender identity makes no difference because this is sex discrimination.

When women (trans men included) were not included in male dominated fields like sports, academic STEM, gamer counter cultures etc while men and trans women dominate these fields, it's because it's related to being raised as a male child - because of sex discrimination.

Keep in mind, for sex trafficking, and rape, these are things that affect trans women, but these affect androphillic trans women which is a similar experience that identified gay men get.

People have realised this, and this is what draws them to gender critical radical feminism. In theory, radical feminism is the most inherently inclusive form of feminism (because all women share these traits) these apply to any women, regardless of her race, gender identity, nationality, religion, and sexuality. Intersectionality is not incompatible with radical feminism, many black women like myself find a lot of the tenants of radical feminism empowering for us. Gender ideology does nothing for us, and how many TRAs are also linked with pro SW groups - they actually exploit us.

These days more radical feminists are shedding conservative influence taking on intersectional and marxist approaches in their ideology which only improves it and makes it more relevant (while you can still encounter mainstream forms like in the article's screenshot). While some mainstream gender critical feminists like JKR usually bring normies in the mold via some basics, many of us have our critiques of her (she's a white neoliberal millionaire), but people starting out in radfemmery will go and latch onto any icon that speaks their truth, sometimes before moving onto something more sophisticated.

Part 5 (LINK):

This is the part of the article which I find weirder than the others. Many gender critical communities call TRA communities a cult, and TRA communities call gender critical communities a cult; which is it?

TRAs constantly vet for terfs and terfy behaviour, they use their own lingo, excommunicate people who stray too much, they have weird affirmation stages they convince any depressed or autistic person they're trans (trying to "crack eggs"), they also talk to their friends and relatives to get them to accept their ideology, they also have problematic faves and their own far right wing movements (see; Trans fascism/nazis) that TRAs just don't like bringing up.

There's more nazi trans people than there are nazi terfs, the only difference is that progressive radfems don't get visibility in mainstream leftist circles because they won't be allowed, many of them are in trans friendly feminist circles that Cathy frequents I assume - but keep their GC views to themselves in those spaces like I do.

My experience in TRA communities is that you often find a lot of lovebombing and cutesy acceptance graphics posted on social media, validation for identities that you have (race, sexuality, etc), then the drill; you must accept all these other identities or we'll excommunicate you - you don't even want to question anything dodgy because you don't want to risk all your friends. This was a huge issue for our detrans radfem friends.

Coming out of TRA spaces into radfem spaces I'll say while the radfem community has its issues and is flawed (there's a lot of privilege denial in some non-leftist or less politically informed gender critical communities as they do drink the "anti-woke" koolaid served by exploitative conservatives because they have been burned by the mainstream left - especially from "leftist men" and trans women who show their true colors with very misogynistic statements while proclaiming to be progressive).

One of the things I actually like about the community is that you're not walking on eggshells as much - people will still call you out for sexism of course, but you can have discussions on this or that and not get completely deplatformed because your opinion isn't popular - this is probably our greatest strength and greatest weakness, because you have more variation of beliefs in radfem cirlces, but also because it makes right wing infiltration easier.

So it's less accurate to call radfems a right wing cult, and more as a group that due to oscracizing from more popular ideologies that have more patriarchal and financial support by men (thus some go to the right wing for this, which is complex but imo wrong) they have taken some questionable routes, the community is not perfect, but there's definitely not a hivemind.

I believe the radfem has lowered the bar on ideological purity to rebuild its numbers but needs to self-vet better for people who are just there for right wing purposes and have no interest in the feminist theory of patriarchy.

One issue that the mainstream left does is equate every movement that has parralel talking points with conservatives as instantly reactionary - not only does this lack critical thinking, it dismisses how conservatives often take valid talking points, IE: (Performative allyship, exploitation of women, corporate exploitation of lgbt rights) and twist them into their own propaganda. Instead of instantly dismissing these points, it is important to dissect them and see if any of it contains reality.

I checked your blog reblog memes talking about bisexuals can call themselves gay and referred to yourself as Bi a few times.

You’re literally fucking horny for a male serial killer, and your nsfw art blog is art of you lusting for straight couples and girls with massive dicks swinging around.

Sometimes tiktok is good. (130K likes!!!)

+ Comments

The video and the comments.

trans women are not predators, trans men are not confused women, and, this one might shock you, nobody murders people because they are cis. People do, however, murder people because they’re trans, ie cis privilege is real.