#exterf

I’m no longer on tumblr. I now consider what I went through to be something similar to conversion therapy combined with getting radicalized into a hate group. I started writing about my experiences on Medium as Ky Schevers and was also profiled in Slate. I would add links but tumblr isn't letting me. Feel free to spread the word if you want. I want to do what I can now to undo any damage I previously caused in the past. 2/2

Wow! I’m so glad to hear about that deradicalisation. I hope you can find a place where those experiences no longer bother you and you feel you’ve made amends if you need to.

Here’s a link to the medium page for anyone interested. I definitely see some stuff I am going to read.

That is a tough situation! I didn’t have people that knew about my TERF beliefs, so it wasn’t something I had to deal with. However, I think that in this case from the details I have, you should be ok to just go and be honest and participate!

There’s a lot of people who have been anti-trans and anti-nb before realising they weren’t cis, so it’s not that rare, and I would hope that the supportive spaces are intended to support everyone regardless. Even if you do have a history of being transphobic, if you’re there and being respectful and non-disruptive, you show with your behaviour that you deserve to be there.

I can see the temptation to worry about the others being uncomfortable and it becoming awkward, but I think that even if they don’t want to interact with you, chances are there won’t be enough of a problem to prevent you from getting support at all.

There are definitely other ex radfems on here, unfortunately they tend to be pretty quiet about that because understandably ppl want to move on. I’ve got a few people’s posts tagged “ex terf” you might be interested in.

I don’t know if I have the best advice for getting out because for me it was pretty gradual and natural. I suggest unfollowing any TERF people as a start. Get yourself some distance. Maybe follow some TERF watchdog sites - theterfs has info and r/gendercynical is decently active - to help start to expose yourself to other ideas. Irl it’s tough to change a big public opinion. Sometimes the easiest thing is to be honest that you used to think x but you changed your mind. And sometimes it’s easier to just avoid the topics entirely. I think once you have that distance you can think about maybe looking into trans issues honestly to re-evaluate. But tbh part of deradicalising is just breaking the obsession with that “enemy” I think.

I’m glad that I can help with balancing that out a bit.

I honestly believe the reason that you don’t see much vice versa is that in TERF communities, having previously been a “libfem” is pretty normal if not celebrated - nobody is born a TERF, and they like to see being an "ex-libfem” as making them smarter and wiser and better than all the remaining “libfems”. It’s a weird ‘not-like-other-girls’-esque situation where the badge of being ex-libfem makes your opinion on feminism much more important.

I would say definitely yes for cult-like, but not actually call it a cult.

Cults require charismatic leaders and a higher level of control over people involved. They’re also a lot more internally abusive.