If you mean the anon from like 2 years ago asking about trans women in radical feminism then yeah that was me. The way I got into tirfism (I touched on this a bit in the old ask I think) was that at first I literally just straight-up agreed with terfs, although I was still taking hrt since I didn't get the opposition to medical transitioning (only to social transitioning). So like, in this context, hearing that radical feminism was actually trans-inclusive was very appealing to me. This was the article that first introduced me to that (I still think it's really good): www.nplusonemag.com/issue-30/essays/on-liking-women/
Idk how I really feel about radical feminism now. The way I previously engaged with it was that I basically treated it as infallible and just felt like later forms of feminism were all incorrect (I'm pretty sure I picked this attitude up from terfs). But that caused a lot of issues with how like, radical feminism (at least in its older form, like pre-2000s) really doesn't properly address trans people? Like a lot of the trans-inclusive radical feminist stuff saying e.g. Monique Wittig (probably my favorite radical feminist author) is pro-trans are just retroactively extending non-essentialism to mean pro-trans. This is fine for like, using it to form a foundation for a trans-inclusive feminism, but not for the way I was approaching it. The only explicit pro-trans viewpoint I'm aware of from this time was what Andrea Dworkin wrote in Woman Hating, but I've since learned that she later wrote a positive review of The Transsexual Empire. Also in Woman Hating there were pro-pedophilia and pro-beastiality positions which she later explicitly denounced, so I think it's probably best understood as just representing an early stage in her beliefs. I do still believe in a lot of radical feminism but like I've pretty much just entirely stopped engaging with it because it just upsets me a lot.
Another thing that didn't help was that I would sometimes try to read radical feminist things even if they were transphobic and just act as though I could simply ignore the transphobic parts which was really not healthy for me lol.
The big thing that makes me very uncomfortable/anxious with tirfism which is kinda hard to articulate is that the acceptance of transfems feels conditional and flimsy. Like it feels conditional in the same way as someone saying they want to prevent climate change because it's bad for business profits or something, like it feels like a weirdly transitory position. What I mean is that like, tirfs will often only justify acceptance of trans women by pointing out how they're affected by transphobia/transmisogyny, which isn't necessarily bad, but the attitude really feels a lot like "well trans women ARE degenerate men, but they're oppressed!" And it might seem like a technicality or some irrelevant theoretical issue but it's something I'm kind of wary of since I'm (still) a boymoder and so I usually don't really face direct transphobia or transmisogyny. Like it reminds me a bit of how some of the less pro-trans tirfs will say e.g. that trans women don't get to talk about misogyny unless they pass because otherwise it's not something they experience. This was also what I was talking about in the original series of asks when I was asking whether trans women would be considered men if they weren't oppressed.
I don't mean that every tirf is on the fence about transfem inclusion obviously, like plenty are obviously very friendly to trans women. But even then it still makes me uncomfortable to see the issue approached like this? Idk, maybe this isn't really an actual issue and it's just because I'm particularly sensitive about it because of like lingering guilt/self-hatred about being transfem? Like idk because even though I agree with radical feminists way more on this I still feel like 10x more comfortable towards people who are just like "gender is what's in your brain" or some equivalent even if I don't agree with them about that.
My perspective on this used to be that I should just be grateful about having acceptance at all, but I feel now after stepping away like that's probably not a great stance to have on it lol. Idk how obvious/noticeable issues like this are to non-transfem people also.
But yeah in other words I still have a lot of guilt about being transfem and it felt like tirfism only exacerbated that even though it's pro-trans and even though it more closely fits what I actually believe in. My main exposure to feminism now is just transfeminists on Tumblr and it's honestly been a lot better for me even if I don't completely agree with every detail
i was pleased to see this article was from andrea long chu!! thank you for sharing c: i had actually seen an excerpt from this article before but i didn't know it was from her, but i enjoy her interpretation of the scum manifesto as it kind of aligns with a view or, more accurately a Feeling ive had of cis people as trans people waiting to happen (or potential trans people) which makes me feel softer on cis ppls. i appreciate the desire-forward approach she takes not only for the Good it does to recognize that trans women too have desires, but for the difficulty i have had articulating a similarity between the homosexual experience and a transsexual experience. a reason people give trans people less grace, or so it seems, is because being gay is wanting to love on the opposite sex/gender, whereas being trans is just Being a different gender than people thought. it goes under the radar if desire is not addressed, because there's no flag of authenticity for people to measure and feel comfortable with. Idk how to explain it but her argument there is something i do resonate as i feel very much that i was not "innately" trans or anything, i just wanted to do it for a couple of reasons so i did. i will probably have to reread the article to garner more insights tho
and no yeahhh i get you on feeling very Shrug on radical feminism because i also treated it as infallible and now i want to be careful in unpacking its flaws but not just assume everything opposite of it is correct (like i did when going from liberal nonbinary with little understanding of theory → terf 😭) i don't necessarilyyy think this meticulousness i desire from myself is healthy, tho, so not recommending that path to you or anything.
and yeah 💀 while i appreciate the connection of some older radfem texts to transfeminist ideas, i think the idealization of radical feminism that occurs among radical feminists gets them stuck on the same texts from the 70's when... it is ok and helpful to have new ideas that thoughtfully elaborate More on trans people, and even mention them more than one time!
i think you're spot on with it (usually) being a transitory position. tirfism is a place people Tend to occupy when they like radical feminism and don't hate or want to upset trans people, but still don't have a thorough understanding of transness or transphobia (and so, are often closeted transphobes.) they usually either stop being radfem-identified and go on to denounce it or go full terf. i do believe true tirfs Do exist, it's just that usually they're not the people who are using that specific label lmao.
i don't think it's unfair that you feel uncomfortable with tirfism, is what i'm saying. the thing is, if a tirf is operating in a radical feminist space that has terfs in it (which, it usually does if they're on tumblr/the internet), they're beholden to terfs and thus have to justify their feminism by making an argument of trans inclusion that hinges on oppression, thus that emphasis on passing and conceding on trans women being not quite women. you're not crazy for doubting!!! friendliness towards trans ppl =/= political rigor. not to say this to make you feel less accepted but, i want you to understand that your feelings aren't coming from nowhere and are validated by a reality of transphobia, and you don't have to feel guilty for clocking that.
you definitely deserve more than crumbs of acceptance and i'm glad you're in a place where you're getting that now 🙏 i am also following many transfeminists nowadays lol. i don't know what most tme people's thoughts on this are; mine may differ having had an intimate look inside the machine.
and it's so okay to like feel more comfortable among people you technically disagree with more. like i would Also feel safer with a random liberal who's never been exposed to the idea of race as a social construct as opposed to an intellectual who belongs to a group that knows that race is a social construct but occassionally loathes brown people for some reason 😭 i don't think putting yourself through that helps anything, for you personally or in a wider, political sense.
