Terfs Lying

This blog has gotten large, and it's not going to get any easier to do... so lets do this.

General sources

6 kinds of misleading (& fake) TERF "proof" (x)

Radical feminism and political lesbianism (x)

Biphobia in TERF spaces (x) (x)

The term TERF was invented by a trans-inclusive radfem (x)

Radical feminism vs TERF vs SWERF vs Political Lesbian (x)

Addressing TERFs quoting research to “prove” autogynephilia when the research is actually concluding that autogynephilia isn’t a thing (x)

Specific TERF actions & events

Beth Rep defames trans woman, gets followers to find and threaten her (x) (x) (x)

Kate Scottow convicted for creating multiple accounts to persistently publish trans woman's financial and medical information on twitter (x)

Posie Parker & fellow TERFs interrupt a BLM protest (accompanied by fascist white men) and yell in black women's faces (x) (x)

Julia Beck protests the Equality Act on behalf of anti-gay republican senators (x)

Lisa Littman does literally everything in her power to ensure her ROGD study returns the results she wants (x)

Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) and their love affair with right wing groups including the Heritage Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom (x) (x)

WoLF denounces multiple human rights groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Southern Poverty Law Center (x)

Fair Play For Women publish methodologically unsound research to get the "41% of trans women in UK prisons are sex offenders" figure (x) (x)

Women and Girls Scotland publish methodologically unsound research to make it look like there is no public support for trans rights (x)

ReSisters Liverpool members attempt to pretend satirical "TRA" sticker they created is genuinely endorsed by Liverpool University (x)

LGB Alliance co-founder discourages school LGB alliances due to "predatory gays" (x)

1979 - anti-trans radfem group 'The Gorgons' send campaign of hatemail and threaten gun violence against Olivia Records (a radfem recording organisation) for hiring a trans woman (x)

1973 West Coast Lesbian Conference - anti-trans radfems disrupt conference to violently attach trans performer & her supporters; (x) 2/3 of attendees vote to include trans women. (x)

TERFs on Tumble actively spreading and using right-wing propaganda (x) (x)

TERFs spread lies on Tumble re: Mermaids UK founder's trans child (x)

Sources about trans issues

Youth transition is not a phase (x) (x), and the original 80% desister myth is due to flawed old research (x)

Non affirming (conversion) therapy doesn't work, and it's damaging (x) (x)

Youth transition is not recommended for gender non conformity unless the youth actively identifies in a cross-sex way (x)

Treating gender dysphoria like body dysmphoria is medical malpractice (x)

Puberty suppression risks in both the short and long term have been thoroughly studied (x)

Puberty suppression lowers lifetime odds of suicidal ideation (x)

Young trans girls have comparable sexual victimisation to young cis girls (x)

Trans suicide rates are not higher after transition, and the author of the study is annoyed people keep misrepresenting her findings to say that (x)

The lifetime detransition rate is about 2.2% (x)

Trans inclusive restrooms do not increase risk to cis women (x)

Trans people are primarily people of colour (x)

The 41% of trans women in prison are sex offenders figure is bogus (x)

The majority of transgender inmates in prison have committed economic or sex-work survival crime, and transgender inmates are less likely than cisgender controls to have been charged with a violent crime (x)

The majority of both male and female professional athletes have abnormally high or low testosterone (x)

Useful tags:

All sources | Definitions & “what does X mean” asks

Whenever I start I make 25 posts in a row but Yes and you should say it.

Most of what they dislike about Islam is either strictly wahhabi or conservative salafi practices that are more politically motivated by nationalism than anything Islamic (e.g. no women driving or banking, mandatory head coverings) or tribal cultural practices which are haraam by Islamic rules (e.g. honour killings, forced marriages, no divorce)

If you have access to any kind of mental health help online or in person. I’d suggest you consult them, because what’ll work best will be individual for you.

However, essentially: you can’t control your involuntary thoughts or feelings, like obsessing over these things. You can only control the way you think and behave in response to those thoughts and feelings.

Some responses will reinforce the cycle. These include going on the sites that you obsess over, or sites on similar topics. Sitting and thinking about it for long periods of time also reinforces that cycle.

You want to prioritise actions which will break the cycle. If you do that, you can slowly decrease the frequency and intensity of your urges to obsess over it. Generally things that break the cycle are things that purposefully redirect your attention elsewhere.

Some concrete ways to do this from my experience:

Notice the times of day where you habitually do the obsessive thing. Do you go on the sites on your phone while you travel, or before bed? Plan something else to do at these times instead. Maybe if you always go online before bed, plan to read a book instead. If you do it while travelling, pick a podcast to try instead.

Make yourself a list of small simple distractions. Whenever you notice yourself obsessing over stuff, pick one at random and do it. The distraction should be low effort but something you like - some ideas might be things like “do 10 minutes of stretching”, “sketch the first animal that comes to mind”.

Practice radical acceptance. This is hard to explain without a therapist, but the idea is to learn to accept that you feel your feelings, without them controlling your behaviour. You should be able to say to yourself, “I feel like I need to know what this hate group is up to, but I also know that it’s just a feeling. It’s ok to feel this way but that doesn’t mean I should go do it.”

The important thing to keep in mind is that thoughts and feelings aren’t wrong or bad. The behaviour or intensity of the feelings might be unhelpful, but the feeling is only there to be helpful.

If you and I have anything in common, I suspect that your “obsession” is protective. You can’t be unexpectedly harmed by hateful people if you keep up to date on what they are saying and doing. As far as your feelings are concerned this is as vital as keeping an eye on nearby hostile tribes in the caveman era.

I’ve kept firm in my beliefs that trans women can experience trans misogyny ( I believe misogyny is an umbrella term meaning the hatred of women and I include cis women, female presenting women, trans women to be included although experiences greatly vary) and respect pronouns, my partner is trans as well- but I perceive gender dysphoria to be a sort of Stockholm syndrome of gender roles in modern day society. Is that problematic?

I know this has been here for a long time, so I’m sorry about that!

I think it’s important to recognise a few things:

A person upholding the ‘wrong’ gender role still undermines the supposed biological basis of gender roles

Seeking to ‘pass’ is more often based in desire to be safe and not misgendered, not desire to uphold gender roles. A trans person being visible is more radical than a trans person ‘passing’, but we don’t have the right to demand people sacrifice their safety in the name of doing it the ‘right’ or ‘best’ way for feminism.

Step 1: Forbid females from altering their appearance in ways that aren’t ‘feminine’ (e.g. top surgery bad vs. breast reductions empowering)

Step 2: Forbid females from using the ‘wrong’ (masculine) language to refer to themselves and refuse to use terms that don’t emphasise their ‘femaleness’

Step 3: ????

There’s research around the topic but not directly on it. Research shows us one thing that I think is relevant:

The ‘sex-specific-ness’ of someone’s attraction is very individual. Some lesbians, for example, get equal blood flow to ‘arousal’ regions of the brain seeing suggestive photos of men as women. That doesn’t mean that the lesbian in question who has less sex-specific attraction would be compatible in a relationship with a man, but it does show that not all lesbians will have the same focus on physical features.

In practice, a person simply doesn’t know another person’s genitals before they decide they’re attracted. Judgements are made on appearance, including secondary sexual features like fat distribution, way before that.

There’s 2 problems with that idea that I can think of:

It assumes all trans people are gender conforming - e.g. hyper feminine trans women, hyper masculine trans men. That’s just not true.

It also assumes that fulfilling the ‘wrong’ gender role has an identical effect to fulfilling the ‘right’ gender role in patriarchal terms.

Its usually safe to assume in feminist arguments that the purpose of gender roles is to identify, segregate and control the behaviour of the binary sexes among humans. We can also say more specifically that gender roles are also justified with a biological basis - women are supposedly inherently more emotional, gentle, nurturing, etc., vs. men are inherently more aggressive, stronger, unemotional, etc.

One simple example of this misogyny in action: Yes women earn less than men, but no that’s not a problem. That’s because men are inherently more driven, and women inherently more nurturing and family involved. Women will want to be pregnant and have kids, meaning they work less hours and less hard than a man, who inherently won’t be as nurturing and have as many family responsibilities. So it just reflects the amount of work put in, right?

Anyway, if a person fulfils the ‘wrong’ gender role, they’re directly undermining that argument about the unavoidable, inherent nature of the difference between men and women.

I did skip over that topic but yeah it’s pretty stupid to use the official diagnosis rates as ‘evidence’ of women being healthier when women are chronically underdiagnosed with that specific condition.

I just tend to point out... when was the last time we had any TERF involvement in actually helping women’s rights? I never saw it as a TERF.

In the which document?