It is also really important to realise that TERFs feel the same way about you as you feel about them: betrayed.
I see a lot more hatred on my timeline for TERFs than for cishet male transphobes. Like a lot. That accusation you make, āterfs only ever attack trans women and never seem to attack cishet male sexistā? Yeah they say the exact same thing about us. And itās kind of true. My friends say ākill all TERFsā a LOT more often than they say ākill all cishet male transphobesā.
And I think whatās happening here is, like, we donāt encounter conservative male transphobes. We just⦠donāt meet them in our social lives. We hang out in Dungeons and Dragons groups, queer Discords, vintage thrift markets, Tumblr, etc. We donāt, mostly, hang out in churches or at gun shows. And if a place or person has a Conservative Christian vibe, we justā¦.. leave. Immediately. Unless weāre forced to stay somehow.
Whereas TERFs look, on the surface, like friends. They are feminists who enjoy lesbian art and vintage thrifting and swing-dancing and communism memes. We hang out with them, maybe we even like them or reblog their posts, and itās only later - when the topic of trans rights comes up - that weāre like, shit, this personās a transphobe.
And that feels worse. It doesnāt feel good to walk into an online forum, realise immediately the admins have a āno pro-LGBTQA+ posts, we are a Christian spaceā and go āoh shit Iām leavingā. But it feels worse to enter an online forum, spend a week hanging out there and enjoying the Marxist analysis, and then realise the mods are removing all pro-trans posts.
You thought you were among friends, but you werenāt. You thought these were allies, but they arenāt. It seems like they should be allies! Theyāre fellow oppressed people, why arenāt they allies? But they arenāt. And that sucks.
And that kinda makes you hate TERFs more than you hate right-wing Christian Conservative transphobes. Like, you never actually have to speak to Christian Conservative transphobes unless youāre unlucky enough to work in retail and get harassed by them - and even then, you go home at the end of the day and vent about it in safe spaces online with other queer leftists. But sometimes you encounter TERFs socially in those queer leftist spaces, and that makes you feel unsafe in your own home, and thatās worse. So you vocally profess hating them and put āterfs dniā on all your feminist stuff, in the hopes theyāll stay away.
Yeah, thatās how they feel. They donāt hate trans people more than conservative Christians because they think trans people are doing more damage than conservative Christians. Only the more radical right-wing minority think that, and that minority is often co-opting TERF politics to seem more left-wing. The strain of lefty Marxist radical feminists youāll find on Tumblr? They hate us because we are so close to them. They come into feminist spaces expecting that theyāll be safe spaces, that theyāll be among friends, and then a trans woman says something that doesnāt align with their experiences and they feel betrayed.
They donāt care that conservative Christians exclude them from churches and gun shows. They didnāt want to go to churches and gun shows in the first place. But when we exclude them from our board-gaming clubs and our communist reading groups and our gay support circles? That stings. In their eyes, trans people are the reason they canāt participate in the safe spaces that they want to participate in.
This is why āterfs arenāt really feministsā analysis is so unhelpful. Sure, thereās a small minority of transphobes out there who are right-wing and express the āwe have to protect cis womenās rightsā argument to basically make themselves sound more acceptable. But the ones who call themselves radical feminists? For the most part they really are, genuinely, feminists. And they are angry because they feel like feminism is their movement, the one thing that stands up for their rights as women, and when they find themselves excluded from mainstream feminism they have nowhere else to go.
TERFs on tumblr have a concept, āpeak transā. Itās basically their term for the moment someone converts. They tell a very specific story about how people typically join their club: a good feminist professes all the views sheās supposed to, like how terfs smell and trans women are women. Then gradually she encounters more and more aggression from trans people, until she eventually ābreaksā and decides that sheāll check out what the TERFs have to say - even though she knows sheās supposed to hate TERFs. Once she reads actual TERF writing as opposed to just ākill all TERFsā rhetoric, she obviously converts! She reluctantly begins to believe TERF views, even though she feels guilty about it because she knows sheās supposed to hate TERFs. But then she sees how nice and kind the TERFs are, how theyāll accept her in a way mainstream feminism never will, and she begins to feel at home in their community. That specific story gets told over and over again. Itās part of their self-image. You need to understand this if you want to understand them.
Sometimes these āpeak transā moments are actually trans women being kind of mean or thoughtless. Trans women saying ācis women have it easy, they get to be perceived as women without any effort!ā really stings if youāre someone who has been traumatised by the experience of being perceived as a woman. Right-wing trans women exist, and sometimes they say shit like āmisogyny isnāt real, I would know because I never experience misogyny!ā and if you are like āmaybe your experience is not universalā they come back with āare you saying my experience isnāt female? Are you saying Iām not a woman??ā and honestly thatās obnoxious as fuck. In the radfem narrative, encountering that is āpeak transā - itās the moment when someoneās rising suspicions peak, and they ābreakā through the dogma and decide to check out these stigmatised anti-trans views.
The thing is⦠trans people are people just like any other group. Some of us are assholes. Some of us are antifeminist and some of us say fucked-up things. It is not fair to tar us all with that brush. It is not fair to encounter a few antifeminist trans women and conclude that the existence of trans women is inherently antifeminist. Thatās often what TERFs are doing. And in that regard, itās not similar to white working-class populism. Itās more similar to the racism of someone who says āan immigrant robbed my dad so Iāve decided to hate all immigrants foreverā or āmy abusive cheating ex was bi so all bi people are inherently badā. Sure, some immigrants commit crimes - but the majority donāt. The existence of some shitty bi people doesnāt make biphobia okay. Etc.
I hear āterfs never actually care about womenās issues, they just hate trans women!ā so often and it just does not reflect reality. I know itās tempting to just say anything bad about TERFs because we hate them, but seriously, this does not help. Because what happens when someone goes and reads a TERF blog and itās 50% discourse about economic issues (like wages for housework or tampon taxes), 30% anti-FGM, 10% lesbian positivity and 10% transphobia? Theyāre going to go āhuh, guess I was lied to about what TERFs think and theyāre not as bad as everyone saysā. And TERFs use that. The narrative they tell about themselves is: āMainstream feminism will just tell you TERFs are evil to prevent you reading our actual arguments, because if you actually read about us youād realise weāre right! Weāre the women who were brave enough to check out TERF writings even though we were told not to, because we were driven to it by our āpeak transā moments, and we realised weād been lied to!ā
I am so deadly serious it is fucking vital to understand that a significant number of TERFs very much are feminists and that is part of the problem. We must stop reinforcing their narrative. We have to give people the tools to actually read TERFs critically and understand where they are going wrong and why.
It is absolutely not true that TERFs on tumblr only ever hate on trans women and donāt speak about womenās issues. If you tell people that, theyāre only going to be more susceptible to a TERF saying āyouāve been lied to about usā.
Wanna know something else TERFs talk about? Like all the time? FGM. TERFs on tumblr talk a lot about Female Genital Mutilation. For anyone unfamiliar, this is a fairly horrific practice carried out by some people who believe that women need to be āpureā to have value, so they sew girlsā vaginas shut and cut off their clits. This is not comparable to circumcision, which may violate the bodily autonomy of AMAB infants but mostly doesnāt cause them ongoing pain or limit their ability to have sex. FGM is aimed at preventing the woman experiencing sexual pleasure at all, ever. In some cases the vagina is sewn shut so that itāll heal over and the womanās future husband can have the pleasure of seeing sheās a virgin, ripping her open, and fucking the wound. Sometimes the victims die. Itās fucking awful. Honestly, we should all talk a little more about FGM. Ending it should be a priority for feminism.
Think for a second about how this works. We tell people that TERFs arenāt really feminists. Someone reads a TERF blog and sees them talking nonstop about issues like FGM, period poverty / tampon taxes, how little girls donāt succeed in math/science classes because their teachers stereotype them and push them away, abortion rights, etc. And the reader goes: āhuh, this seems pretty feminist actuallyā. And then the TERF goes: āYeah, the reason weāre painted as not being feminists is because these issues donāt affect trans women, so people say they arenāt really feminism.ā
TERFs argue that trans women are āsocialised maleā - eg. they arenāt pushed away from math classes as a kid, because their teachers perceive them as male and therefore encourage them into STEM. According to TERFs, mainstream feminists are no longer allowed to care about FGM because it doesnāt affect trans women. When we say āpeople who need abortionsā instead of āwomenā, TERFs paint that as sinister. Trans women donāt need tampons, so tampons arenāt a feminist issue any more. They say: trans women are trying to co-opt feminism. Feminism is your safe space as a woman, your movement for your rights, the one place you should be centred - and trans women want to take that away from you.
See how that works? Itās a radicalization process that, if they werenāt recruiting feminists, wouldnāt fucking work. The message is: āyou as a cis woman arenāt welcome in liberal feminism any more, but youāll be welcome here in radical feminismā.
It is vital to affirm that this is not true. Abortions, FGM, period poverty, discrimination against little girls, etc are all unquestionably feminist issues even if they donāt affect all women. Discrimination against women who wear hijab is a real feminist issue, even though it doesnāt affect all women. The issues of women in STEM are feminist issues even if they donāt affect women who work in childcare or marketing. Transmisogyny is a real feminist issue even if it doesnāt affect cis women.
TERFs believe that trans women arenāt the natural allies of women because their issues are different. Cis women need abortions, trans women need gender affirming surgery, and TERFs believe those are two different campaigns. They are not. Those campaigns are one and the same. We are both fighting for the right to bodily autonomy against a cishet male hegemony which believes male politicians should have the right to control what medical procedures people can get. If we establish that everyone has the right to get whatever medical procedures they want with informed consent, this will benefit everyone; cis women, trans women, disabled people, gay couples seeking IVF, etc. If we establish that it isnāt okay to discriminate against people for how they dress, that will benefit gnc women and trans people. Etc.
Many, many TERFs are feminists and that is part of the problem - they are similar to trans-inclusive feminists in many ways, they often share our beliefs or want to be in our spaces, and that is part of why we hate each other so much. We bump into each other. And itās easy for TERFs to recruit young feminist women who have been traumatised by patriarchy and who are really angry and who see the rest of us talking absolute bullshit about all this.
Radfems, and folks on the fence: Your feminism will be stronger if it includes trans women. Most of them are cool. Honest. The ones you see getting reblogged in your TERF circles are not representative.
Everyone else: please stop talking about shit you donāt fucking understand. If you havenāt spent time with these people, donāt confidently go around asserting that theyāre all not really feminists. You will end up indirectly feeding their narrative. You are giving them ammunition. Stop.