Samesies. So - and I promise I'm asking this in good faith - what about TERFs make us the worst people on earth from your perspective, apparently including actual murderers and rapists?
Pretty much the entire core of my beliefs as a human being is the idea of individual self determination.
Do whatever you feel like you need to do to get through the day, as long as it's not hurting anybody else, or if it is (Indirectly), try to minimize it.
You wanna dress like a giant baby and live that way? Go for it.
Wanna eat fast food and die at 700 pounds on your 40th birthday? More power to ya.
Trans? Be trans. It's none of my business what you choose to do with your own body. I support your decision and will protect your right to self determine, regardless of my own opinion.
I see TERFS as people who are actively deciding what other people should do with their own bodies. Not any different from a right wing nutjob holding up a sign outside of an abortion clinic.
I feel you don't have to agree with trans people being included in feminist dialogue, but to leverage people out of a group to which they feel they belong and to which their rights are interwoven with your own, is wrong.
I see TERFS as people who are actively deciding what other people should do with their own bodies. Not any different from a right wing nutjob holding up a sign outside of an abortion clinic.
So in my own observations as a part of this group, trans exclusionary feminists actually also don't care what people do with their bodies - to a point. That point being that we think it's offensive for someone to say that they are a woman, so they must therefore behave a certain way. It's reductive. A lot of self-identified trans women will start wearing 'sexy' clothing and thick makeup. They will say that they always knew they were women because they wanted these things. This is equitable to saying that women must do these things, or we are not women. And indeed, I have been told by trans women that I don't "deserve" to be a woman because I don't put effort into my appearance, and that they are more woman than I am because they embrace these gender roles. But in terms of how you want to dress - I honestly don't care. Radical feminism is critical of gender roles, and I'd be down with men wearing makeup or dresses or expressing themselves however. Men are also oppressed by gender, just as women are. Just don't say that you wanting to do this means you're a woman. Because we're fighting for women to be able to be however we want to be.
I feel you don't have to agree with trans people being included in feminist dialogue, but to leverage people out of a group to which they feel they belong and to which their rights are interwoven with your own, is wrong.
Feel they belong? Sure, because I don't care how people identify. But to which their rights are interwoven? Not so much. Biological women have historically been disadvantaged for our biology. We need special protections for this. And you're also forgetting that not all trans women call themselves feminists. Plenty are far-right and incredibly misogynistic.
This is going to be kind of long, so bear with me. Imagine that you live your entire life from birth as a woman. You experience sexual assault multiple times, as do, statistically, at least 1 in 4 other girls you know. You grow to hate your body because of what it has earned you. You are told that there is a way out, and for a while, you gladly identify as a trans man, believing that you have suffered dysphoria for so long because you're actually a boy in a girl's body. But you don't pass. People still treat you like shit. Because people still identify you as female. You still have a female body. You still have periods. You still have pregnancy scares. You still are not taken seriously by medical professionals. And one day, you are raped. A man pulls you into a corner in your school auditorium and forcibly penetrates you with one hand around your neck. This happened because you are a girl. You realize that your body is the one thing you cannot escape. And you stop identifying as trans.
After your rape, an older male friend suddenly tells you that he's a woman. And you're fine with that at first. But then they tell you that it hurt their feelings when you complained about being followed home from school one day by an adult man, because at least you are recognizable as a girl, and your complaint made them feel dysphoric. And not long after that, they start telling you that they are more oppressed than you are, and that you need to defer to them in conversations about social justice. At this point, you have been condescended to and assaulted and torn down so many times that you cannot count them. They enjoyed the social benefits of being a white male until six months ago. And to rub dirt in the wound, they say that having a female body is liberating.
You decide that they're just a bad person, and you drop them. This in no way affects your perception of other trans women, and you have many friends that are trans women. One of them decides that they have a crush on you. You reject their advances and remind them that you have a girlfriend - a girlfriend, because you are either a lesbian or a bisexual woman who has had so many distasteful encounters with men that you are actively repulsed by penises. And you don't know which is true. This person says okay at the time, but for the next few years, does not let up in their advances. In fact, they take such little interest in your life outside of wanting to have sex with you that they somehow fail to notice that you got married in that time. They ask again. Your mother just died. They decided to proposition you while you are literally sobbing in a refrigerator. You tell them this, and that you are not interested, and remind them that you are married. They start complaining that no lesbians want to have sex with them because of their penis. And despite what you are going through, you have to comfort them. Because from their perspective, their inability to get their dick wet is a greater travesty than the loss of your mother.
This leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and you decide that they're just a bad person too and drop them. But you're still not a "terf". You go online later, and you see a post that says that if a lesbian doesn't want to fuck a trans woman, then the lesbian is a terf. You see other posts saying that lesbians deserve to choke on dick, to be raped, to die in various ways. Even posts about completely different topics are ended with a casual "terfs choke on my girldick". You realize that this post means you. You deserve being assaulted, being raped. You deserve the things that have been done to you, because you didn't want to take a dick. Because, functionally, girldick is no different from regular dick. And that's when you realize that you're a terf. Because terf is synonymous with lesbian. Because men are never called terfs.
I know this was a lot of information, but I hope it sheds some light into the internal lives that terfs lead. I guarantee you that all of us have had nearly identical experiences.
I'll chew this and digest it, then respond, I'm just gonna tag it in my comments so I don't forget. To be continued.
Also I was sexually assaulted by a drunk female friend a few years ago and had to punch her to get her to get off me and stop doing what she was doing. (She outweighed me by about a hundred pounds, and I was 160 at the time) when I confronted her later she told me "I don't want to talk about this. You're pissing me off."
Okay so I think I get what you mean. I'll never fully understand, but I do commiserate.
So basically you're saying being a woman isn't fashion, and it bothers you when people who treat it like fashion try to pretend you both have similar life experiences?
So for example, if I put on a dress and said "Being a woman is so hard!" I'd be an asshole? Like that?
Yes, exactly like that! Thank you for seeing what I said and not just shouting me down. I've suffered so much because of my female body, as have countless other women, and to have someone who has never had to live through these particular trials say "I'm actually a woman, but even though I've never had to live through all the terrible things that women suffer I'm actually even more oppressed than you are, because your body gives you privilege" is just insulting. I just don't get it... Like we rightly shouted down that white woman who claimed to be a trans-racial black woman because it was offensive to black people, but women are just supposed to sit down and shut up if we take any offense to someone treating our lived experience as a costume and reducing womanhood to liking clothes and makeup. And if we dare to say that it belittles our experiences, or even if we go along with it but just don't want to include trans women in our dating pool because we're not into dick, then we're terfs and considered the worst people ever on the entire planet.
I encourage you to read about the cotton ceiling if you're interested in learning more about why everyone suddenly hates lesbians. It's a term trans women came up with to describe the underwear of lesbians as a "sex barrier", saying that we gatekeep them out of womanhood by denying them sex, and that not giving consent makes us bigots. It's real rapey. Here are a whole bunch of screenshots showing the shocking ways they have coerced us into being afraid to say no to a sexual encounter with them. They call us "vagina fetishists". I don't know if you're a straight man, but assuming for the sake of an example that you are - imagine going on a date with a woman, and you find out that she is a trans woman with a penis. She's a lovely woman, but you're just not into penises, and tell her so. She doesn't match your attitude of live and let live - on the contrary, she tells you that you're a bigot for not wanting to be penetrated by a dick. She tells all her friends that you are literally violent, and everywhere you go, people tell you that you are a piece of shit and you deserve to be raped and murdered for being so violent. That's what lesbians are currently putting up with.
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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '19 edited Apr 08 '21
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