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One of the sad-funny things about TERFs is that, when I’m going on a nice little block spree so I unfortunately have to see some of their posts, there are so MANY posts that are “asks” they very clearly sent themselves so they could argue with their imaginary foes. It’s not enough that they don’t have friends, they can’t even get real ENEMIES on board.
Well, no. If they engaged with their actual enemies, they would have to come up with responses to those enemies’ arguments, and those might raise uncomfortable questions among their ranks. Questions like “why is radical feminism deeply opposed to intersectionality?” and “Why has our movement shaped itself to align with traditional enemies like anti-choice, anti-queer fundamentalist social conservatives?” and “If this is a cause for greater justice, why do we have to lie about our beliefs to other people all the time?” and “Why can’t we actually find very many detransitioners anyway?” and “Excuse me, where is the evidence of bathroom crimes again?” and “Why are there multiple ex-TERF figureheads that describe themselves as having been groomed by a cult?”
I am a butch and I generally pass as a lesbian if I’m not being especially open about being ace. These people try and cozy up to me sometimes, and they do not generally stick around for long when I start explaining the historical patterns that led radical feminism to be rejected by intersectional feminism over the past thirty years—slower for pop feminism, sure, but that rejection was largely in place by the end of the aughts.
Real enemies have real arguments, you see. That’s not a great thing for keeping what adherents you do manage to trick into your folds in line.
I’m Butch as well, and the straw man arguments they come up with to try and get me to hate the trans community are absolutely wild if you actually speak to trans folks, see them as people, and listen to what they’re actually saying.
It’s also super inconvenient for them if you know the actual history of our struggle for gay liberation as well as feminism. Caelan Conrad and Sarah from The Leftist Cooks did an extremely good video called “Drop the T – The Deadly Consequences of Gay Respectability Politics” about the revisionist and assimilationist history of the gender critical community, including terfs. I highly, highly recommend it.
I keep meaning to post it to my blog, but there’s so much I want to say about it, I don’t even know where to begin. They really destroy absolutely every talking point that these people use in order to try and pit women like me against people with whom I am absolutely in community.
And this doesn’t even touch on the fact that terfs actually hate Butch women like me and also create a lot of wild lies about us in order to differentiate the “good” Butch women from those who are supposedly tainted by the queer agenda (which would be the vast majority of us, according to them)… But that’s a different post for a different day.
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