By David Futrelle
Most people recognize it’s wrong for someone to impose their sexual fetishes on people without their consent — whether the fetishist in question is a boorish dom who demands that women to treat him with the sort of exaggerated deference that no one is obligated to provide anybody unless they’ve agreed to do so as their sub, or if he’s an outright sexual predator like Louis CK coercing younger female comedians into watching him masturbate.
Recently, though, some TERFs have taken this relatively uncontroversial proposition and turned it into something altogether different and deeply wrong. Claiming that the vast majority of trans women are really men pretending to be women just to fulfill some sexual fetish of theirs, they are now suggesting that by merely appearing in public, trans women are forcing their festish on the world much like a flasher exposing himself to children.
In a post on the GenderCritical subreddit — “gender critical feminist” being a favorite new euphemism for TERF — a Redditor called arnaq declares that “I object to being forced to participate in other people’s fetishes and delusions,” a completely reasonable objection, or so it seems, until one sees what she really means.
She starts out as reasonably as her headline at first appears, recounting her experience with a predatory sexual harasser who tried to impose his fetish on her with a series of obscene phone calls.
“Years ago,” she writes,
I had a retail management job and one day I started getting very creepy calls. It was a man who would breathe heavily and say things like “Will you be my mistress?” “Will you fucking punish me?” and all this other disturbing shit. I told him to fuck off and eventually one day he stopped calling. It was so uncomfortable that this man was using my position as a retail employee who was supposed to cater to my customers and forcing me to give him attention.
Every feminist recognizes (and, I imagine, even many non-feminists recognize) that obscene phone calls are no joke.
At this point, though, arnaq’s post takes a rather dramatic turn:
I feel the same level of creeped out being forced to acknowledge these men who fetishize womens’ bodies and their bodily functions as women themselves.
She is, of course, talking about trans women, not crossdressers.
While it is possible some of them aren’t doing this for fetish reasons, it is obvious that many, MANY of them transitioned because they got off on crossdressing or can’t wait to “touch my girltits~!” or some other extremely offensive “reason” for feeling they are a woman.
This is, of course, utter bullshit. There are of course “chasers” who fetishize trans bodies but assuming that those inhabiting trans bodies share these fetishes is absurd. This whole notion is built on the assumption, as Natalie Reed has noted,
that the “shemale” is doing it to get laid, to attract men to him with his new hot, curvy, sexual-object of a body. Either that or, as in “autogynophilia”, doing it to have himself as his very own personal sex object.
In fact, Reed explains,
It is not an act of attempting to emulate or express ourselves as The Other, we are attempting to more accurately and honestly express The Self. We don’t transition into being a new or different person. We become more ourselves.
Back to arnaq’s post:
As much as TRAs [Trans Rights Activists] like to claim that all of them are genuinely women and have known since they were in the womb, spend five minutes in a TRA reddit community and you will see post after post of how sexy they think being a woman is. Things that genuine women never even think about.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure plenty of “genuine women” admire and enjoy their “genuine female” bodies and, yes, even think of them as sexy.
I am all about gender nonconforming people and if they or anyone else wants to dress or participate in activities related to the opposite “gender” I could not care less.
The fact that you’re posting this screed kind of suggests that you do care, a lot.
But it’s the fact that I am supposed to “accept them as one of my own” and pretend that they didn’t grow up in a world that catered to people born the same sex as them while likely many of them (and men in general) preyed on women sexually that pisses me off so much.
This is an attempt to use the language of feminism to support outright bigotry — bigotry as brazen as Trump’s insistence that Mexican immigrants are a bunch of rapists. There’s absolutely no reason to assume that large numbers of trans women behave in a predatory manner towards cis women, either before their transitions or afterwards.
Why do I have to compromise my safety to satisfy someone else’s delusions?
You don’t. But TERFs trying to ban trans women from women’s bathrooms are essentially demanding that they compromise their own safety by forcing them to use men’s bathrooms, which puts them at risk of assault by transphobic men who don’t like the idea of “men wearing dresses.” This sort of violence isn’t imaginary. These assaults really do happen. (And it’s not just cis men who are the attackers; several days ago two cis women were charged with sexually assaulting a trans woman in the bathroom of a /North Carolina bar.)
Why do I have to pretend how I think and feel to appease someone who has enjoyed privilege myself and other women never have?
Trans folks face bigotry and harassment on a level that few cis people can even comprehend, both before and after transition. A staggering one third of trans teens who identify as female despite being assigned male at birth try to commit suicide. (The percentage for trans male teens is an even more staggering 50%.) Yes, as every feminist knows, cis men enjoy privilege over cis women. But the idea that trans women are somehow privileged over cis women because they once presented as boys and men is absurd.
Why do I have to stand for them weaponizing their position as a TIM to attack women and coerce lesbians into sex?
A TIM, by the way, is a “Trans-Identified Male,” TERFspeak for, yes, a trans woman. In any case, I’ve seen zero evidence that “weaponizing” transness to coerce cis lesbians into sex is an actual thing in the world, rather than simply a moral panic, outside of a tiny handful of individual cases. (TERFs who’ve brought this issue up with me have offered only a single example of a real-life trans woman who preyed on cis lesbians in this way.)
Ironically, there were some Rad Fems in the 1970s, many of whom have since become TERFs, who tried to convince straight cis women to become “political lesbians,” abandoning sex with men (if not necessarily starting to have sex with women) in the name of feminism — before everyone (or almost everyone, anyway) realized that that was not how sexuality works, and that pressuring people to somehow magically change their sexual orientation for political or supposedly political reasons is creepy as hell.
I would not be surprised if many of them even get off on the fact that women like myself are placed under this sense of obligation to do cater to them unwillingly by the way many of them behave when they don’t think actual women are paying attention.
I don’t even know what the fuck she’s talking about here.
It is pure misogyny that women are placed under scrutiny and attacked for pointing out how uncomfortable all of this is. A man forcing me to acknowledge him as a “fellow sister” is a violation of my boundaries and I will not stand for it.
Trans women are women. Full stop.
Naturally, the regulars in the GenderCritical subreddit loved armaq’s manifesto. One commenter took armaq’s transphobia one step further, offering an example of alleged trans sexual fetishism that I, at least, have never heard of before.
“Yeah,” wrote a commenter called legally_cool.
I don’t care what people do in private but I’m not playing along with anyone’s fetish. Some TIMs get a boner from having their pronouns respected like wtf how is that normal behaviour.
Trans women … get boners from HAVING THEIR PRONOUNS RESPECTED? They get Pronoun Boners?
I’ve devoted much of my time over the last eight years trying to expose (and make some sense of) the weirdest sub-varieties of misogyny on planet Earth, but goddamn, TERF transmisogyny can get just as weird as manosphere misogyny, if not more so.
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If pronoun boners are an actual thing, can the official term for them be proners?
Ok, really ignorant feminist here who never met a trans person (that I’m aware of at least). I just kinda think folks are folks, and I’m fine with ya’ll who just want to exist. I just want folks to stop screaming “Don’t be yourself!” Seems like the trans are getting that bs. Let others alone to follow their path, ok? We’re all human. We’re all different. But we’re stronger together, no? Hugs to the trans I never met. Be strong. Rooting for you!
@weirdwood: TERFs don’t think, period.
@Hexum7: Nobody with an IQ above single digits would want a TERF at their party.
As an antidote to this revolting stuff, may I suggest this utterly beautiful and heartbreaking piece by Gwen Benaway? It’s a long-ish one, but every word is precious. For example:
And this:
Ok, so, I’ve seen the word “TERF” floating around for a while now but never figured out exactly what it means. Now I think I’m like 90% sure that it’s just a shitty excuse for a feminist who hates trans people? In that case they sound kinda like the MRAs of feminism, and not to go all “no true scottsman”, but if they don’t recognize the rights of an entire group of women, then doesn’t that make them literally not feminists? Just like MRAs really have nothing to do with men’s rights because they ignore men’s issues that can’t be blamed on women? And since they are literally not feminists by definition, I second Bina’s idea to call them FARTs instead, since feminism appropriators is all they really are.
@Dr. Thang
Yes, “TERF” is traditionally an abbreviation for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” though to keep the acronym, I’ve heard it retconned to “…Reactionary Fuckwad” before.
They are technically feminists. But quite lousy ones, if I do say so myself. Christina Hoff Sommers) is technically a feminist, but not a very good one. We don’t listen to her.
We have to deal with the lousy ones as best we can. A feminism for only the white, cis, neurotypical woman–even if sapphic–is not a very good feminism.
So…we gotta work on a better feminism, especially to the public at large.
Because they need it.
Let’s see, constant depression since puberty, bullying thru high school, the sheer hatred of ever looking in a mirror or photo, etc. Wow. So privilege.
Gods, TERF lesbians are the worst. Thankfully, none of the women I know buy into this nonsense, or at least keep it to themselves (not that TERFS can keep anything to themselves).
Here and on Pharyngula, I’ve gotten to watch regular commenters turn ridiculously hateful amazes me how quickly any principles fly out the window.
@Gijoel
When I first heard of that, I thought they meant cis-men who would just do it to be creeps and thought that it does sound like an awful possibility… And I am feeling really conflicted about having that thought/worry, because I don’t want to be terf-y and I’m afraid that, what if this means I am one. What do you guys think I should do about myself, ’cause I want ro be a good ally to trans people and not have these sort of thoughts? 🙁
By “not wanting to have these sort of thoughts” I meant thoughts that are harmful to trans people, not whatever I am a terf or not, their rights are more important than my feelings
@Robert, it does make a kind of sense in the context of the whole “Autogynephilia” theory.
The idea is that transwomen are so narcissistic that they’re not attracted to any sexual partner in and of themselves but rather for how they validate the autogynephile’s gender identity. Being in a relationship with a man who identifies as straight is acceptable, but the holy grail is a lesbian because they’re seen as the true “gatekeepers” of feminism and womanhood and getting to fuck one means you’ve been truly “accepted as a woman”.
That’s how TERFs see it, anyway, as I’ve been lead to understand. Personally, I don’t doubt that autogynephiles exist out there, but saying all trans people are is a pretty gross oversimplification.
@Bina: I still call them TERFs; I just expand it as “Trans-Exclusive Raging Fuckwits” now. But FARTs works too. ?
From David’s original post:
From my understanding of the history, it’s not that they became TERFs– they are the origin of any organised trans-exclusive tendency in feminist thought. Previous feminists may have been positive, indifferent or vaguely negative on the trans issue but this lot put a lot of time and effort into being specifically horrible about it. So, yeah, thanks for that. You suck.
Also, they were WGTOWs but I’m not sure we can blame them for miggies– I think we can just put that down to convergent evolution of awful people generally… like how the TERFs find themselves on the same side of the aisle as conservative Christians in their eagerness to get “bathroom bills” and other similar pieces of bigotry passed. This was evident last year here in Ireland when the movement was underway to have the 8th Amendment to the Constitution repealed which prohibits abortion: a bunch of TERFs complained that the Repeal movement was trans-inclusive. “They’ll never need an abortion!” They were told it was a matter of solidarity and bodily autonomy. A portion of middle-class so-called feminists threatened to vote against the repeal (!) if trans women weren’t expelled because, well, they personally could always afford the trip to the UK if they needed a termination. Their less well-off “sisters”, apparently, could fend for themselves.
I may have told that story before & apologies but it captures the TERF attitude perfectly and is what pisses me off the most about them: they claim to be acting in the interests of “real” women, to be protecting them, but they are making women demonstrably less safe. And not just through negligence– they will throw whole classes of vulnerable women under the bus in pursuit of their repugnant vendetta against trans women. They piss me off no end.
@Valkyrine
Ok, your first interpretation was wrong because they intentionally used deceptive language. That happens to everyone sometimes. Now that you know the truth, do you still have that same worry? If so, I recommend researching how often it happens that cis men pretend to be trans women to sneak into bathrooms. Then look into how many women get confronted or attacked for using the restroom while not sufficiently appearing femme.
If not then you don’t really need to do much other than keeping in mind pretty much any reasonable-sounding argument about gender and bathrooms is a lie, and listen to trans people (not to imply you’re not, it’s just something we cis folks always need to keep in mind).
Well, it IS kinda hot to be respected. Other than that tiny glimmer of reality, that whole thing is hogwash.
I remember going to speak at an abortion rights rally in the mid-1990s. One of my lesbian avengers friends (who was actively working with Planned Parenthood in a way that I was not) had asked me to speak, so I went, and I spoke.
I spoke about how some abortion rights folks had found the idea of incorporating trans* people into the movement was weird to them b/c they thought of trans* folks only as MtF folks. But I told them that even if I was MtF, there are plenty of FtM folks out there who can and do get pregnant and need access to PP services, including, sometimes, abortion…
…BUT, I also told them, imagining PP’s natural constituency only as those folks who might get pregnant is a gross mistake. There are plenty of dykes who aren’t having any sex that might get them pregnant, and there are plenty of trans* folks who have no fear of getting pregnant either because of the kinds of sex they are practicing or because of their own bodies’ capacity for pregnancy.
Yet the right wing is trying very hard to tell all of us what we can and can’t do with our sexual organs. Body autonomy is for everyone, but autonomy over our sexed body parts is particularly contested, to the particular detriment of female persons, queer persons, and trans* persons.
The natural constituency of PP, I said, is all these folks who sexed body organs the right wing seeks to control, and that I must fight to preserve access to abortion even if no one who might get pregnant would ever fight for my right to have a vaginoplasty because the ideological assumption that one person or even one government can control the sexed body parts of another is an assumption that persists to my detriment. I cannot allow it to persist so long as it takes a form which creates some caveats or exceptions allowing vaginoplasty just for me, nor should those seeking abortion access allow it to persist so long as it is burdened with caveats or exceptions allowing their abortions.
So long as the assumption persists, all of us are in danger, I told the crowd.
I as an anti-violence activist who worked in DV shelters and anti-SA programs, so I didn’t track exactly how or why trans* health care became available in the PP locations in my area, but after the rally a bunch of people – random folks there for the rally, people who volunteered with PP and people who actually served on PP’s board and in other key positions came up to me later to thank me. And though I don’t know exactly when the policy change happened, two years later a trans* friend of mine got transition hormones from PP when they had not been available at the time I spoke at the rally. And you know what happened after that? All the trans* folks in the area started hearing they could get hormones from PP, and pretty soon all the trans* folks in the area started defending the fuck out of PP whether they were people who could get pregnant or not.
That’s the shit.
That’s what real feminism looks like. That’s how we help each other. I like to think, though I can’t know, that my little speech made some small difference. It wasn’t a big rally, but it was attended by some influential folks at PP. But whether I helped nudge them or not, PP made the right call. Trans* folks responding by supporting PP, and PP in our area got stronger. Gay boys in the area – not a lot, I’ll grant, but some – who cared about trans* folks started caring about PP.
TERFs would have had PP refuse such services. TERFs would have kept PP focused on cis* women only. TERFs would have made PP weaker and more vulnerable over time.
I don’t doubt that (most) TERFs want the best for women, but what they want to do won’t get us there.
Maybe I’m unusual, but I really don’t care what exact equipment people have in their pants.
Also, kids develop a sense of gender pretty much at the same time as a sense of self.
So telling kids as soon as possible that there are more choices than male and female would really help a lot.
I finally figured out I was agender a few years ago. I’m 35. The feeling of ‘Oooohhh! There is a NAME for it!’ was quite amazing.
And to all the asswipes saying ‘It’s just a phase’:
If a kid is saying ‘I wish I were X’ the best way forward is to ask why. Often the solution is quite simply telling them that gender doesn’t dictate what they can do. If you’re one of those people who believe in gender roles and gendered toys, you can go fuck yourself.
If a kid is saying ‘I AM X’ the best way forward is to talk to professionals to figure out how best to proceed. Because that kid is likely trans. And the earlier you acknowledge this, the better the outcome for the kid.
I’m still learning about this so I have a few questions. What about the cotton ceiling, what’s that supposed to be? So far I’ve only read terf interpretations so I’m confused. And also, would David and the other cis-men here who support trans women and assert trans women=women, date and have sex with trans women? I’ve always wondered that
@Crip Dyke:
So much this. I mean, how far inside your own bubble of self-righteousness must you be to want fewer allies? ?
Can confirm that it’s nice to get respect. Also, rarer than it should be.
OT
GOP Senator Rand Paul, a chief critic of Obamacare, is going to Canada to get hernia surgery: report
One of the biggest critics of “ocialized medicine” is about to get some first-hand experience in how it works
When push comes to shove, Rand Paul actually likes socialized (or possibly ocialized) medicine — but only for himself.
https://www.salon.com/2019/01/14/gop-senator-rand-paul-a-chief-critic-of-obamacare-is-going-to-canada-to-get-hernia-surgery-report/
When I wade into a subject that’s in some ways new to me — or at least newer to me than it is to a lot of you — I learn even more than usual from you all. Thanks, Cat, for helping me understand the TERF trajectory a little better, and thanks Crop Dyke for the PP stuff!
Valkyrine, the first link in the paragraph about TERFs wanting to ban trans women from women’s bathrooms has a lot of good if depressing info on the bathroom violence issue.
Cindy, I’ll let someone else handle the “cotton ceiling” question; my understanding is that sort of thing is much, much, much rarer in the real world than it is in the TERF imagination. As for the other question, yeah, sure, absolutely!
I’d bet that, by this misdirected wankstain’s standards, there are very few “genuine women” out there. TMI time, but I made “stripper” outfits and did strip teases in front of the mirror for myself when I was a teenager. And I’m aro/ace. I can’t even imagine how it is for you people who experience sexual attraction and like all that genital-smushing nonsense.
That’s the self-defeating aspect of gatekeeping, though. No matter where you set that gate down, there’s bound to be something you’ve left on the other side.
@Cat Mara,
I’d agree with that. I did some intensive research years ago for uni, on 70s and 80s feminism, including political lesbianism and antiporn feminism. At the time I didn’t see transphobia, but looking back, the foundations were absolutely there. Just one example – Sheila Jeffreys, now a vocal TERF, didn’t really talk/write about trans stuff back then, but you can see the roots of her current stance in her early work. It’s blindingly obvious! Janice Raymond is another example.
I’ve seen terfs claiming the name is a misnomer because “we’re not trans exclusionary – we totally include trans men.” . Yeah no. You include the imaginary women you superimpose over us. That’s not inclusion.
Re “cotton ceiling”, I’m far from an expert but my understanding is it was initially a thought experiment about how trans women are presumed to be undesirable partners purely because they’re trans. Kind of like how we keep seeing MRAs refer to women over 18 as post-wall or whatever. You can challenge those assumptions and the prejudices behind them without believing MRAs should be compelled to sleep with women their own age.
@Mish:
Have you ever read The Transsexual Empire?
I have.
The origins of a wider anti-trans feminist stance weren’t just obvious: they were quite explicit. I save “obvious but not explicit” for the feminists of the 60s when awareness of trans* lives wasn’t sufficiently widespread for people to have formed considered opinions or to have decided the question of trans* rights was sufficiently immediate to develop an explicit opinion. People just hated the queerbos and the trannies and getting into the details of why was just, at that point, too much effort. So you have folks like Mary Daly who was later quite explicit about her opposition to trans* advocacy and trans rights who don’t say much at all about trans* folks in the 60s. Why bother? They didn’t know any out trans* people and didn’t know anybody who knew any out trans* people, so things never came up. And yet, Daly was constantly talking about the power of the “female essence” as synonymous with the power of women. It was inevitable she’d hate on trans* people.
===> and before people presume to educate me, I know very well that there are people who served as her graduate assistants and others close to her who said that before she died Mary Daly had a change of heart on trans* issues. It’s also true as she got nearer to the end of her life that she spoke up on trans* issues less often. Personally, I think they’re probably exaggerating her change of heart when it’s more likely she simply experienced a loss of certainty without achieving any real reversal. I say that because it would have been easy enough to write something announcing her reversal if she’d had one. But the main point is that even if she had such a change of heart, it does not eliminate her history of anti-trans* speaking and activism, nor the fact that she served as Raymond’s adviser while Raymond was working on The Transsexual Empire. Her 60s positions did lead directly into the explicitly anti-trans* positions that she took (and that her graduate students and other followers took) in the 70s and 80s. That’s the history of the ideas, and whatever complicated feelings she might have had near the end of her life don’t change that history.