By David Futrelle
One thing I’ve learned doing this blog lo these many years is that hate looks like hate, no matter what kind it is: Misogyny looks like racism; racism looks like antisemitism; antisemitism looks like homophobia. While these different forms of bigotry aren’t identical by any means, they do share many of the same tropes; a misogynist complaining we live in a “gynocracy” secretly controlled by women, for example, sounds a lot like an antisemite peddling some updated version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I’ve also learned that these various varieties of hate sound remarkably similar even when they’re being promulgated by people who are ostensibly on the opposite ends of the political spectrum: the transphobia promoted by women who consider themselves both radical and feminist sounds a lot like the transphobia promoted by those on the far, far right.
I’d like to illustrate this last point with a little experiment in the form of a quiz.
Take a look at the quotes below. Some are from the Gender Critical subreddit, Reddit’s main forum for trans-exclusionary “radical feminists.” (All of them garnered multiple upvotes from other “Gender Critical” Redditors, with several getting well over 100 upvotes.) The rest of the quotes are from articles in the neo-Nazi internet tabloid The Daily Stormer, one of the most gleefully bigoted sites on the internet. See if you can tell which quotes come from which of these two sources.
The answers are below, or you can just click on the quotes, which are linked to their sources.
I) “If a man cuts his dick off, he’s still just a man.”
Answers: A) Daily Stormer; B) Gender Critical subreddit; C) GC; D) DS; E) GC; F) GC; G) DS; H) GC; I) DS; J) DS
How’d you do?
If it’s any consolation, I had to doublecheck a few of these to make sure I was correctly remembering where they originated.
Hate sounds like hate, no matter where it’s coming from.
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5/10. I knew TERFs sounded like Nazis, but I didn’t think they were quite this similar. I was expecting the Nazi ones to be the ones defending straight men and claiming social control conspiracies, but apparently not. Honestly, for the most part the TERFs sound worse than the Daily Stormer.
I got half of them right.
Oy. The only one I was pretty confident about was H, because I thought the word “misogynist” was a tip off. Otherwise, I didn’t do better than chance.
I admit I was shocked by B, because common sense would say “radical feminists” would at the very least be against men beating anyone up for not meeting their standards. Shoulda known better.
I got like 4 of them. They really do sound identical.
I have noticed TERFs being more Nazitastic lately. I’m seeing a lot of theories about trans people controlling the media and brainwashing the masses.
@WWTH
Cross-pollination. The more time you spend making friends with Nazis (as TERFs have), the more you sound like one.
@WWTH
Same. Thought it was only my impression, but I imagine they are taking advantage of the narratives being pushed by the Nazis in order to sell their own. Essentially they are riding on the mainstreaming of Nazi transphobia to sell their own toxic brand.
I don’t know how people are going to be convinced about gender especially when considering ContraPoints is problematic in at least some people’s eyes.
Granted, people will consider conservative religious (and secular/philosophical) beliefs as the only valid delusions and gender liberation as an invalid delusion appealing to hedonism, as if it were made up to excuse degeneracy or chaos. Voices from non-cis men of color may too be dismissed for “caring too much about race” in addition to pandering to delusions regarding gender – I would hope it would be apparent to them that it’s pretty much racism to erase non-binary genders that exist(ed) in other cultures.
This could attract even well-meaning people who are pretty much uninformed about issues regarding gender that aren’t just cisgender men and women.
Didn’t even bother trying to guess any of them, because, well, yes, they do look so disturbingly similar to the point I was reasonably sure any guess on my part would be basically pure chance. Gotta say B at first sounded kinda more Stormer to me, but then I remembered that TERFs consider all trans women to be men, and many are either so misandrist and/or transphobic (most likely the latter) that they kinda want such a thing to happen.
@Diego Duarte
Definitely. Since both groups have hate as their firmest principle it’s easy for them to bond over it and form alliances. Already some TERFs openly associate with and defend Nazis, like how Posie Parker appeared on a podcast with Jean-François Gariépy.
An aside: I recall a TERF who used to comment here called Sly Fawkes (later The Real Cie). She at one point claimed as part of their usual TERF is a slur routine that “TERF is Feminazi covered in glitter.” The term “Feminazi” is obviously a disingenuous and harmful term and shouldn’t be used. It is in no way equivalent to the useful term “TERF.”
However, there’s something ironic in her reference to it that these TERFs aren’t really feminists but sound like literal Nazis.
Got 3. Didn’t even do as good as I should have if I guessed each.
Wow. 4/10 and I was SURE I knew at least 4 of the ones I got wrong!
5/10. I did quite a bit worse than I expected.
I was thinking that any mention of British politics was a dead giveaway for GC, because there’s a weirdly prominent transphobic faction in UK feminism… but nope, #1 was Daily Stormer.
I thought that taking the perspective of the “straight man” attacking a trans woman indicated Daily Stormer, because they identify so thoroughly with men…. but nope #2 was GC. I also got #3 wrong for much the same reason.
I did get E through I right, though given how off I was on my thinking for the first four, that was probably just dumb luck.
Definitely an interesting experiment.
@Aaron
I see we made the same mistakes on the first two. I thought the same, but apparently not.
@Naglfar, Aaron
Same here, same reasoning
@Naglfar
Hah! There’s also the fact that the Daily Stormer is pretty Americentric.
However, I find it much stranger to see the second quote in GC. It seems… well, odd for a (radical!) feminist to try to justify a straight man beating up a sexual partner.
@Aaron
It is, but remember that TERFs aren’t really feminists and they don’t see trans* people as human. I got that one wrong as well, though, so it just goes to show how much TERFs are like Nazis.
And now I’m tempted to record a parody of the Dead Kennedy’s “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” called “Nazi TERFs Fuck Off.”
Got 8/10. I missed D and E.
I’ve been reading the Internet while admitting to myself that I was trans for awhile, now. It took pretty close reading to score 80%, but, sadly, I have enough exposure to TERF thinking, at this point.
Grace
For me, the “that’s super fucked up” part of B was a giveaway for GC. The Stormers would be more focused on disgust, but TERFs would be more interested in appearing to be fighting on the side of consent. It doesn’t surprise me that TERFs are fine with brutal violence against trans women. Men being violent against other “men” is normal and reasonable in their view.
Got 8/10. I missed D and E.
I’ve been reading the Internet while admitting to myself that I was trans for awhile, now. It took pretty close reading to score 80%, but, sadly, I have enough exposure to TERF thinking, at this point.
Grace
… somehow I got 100% incorrect. My answers were exactly mirrored.
Okay, chronicling as I go:
A: TERF
B: TERF
C: Stormer
D: TERF
E: TERF
F: TERF
G: TERF
H: TERF
I: TERF
J: Stormer
Okay, I realized that I’m just labeling things TERF because I can see the TERFs saying that while I really have no clue how trans* folk are talked about in the Daily Stormer. I’m really only labeling things Stormer if I can’t honestly see a TERF saying it, and that method didn’t end up being very discriminating. Even (C) wasn’t something I couldn’t see a TERF saying, it was just something where I thought a Stormer could have said it, and there had to be some Stormers, right?
and answers are?
Wow. I did badly. 5/10. Looks like my judgement is no better than random chance.
I really didn’t think that Stormer would actually give a fuck about hormones, and I also didn’t think that TERFs would give a fuck about men having relationships with trans* people.
Some of the language stuff is interesting, too. I thought J was stormer based on the use of “her” (including scare quotes) rather than something else like TIM (although I suppose David screened those quotes out for being too easy). But in example I they use “just a man” when I thought Stormers would use “less than a man” language, where I thought TERFs would use “just a man” meaning “just the same as those cis men that are responsible for women’s oppression”. “Just a man” turned out not to have the significance that I thought it would.
Honestly, it’s lucky I didn’t do even worse that random chance. (Get it?)
OTOH, I don’t really feel like doing the deep dive necessary to find any trends in differentiating their rhetoric. There aren’t enough spoons in the world for that.
@Catalpa
I didn’t even consider that, but you’re right. The Daily Stormer wouldn’t frame their objection around consent, not even obliquely. It’s just not how they think.
Then again, #3 really does seem purely driven by disgust, and that was also GC.
@Naglfar:
Considering that TERFs originally called themselves “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” and the acronym, I’d say that counts as an own-goal.
The B remind me of the old “if we allow several sex in the same toilet, rape will happen”. It’s a physically possible scenario who don’t happen because of how incredibly stupid, dangerous, and useless it is to do.
It also count as projection, because straight men seducing women just to rape them is definitely a very real problem. And women, unlike men, aren’t trained to think they are well within their right to beat up an aggressor.