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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@Naglfar:
So, I’m sure this will be unpopular, but if they’re not feminists, then TERF isn’t just an accurate description of them and does seem to be more likely to be an insult/epithet.
There are plenty of people who are racist fucks and still feminists in some sense of the word. I mean, if there weren’t racist feminists, why the fuck would Sojourner Truth needed to ask, Ain’t I a woman?
And that continues to this day, or we wouldn’t still be fighting over intersectionality. So the idea that someone can be feminist and still support certain forms of oppression has been addressed over and over and over throughout feminist history.
I understand the desire to say, simply, “then they weren’t feminists”. But that means that Emma Goldman wasn’t a feminist. Gloria Steinem wasn’t a feminist.
We’re not demons or angels. Pat Parker, apparently, could be an abrasive jerk to people who didn’t deserve it, and yet I love the fuck out her poetry and her passion, and there’s no way in hell she wasn’t a feminist just because she treated some other women like dirt.
I’m clearly a fuckup around some things, but that doesn’t instantly kick me out of the feminist club (I hope). I do what I think is right, and when I get it wrong, I try to learn better.
There are plenty of people who are NOT feminists and who hate trans people. We can call them something other than TERFs: cis supremacists works for me. But if you’re calling them TERFs, then they’re feminists by definition.
If you don’t think they deserve the dignity of being included in the group of feminists, then just call them FARTs or anything else that doesn’t have “feminist” in the definition. But a TERF is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. That’s just what the term means. It doesn’t apply to non-feminists, and we shouldn’t assume that just because someone is feminist that they’re magically free of cissexism.
@Surplus
They all like to conveniently forget that they cane up with the term…
@Crip Dyke
I understand where you’re coming from, and maybe by some definition they are still feminists, but I feel like saying TERFism is a valid school of feminism gives them too much credit. Here, we see that TERFs tend to sound more like literal Nazis than like advocates for women’s rights.
I don’t recall anything Goldman said about trans* people, but I do recall Steinem saying some unsavory things about trans* people in the 1970s. However, I also recall that more recently she apologized for those remarks and while that doesn’t make everything all better, it shows some level of caring that TERFs lack.
The main reason I’ve used the term TERF is because it is a relatively well-known term to describe a specific flavor of transphobia that uses somewhat feminist-sounding language. Maybe some TERFs are actual feminists who are also transphobes (I know it’s possible to be bigoted in one way while not in others), but I have a hard time seeing someone who wrote the quotes above being true supporters of women’s rights. The misogyny present in lots of TERF rhetoric and the splash damage on certain groups of cis women seems very antifeminist even if you ignore the transphobia.
I recognized F as being a TURF as no one on the Right, no matter how moderate, could ever try walking in someone’s else’s shoes. The fact that it was done out of curiosity was a give away too.
Honest question about number two; I can see how a trans person finds someone refusing to have sex with them because they’re trans shallow and transphobic, however isn’t having sex with such a person through deceit still rape?
What am I missing here?
I’d argue that TERFs are feminists in a similar way that White Feminists are feminists- i.e. “there should be rights and protections for me and folks like me, and fuck anyone different. If I don’t have someone to be superior to, then how can I really be considered to have rights???”.
@Cryp Dyke : what you say is theoritically possible, and maybe even apply to some specific individuals ; but the VAST majority of TERFs aren’t feminists. The one I have seen are socially conservatives, and a lot of them don’t ask for more but rather for preservation of the statu quo.
In addition to that, a lot of bigoted people are generally bigoted. Few if any racists aren’t also misogynists, and vice versa. I am not of the opinion one should dwell too many time on trying to see if a particular asshole is “just” transphobe, or if it have more problems. It seem that once someone think an arbitrary criteria can split the world in worthy and unworthy, he or she does not care about which criteria is used.
@Crip Dyke
She didn’t, as it happens.”I am a woman’s rights” is a better slogan anyway :).
@Naglfar
I read a recent tweet, I don’t recall where, which asked something like “If TERF is a slur, then how come you don’t hear the kids on xbox live using it?”
Back in 2018 Jello Biafra actually did DJ a furry party in San Francisco and did do “Nazi Furs Fuck Off” so there is precedent there.
@Naglfar
Which brings me to the following question, and one that others seem to be addressing as well but what exactly do TERFs want? Because at this point I only see the transphobia in their narrative, but not the feminism. As a matter of fact, if I’m being honest, I don’t actually recall them making or promoting any feminist viewpoints, and that may be because I’m haven’t properly educated myself with their movement, but all I ever see TERFs saying is transphobic shit.
And that’s not to mention that they are allying themselves with the very people that, if the TERFs were to achieve all of their goals (including whatever rights for women they are championing for), would entirely roll back all such gains and confine them to the kitchen and outside public spaces for the rest of their lives.
So, whilst I agree with Crip Dyke’s view that feminists can have toxic views in other topics, I still have yet to see TERFs actually defend feminist views. Therefore I think it’s pretty valid to take away their “feminist” label.
1 out of 10, which is waaaaaay worse than random.
I really suck at this.
I think I got almost all of them wrong, but it’s hard to keep track; reading those quotes is a rather high-stress activity.
Anyway yeah this sadly makes sense. Feminism that already leans into conspiracy theories, minority scapegoating, white female innocence tropes etc. is easy prey for far-right entryism.
@Crip Dyke
Last year or so I would have said you’re correct, at this point I’m no longer entirely sure. “Radical feminist” willingness to share a platform with actual Nazis over trans-inclusive feminists says a lot about their underlying motives IMO. Those are violent white men who literally would treat them as livestock given the chance, and they’re willing to reach out to such men because they see trans people as that much more of a threat? IDK, that sounds less like feminism than embracing male protectionism.
(Likewise, as much as I’m terrified of a future where men subjugate women through e.g. genetic engineering, a lot of the fears of extermination sounds less like feminism to me and more like white supremacist fears that “the beauty of white women will perish from the Earth”. Something is very wrong and rotten in the heart of this kind of “feminism”.)
I think it was when I saw a clip of Joe Rogan interviewing Steven Crowder where they both despaired about children being allowed to explore their gender identity at a younger age that it was pointed out in the comments that what united their reactionary attitudes was simple disgust. Their focus was how gross the transition process was and how poorly they thought one of the advocates Crowder ambushed passed.
You read the comments David highlighted and it’s just more of that shared disgust. There’s no intellectual rigor, it’s just “that’s GROSS!” Sadly, it’s a disgust shared by a great many reactionaries, from Nazis on down.
@Catalpa
Does that mean feminists who are white supremacists as well? I think a lot of TERFs are white supremacists, and in general there’s a lot of overlap between racism and transphobia.
@Ohlmann
I agree. In addition to being a waste of time, this sort of categorization seems to imply that it’s okay to be one kind of bigot so long as they’re not others as well.
@Schnookums von Fancypants
That’s great. I’m not a furry, but I would have loved to be at that party.
@Diego Duarte
To hurt trans* people? It seems that that is their main goal and any cis people they hurt along the way are collateral damage.
I can think of a few TERFs saying some feminist things (not that that excuses their transphobia) but for the most part I see that they are much more focused on transphobia than feminism.
It’s also known that at least a few TERF groups, like the Women’s Liberation Front, are partially funded by and mainly work with right wing groups, and I think that might just be the tip of the iceberg and many more TERF groups might be alternative façades for right wing anti-LGBT groups.
@Cyborgette
TERFs are also strangely obsessed with fertility, which is similarly reminiscent of Nazis.
@Katamount
Joe Rogan is an odd one. He loves to hang out with reactionary conservatives and endorses all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories, but has a surprising amount of support from people claiming to be leftists (most likely skidmarxists/dirtbag leftists). I really don’t like Rogan for this reason.
@Naglfar
I’ll cop to listening to a fair amount of “dirtbag” content, but just listening to some of the softball interviews Rogan’s given some of the worst people in media was enough to turn my stomach. I’ve never subscribed to his podcast and likely never will.
Notice how they all, Nazi and TERF alike, focus on trans women? Not one mention, in any of those quotes, about trans men.
I wonder why. Of course fear of castration is part of it for the men who are writing that hate. They find the idea that a trans woman would amputate her penis horrific. The thought of trans men amputating their breasts doesn’t seem to connect for them. Which is what is so interesting. A feminist who is more worried about amputated penises but not amputated breasts?
The fact that it was so difficult to get more than chance on identifying those quotes makes me think that at least some of the TERF quotes were actually written by men.
@ otrame
When terfs talk about trans men they almost always talk about them like their all teenage girls who are actually lesbians but because of the society can’t just accept that their butch lesbians and there for if any trans man tries to do hormones or too surgery they will start talking about child abuse or how their mutilating their bodies because of society treats them and society is just so darn horrible it makes them not want to be girls so their just all confused children who need adults to tell them whats actually best for them. They never talk about trans men as adults or straight trans men or gay trans men who like men.
@Otrame
In context, D is about a trans* man (yes, I checked and I regret it). Still, your point stands.
Some could well be, there definitely are male TERFs (Graham Linehan comes to mind).
I think the reason TERFs and Nazis focus most of their vitriol on trans* women is because of cultural images of trans* women vs trans* men. For decades there has been a cultural image perpetuated in media of a trans* woman as a predator sneaking into bathrooms to molest cis women or taking advantage of cis men. OTOH, the media seems to have mostly ignored trans* men and views AFAB people as unlikely to assault cis men.
Yeah, my use of ‘White Feminists’ was meant to include feminists who are white supremacist or otherwise racist in their activism, not feminists who happen to be white.
I’d expect that the overlap between TERFs, SWERFs, and white supremacist feminists is pretty extensive. Hate tends to clump together.
There’s an argument to be made, I suppose, that the definition of feminism has shifted and thus someone who would have been considered feminist in decades past no longer fits that definition in the modern day. For example, the suffragette movement. A hundred years back, advocating for (white) women to be able to vote would have been seen as radically feminist, but now that such a viewpoint is normalized, even a large number of misogynistic assholes at least claim that women should be about to vote, and that doesn’t make them feminist. Thus, Steinem was a feminist in her time but people espousing the same views nowadays can’t be considered the same?
Otrame
That’s an interesting point. I believe many factors are at play there, one of them being the perpetual notion that a man can never behave in a vulnerable manner. Remember that Australian couple who got bombarded with death threats because the husband decided to adopt his wife’s last name? They feel threatened by any gender expression that does not adhere to patriarchal societal norms.
Another take is that TERFs seem to adhere to a patriarchal concept of feminity, with all the damning implications which would make it almost impossible to adopt actual feminist viewpoints, and so they see transgenderism as merely performative. A trans* woman is viewed as nothing more than an outsider benefitting from both the perks that society affords men, and the alleged “benefits” women enjoy under a patriarchal society.
It should also be noted that trans* men, in general, also suffer less discrimination than trans* women, precisely because the discrimination is also associated with misogyny. I wonder how much relates to the adoption of “stoicism” vs the adoption of “vulnerability”. For all their bullshit, I don’t see the Nazis being as outspoken against trans* men as they are against trans* women, despite the fact that they would also fall under a similar logic of “removing available women from the sexual market place”.
@Schnookums Von Fancypants:
Considering that 2017 was the year Rocky Mountain Fur Con shut down in large part because they sided with the Nazi Furs in an argument that started on Twitter and the ex-chair went full sovereign citizen trying to cease-and-desist the person who complained… it was definitely in the air at the time.
@Catalpa
I agree, and that’s why a lot of older former progressives seem to become reactionaries. For example, Terry Gilliam. In that thread, Snowberry said that:
And I think that’s relevant here because in both cases people have a hard time moving forward to more progressive goals.
@rv97
Natalie Wynn is just one person. She can neither save nor condemn the entire trans community single-handed.
If we all endeavor to make our society less transphobic, if cis people (me incl.) listen to trans voices, especially the most marginalized trans voices, then change is possible.
Re: Steinem, in more recent years she has distanced herself from what she said in the 1970s and apologized, so I’m not sure if it’s fair to still call her a TERF. I could still say she’s a former TERF but it doesn’t seem she still holds such views now AFAIK.
@Viscaria
In addition, a lot of trans* people, myself included, don’t really like Natalie. After all, she appears to be a transmedicalist and has a propensity to platform harmful ideologies. I don’t want to reinstigate the argument we had a while ago about her, but she still seems to say some problematic stuff.
There seems to be a tendency for the cishet public to pick one high visibility trans* person and assume that that person represents all trans* folx. For example, Caitlyn Jenner. This is obviously problematic because trans* people are not a monolithic entity and it’s harmful to perceive us as such, but also because often the people who they choose is often not very representative of most trans* people. Caitlyn Jenner is a conservative Republican who opposes gay marriage, and I couldn’t be further from that. I don’t know if Natalie is on her way to be the next in that position, but I hope not.
Ideally, there shouldn’t be one person whom everyone sees as representative of all trans* folx.
Off Topic, but since furry conventions were already brought up, and I’m sure people could use a bit of better news, from Nerd and Tie:
Furry Convention ‘Further Confusion’ Attendees Rescue Woman From Assault
Basically a small group of people in fursuits ended up performing a ‘citizen’s arrest’ on a guy who was beating up the woman he was in the car with.