My honest take is this: if you've not been called a TERF yet, it's not that you aren't one, it's just that they haven't found you out yet.
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I mean, you do realise that many, many TERFs (me included) didn't start out this way? We started out as trans allies / wannabe 'nice' women.
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We took trans testimony at face value, accepted trans people (almost always males) as individuals, tried to just get along and play nice.
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But at some point, what we were doing wasn't good enough. Maybe we wanted space for women who were born women. Or biological women. Female.
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That's transphobic. Maybe we wanted to talk about vaginas, and periods, and PCOS. That excludes trans women. It's transphobic.
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Maybe we said "Hang on a minute" when we saw someone who'd been a man until his mid-30s competing, winning, against women in sports.
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Maybe we worried about people like Danielle Muscato taking places in women-only shelters, despite being obviously male. Whoops! Transphobia!
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Maybe we used the phrase "male-bodied" or tried to suggest that female is actually a thing. You wouldn't believe the backlash that gets.
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Maybe we tried to tell a rich white boy in eyeliner and a dress that our years as a single mother, shit on by society, that we weren't "cis"
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Perhaps being told that we are oppressors of male-bodied people, who need to be called out for our 'cis privilege' was the turning point.
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Whatever it was, many of us didn't start out as TERFs. We just got tired of no apology for our femaleness being good or scraping enough.
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Maybe we'd been an unfailing ally until we retweeted the wrong woman, or the wrong article, then faced a huge onslaught for our transphobia.
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Maybe we saw huge males punching a 60yo woman who just wanted to go and hear a talk. Or saw them arranging to go and 'fuck up some TERFs'.
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Perhaps it was seeing "LGBT" orgs refusing to condemn attacks on women, instead calling for us to make the world better for trans people.
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Maybe it was seeing lesbians told they were transphobic bigots for not wanting to suck dick. Or maybe being told "suck my girl dick" did it.
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Or maybe it was the lack of any definition whatsoever for woman, man, trans, gender, male, female, that did it.
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We're seeing sex-based protection that women have fought long and hard for disappear in favour of gender, a concept thats never been proved.
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We're watching rapists and murderers claiming to be female so they can get better treatment and access to women-only space like prisons.
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We're watching female prisoners get sexually harassed and assaulted, and female professionals traumatised by having to search / touch males.
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If any of this bothers you as a woman, make no mistake: you're a TERF. Any thought-crime is enough. You may think you're an ally, but no.
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"But I have trans friends" - nope. "But I think trans people should be protected by law" - nope. Any question at all, and you're a TERF.
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"I think everyone should be able to wear what they want, act how they want, but that doesn't change their sex." = TERF.
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It's comforting to position TERFs as big bad wolves, different from you - the nice women, the humane women. Problem is, it's a lie.
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We're women. Ordinary women. Lots of us aren't radfems. Lots of us aren't anything, except normal, run-of-the-mill women. Like you.
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We weren't TERFs until suddenly, one day, we said or thought the wrong thing, and we were. Because a man said so.
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I remember telling a friend, "I think I might be transphobic". I was told it was good I'd recognised the prob and could now work through it.
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Problem was, I couldn't make myself believe in trans anymore. And I couldn't get a straight answer on anything at all. Because its nonsense.
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The only solution - which I wasn't willing to take - was to stop asking questions and to just go along blindly, never questioning.
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I couldn't. I was devastated. I lost friends. I lost my online network. I felt like a terrible human being. Why couldn't I just be nice?
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I thought I was a kind person. I thought I was humane, and compassionate, and supportive. But no, just a scummy TERF bigot.
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