Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is the last thing I want to be talking about today, especially given last week’s thread about how a show I loved made me feel dehumanized. But given the news this is the only thing on my mind, so buckle up for: TERFs.
I didn’t plan to talk about this now, and haven’t prepared anything for it yet. In fact, I’ve spent the last day defending my right to exist as a transgender woman in the face of bigots, which is probably why I can’t think about anything else right now.
All of which is to say this is going to be messy. It was going to be messy under the best of conditions with lots of prep, so be prepared. I know I’m going to forget stuff, and possibly not be as articulate as I could be. I ask that you bear with me.
Also there will be several links in this thread. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take the time to read them. If you truly want to learn and understand, they will be invaluable to you.
Before I get into it, I do want to point out this is two weeks in a row I’ve felt compelled to speak on a topic I hadn’t planned on at the time, due to events in the world. So maybe take note of how it’s like we trans folks are almost constantly under assault.
Let’s start with the definition of TERF, which TERFs will tell you is a slur rather than an empirical descriptor. Them being upset about it is akin to racists being upset they get called racist rather than their actual racist actions and beliefs.
TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. They’re people who believe trans people are not who we say we are. This is chiefly expressed as discrimination/oppression of trans women, but it affects trans men and non-binary people too.
They’d like to rebrand themselves as “gender critical”, but I don’t like giving bigots the benefit of rebranding to something softer than what they are.
We let anti-choice people rebrand to “pro-life,” despite their lack of support for contraception or adoption, or any kind of effort to abolish the death penalty… all of which you’d stridently support if you were actually “pro-life.”
Letting them control the narrative there has done a lot of real harm, I think, and I don’t intend to let TERFs do that.
If you don’t probe any deeper than the surface, it seems as if TERFs have a legitimate concern. They purport to be about preserving all the hard-won gains women have fought for over the years (well-deserved, very hard fought for gains).
And they feel by letting trans women into those gains, to enjoy those same rights, they’re losing something they worked so hard for. Because we’re not women and didn’t earn it.
The problem is the entire thing crumbles under the very briefest examination. I’m going to do some of that here, but again, I didn’t plan to do this now so this is going to be totally off the cuff.
But even so, you’ll see how the entire thing falls apart.
In order for their entire argument to make sense, you have to believe that gender and biological sex are inseparable. They’re not, and even biological sex isn’t binary, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Gender is a social construct. We made it up. Animals don’t have gender. They can be male or female, or many variations of intersexed, meaning they are born with/without different reproductive organs (SPOILER this happens in humans too).
That doesn’t mean gender isn’t real. Money is also a societal construct. It’s real, but only has value because we all agree that it does. If we stopped and society broke down, it would just be… paper and metal.
So in TERF ideology, if you’re born with a penis you’re a man, and if you’re born with a vagina/uterus you’re a woman. End of story. It’s this outlook that causes them to see (and perpetuate) the trope of trans women just being “men in dresses invading women’s spaces”.
And they thus see trans men as “confused lesbians” (which doesn’t even address trans men who are attracted to… men! Or are asexual!), and generally think non-binary people are just confused about everything, rather than trusting they know themselves better than anyone else.
And this is where that line of thinking breaks down entirely: what about a woman who has a hysterectomy? Is she no longer a woman? What about a man who loses his penis in a car accident? Is he no longer a man?
What about people born without secondary sex characteristics? It happens. Are they no longer men and women? (they of course are whoever they say they are)
To reduce women and men to nothing more than their reproductive organs is the EXACT thing our misogynistic society does that feminism is about fighting against. They’re betraying their own purported ideals in the name of bigotry (does that sound familiar? Read on.)
Science is not on their side. If biology is all that determines gender, wouldn’t that negate the existence of gay people? Yet they exist, and most of them cisgender. And the TERFs have no problem with them. (there are even gay animals! look it up.)
Even outside of reducing human beings to nothing more than their biology, it’s not like biology is binary! This is a short thread by a biology professor explaining that in an easy to understand way:
https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1207834357639139328
For a more thorough examination, I highly recommend this one from a biologist/endocrinologist that gets further into the actual science. It’s long but well worth your time. SCIENCE!
https://twitter.com/ScienceVet2/status/1035246030500061184
I’m not going to repeat all of those threads here, but I’m going to say that science doesn’t care if you believe in it or not, it’s the empirical truth no matter what… until we learn more and revise our understanding to fit the actual data!
That’s how we learned there’s more than just “male” and “female” in the range of human life in the first place. And that’s JUST biological sex, we’re not even talking about gender here. This is just in refute of their “but science says men and women only!” asinine argument.
Here’s another great (single tweet!) post debunking a key tenet of TERF belief, that trans women can’t know what it’s like to be women. That argument, again, falls apart under the barest scrutiny.
https://twitter.com/mckinleaf/status/1269407126109040641
And if having actual science not on their side isn’t enough to stop them, if betraying their ideals and supporting misogyny via pre-defined gender roles based on biology isn’t enough to stop them, what’s motivating them?
GLAD YOU ASKED.
It’s fear, anger, and all the other things rolled up inside a little bigotry burrito (empirically the grossest burrito, except maybe any with cilantro!). And that can be hard to believe, especially for TERFs themselves (some of whom I’m sure have never considered some of this).
All you have to do to really understand them is… watch them. There’s that “when people show you who they are, believe them” quote that is like a mantra of mine. So look at what they do…
They’ve partnered with right-wing conservative groups (some of the very same ones who campaign against women’s reproductive rights!) to enact anti-trans legislation. They’ve done things to actively harm the LGBTQ+ community.
NOTHING they do is about lifting up and protecting women, it’s all done with intent to harm and oppress trans people. Have some receipts. This is a long but, so far as I can tell, very good article allllll about it:
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical
Their argument breaks down further when you stop to ask… how do you plan to police trans people to keep them out of certain places?
There are cisgender women who are six feet tall, with broad shoulders and strong jawlines. There are cisgender men who are short and lithe with soft, rounded faces. How can you tell? WHO gets to decide? And why is it chiefly white cis women wanting to make that call? Hmm.
Where does it end? Are all tall women not allowed in women’s spaces because TERFs fear they’re “men in dresses”? What about women going through menopause who can no longer reproduce? Or women with hair on their legs?
Not only is it wrong, it doesn’t even make any sense and wouldn’t even be possible. It’s all about upholding a very cis white male view of what a woman should be.
Does every bathroom get a guard outside who gets to decide who people are based on their APPEARANCE? That’s as reductive (maybe even moreso!) than saying people amount to nothing more than their genitalia.
So when a certain billionaire author who’s repeatedly demonstrated (and then doubled-down on) her transphobia announces a new book in which a cisgender man dresses as a woman in order to assault women…
She’s using her mega-platform to push a propagandic talking point meant to scare cisgender people into thinking of trans women as predators and not women. Even worse is that we’re most often the VICTIMS of violence, especially trans women of color.
Has a cis man ever dressed as a woman in order to assault someone? Maybe. Has anyone ever committed voter fraud? Sure. Is the latter an actual problem in this country? In every investigation done, the SCIENCE reported, says no.
It happens so infrequently so as to not be an actual issue. And when it does happen, it’s almost always perpetrated… by the very people railing against it.
So do a google search for cis men dressing as women to sexually assault a woman (despite all evidence showing that women are most often assaulted by people they already know) and not strangers in a public bathroom. Did you find some? Did you find ANY?
Now do a google search for trans women who’ve been assaulted or killed (almost exclusively by cisgender men), and get back to me in five years when you’ve read all the results.
Here’s a good article about how “men in dresses sexually assaulting women” basically never happens:
https://time.com/4314896/transgender-bathroom-bill-male-predators-argument/
One of these things is an actual problem, one of them is propaganda used to stoke fears in support of upholding the misogynistic status quo and oppression of women and “the other”.
It’s all wrapped up in sexism and racism and every other ill society foists upon us, because we ARE a society and you can’t examine any one of these things without touching on all the others.
Trans men are men. Cis men are men. Trans women are women. Cis women are women. Non-binary people or gender-fluid or demiboys or intersex people or androgynous folks or anyone else IS WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE.
To be a TERF is to promote bigotry, plain and simple. Cis people just want to live their lives as themselves in peace. GUESS WHAT EVERY NON-CISGENDER PERSON ALSO WANTS?
Unfortunately we have to ask the cis folks to give that to us, because they’re the ones causing the problem. So fucking have some compassion and do. Please.
And if you’re cis and this angers you, stand up to this bigotry and let us know you’ve got our backs. We need you.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com