A question relating to the trans*/feminism debate

I'm in a similar boat, princess, although I do have like-minded friends too, and some good fb groups I hang about in.
I defriended someone (am not fb-clever enough to mute) for saying all terfs were deeply damaged people.
I feel like this comes from the issue of women speaking up in favour of women-only groups where women can support each other's recovery after rape.
It's very similar to MRA slurs about women who are feminists just being one of the teeny tiny minority of women who were raped.

'As soon as we decide prostitution is just fine as soon as a woman wants to do it, men will decide that the only problem is that not enough of us want to do it, and ensure that our choices are restrictive enough that it becomes the best "choice" of several.'

That's very thought-provoking. Yes. It really underlines the way in which an economy which is bad for women overlaps with an economy in which the sex trade is legal.
On the face of it it doesn't work because there are countries like Germany where it's legal but women probably don't do badly economically. But the economy we're talking about is globalised - and there are women from other countries with fewer opportunities who staff the brothels.

PrincessSmartipants I'm sorry that has happened to you - and that is a very familiar story here. I, too, am boggled at how we got to this point, and it's only after a long time that I have snapped and started talking about it in namespace social media - I was frightened that women I liked and whose good opinion I wanted would dismiss and unfriend me as a "TERF".

But - after a lifetime of standing up for trans rights, and seeing them as political siblings - I'm another one who has done a 180 degree turn and feel like we are fighting to hang onto any women's movement at all. Fuck that woman-hating ideology.

I still think this piece by Sarah Ditum is so useful: sarahditum.com/2014/07/28/how-terf-works/

This, too: www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-terf

FairyGodmother I'm so sorry you have to deal with this shit after what you've already been through.

It makes a lot of sense, that pro-prostitution arguments are the same ones pimps use when they recruit girls. They're using what they know works, and try to use the same tactics to make the average non-involved person feel ok with prostitution.

Yup. As soon as we decide prostitution is just fine as soon as a woman wants to do it, men will decide that the only problem is that not enough of us want to do it, and ensure that our choices are restrictive enough that it becomes the best "choice" of several. The legalized prostitution hotbeds of Asia are not places where conditions are good for women, just like the places with officially recognized "third sex" roles for men who are effeminate aren't usually good places for women.

omg Abortionfairy that Churchill quote is bang on.

My new rule of thumb (which I came up with about 5 mins ago, but I think it has legs) = what would a misogynist man want feminists to do, if we asked him?

Well he would definitely want prostitution to be legalised so that he could purchase sexual access to women's bodies at his convenience.

He would probably also want man/woman to be redefined based on identity not biology, so that he could maliciously enter women's spaces without obstacle, and so that any female solidarity that feminists had painstakingly managed to form would be destroyed. Feminist campaigns on abortion rights, FGM, maternity leave etc. would be nicely undermined by the derailing battles that would inevitably take place over inclusion of trans people.

I don't think we should do what misogynists want us to do. Just as a rule of thumb.

Have you tried talking to them about it Princess?

This behaviour is both wtfbbq, and harmful.

Princess, I think some people are so desperate to be seen as progressive and right-on and inclusive that they go along with the current trans-centric mob-think. It doesn't occur to them that they are helping to erase the rights that feminists fought for in the first place, and eroding the places which women have traditionally claimed as their own.

Up until recently, I was in the live-and-let-live category. I had no issue with transpeople as individuals. But having been subjected personally to the vile resentment that some transwomen have towards biological women and their barely-veiled hatred of gay women like myself (that's when they're not trying to coerce us into bed), I have done a complete 180 degree shift on the subject.

I will not let these activists redefine my experience as a woman, nor will I allow them to trample on my rights in the process.

This is the 21st century backlash against feminism.

There's an apocryphal Churchill quote that says "the fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists." Some of the most woman-erasing, misogynistic expression in society now comes from so-called feminists.

I am genuinely bewildered by the stuff they are saying. I can't reconcile it with what I know/knew of them and I can't understand how they reconcile it with being a feminist.

Well a year ago I wouldn't have thought I knew any people like this. These are old friends (from uni in fact) who move in similar circles to me though geographically far away. They clearly have some very different ideas to me that only came to my attention when the whole trans* issue came to to the fore in the last couple of years. Before that I would NEVER have expected to see these women speak like that about other women.

Because every single feminist I know on FB seems to be going along with this die TERF die mentality.

That's terrible. Death threats towards other feminists?
I don't know any people like this. If I did I would like to ask them why they're basically yelling "she is a witch, burn the witch!!" about other feminist women.

PrincessSmartipants - tbh it doesn't help if you ARE articulate and well-read - they're not interested in listening to arguments, just in shouting 'Die TERF scum die!'

Well we seem to be broadly in agreement on here, Princess. That's a start of sorts. But yes there has been a high-profile silencing lately.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PENIS, in our species. Ahem. As you were.

So what kind of 'feminist' does this make me? Where do I fit now? Because every single feminist I know on FB seems to be going along with this die TERF die mentality. Or are there others who are silenced (like I feel I am) by the very threat of that sort of abuse?

I'm not a very clever or well read feminist but this is starting to make me really fucking angry.

I've just had to hide 2 FB friends because they were ranting and raving on about TERFs and SWERFs and saying they wish they would all fuck off and die (yes, those actual words, thank God they don't know much about what I think because I'm too scared of the backlash to voice most of my thoughts online, oh the irony). This was following some sort of online spat they'd been involved in about womens' toilets and who can/should use them. The 'penis can be female' line was trotted out alongside a whole load of other shit about using whatever public toilet you feel most comfortable in shame if that fucks it up for women but hey they can just hold on til they get home

And all I can think is, what utter fucking BOLLOCKS. All over the world, day in day out, penis is used as a WEAPON against women and girls. Rape is a tactic of WAR used by male bodied people to oppress/threaten/terrify/subjugate/forcibly impregnate women. Where the fuck does gender identity come into that? Are women going to be safe from that if they say, oh but hang on a tic, I'm really a man inside? Will a child being forcibly held down so her genitalia can be mutilated be suddenly left alone if she protests that actually, she is really a boy and so her genitalia are male not female?

I don't get it. I just don't. And I'm sorry for the long and sweary rant but I genuinely have NOWHERE else to say any of that. I don't dare raise the subject even with my friends because it turns out I am that most reviled creature, a TERF, and I am not articulate or well read enough to defend myself.

Someone posted recently about the irony of the fact that individuals in her local feminist group who didn't feel able to protest against Ched Evans because they felt it would be too risky, were all enthusiastic about taking part in an anti Julie Bindel protest. In other word: don't attack the patriarchy because you might get hurt, make yourself feel better by attacking other feminists you don't like, because you know they and their supporters are not going to hurt you.

Archery, I have heard the same, usually from oh-so-trendy "genderqueer" people who pride themselves on being so post-modern.

They have unwittingly co-opted anti-women insults from the patriarchy they claim to protest against, and are using the same kind of insults that MRAs use, just with bigger words.

Funny thing is, I don't see them protesting against the patriarchy with nearly as much vitriol and vehemence as they do with rad-fems. How many rad-fems have killed transactivists or sex workers? How many men have killed transactivists or sex workers? Yet we're the ones bearing the brunt of their attacks. Strange, that.

Yeah a knickerful, its like theres no solution ...either waysomeone will be offended.

Same for SWERF - just a fancy way of calling us "frigid lesbians".

Council, exactly. the number of times I have seen people who label themselves as "progressive" and "queer" laugh about someone being a "prude" or "rubbish in bed" because they don't agree that sex work is empowering is ...a lot. Same old woman-hating in new shoes, is all.

Choochi, I think a number of transactivists wouldn't accept that solution.

The use of TERF as an insult - that's just a fancy way of calling someone a "man-hating lesbian". It's not surprising to me that transactivists and their allies have adopted it so wholeheartedly. After all, how dare biological women reject the notion that biological women and transwomen are the same. How dare we object to the presence of male bodies in female spaces. How dare we have our own opinions and not bow down to male voices.

Same for SWERF - just a fancy way of calling us "frigid lesbians".

Would the answer to this to be to have Trans only spaces? But it would be very challenging given all the emotions involved.

Notwhat I am really grateful to you, and to other women who have been through what you have endured, for being willing to talk to us about it, when you can bear to. It can't be easy at all for you, but it has been so valuable in countering the "empowered escort" bullshit. Thank you.

i would suggest the people that use those terms have accepted wholesale the right of male born people to access female bodies, in one way or another.