TERF

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

So I have seen this expression a lot lately... and TERF gets thown out a lot when feminists are discussing things that are only capable of affecting biologically female women.

And I just can't get my head around it tbh. I don't think feminism should exclude people I think it helps everyone. I get really upset when white feminists forget about WOC or Lesbians, or other minority groups because the point of feminism is to make women's lives better. SO if there an issue that is unique to black women (for example) it is still all of our issue and should be dealt with by all feminist.

So if trans women want in on feminism why do they think can exclude the majority of women by saying we can't discuss our issues? And if trans people want to be accepted and have their rights championed by feminism is that fair since the majority of feminists aren't also suffering those same problems? Is it not a huge double standard?

Abortion rights and prenatal care and contraceptive health, vaginal rape. Are these things off the table now for feminism?

Am I getting it wrong, missing something? It feels to me like male privilege, telling women what they can and can't talk about..and doing so in a way where they actually feel guilty as though they have done something wrong.

kim you clearly don't get this. Do you get it that feminists don't like it when they discuss eg male violence and a man pops up and says "women are violent too"? That's what you do every time the silencing of gender critical is discussed. And you're just as wrong as those men who derail feminist discussion with "women do it too" or NAM, both in the substance of what you are saying and your derailing insist discussion. Those men also would characterise feminists criticizing them for doing this as being silenced by feminists.

kim I Have had white people make my life miserable. Does that mean I (as a white person) don't have white privilege?

I fully understand that I don't understand (iyswim) what it is like to be a LGBT person in the world today. And that my life is easier for not knowing the everyday troubles that an LGBT person deals with every day.

But I feel like by you saying that you have not benefited form male privilege you are effectively saying you understand my experience. That you know what it feels like to be scared your husband's friends are judging you for not being pretty enough/ or that they are thinking your dh should leave you because you are infertile. Or what it feels like to watch your mother getting beat up by your father and wonder why the fuck your sex has to put up with it. You have never been judged by your decision to use pain killers during labor/choose a natural birth. Breast feed/bottlefeed. These are all things that you can't understand and have the "privileged" of not worrying about in a personal way.

If tomorrow you woke up and had been given a woman's body, you'd be able to understand fully some of the things women go through but it still woulnd't have changed the fact that you grew up being told that other woman should defer to you.

Nowhere on this thread have I said that you are lucky kim147. Nor have I said anything about male privilege with regards to you personally.

I spoke about behavior that I have observed in some transwomen. I said I see transwomen acting with male privilege all the time, I see them acting entitled all the time

Because I do. I see transwomen, who have intact male bodies, insisting that they are female and wanting into female space and wanting female centric organisations, spaces, discussions and struggles, changed in order to include and suit them. That to me shouts 'male privilege'.

I also see transwomen acting dominant and threatening women with sexualised (and other) violence. Behavior which is exactly the same as that of men when they want the women to shut up.

And my discussing that is not a personal attack on you. You are making this personal, not I. And you are swearing at me and accusing me of all sorts of things because you disagree with me. I could read your posts as trying to guilt me into shutting up. Which is also something I have observed transwomen doing - demanding that women change their language or be quiet about women's rights because of an individual transwoman's mental health issues, trauma at the hands of men, suicide attempts, pain and distress and so on. Now, of course I feel sorry for anyone with these sorts of issues but I am not responsible for them and I see it too often to think that it is a good idea for myself and other feminists to allow such behavior to influence how we discuss women's issues.

You are not being silenced - you are here and you can post the same as anyone else. You may be disagreed with however, and you may read views which are painful for you. I don't think we can be expected to not discuss transgender politics, or lie about what we experience and believe because of your presence on MN and the horrid things that you have experienced.

I have experienced horrible things at the hands of men too. Which is one of the reasons why I do not want to share locker space with a male bodied person and why I would like to meet up with other female bodied people in order to discuss male bodied violence against female bodied persons without having male bodied persons present. And when I or others express those views and we are threatened and harassed, that only confirms my view.

Kim I am so sorry that you were bullied at school. That kind of experience can and does colour the rest of your life. I am also sorry for the struggles you have been through since then, I really can't imagine how difficult your transition has been.

However, while you might not realise it, you did grow up surrounded by male privilege. However you felt inside, your external appearance would have afforded you deference from complete strangers that my external appearance wouldn't have. Your horizons would have been wider, your behaviour less censored. It's all subtle stuff maybe, but it does make your lived experience different from most adult women's.

Trans theory (genderism) fundamentally conflicts with feminism, so feminists who care about women's liberation need to resist it.

This includes resisting:

The idea that gender ('the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women' - WHO definition) is innate and caused by 'male' and 'female' brains.

The idea that biological sex is a social construct and it is bigoted to talk about how it forms the basis for women's oppression.

The idea that children who do not conform to social sex roles are 'born in the wrong body' and need to be hormonally and surgically modified.

The idea that men can become women and vice versa (only possible if you believe there are metaphysical 'male' and 'female' essences), and all men, including rapists and serial killers, are woman if they say so and deserve to be legally treated as such.

The idea that women must prioritise male needs, including the desire to be socially treated as female, over female reality.

Women who resist the above ideas are called TERFs.

I believe most feminists do not believe in genderism, even those who attack radfems. I think a lot of genderism supporters are motivated by pity for people suffering from dysphoria. It seems beyond understanding to me that sensible people who are feminists of any stripe could truly believe what you've set out donkey . I think a lot of people are naive about human behaviour. Not just young people. I listened to a 50+ lesbian lawyer recently say that women are at "no risk" from male bodied people (including "gender fluid" men who may take no steps to transition) in communal showers or sleeping areas because there is no man in the room. (The idea of a lawyer saying "no risk" about anything shows the bizarre mind set required to support genderism.) This willingness to make assumptions about good behaviour has led to disastrous outcomes in the past, for example people used to think priests would never do anything bad. The same happened with eg the Islington homes scandal where there had been a belief that gay men would never be paedophiles. It's very attractive to believe that all people are good or that people who have difficulties in life are good people. I don't know where this trend of genderism is going to lead but it is very worrying.

just no there isn't. It's all just sociological nonsense. You're not allowed to question the mantra that transwomen are women cos that's transphobic.

I'm sorry, buffy v I don't think sociology is nonsense and I agree it real. I regretted that comment as soon as I posted it.

I don't think the feeling of being in the wrong body is necessarily untrue but there is a reality, both biologically and sociologically (I think), that is not overcome by an individual's feelings. For example, when de Beauvoir said "one is not born but becomes a woman", I don't think she meant that men can become women but that socialisation forms a girl into what we think of as a woman. I agree with this but genderism undermines it with claims that there is no shared experience of girlhood which is necessary to state if one believes that anyone can be anything.

I've done tests like that Buffy and got 50/50 so clearly my brain is some sort of hermaphrodite brain...?
I only feel wrong as a woman when confronted with sexist expectations of how I should behave/think/look.

buffy you're not more male than female. You are female and the concept of having a male or female personality is bullshit. I always come out more male than the average male in those tests and also the finger length stuff. As the mother of children though, I know there is a material reality to my femaleness (not femininity) that has a huge impact on my life and my perception in society. The idea that someone might "feel" like a woman because they like the things I'm supposed to like is pretty hard to swallow.

I'm not sure it's always about wanting to be the opposite sex as much as not wanting to be the sex that corresponds to the physical body. I find it pretty insulting that not man=woman, tbh.

Is there a corresponding Internet hooha going on vis a vis transmen, does anyone know?

That is a really interesting question.

I expect they think they're women who've got above themselves.

MRA's that is.

Can't imagine them welcoming trans men with open arms tbh.

But maybe they do, who knows. I can't bear to look at MRA forums to find out.

I imagine to put oneself through the trauma of deciding to cast off the gender assigned at birth and go through the very difficult process of transitioning, one probably has a greater motivation than simply wanting to wear high heels

Buffy, since the criteria for being trans is now 'identifies as trans' there are a lot of men with no bodily dysphoria who are identifying as women because they enjoy wearing women's clothes.

It's not polite to point this out, and I do not mean to deny the fact that some trans people do indeed transition due to intense physical dysphoria, but the standards have become so relaxed that lots of fetishistic cross-dressing heterosexual men are now claiming a 'womanly' identity and demanding access to women's spaces and, especially, sexual access to lesbians.

These men are all over the internet because they like to document their hyper-sexualised 'feminine' personas in pornographic detail.

np.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/267iix/am_i_weird_possibly_nsfw/

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/reed-barrow-stop-making-rape-and-death-threats-against-lesbians-feminists-and-gays/#comment-13723

www.flickr.com/groups/509541@N23/pool/

I realise these links may be seen as extreme and some people will think I shouldn't have posted them at all. But since they actually exist and the males in them are claiming to be transwomen, I think women have a right to discuss them.

Again, I'm not saying this is all transwomen, but they definitely exist. Men will actually go to great lengths to pursue their sexual fetishes. And since no one is allowed to deny anyone's gender identity, their 'struggles' are supposedly the same as transsexuals with full-on body dysphoria or natal women's struggles against sexism.