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.

Goldsmiths.

I totally agree with you WhentheRed.

Girls and women need sex segregated spaces for our human dignity, bodily integrity and to prevent men being able to abuse us with sexualized and other violence including voyeurism and flashing.

It is not our fault that men as a class predate on girls and women. And it is not our fault if men as a class are abusive and violent towards men who break patriarchal gender rules.

I abhor the notion that removing sex segregated safe spaces for females is somehow progressive and modern and an obvious and just solution to a problem that men are responsible for. I would campaign very hard against a school my daughters had to go to or any other space that tried to take away female right to privacy and safety. And if anybody called me transphobic for it they can frankly fuck off.

I'm old enough to remember when transgenderism was called transsexualism before queer theorists, post modernists and misogynists got their hands on it. At that time, feminists had a lot more sympathy for transsexuals than many of us do now, that is when they came under our radar at all. But with the escalation of transactivism and the eroding of women's rights and hijacking and colonization of our sex, our view has changed. Calling us transphobic because we defend women who are universally oppressed and victims of male violence is one of the most misogynistic things I have ever encountered.

Non gender conforming children being diagnosed as trans =
That's scary, like something from the 1950's.
Is this happening in the UK?

Yes, absolutely it's happening in the UK, even though we don't know what the long-term effects of puberty blockers will be. I have no idea where medical ethics has got to in this area. There's likely to be a massive backlash in a few years but right now the only people expressing any concern seem to be radfems who get called bigoted and transphobic when they mention it - the proper liberal position appears to be unquestioning support even though it is basically experimenting on kids.

I believe the legal limit in the UK for children being given puberty blockers is 12 years of age.

new forces within advanced capitalism has commoditised the female form, privileging female beauty over male, in its quest to create new segmented markets. Now, when most products are sold with sex, and women are increasingly objectifying themselves and other women, it is only a small leap to suggest that this conditions our sexuality. This same process, I believe has given rise to the further entrenchment of gender roles but also to the rise in men seeking to act out their sexual fantasy as "the objectified woman" or to transition. The objectified woman, is the woman who displays her subordinated status by behaving and looking like the "object" in almost comically exaggerated ways, enhanced ,airbrushed, using obviously sexual body language and clothing to enhance her status as sexual object.

Absolutely, Mini. This dynamic is blatantly on display on some of the porny trans blogs, and I've seen many males online, both self-identified cross-dressers and transwomen, talk about this very explicitly - that being seen as a sexualised object excites them.

Having just reread what Shelia Jeffrey has to say about the child transgendering which is happening in Australia, I am really concerned by it. As a child, I was what was known as a 'tomboy' what she describes as being criteria for candidates for childhood transgendering was what I was/the gender I performed. I wanted to be a boy, but I wanted to be a boy because my mother only liked boys, so, to my child's mind, by being a boy, she would like me. I wouldn't want to be a man now, but if I had been caught up in the 'male mind trapped in a female body' thing, that choice might have been taken away from me.

DH has also watched the 'this is what a male lesbian looks like' video and has almost exploded! He cannot see how anyone who has a penis and a beard and has no intention of getting rid of either can a) classify themselves as a woman, b) classify themselves as a lesbian and c) expect lesbians to want to have anything to do with him sexually. If my DH can get this, and, while he agrees more than he did before he's no radfem, then, why the hell can't other people?

Anybody want to hazard a guess which toilets were opened up to everyone?

Wait so men still have their own toilet and yours?! Wtf is their excuse for that? Surely they should all be unisex

At a festival once, I used the men's loos. They were empty, the queue for the ladies went halfway round the world and back, and when I need a pee, I need a pee.

I came out of the cubicle to a line of men stood at urinals, trying to cross their legs like virgins at an orgy. I cannot, for the life of me understand why they always have the exact same number of male and female loos at events.... it makes it nigh on impossible for women to use the bloody things without invading men's ones and getting soundly told off for it.

Making some of the women's loos into unisex ones is utterly stupid.

Really it's one loo in one building. They're about to revamp the whole building so I hope the loos are sorted out properly.

Gender is a social construction. Now it appears to have morphed into a medical disorder Yes, this exactly.

I think it's very worrying that at a time when the binary opposition of gender is being deepened and extended, that any failure to limit your behaviour to strictly demarcated gender specific behaviour becomes a medical condition.

But then again, I give you capitalism.Advances will always be made because drugs companies must compete within the market. Its false to say that demand leads to supply, it is that supply leads to demand. We need to be convinced that we require these drugs, shoes, clothes, make-up, surgery etc,... To make this point quite explicitly, do we think it is possible that someone living in a small undiscovered tribe untouched by "civilisation" is likely to be diagnosed, drugged and mutilated in their quest to change their gender? I think it quite unlikely. I am not suggesting that is never the case, but roles and behaviour will likely as not be governed strictly according to sex. Of course gender will be binary. So what is really puzzling is this, as feminism seeks to question gender, capitalism seeks to deepen and entrench it, now we have people questioning their assigned gender. Is it because we dared to ask the question, dared to push the boundaries or is it because every radical demand is eventually subsumed into the totality, not in its original form but as something reconstituted.

So, is it patriarchy that creates the problem of people wanting to transition or the advances, and commoditisation of the human body, atomisation of individuals, the subjection to the ideology of individuality and the objectification of self coupled with the need for expansion into new markets that is driving this?

Psychiatry has always struggled to justify itself as a proper medical science, I am inclined to think that gender dysmorphia, that cannot be scientifically proven to actually exist as a medical condition is much like the myriad conditions that get added and removed from the DSM over time. We are told that the diagnostic criteria change, but whole conditions come into being and vanish.

Just wanted to say, Mini, your post on Friday was really fabulous. So much stuff to think about in there about what sexuality is... and how false it is that certain sexes / genders have been so deeply culturally associated with aspects of feeling / arousing desire.

donkey that being seen as a sexualised object excites them

This is an important point and one that must not be discussed, according to trans activists. Paris Lees has been published saying how it's great to be groped on a bus, etc. It's really vile and it's important to discuss why this is and how it affects women.

The desire of some transpeople to be a sexualised object, AKA woman in patriarchy, is indeed both highly disturbing and extremely misogynistic. And, yeah, you do make yourself pretty unpopular if you try to discuss it. Talking about the sexual fetish element of transitioning is verboten (unless you are trans and it is your sexual fetish).

Then again it is no less taboo to talk about how some trans people seem to be rejecting bodies that abuse happened in or transmen rejecting the sexualised object status of womenhood by rejecting their femaleness. Or homosexuals not allowing themselves to be homosexual (and others not letting them).

In fact it is all taboo other than talk of an 'inner gender identity'.

Some great tweets from Sarah Ditum today that are relevant to this thread:

-'Just read this immaculate confection of social justice bullshit: "Gender-variant male, anti-terf, anti-swerf, anti-misandry."
-Or, translated: "Man, anti-female-only-spaces, pro-prostitution, anti-feminism." Isn't social justice vocab MAGIC.'

She's bang on the money there, I think. TERF has been eagerly adopted by MRAs because it's the most respectable way to deny women the right to meet. It's not surprising you often see it in company with other misogynist expressions.

I just googled Gender-variant male, anti-terf, anti-swerf, anti-misandry

It's Jasper Gregory. The "male lesbian" upthread. And here I was thinking only MRAs use "misandry" in conversation

The closest feminist group to me (that I have found online), their tagline almost reads like that quote.

(we're dead feminist but we just care about all these other things first, and we're sex positive! Whoop whoop)

I haven't been in touch with them funny enough.

Ha! At least it makes it quite clear what they'll be talking about at their meetings.
Maybe time to start another group, for people who are mainly concerned about the oppression of women.

What...
'I am six and I'm a transgender kid. I am a cool kid'

In the UK, the Gender Identity Research & Education Society claims that a school of 1,000 pupils should expect around 10 children to be gender variant to some degree.

Wtf does gender variant mean? Is it the new word for a tomboy?

Well fuck me, I guess dd is actually a boy.

What makes me angry is that the child is now being "raised as a boy".

So what, put some more stereotypes on the kid? Why not just raise her as a child?

|They started calling her he when they cut her hair and changed her clothes...If she wanted a "boy cut" why not just let her have a boy cut. Why not allow boy clothes? Would the issue be there if those were acceptable in the first place?

FtM children they don't get hormones at puberty do they? I mean hopefully whatever happens she won't have to take drugs to change her body and just be who she is as an adult.

This is the child abuse scandal of our times. It's also rank homophobia.

Apart from the horror of giving kids drugs to block puberty, how are these kids going to cope when they are teens and have to deal with sexual health issues or accept that straight kids won't date them after years of their parents indoctrinating them?

Just read this immaculate confection of social justice bullshit: "Gender-variant male, anti-terf, anti-swerf, anti-misandry."

Not anti-misogyny though? So disturbing. It's just another angle to the oppression of women, isn't it.

Wow good job parents of that 6 yo girl, you decided to raise her according to one outdated gender role instead of the other! What century is this again?! YY Really why can't she just be allowed to be a child.

And something people don't like to talk about is the gendered nature of transgenderism.

So for example puberty blockers used on girls will generally inhibit growth thereby making a female who is likely to be smaller than men in general, even smaller than she would have been. This is clearly NOT going to make her have a more male like appearance in adulthood.

Plus, as we have already touched on, it is entirely different action for a member of the privileged class to choose to impersonate the subjugated class than it is for the subjugated to impersonate the privileged.

Plus when we add in society's high level of lesbophobia, it is no wonder that young non gender compliant women want to be men. They are not stupid they see that women are both subjugated by gender and punished for not complying and accepting our lowly status and position as a member of the sex caste.

This is a subject of great concern and one you hear little about. Notice that all the spokespeople for the trans movement are MtT. And the vast majority of the time people speak about transgenderism as though they are speaking about both males and females, when the reality is that they are generalizing on the basis of MtT issues and experiences.

I am gobsmacked that liberals, third wavers, etc generally appear oblivious to the gendered nature of transgenderism and speak about it as though it is one thing. (A bit like like how many people fail to separate homosexuality and lesbianism.)

I would hate to be a non compliant girl growing up in the current culture of pornification, queer theory, sex positivism, noeliberalism and patriarchal capitalism/consumerism. Chuck in social media, the internet and pop culture plus the backlash against the women's movement of the 70s and the erosion of the gains made by lesbians and what you get is girls rejecting femaleness. I don't blame them. But what needs rejected is gender and sexism, not femaleness. The whole thing is hideous.