I posted on another thread about how I’ve fallen out with my closest friend here (where I live, not the UK) after challenging her about JKR. She wrote “Fuck TERFS” in a post about JKR, I asked her what she thought JKR had said or done wrong, and that led to a huge argument which culminated in us agreeing never to discuss this topic again in order to save our friendship.
Throughout the argument, I tried to make it clear that I supported trans people (genuine ones, not your Travis Alabanza types) but that I did not agree with everything that was being done in their name. I gave her examples of things I had seen and heard during my time as a teacher in the UK. She did not respond to any of the points I made except to deliberately misinterpret them, conveniently ignoring the parts that didn’t fit her narrative of what a TERF is like. Instead she just shouted slogans like “Trans women are women!” and “Trans rights are human rights!” (the latter is not even in question). She also said she thought it was “sad” that I felt my womanhood was “threatened” by theirs. But the thing that really got me was when she said she thought a transwoman’s right to feel safe and comfortable in public spaces was more important than a woman’s (because of course they are the most vulnerable, the most oppressed group ever). I honestly could not believe that a self-proclaimed feminist could ever say that.
Anyway weeks later we have still not seen or spoken to each other so I guess our friendship is over even though we tried to pretend it wasn’t. What I need to vent about is that she is now flooding her social media with screenshots of tweets from people like Munroe Bergdorf and anti-GC memes including pictures of guns with slogans like “Arm Trans Women” and “Support Trans Rights or Die”. This, by the way, is from an otherwise liberal, anti-gun, Democrat voter from the US. I feel that these are clearly aimed at me as she had clearly never mentioned trans issues until JKR.
The war on women has really affected my mental health, which tbh was already in a bit of a precarious state, but it has been made worse by her posting things like “Support trans rights or die” because I feel like she is saying that I, personally, deserve to die simply for disagreeing with her.
I have of course deactivated all my social media accounts to avoid seeing this shit but I sometimes have to log back in to check for news about the local groups that I am part of and stumble upon her posts.
Please someone help me understand why a person who is not even trans herself and has no close trans friends can feel so strongly about this issue? I used to think she was intelligent and discerning. How a person who prides herself on being anti-fascist cannot see the irony in her own attitudes and behaviour (calling for book banning/burning, compelled speech, censorship, cancelling, violence/death for non-believers, deliberately misinterpreting people’s words in order to denounce them, etc) is just staggering.