Complete misunderstandings of opponent's position, beliefs, habits, preferences, etc

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

This is a more general thing but I'm prompted to post here by reading this thread on Reddit earlier today. It's a post showing various ridiculous bits of "replacing some vowels with X's makes it inclusive!", along with someone's explanation of the etymology of words like "man" and "woman", which ends with the sentence "TERFs love to pretend they're doing something smart by editing words with man in them."

The responses are heaving with replies attributing this kind of thing to "TERFs" e.g.:

Feminism: Can we PLEASE push for equal pay, maternity leave, and actual rights for all women???

TERFs: All I can offer is putting an x randomly into words.

and

This kind of performative terfy nonsense is one of the big reasons why so many people see "The Left" just as this one big pool of sensitive children.

This is just… weird. I guess it's getting mixed up with the once-popular "womyn" type thing that a few feminists used to do and you verrry occasionally see some radical-leaning modern feminists do as a kind of nod towards them.

But I see it a lot with this issue — people deciding a thing they don't like is a thing that "TERFs" do because, I dunno, it's bad, TERFs are bad, so they must be doing the bad thing. It's frustrating, but what can be done about this kind of misunderstanding? On that thread, one person has popped up to more or less go "Huh? This isn't a TERF thing" but as usual, the debunking gets buried by downvotes and goes unnoticed. In this case it's trivial but there's lots of people out there clearly just seeing GC women as something entirely different to what they are.

Everything’s our fault though, innit

It’s funny that TERFs are being contrasted with Feminism (I’m going to assume they mean liberal or intersectional feminists)- it’s the liberals and intersectionals who are trying to change language! GC feminists are trying to preserve it FFS. And I’ve never seen anyone suggest that changing an a to an x is the answer to all our problems.

I've no drive to either change or preserve language particularly, I just recognise that language communicates concepts and when someone wants to change it so that it's less good at that, that causes problems (and probably won't end up sticking).

I wouldn’t even bother engaging with anyone or anything that used that lazy acronym.

Trans activists often claim that GC feminists want to assign regressive gender roles to people based on their genitals. Trans activists call this “bio-essentialism”.

They must know deep down that this is a wild misinterpretation of GC feminist beliefs, but they keep saying it. Laurie Penny posted similar views on Twitter a few days ago.

I mean, it's Reddit, it's fruitless to say anything off-message in 98% of subs. I wouldn't get involved there.

I was meaning more, what can be done about the general misperception? And it also makes me wonder how much of what I believe about groups I'm not part of is wildly incorrect.

I didn’t know that GC feminists were being accused of wanting to replace some vowels with x’s, though. I’ve not seen that one before.

Cat yes, that's another one. It's odd how these perceptions take hold — presumably one initial person misrepresents something, accidentally or deliberately, then it spreads because people believe their friends and aren't inclined to go to the source to see if it's true.

I've seen people describe Vladimir Putin as "gender critical". Like, really...?!

For many people it's just become the latest nebulous boogyman word to fling at people with out understanding what it really means. I've seen Ben Shapiro called a TERF - I hardly think he is a radical feminist.

It's become shorthand for 'person whose opinions I don't like' so all kinds of nonsense gets projected on to it. The vast majority of women who don't think people can change sex aren't radical feminists either.

Trans activists often claim that GC feminists want to assign regressive gender roles to people based on their genitals. Trans activists call this “bio-essentialism”.

They must know deep down that this is a wild misinterpretation of GC feminist beliefs, but they keep saying it. Laurie Penny posted similar views on Twitter a few days ago.

They're all about the fake news, DARVO and alternative facts.

They must know deep down that this is a wild misinterpretation of GC feminist beliefs, but they keep saying it. Laurie Penny posted similar views on Twitter a few days ago.

You're assuming they've actually read/ listened to GC feminist beliefs. But we've had years of "no debate" and "I've read it for you so you don't have to".

On the plus side, I suppose that if people do start to think "womxn" etc. is a secret evil-terf bat signal, they might stop using it.

Relatedly, the other day I saw somebody confidently explaining that the reason GC people have dinosaurs in their display names on Twitter is that it's a code: 🦖 = T Rex = TRans-EXclusionary. Followed by multiple credulous responses saying things like "wow, I didn't know, thanks" and talking about how stupid it is.

As we all know, GC feminists adopted the dinosaurs ironically, because David Lammy accused us of being “dinosaurs hoarding rights”. So I found it funny that trans activists were determined to wrest dinosaur symbols from us. If colouring in pictures of dinosaurs with pink, white and blue stripes is making some people on Twitter happy, then I’m all for it.

It's another false flag attack by TRAs to claim that it is TERFs behind the removal of the word "man". Women just want to be known as women, not womxn, not bodies with vaginas, not birth-givers etc.

D - deny
A - attack
R - reverse
V - victim and
O - offender.

I didn’t know that acronym until recently but claiming that GC thinkers want to impose “gender stereotypes” is just one manifestation of DARVO tactics. In so many cases, TRAs take something that they do, and say that is what evil TERFs do. It’s so weird. The cognitive dissonance?

Relatedly, the other day I saw somebody confidently explaining that the reason GC people have dinosaurs in their display names on Twitter is that it's a code: 🦖 = T Rex = TRans-EXclusionary.

Thanks for giving me the best laugh of the day so far

What would those plonkers make of my name? Just in case they are monitoring this, I name changed here as a response to the idiot Lammy's statement that we were rights-hoarding dinosaurs 🦕. 'Rights' being, I hope, self-explanatory to the average TRA, and 'raptor' meaning thief.

And just in case it goes over their heads, it's tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken in any way as a confession that I want to steal the rights of others. I just don't want them to steal mine.

Just proves they haven't the first clue what they're talking about.

@MidsomerMurmurs

D - deny A - attack R - reverse V - victim and O - offender.

I didn’t know that acronym until recently but claiming that GC thinkers want to impose “gender stereotypes” is just one manifestation of DARVO tactics. In so many cases, TRAs take something that they do, and say that is what evil TERFs do. It’s so weird. The cognitive dissonance?

It’s a classic gaslighting technique that is employed by abusive people.

It's been done forever, it just seems all the more bizarre given that the evidence to the contrary is right there in front of people's faces so easily these days.

I remember my exFIL spouting about how the feminists (spat with bile) had brought all this (whatever the current issue of the day was - often didn't matter if women were even involved) on themselves.

There has been all sorts of tedious "misunderstanding" of the GC position but one of the best I've seen on here was something like: GC's views on gender are like Nazis' views on race. What, that it's entirely irrelevant and you shouldn't treat people any differently because of it?!

That got a bit of spluttering "no not that"!