This is an extract from a trans activist's blog on how to drive gender critical feminists out of groups.
extract
Parallel Institutions
A solid first step is to create organizations that are inclusive to all that are redundant with whatever function the TERF’s run. Sometimes it’s enough to simply beat the TERF’s at their own game. People like less discrimination, not more. Our trend as a society is toward greater understanding of one another. For this to happen, you have to provide a viable alternative to whatever function the TERF’s are currently offering so people can choose to avoid them.
For example, in Vancouver, you have several great rape crisis centers, such as the WAVAW, that serve all women. That stands in contrast to centers who abuse the notion of “women only spaces” to ban women from aid. All of these centers are universally superior in safety, size, and quality to centers that are not inclusive.
In Austin, we have Central Texas Femdoms (CTFD), a kink group for dominant females that is trans inclusive. They formed due to the transphobic comments of the founder of another pro-Domme organization. As a result, the TERF run group is nowhere to be found, as CTFD is the one with access to local play spaces and clubs.
A famous historical example isCamp Trans. This was the alternate music festival setup across from MichFest, a music festival that was sick with TERF influence. While it sadly ended in 2012, its legacy lives on. It served thousands of women of all kinds and provided a safe harbor for community to thrive. (More about MichFest later.)
Leadership Reform
You make a group that does everything the TERF group does, but without the unnecessary hate. Yet the TERF group finds a way to persist. Now what?
A gradual strategy that can succeed is infiltration and replacement. Entryism is a century old non-violent tactic that works in any group that uses voting to determine leadership. Gather a group of like-minded allies, join the group, and then vote one another into key positions. Attract more via outreach and over time the group will be geared toward promoting social justice and human rights.
We have seen this approach yield splendid results in pop culture. “Good ol’ boy” clubs in science fiction, video games, comics have all but ceased to exist. Today, the first three-time Hugo Award winner is N.K. Jemisin. That’s a hard break with science fiction’s history of rewarding stale old white men. That was achieved thanks to the infiltration and replacement of the conservative fans by more and more progressive elements.
We also see this at Marvel Comics, which publishes such groundbreaking work as Gabby Rivera’s America Chavez, which puts queer women front and center. That would’ve been unheard of without the editorial shift achieved through concerted entryism into that business by Heather Antos and other leaders. Noelle Stevenson’s gorgeous queer-centricShe-Ra and the Princesses of Powerseries would not have been possible without the dissolution of the old barriers. Stevenson got the role of show runner thanks to her work in comics.
With TERF groups, many will likely try to ban trans women from membership. This can be worked around. Cis women allies can easily enter a given organization. If they work as a collective, it’s a matter of figuring out the number needed to achieve a simple majority (or whatever number is needed to overrule attempts to stop the bloc). For example, if a collective has about 25 members, then a group as small as 30 could wrest control from the bigots.
Then, when it comes time to select leaders, remove the old bigoted guard and install rational leadership. Done correctly, this is a wonderful bloodless democratic coup. It’s enabled since TERF’s are a tiny — if loud — minority of all women. Finding women willing to help replace their hate with love and inclusiveness is therefore not an impossible task.
This tactic is especially sound when trying to take over a group that has resources and performs functions that are important to the broader community, but happen to be biased against women. For example, discriminatory rape crisis centers on one hand perform an important function for the segment of women they do serve, even as they impose misogynist exclusionary definitions of who they’ll treat. Maintaining continuity for the delivery of this kind of service is important — no one wins if they’re shut down or disappear. A gradual internal take over simply allows the organization to stop being a hate group while still caring for women in need.
Purse Strings
Let’s say the group has taken steps to make entryism difficult or maybe their size makes that approach too difficult. Now external pressure becomes the main method, as this can yield positive results. The easiest target: the group’s money. Financial pressure is a proven way to cause a group to reform or shut them down so one of the before mentioned parallel groups can take their place.
There are several ways to hurt a hate group’s purse strings: political lobbying, boycotts, picketing, and lawsuits.