Dating as a TERF

[TERFisTHEnewTREND]

I'm a 34 year old female. I'm currently dating via Tinder.

When the gender issue has come up and I've mentioned that I'm a TERF, a lot of men have disengaged from me. I once went on three dates with a man, we got on great, and then when I mentioned my views on gender ideology, he ghosted me after!

Do you mention your stance up front or do you wait? I don't want to date anyone who thinks humans can change sex, is it worth stating this on my profile?

Any help/ advice/ insights appreciated.

Why would she want to go out with someone who despises women?

"Terf island" though... e m b a r r a s s i n g.

We like to poke fun at the bible belt, fox news and the rest of the crazies.. yet we have our own wacky little clan.

You can have moderate views about what is or isn't acceptable (fast tracking gender status via the Scottish bill (that was rightly quashed), natural born males in women's sports (most would agree that shouldn't happen until such time (if ever) it can be proven zero advantage would be gained), and the most contentious of them all, natural born males in women's spaces...this is where a rigorous test is required to ensure that the transition is legitimate)...but just dismissing them as blokes in dresses is not acceptable.

But they are men in dresses.

Thank god. Imagine ending up with someone so deluded that they think people can actually change sex. Hold out for the sane minority, OP!

There no grey areas, our mistake was being kind and trusting. Those men in dresses want our stuff. I think putting your cards on the table as a woman who can think critically is the best way to not waste your time.

Well being a terf will severely limit your pool of potential partners..

Thank fuck for that!

Embarrassing? Despite my dislike of the term TERF, I'm proud as fuck of this image. We're a bastion of sense. A nation of informed, politically engaged women who won't wheesht.

Are you genuinely trying the 'be kind' tack? The views you've expressed above are bog standard 'terfy'. Expressing these views on, for example, Twitter, would bring down the wrath of TRA's on your head. Check out www.terfisaslur.com for a small sampling of the kind of abuse heaped onto women who dare to voice even mildly 'terfy' views.

And however many times it's chanted, the mantra TWAW is simply not true.

Well @TERFisTHEnewTREND perhaps you will just sift out the phoneys and " oppression larpers".

As my gran used to say @MargotBamborough , you are a rock of sense.

We like to poke fun at the bible belt, fox news and the rest of the crazies.. yet we have our own wacky little clan.

Yes, we've noticed you, but as rationality is beginning to prevail, your numbers will dwindle.

Even the swishiest and most effeminate of boys are boys. With a full and complete entitlement to their own bodies. To teach or preach otherwise is incredibly hideously homophobic. If you teach kids that not all boys are boys it'll be the little gay lads that'll think you're talking about them. That the rest of the class turns to look at when you say it. Teaching kids crappy ideas as if they're true makes more kids more unhappy and the only people benefitting are the people selling the 'cures'.

So no thank you. People deserve compassion and respect. Ideas can (at most) expect to be considered carefully before you decide if it is after all a good idea or a bad one. I've thought about this very carefully indeed. I've listened to a lot of people. And no whatever gender identity maybe it is clearly too personal and nebulous to in any way be useful for the government to track it or laws and policies to be rewritten on the basis of gender identity rather than sex.

Adult human females continue to exist and are quite significant enough to retain the word which refers to us in law and policy. To say this is not an attack on anyone. To deny or oppose this is preposterously misogynistic.

And yes ironically @DC1888 your totally reasonable and mild assertions would get you labelled a terf if the purity police came for you.

Oh dear.

Do keep posting. You are doing more to show the deep prejudice and ignorance behind the term than you are showing anything else.

You have also shown how deeply hypocritical you personally are. You keep posting about how offensive some people are, while you are the poster who used the term hermaphrodite for those people who might have differences of sex development. You cannot answer any questions, nor articulate any views in a meaning and considered way, yet seem to be here relishing calling people ignorant. Your own posts lack coherency and the ability to think beyond the superficial level of a concept.

All you have done is shown your own views about women’s need match those you have called extreme, and vilified, denigrated and demonised. It really is a case that you cannot conceive of being seen as being like those women you have seen described as mean, hateful terfs so you join in pointing fingers.

Yet your own views are mostly aligned. The difference is you cling to this perception that this magic solution ‘case by case’ is a workable one. Why? Because some people in the Labour Party hide behind it despite them not being able to provide details on how that will work? Do you understand how closely you have emulated their stance which is one empty and devoid of delivering a workable solution? They must be hating the thought of their election interviews because women and trans people will push for answers and when there is no clarification it will show that the ‘middle ground’ was never going to work. We know, because we have quite thoroughly explored middle ground. It still harms women and children.

Has it ever occurred to you that you are the one that is part of the group causing harm to women and children?

Fuck. There is some disconnected thinking on display in your posts.

Honestly, go look at the threads on Melissa Poulton, or Eddie Izzard, or Anne Combs and tell me why you believe them to be women.

Because if it’s just on their say so, how would you ever apply “case by case basis”?

Really puzzled by how you list your own views here, which are, FYI, 'terfy' views, and then try to suggest you're embarrassed by them. How come?

I do look forward to hearing about this rigorous testing. What does it involve? And who administers it?

So we'vee got to the point where everyone basically agrees with all the points made by feminists over the past few years, but is somehow still raging at feminists?

“I’m a vegetarian, except for chicken and fish.”

so you’re a meat eater who likes the virtue you get from vegetarianism.

Same thing.

Oh 100%.

Continue to sneer at and cast aspersions on those horrible terfs, safe in the knowledge they are doing the dirty work of keeping men out of women's spaces and trying to stop children from being sterilised.

We like to poke fun at the bible belt, fox news and the rest of the crazies.. yet we have our own wacky little clan.

You haven't realised yet that in this scenario, you are 'the crazies', have you? You believe in magical gender essences, in people who have been born in the wrong body (what is it that's in the body exactly? A soul?), that physical provable reality is less important than unmeasurable inconstant feelings. You are the religious believer in this situation.

Cringing for you.

Don't be silly.

The only people who wouldn't date a TERF are the people who believe in the kind of flat earth thinking that says humans can change sex, who have regressive and sexist views about men and women, and who care so little about women's rights, safety and dignity that they support male rapists being housed in women's prisons and make athletes competing in women's sport.

THE WHOLE POINT OF THE OP is that she DOESN'T WANT TO DATE THOSE PEOPLE and wants to find some way of filtering them out or forcing them to reveal themselves SO SHE DOESN’T WASTE HER OWN TIME GOING ON DATES WITH THEM.

Gosh, yes, that post was really something.

How can you be so lacking in self awareness to not realise that Team Pronoun ARE the UK's Bible belt? It's just a different Bible.

Finding this absolutely 😂😂😂

Women wanting to retain equality, access, humanity are 'wacky' and will never get a husband! 😂 Embrace Christmas you turkey, or you'll never have sex again!

OP you just discovered that incels and MRAs and TRAs are all one choir on the same hymn sheet. And they'd love you to believe that you must embrace submission and subordination to them. They'll tell you all kinds of wild lies, starting with that men change sex and moving on through 'everyone else is doing it' in the way your mum told you once to listen out for from someone trying to coerce you into taking a drug or having unwanted sex.

But frankly, fuck that. There are men all over the place who are not socially and emotionally crippled, who don't hate women, and who aren't deeply threatened by women not being a walking mummy/service unit, I'm surrounded by them in terms of family and friends. Nice, normal blokes you'd spend a lifetime being happy with. Look for them, women never have to settle for someone who sees them as lesser and has no fucks to give about them as a person. Never.

Frankly we'd all be better off being single with a good vibrator than settling for a lifetime of misery with a partner like that. I mean honestly, what do these idiots think is in it for the women involved? There's not even the idea of a 'heavenly reward' after your lifetime of drudgery, misery and servitude.

Arthurbella; "Continue to sneer at and cast aspersions on those horrible terfs, safe in the knowledge they are doing the dirty work of keeping men out of women's spaces and trying to stop children from being sterilised."

This.

I think we’ve all done it at some point.

we read an article in “our” newspaper, we see a short social media post and we go “oh, that sounds awful. Poor people.” And we sort of move on. We don’t ask for evidence or dig into it.

Most people don’t know that much about science, unless it’s part of their job or special interest. If someone who seems to know what they’re on about tells you “the science has moved on” it’s easy to accept that. We don’t ask how, because quite often we don’t understand the explanation anyway. Even if we are clever.

So I think many people formulate their own explanations- trans is born into the wrong body, it’s like a DSD of the brain. There must be more to it than just a man in a dress. Hayley Cropper. Doom posts about murder rates with no context.

I get that. We’ve all been there.

There’s also so much sex stereotyping, even from people who would say they are progressive or kind. It’s ingrained ideas that women are this and men are that. So many people never think about how much is socialisation, how much is innate, how much personalities overlap between the sexes. It’s like when we used to talk about how language prejudices women in a way it doesn’t for men. He’s assertive and strong, she’s a nag and bossy etc. there’s so much to unpick and most of us don’t want to face up to what our views actually mean.

Of course there’s a bunch of people who will claim they’re better than everyone else, whilst actually holding the same ideas, just wanting to pretend they’re somehow different.

So no one can explain how case by case would work, how we can distinguish truth from those “at it” or even why someone else’s suffering means women should have to suffer, because the answer is that they will always prioritise men over women and some people don’t want to be that person.

But they are. And that’s where all the other nonsense flows from.

Congratulations mate, you’re a terf.

Your beliefs are precisely what people are getting death threats for on Twitter. Why do you think you’re so different from us?

I mean really this boils down to a four stage interaction for women who are gender critical.

Lobby> You MUST say and demonstrate your belief that this man is a woman because we tell you to.

GC Women: No. Not going to do that in <range of contexts> due to <range of reasons>.

Lobby: <huge screaming meltdown and endless bullying, threats, demands, emotional outbursts, emotive anecdotes, because you MUST SAY/PERFORM HOW YOU BELIEVE ON COMMAND, this goal then pursued in perpetuity because you are an essential part of the process, it can't happen without you>

Women: <ignores and cracks on with life. No problems caused by non engagement other than those intentionally created by the lobby to try and coerce them into non consenting participation>

Hits the nail on head.