I hope this isn't too hot of a take, but I don't like the "No True Scotsman" approach to TERFs.

I honestly think we should stop using the term and just call them transphobes. I don't have a problem using it for actual radical feminist that hates trans people, ie. Germaine Greer and people like that, but in reality people who hold those believes in anti-trans circles are very rare, and they're mostly second wave feminists in their 70s or above.

I'm aware that a few radical feminists are still active in those circles, but the majority of TERF thought leaders are either liberal pop-feminists, or don't even identify as feminist at all. Because of that I don't buy for a single second that their hatred of trans people comes from misguided feminist beliefs, rather than plain old disgust and a weird need to defend normalcy that's not at all different from how conservative christians feel.

On this topic, it looks to me that liberals will hold onto exactly fucking one progressive ideology and think that they're done, but really their spin on it is absolutely toxic. TERFs are just one manifestation of that. Ya feminism is great and important, but it's not the only method of analysis. Heaps of non-white feminists like bell hooks have written entire books about how white feminism is problematic by itself.

I say this as a vegan, but FUCKKKK vegans that imagine that veganism will solve everything or that they're done with growth because they try not to harm animals. Yes veganism is important for not harming animals, and yes it will cut down on a lot of environmental destruction. But veganism doesn't do anything to solve capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. A lot of non white people online call this "white veganism", and I'll borrow this term from them.

I feel like a lot of valuable movements get hijacked by middle class Westerners and turned bullshit. It's one really insidious way of managing popular discontent.

ACAB includes genital police

Yes, feminisms can certainly be transphobic. And like you say, "TERFs" are transphobic in the name of feminism. Almost always as some form of cultural feminism. Which is an issue because TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminists, yet 99% of so-called TERFs (even self-identified ones) don't know jack shit about radical feminism! So the whole term is a misnomer. Maybe even counterproductive because by equating radical feminism with transphobia, you're distancing yourself from some very useful feminist critique (like the construction of sex as a class that can be abolished) that is actually quite relevant to transgender liberation!

It's a process of a thing creating and becoming its opposite, at the same time feminist and one of the most mainstream forms of antifeminism. I don't think they can be understood by thinking of them one-sidedly as feminists or not feminists, they are both at the same time.

I see a lot of people say things like "TERFs aren't real feminists" or "We should call TERFs something besides feminists," and I understand where this viewpoint comes from, but as a transfeminine person, I honestly don't like this approach.

That's the 'Masses, Elites, and Rebels' mentality that Roderick Day criticized, is it?

To make one's enemy fully 'alien' to themselves is part of that... (I agree on your point, Angel)...

This begs the question: why do they {the TERFs} believe the things they do?

I get what you’re saying. The argument of TERFs not being real feminists is typically a philosophical one, that the underlying assumptions and mentality preclude feminism. Which makes valid points, but that doesn’t automatically turn TERFs into cultural conservatives, as fun as it is to point out to TERFs the bedfellows they’ve made.

That’s why I stick to arguing that the assumption is biologically reductive. That they’re arguing that the feminine is fundamentally about the reproductive organs, exactly the view that feminism has been trying to overcome for centuries.

GOOD POST ✔️

The R stands for Reactionary.

There is absolutely a potential for feminism to overlap with parts of reactionary ideology.

I'm in the same boat largely. Are terfs in practice working towards the most awful, antifeminist goals? Absolutely. It lies in the nature of the terf rabbit hole that fighting against our rights turns people into single-issue obsessives that are willing to compromise any and all other issues besides transphobia and enter alliances with openly anti-feminist orgs, because that's where all the campaign funds are. But that doesn't change that historically, terfs represent what used to be a major wing of feminism. To write that off for the sake of a simple gotcha like so many people do eschews the possibility for needed feminist self crit and creates blindspots in the understanding of feminist history and intra-feminist struggles. Terfism is one of the worse acts of mental contortionism out there, but it does come out of the gender essentialist wing of 2nd wave feminism that also was the root for political lesbianism and swerfism and that origin story is inseperable from their specific brand of transphobia. That they have backed themselves up into a discursive corner doesn't change how they got there in the first place.

That said, i'm also cautious to give terfs too much credit. I'm absolutely not saying that you're doing that, this is not my impression, but i run into a lot of people both offline and in discourse about trans rights that overestimate how many terfs are actually out there, how important they really are in anti-trans activism and how much influence they still have on feminism and lesbian* spaces today. So i think this is worth noting when we're having a discussion like this one: While cis feminism urgently needs a more thorough critique of its cisnormative biases and expectations, while there are areas where the movement needs to incorporate more of a trans perspective, i generally find that feminists, particularly lesbian, bi and pan feminists, are among the best allies i have out there. A lot of the offline spaces i feel safest in are operated by them and when i sit down at a table with cis people where i feel welcomed, it's usually a table in a deliberately feminist venue. And on the opposite end, when i look at how anti-trans movements are structured, terfs are tokenized figureheads for a movement that is overwhelmingly made up of and almost exclusively funded by rightwing white cishet dudes that deliberately hide behind the protective veneer that the weaponization of issues like "women-only" spaces offers them.

But it's worth noting that the feminist allies i'm talking about are the ones that are leftists instead of liberals, that are accutely aware of and critical of white feminist bias and take effort in welcoming PoC in their spaces, that have early on grown into a part of the movement that has consistently been open to impulses outside of white, affluent, cishet voices. Safe communities are always built on taking each others' experiences seriously.

I agree completely, read whipping girl

I feel like when people utilize this approach, they're trying to see TERFs as a problem from the outside rather than a problem within. We cannot build a better, more inclusive, and more intersectional flavor of feminism if we assume that problematic tendencies such as transphobia are inherently beyond feminist thought.

In the US at least, the TERFs I see come across as BlueMAGA liberals and reactionary conservatives masquerading as feminists, if they are even appropriating the label feminism. They're using their megaphones to silence real feminist topics and sucking up all the attention and energy away from solving real problems. I have no trouble accusing them of not being feminists. Imagine if someone had a lot of anti-minority rhetoric dressed up with feminist aesthetics, you'd correctly label that person as a racist first, not a feminist-with-one-bad-opinion.