Ovarit

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Ovarit is an invitation-only, self-described link aggregator "feminist" echo chamber dedicated to hating trans people, especially trans women. It serves as a refuge for the TERF movement, as well as other transphobic discourse. Despite it being a self-described "platform for women-centered communities", transphobia remains its primary export, and actual women-centered communities are non-existent.

Unsurprisingly, Ovarit was founded by former moderators of /r/GenderCritical on Reddit, which was banned in June 2020 for its virulent transphobic discourse. Fun fact: its GenderCritical forum is the most popular one on the website, for obvious reasons.

The name "Ovarit" directly references ovaries, the anatomical female gonads; the use of this name implies an exclusion (what a surprise!) of, in addition to trans women, any woman who may have had an oophorectomy or who was born without ovaries. It also includes trans men and non-binary people who have ovaries.

History

Ovarit's history began on July 29, 2020, exactly one month following /r/GenderCritical being banished from Reddit. Some of its users flocked to alternative Reddit-like "free speech" platforms, such as Saidit (a QAnon hub), following its ban. However, some other users felt that a "true feminist" alternative to Reddit was necessary; as such, former GenderCritical Reddit users, with the "help" of "feminist" developers from Spinster.xyz and the hate group Women's Declaration International (formerly WHRC), created Ovarit. A little organization on Discord also took place during this process, unsurprisingly enough.

Ovarit's original mandate was to create a "safe space" not only to "protect" themselves and "carry on as before," but "to become even bigger." Some former Ovarit users claim the site instead has "dishonest power tripping mods and admins" who "allow 'gender critical' men to join" as users, and turn a blind eye to homophobia while promoting political lesbianism.

The platform

Ovarit is a link aggregator and runs a forked instance of Throat (a clone of the now-defunct Reddit clone Voat). Its individual forums, named "circles", all generally revolve around trans-exclusionary ideologies in some way. Examples include:

• "Activism", for activism… against trans women
• "Cancelled", which attempts to denounce attempts made by rational persons to criticize ("silence") transphobes
• "GenderCritical", because why not?
• "Radfemmery", which is for memes that ridicule trans women
• "TransLogic", which attempts to baselessly criticize what trans activists (or as they call them, TRAs) do
• "Women", presumably for advocating for women's somehow-sex-based rights

Ovarit puts up some rules to "limit" transphobia, as in forbidding the slurs "tranny" and "troon", but still permits common TERF lingo, such as "TRA" for trans activists and "TIM" ("trans-identified male") for trans women.

Invite code system

Ovarit, being a closed forum, requires the use of invite codes in order to register and participate on its website; non-registered users are still able to read through Ovarit's blatant lies, but are unable to participate, similarly to Reddit. These codes are spread by its established members and Ovarit's administrators themselves, effectively creating a referral system limiting anyone's ability to join, with the sole exception of people who share its anti-trans worldview. Codes are shared both in external TERF forums and websites, Ovarit's external social media channels, as well as in an /r/Ovarit_Codes community on Reddit (now banned). Ovarit's forums have been described as "insular and defensive" and as an echo chamber, since unlike Reddit's /r/GenderCritical, its gatekeeping allows only the "good humans" (bigots) in. Fortunately, this invite code system means that its forums are of a significantly smaller size than Reddit, limiting its outreach and keeping it confined to that corner of the Internet.

Transphobia

Ovarit's transphobia can only be described as extremist, and as absolutely virulent. Its /r/GenderCritical forum is filled with people ranging from J.K. Rowling defenders to "kill all transgenders" terrorists. Many of its posts attempt to justify instances of transphobia which have been reported in the media, and celebrate "victories" obtained by transphobes attempting to justify and/or legalize transphobia. Lots of complaints on "censorship" against anti-trans views are also present on various forums.

Enbyphobia is also present on its forums, as well as transmisandry, but both are significantly less common than transmisogyny, simply because trans men and non-binary people do not exist in the TERF mindset. Well, unless a given TERF falls into the Abigail Shrier camp of transphobes.

Ovarit's breed of transphobia seems to not be of the religious right's "family values" kind at first glance, but a clear undertone of religious bigotry is present within some of its members. This puts it in line with other transphobic organizations, which aren't religious themselves but often collaborate with the religious right for extra points.

Pissed at us

See the main article on this topic: Pissed at us

Unsurprisingly, just like other hate forums and in a similar line to FeministWiki, Ovarit hates us.

“”The entire page (and website) is crying about the poor TIMs that they almost forgot to paperclip the token females in their group. The "transmisandry" is pretty funny, because they love to tell TIFs to shut up, as they are "strait white men" now, and bringing up sexism is transphobic because that would admit that biological sex and sex based oppression exists.

—MenHaveItEasy on Ovarit, referring to RationalWiki

“”Lmfao at them using a doctored screenshot to demonstrate our “insanity.” Also, where are the receipts for the “kill all transgenders terrorists” and the “clear undertone of religious bigotry in some of its members?” Oh right, there are none because the page just makes shit up and passes it off as fact. And since people are stupid and incurious online, they’ll read it and believe it without any fact checking involved. Also, the usual phony right wing accusations are being leveled at us once again. Yawn. Boring. Predictable.

—Coffiefiend on Ovarit, referring to the Ovarit article

“”Men cant resist the urge to take credit for everything. Its likely that the TIM who wrote his name in the snow, so to speak, also wrote that fetishistic period blood line (why would a real woman, menstruating or not, need or want this?), because TIMs are the epitome of toxic masculinity and grossness.

—MenHaveItEasy on Ovarit

Response

On avoiding hoaxes

Some self-criticism is in order. RationalWiki, beginning — but not ending! — with one anonymous contributor, did fall for a hoax perpetuated by a Twitter troll. As skeptics, we can't go around knowingly perpetuating hoaxes, but we are only human and so this went unaddressed for an unfortunate length of time. A lesson, in short: screenshots do not generally make for good citations, in and of themselves; avoid truthiness, pursue verifiability. The original thread was quite different from the doctored screenshot. Perhaps speaking to the site's overwhelmingly transphobic nature, though, the poor OP received few actual responses to her request for vegan sausage recipes.

Ovarit is actually susceptible to this type of hoax itself. The "/o/TerfIsASlur/" section of the site, for example, predominantly consists of nutpicked social media screenshots that lack URL citations.

Violent rhetoric

Several Ovarit users in the thread discussing their RationalWiki entry believed that TERFs don't tend to call for violence against transgender people. An Ovarit thread just three months later failed to reach such a pacifistic consensus. After a viciously transphobic screed by Lily Cade that called for trans women to be "lynched", many users on the forum defended, downplayed, or even outright praised Cade's remarks.

Others simply bargained that Cade was not representative of TERFs. The fact stands that the BBC felt she was a good enough representative of transphobic lesbians (of which there are not so many), alongside "Get the L Out". Cade is not the only example, as some users appeared to think; The TERFs, for instance, has a dedicated section listing examples of real-world violence motivated by TERF ideology. In one utterly priceless attempt at defending Cade, some try to explain her call for violence as a mere metaphor.

“”She is Valerie Solanas for our age. I feel like feminism is back.

—BlackCirce on Ovarit

“”I just love her righteous fury, I can feel it burning through every word she writes.

—NoThankYou on Ovarit

“”I bet Newsweek went looking for one troll to represent all TERFs because they're scared of all the sex abuse incidents in the news lately caused by TIMs. I'll go far enough to say that most of them arent even horrified by her words, because most of them are violent themselves. They're just happy to have one case that proves their strawman right. Dont even bother with condemnation, because you'll be on the defense trying to explain that most radfems arent like this, when the argument should be about the actual cases of grooming, violence, threats, sexual harassment, and erosion of women's sex based rights caused by transgender activism.

—MenHaveItEasy on Ovarit

“”I obviously don't condone the call to violence, but there is so much anger in that post, and the problem is I kind of get why someone would be that angry. She's talking about autogynephiles and pedophiles and other rapists.

—NoThankYou on Ovarit

“”Lily Cade is based as fuck. All these nicefems think being nice will win us this war against violent, dangerous men. She survived TIM sexual assault, why can't she rant about them?

—Ash94 on Ovarit

“”Guilt by associatiation is all what they have.

—BiologyIsReal on Ovarit

See also

• FeministWiki
• LGB Alliance
• Reddit
• Patriots.win — Ovarit's Trumpist Cousin