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It's a social construct Gender

Spectra and binaries

Day of Silence Patriarchy Gender binary Abolition of gender Gail Dines LGB Alliance Trans-exclusionary radical feminist Transmedicalism J. K. Rowling Women's Declaration International Reem Alsalem Beira's Place v - t - e

{{cquote|The only thing TERF's deserve is being doxed & killed"||| alex caseyhttps://terfisaslur.com

Trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF; also Trans women exclusionary feminism or TWEF) is a term applied to anyone who believes that trans women are male and that trans men are female. TERF's are characterized by their belief that gender identity is based on regressive sex stereotypes and restrictive gender roles. They make a clear distinction between gender and biological sex, while transgender activists conflate gender and biological sex. Check out: Sex and Gender - A Beginner's Guide</ref> They do not believe that transwomen are biological women™ because they are born with a penis and XY chromosomes.They acknowledge the 1 out of 20,000 - 50,000 XY women with androgen insensitivity syndrome, and people who are born intersex,but make a sharp distinction between intersex people and genderqueer people. many intersex people are angered at wha they perceive to be the transgender community's appropriation of medical intersex conditions. l [2]. Those referred to as TERF's want to completely abolish the classic gender binary, and oppose biological essentialism. The term "TERF" is not used by those in the group, who consider it a slur comparable to "feminazi"and [[3]], and think of themselves as simply acknowledging biological reality. Instead of "terf" they refer to themselves as "gender critical", because they are critical of the regressive gender stereotypes promoted by transgender ideology [[4]] They are also very critical of the lesbophobia [[5]] and Rape Culture[[6]] promoted by the trans movement. Many gender critical feminists live in fear of being labelled as "terfs". The "terf" label has led to women being fired, unpublished, censored, doxed, threatened with rape, assaulted,and even killed. Banned By Trans: Who's Silencing Who?

TERFs (and SWERFs) are a loathed subset of feminism because they directly challenge male entitlement. TERF's do not believe males are entitled to access female spaces simply by declaring themselves females. TERFs also believe that the gender self-declaration promoted by the trans activist community is harmful to women, undermines their hard-won Title IX rights, and threatens the safety of women in homeless shelters disabled women in homeless shelter raped by man claiming to be transgender, domestic violence shelters, and prisons http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.pdf.

Against feminism

Broadly speaking, there are two major points on which TERFs and mainstream feminists vehemently disagree — on the question of gender, and on the nature of the third wave of feminism.

Towards binary gender

TERFs almost universally reject the concept of cisgender privilege, and even the term "cisgender" itself, as demeaning to women (another controversial term in LGBTQ+ circles that is usually understood as a transphobic shibboleth). TERFs tend to reject any terminology models (for words such as "woman" or "man") that are not based on biological organs, gametes, or chromosomes. Thus defining their own movement as that "of women to liberate women from oppression, and that female biological reality is a defining aspect of women's experience of oppression."You may call me a TERF but I am not transphobic]

Academic radical feminism is premised upon the idea that gender is entirely a social construct (and further, that it is harmful). Some transgender people maintain, on the other hand, that gender is to some extent intrinsic (that is, even though they were raised as one binary gender, they have always identified as the other, and further, trans people often, but not always, want bodies to match). As frequently happens when ideology runs up against someone else's lived experiences, ideologues respond by trying to hammer the problem flat until it fits with what they already believe. As such, there has been, and continues to be, a rich current of censorship and attack underlying much transgender activism on the issue of sex-based oppression in general. The obvious conflict between the notion that "gender is innate" and the goals of liberating women from sexist stereotypes seems to escape them.

While not all radical feminists would agree, those that critique — "I'm not transphobic, I'm trans critical!" — transgender people's existence maintain (generally contrary to both what trans people themselves have said about their own identities, and the medical consensus on gender dysphoria) that trans women are nothing more than "effeminate men" who have been relegated by the patriarchal gender binary to the status of women (whereas trans men are often using the option to transition to cope with sexual trauma, internalized misogyny, or bothhttps://mariacatt.com/2016/03/31/the-adult-baby-story/. When destransitioned people share this information they tend to be erased by the transgender community https://thirdwaytrans.com/tag/detransition/).

Because no logical argument can be made that maintains their beliefs, they actively seek to silence any discussion or dissent regarding transgender ideology. When anyone questions the idea that trans women are women, the canned response typically is "trans women are women."

Against the Third Wave

File:TERFs.jpg

Trans Exclusionary Radical "Feminists", by Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls.

TERFs loathe the third wave of feminism. For a number of reasons, partly their own authoritarianism, partly their own demographic myopia, and partly because they themselves represent a partial embodiment of every stereotype thrown at feminists over the last century and a half, this particular group of radfems have been roundly rejected by nearly every demographic they claim to represent, including, but not limited to, women of color, sex workers, kinksters, most male allies, and, at long last, most every feminist who has come after them. This is in part due to their inability or unwillingness to understand intersectionality.

They also seem to deeply resent that the third-wavers have taken their best ideas — understanding and fighting patriarchal structures and rape culture, the fight for reproductive rights and women's health care — and carried them forward, while leaving the dogmatism and one-size-fits-all theorizing behind, rendering the majority of them irrelevant.

For sex workers, the reason for rejecting that form of feminism is, in large part, because although all sex workers around the world can be said to be exploited (especially in developing countries and anywhere with a strong culture of machismo) and some are indeed held in the industry forcibly against their will (as opposed to economically, in the same vein as minimum wage workers), they nevertheless find the conflation of sex work and slavery to be insulting both to themselves and historical victims of slavery, not to mention counterproductive for helping actual victims of sex slavery (who often, upon freeing themselves, resort to voluntary sex work in absence of other opportunities). Sex educators generally agree and in addition feel that such attitudes deny the agency of people to seek their own pleasure, hiding an underlying puritanism behind concepts like false consciousness.

Back in the 1980s, TERF ideas were at the absolute pinnacle of the tree of ideological soundness and political correctness (early enough that that term was only used approvingly by those supporting it). During this period, transgender people were only beginning to become the subjects of political awareness. They can't quite understand how the same ideas — let alone their actions — in the 2010s are considered odious bigotry.

TERFs and wingnuts

“”In the 1980s, TERFs successfully brought an end to trans health care access. One TERF operative wrote the government report which led the the revocation of trans medical care under government programs and soon thereafter, private insurers followed suit.

—theterfs.com

TERFs have been known to collaborate with the Religious Right. Notable instances include Cathy Brennan's collaboration with the Pacific Justice Institute in order to harass a trans woman via death threats, and generally acting as their mouthpiece; and when Sheila Jeffreys said she aligned with the "radical right" regarding transgender legislation.

Their particular transphobic rhetoric also owes a lot to wingnut homophobia in its structure, showcasing the same homosexuality-as-a-choice; when Jeffreys noticed RadFem2012 was cancelled and labelled a hate group, she said: (emphasis added)

Criticism of the practice of transgenderism is being censored as a result of a campaign of vilification by transgender activists of anyone who does not accept the new orthodoxy on this issue.

The bolded part is eerily similar to what the radical right have said about homosexuality; specifically, it resembles a quote about such by neo-Nazi Paul Fromm: gender identity as choice instead of something a person is, as well as a massive persecution complex.

TERFs have advocated reparative therapy for transgender people, e.g. Janice Raymond, in her paper Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery:

Nonsexist counseling is another direction for change that should be explored. The kind of counseling to “pass” successfully as masculine or feminine that now reigns in gender identity clinics only reinforces the problem of transsexualism. It does nothing to develop critical awareness, and makes transsexuals dependent upon medical-technical solutions. What I am advocating is a counseling that explores the social origins of the transsexual problem and the consequences of the medicaltechnical solution.

This is exactly the same rhetoric used by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an anti-LGBT group dedicated to lobbying reparative therapy.

Sex worker exclusionary radical feminism

Sex worker exclusionary radical feminism (also known as SWERF) is yet another offshoot of feminism, one that opposes women's participation in pornography and prostitution. The term was coined to match that of TERF, as their memberships overlap. Their ideology also overlaps as both subgroups follow a prescriptive, normative approach to feminism; i.e., telling women what to do — TERFs with their gender, and SWERFs with their sexuality.

SWERFs criticize the objectification and exploitation of women within pornography and the sex industry, as well as the violence and abuse that sex workers frequently suffer.

SWERFs typically go completely overboard and dump on sex-workers who chose their profession freely, even in places where it is completely legal and safe, claiming that the sex workers are nothing more than deluded victims (and co-perpetrators) of human trafficking. Much like white supremacists might insist that adoption agencies helping children from the third world find parents in the west are nothing more than deluded extinctionists. This dogmatic hostility to voluntary sex work is known as whorephobia.

The bottom line

The fatal problem either lies in the method of propagation of the TERF message, or in the message itself. Given that TERFs often fall into very familiar scripts reminiscent of denialism and other dead-end positions, and that people (especially academically oriented third-wavers) are very much familiar with the TERF argument cluster and reject it anyway, it's probably the message that is the problem here, not its method of propagation.

See also

• Germaine Greer

External links

• You might be a TERF if... by Cristan Williams
• The TERFs — lots of resources, from a history of transphobia to a list of websites TERFs run