(no subject)

[kaberett]

So I considered attempting to do this in a way that ~laid my soul bare~ and was deeply personal and assumed good faith and tried to Achieve A Rapprochement or whatever, but actually, no, I can't quite believe this is a thing I have to say:

If you want to hang out cheerfully and happily with TERFs or "gender-critical feminists" or whatever the fuck you want to call them this week, I cannot cheerfully coexist socially with you.

It is really very simple.

I don't care how polite you're being about implying or outright stating that I'm deluded or lying or dangerous or, somehow, being disrespectful to nice "normal" people.

It's okay for you to go "I don't get it, can I ask you more questions?" It's better for you to go "I don't get it, but I don't need to" (see also: I fundamentally do not have any intuition for or gut-level belief in angular momentum but that doesn't mean it isn't real).

I am actively not okay with sharing social space with people who are willing to extend infinite sympathy and compassion and ~understanding~ to folk who are loud and vocal and proud about wanting me to not exist, without even doing me the courtesy of admitting that these people they are so friendly with are deliberately setting out to harm me.

Just... no.

Comments

[kaberett]

pleas ejust fucking... show yourselves out. you are okay with people hurting me. you are not my friend.

I am scared of you. Please be fucking honest and upfront with me about what you think of me, and then leave me alone.

[azurelunatic]

They can fuck right the fuck off.

[rydra_wong]

I am very sorry that this is a thing you have to spell out for people.

(Also, fuuuuuck people who want to pretend that unthinking biological essentialism is being "gender-critical".)

Solidarity.

[ewt]

Seems fair.

Caveat: I don't always know someone is a TERF unless it happens to come up. But given who my friends are, that tends to be a deal-breaker or at least a case of "oooookay I am just going to quietly avoid this person from now on".

[ewt]

(Depending on whether, having realised their TERFery, it is safe for me to tell them off. These are not safe people.)

[redbird]

Indeed. You shouldn't have to say this. Civility is vastly overrated.

[hairyears]

Terf's are not safe people, and I am well aware of the need to maintain a social 'cordon sanitaire' between them and the risk that they will use me to gain access to people they can damage.

[rmc28]

Well said.

[madgastronomer]

Yes. Yes yes yes.

I am not personally in danger from them, but I get some shit-slinging because of whom I'm married to (I was once told I should call myself a lesbian because I'm married to a trans woman, and that I was "stealing the thunder of real lesbians"... which... I'm not a lesbian and don't call myself one and also what thunder?), and, of course, they're a very real danger to my wife. So yeah, also not ok with it.

I do try specifically to make myself available to people who genuinely are trying to understand, if only to spare some poor trans person from having to do 101 yet another time. But there's a huge difference between trying to understand and "gender-critical" TERFs. I don't put up with the latter.

Nobody who thinks my wife and friends aren't who they say they are, and nobody who is willing to put up with those who think that, gets the pleasure of my company.

[silveradept]

Someone might get the benefit of one "you do know that this people are advocating for my nonexistence," if it's someone who might not realize what is up, but there's not any presumption that it will happen, and if they don't get it or don't want to change, then it's time for new friends.

[sfred]

Hear, hear.

[swingandswirl]

One of the things I hate about the term 'TERF' is that it's so... polite-sounding and sanitized, for lack of a better word. What these people are is hateful, bigoted misogynists and I hate that we use language to tiptoe around that. When really we should be chasing them out of both feminism and polite society with sticks.

[recessional]

I take comfort in the fact that a large number of them are starting to be very upset with the term because they know what it means and they know when we use it we mean They Are Actually Bad.

Also the syllable itself (rather than the full "trans exclusive/eradicative radical feminist") does have a lovely curse-word ring to it.

[contrarywise]

So much this.

[cadenzamuse]

Ugh. I'm sorry that you have to state something this obvious.

Terf War

[hairyears]

I regard terfs as a danger to me, and I'm cis, male, articulate and middle-class; and, in my own way, I am moderately dangerous in my own right.

Terfs keep interesting company.

Terfs are happy to use their transphobic hatred to 'front-run' socially regressive policy initiatives for people who are not, in any way, 'feminist'.

Terfs keep company with people who are terrifying and some of them are violent. All of them are potentially damaging, to me, and to quite a lot of people I am rather fond of.

And, indeed, to people that I do not know, and probably a handful that I do know, and dislike. That doesn't stop me looking very closely at all avenues for isolating and neutralising terfs.

I dislike regarding people as diseases, and managing them like an epidemic, or an infection: but terfs cannot be persuaded and I can't engage with them in any useful way: all interactions with a terf are contaminated by their bad faith and the certainty that they will use it as an opportunity to seek out people they can damage.

So yeah... Terfs are dangerous to us all. And take a moment to imagine them obtaining an address-book from the people here, or (unwisely) using 'terf' on Facebook.

Re: Terf War

[madgastronomer]

OK. But there is a massive difference in the danger they pose me and the danger they pose to actual trans women, andthat's important.

Re: Terf War

[flippac]

See also: the state of medical access in the US and campaigns against access for children in the UK that they'd no doubt push further once they got that far.

Or what any trans woman can expect to happen after acting in self defence.

[redsixwing]

Hear /hear/

I'm sorry too, that this is required.