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.
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.
Is TERF ideology flawed and misguided? Absolutely, 100%. Is it not feminist? On some level, I see why some would say it isn't, but at the very least, it's in the name of feminism. Although TERFs are incredibly sus with their hyperfocus on trans people, especially transfeminine people, and very minimal focus on actually advocating for women's rights, TERFs are not exactly stemming their transphobia from a viewpoint that conservative Christians, for instance, might stem their transphobia. Their viewpoint is tied to a certain interpretation of feminism, even if that interpretation sucks major doodoo ass.
We have to remember that even mainstream, liberal feminists are not exempt from some problems that TERFs embody. These kinds of feminists can often have transphobic and bioessentialist ideas as well. The difference? They are often more implicit and mask-on with these problematic tendencies. If they're not outright transphobic in their thinking, they, at the very least, tend to be very erasing of trans struggles, as they usually are with all other kinds of intersectionality. Their major issue with failing to grasp intersectionality is painfully obvious with how much they focus on white cishet women, failing to demonstrate that they don't even have a single place in their mind concerned about black women, trans women, and other more marginalized groups of women. I see these feminists as a problem obviously (because libs suck), but I certainly wouldn't say they're not feminists.
I'm functionally at a point where I can only trust feminists that are truly intersectional and communists, but unfortunately, I wouldn't say that outlook comprises most self-identified feminists. However, I wouldn't say that any feminist that deviates from the most helpful outlook on patriarchy isn't a feminist. They're just, in some way, a failed one in desperate need of education.
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.
Calling reactionary second-wave feminism "feminism" is like calling National Socialism "second-wave socialism." The whole "movement" was founded on a contradictory premise, courtesy of middle-class white people.
Second wave feminism is to feminism what bourgeois democracy is to democracy.