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 guess I'll continue, if a rando calls themselves a feminist, you really have no idea what's about to follow, it could be a lot of random things like "I'm a woman who doesn't like misogyny against me", "I'm a woman supremacist", "I want an ideological framework to classify me as a sympathetic victim among my peers to satisfy my persecution complex despite nothing bad currently happening to me.", "I don't like the way men treat me and have no interest in feminist theory".
For these reasons, I find it prudent to use terms like Intersectional Feminist and Marxist Feminist, as they help delineate what is a principled feminist apart from reactionary and unprincipled uses of the label.
I've noticed this tendency very well. "Feminist" alone is a vague label that can either make a person either extremely trustworthy or extremely untrustworthy depending on how they're using the label. My point is, though, I think a lot of these people who say things like "TERFs aren't true feminists" aren't people who truly understand feminist theory themselves. I love specifying that I don't fuck with liberal, bourgeois, and unintersectional feminism in every instance I speak on my views about the movement. It's the only way I can make it sound likable in my own mind.