There's nothing feminist about them so let's not allow them to claim any part of it.

  • the_river_cass [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I actually don't understand how and why this happened. TERFs in the original sense are a pervasive problem. (at least, they were on reddit... god, they'd raid /r/MtF regularly and spam horrifying DMs to every trans woman who seemed to be struggling... reddit would never do anything about it... I'm very certain they're responsible for at least one suicide.)

    transphobes in the garden variety sense are 1000x more tolerable because 9 times out of 10, they hold to much less violent forms of transphobia and misogyny. they don't get why whether we exist or not is a question that matters and they don't want to be bothered to think about it - they aren't on a personal mission to eliminate trans people from the face of the earth.

    TERFs are like nazis. scorched earth, take no prisoners.

    • Fakename_Bill [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Yeah, I don't get why people here throw around TERF for people who are clearly garden variety transphobes. My first instinct is that it cheapens the terribleness of actual TERFs in the original sense. I think I made one or two comments to that effect, got told that TERF just means transphobe now, and figured I should just go with the flow because I'm a cis dude.

      I'm sorry you had to deal with that on Reddit, I can only imagine what that must be like. Solidarity, comrade.

          • the_river_cass [she/her]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I mean, do keep in mind that I'm effectively being a linguistic prescriptivist here so the people who disagree do have a leg to stand on. I just think it's worth keeping the term for the truly horrible people who deserve it.