I love interacting with you all very much, and I know there’s a lot of important political issues in the world going on right now. I love my Linux Mint setup, I support Palestine and trans people, and I’ve blazed through all of OG Star Trek, TNG, Voyager, and am now on DS9.
But I also want to discuss Luka to the Lakers and Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile and getting 5 Grammy’s, a tour, and a Superbowl halftime show out of it, you know? I wanna talk about your country’s Eurovision entries. Am I just not in the right communities?
There you go again. You know very well that this is a derogatory term that is used to shut down debate. And you must also know there are a handful of situations (females in sports, children’s medicine) where legitimate rights come into conflict. You have your views and values about these situations, I’m sure, but it’s silly (I will refrain from any worse judgements) to pretend that debate on these subjects is morally illegitimate.
Personally I find this whole subject incredibly boring so that’s all I have to say here.
How does debate about women’s sports (in my opinion, an overblown and distracting issue to cover for more serious anti-trans sentiment and legislation, when it affects a handful of people) and children’s medicine (a non-issue, trans children cannot transition and puberty blockers are proven to be safe and effective, frequently used by cis children going through early puberty, and non-damaging long term if a child later decides to resume the natural course of surgery, whereas allowing puberty to continue IS permanently damaging) come into conflict with feminism? What do you even think feminism is? TERF isn’t a derogatory term, it’s a self-assigned label that has come into hot water more recently for being bigoted. I’m not pretending that debate on those subjects is silly. It’s very serious. These subjects are frequently used as excuses to pass further and further restrictions on people living entirely outside the scope of said subjects. What I’m asking you is where feminism comes into play?
Seriously. You can’t just state feminism as the opposite side of the debate against trans people. That’s insane. Feminists support equality of all genders. Feminists believe trans women are women, and their rights should be protected. Go to any feminist rally, and see how many trans flags are there. You’re conflating the belief in gender equality with the belief in “protecting women from trans women.” I’m not stifling discussion. I’m questioning the appropriation of progressive ideals to turn progressives against each other, which, whether intentional or not, you’re contributing to. It’s like saying you see both sides of the issue between immigrants and crime victims.
As a feminist, who participates in local organizations, and reads theory, don’t appropriate the ideas of gender equality to oppose those that most need its support.
I’ve followed “gender critical feminists” for a while, and in the early 2010s they did claim “TERF”. It’s only when it became better known to the outgroup and that they, accurately, overly focused on trans women to explain how evil they were, that they tried to rebrand and used “TERF is a slur”.