scatterdarknessscattersilence:
This feels important and maybe it’s something we should talk about more. I’ve seen some cis lesbians talking about it and I’ve seen more than a few young women proudly calling themselves “ex-libfems” (although nobody seriously identifies as a libfem) but no comprehensive accounts.
My own experience is that when radfems don’t know you are cis they will assume they are trans and start throwing abuse at you. When they know you are cis, that’s when the private messages asking for a “debate” and claiming to be interested in your viewpoint begin.
(Obviously it’d be cool if people add their own experiences)
(Image shows tweet by JN Wiedle that reads “there’s a lot of great discussion and focus on how white supremacists and MRAs prey on isolated/insecure boys/men on Reddit/4ch; I wish there was similar discussion & focus on how TERFs prey on isolated/insecure girls/women on tumblr”)Self-reblog for wider audience.
they’re using ace exclusionary stuff as an entry point for recruiting too, esp for recruiting young lesbians
Also they equate terf with lesbian so they accuse anti terf stuff of homophobia, I saw this on a polygon live chat just yesterday, some people started saying trans positive stuff and someone said no terfs allowed or something like that and a handful of transphobes came out to start arguing and the two main things they said were that people were being homophobic and that terfs aren’t a real thing, blah blah blah, so if someone starts saying that stuff that’s a red flag
most terfs don’t like being called terfs tbh, so they’ll act like the word itself is some meaningless strawman, or they’ll claim the word is homophobic towards lesbians, and instead go by dogwhistles like gender critical
They’ll also take advantage of newly out trans men (while erasing their gender identity and treating them as just confused lesbians, so using the same tactics they would on cis women), which is why you end up with a lot of trans men spouting terf-y rhetoric. I wrote a more in-depth post about that here
Not trying to make this all about trans men but more saying that I’ve experienced terfs use these tactics and it’s obvious they use the same tactics on cis women, so here’s some things to watch out for
Most bi discourse is TERF/radfem idiocy wrapped up in “you didn’t know better but now you know :)”. Take the whole butch/dyke conversation. “lesbian only terms” anyone over 30 would instantly call bullshit, but you tout it enough at 13-25 year olds and you’ve got a heard of up and coming voices saying ignorant stuff because they were bad faith informed.
It’s exactly how “queer is a slur” came to be a tumblr wide phrase. Anyone 30 and up would immediately go “uhm we took that for ourselves and it’s the preferred term”, but, again, you bad faith inform a bunch of shy, overly eager, isolated teens and you’ve got up and coming voices enforcing radfem ideology–but it’s even better because these voices claim to hate hate hate radfems and TERFs, so this idea had nooooothing to do with them. It’s easy to spread your ideology when you convince someone else it’s their ideology and has nothing to do with you, a person they supposedly hate.
