How monolithic is the terf field? I found myself completely lost in the original huffpost article, which I found messy and incoherrent not least because it starts off in London and almost immediately links to conservative groups in the US, it says terfs created and then rejected the terf concept, but links to an interview with an activist who says it was created to disparage and separate terfs from real radical feminists...
But not having came across terfs in real life (I think), I was still intrigued by by the use of the signifier 'radical', because usually in marginalized discourses and contexts it tends to signify progressivism, 'radical feminism' 'radical lbqt activism' etc. (As opposed to when inserted in conservative discourses it tends to be the opposite, a negative) so I started reading a bit and would like you or anyone else knowledgeable on the internal terf logics to comment how inaccurate my reading is (in its context), regarding a possibility of coherrency of arguments/logics and thus possibility for debate or is it in all forms a discourse of hate? My question is sincere, I have an interest in these questions mostly through discourse of identity politics and its theories.
One of the first articles from the London context I came across was this
opinion piece in the Guardian, a critique of how radical feminist called Linda Bello ('Black, female, Jewish, and lesbian feminist' as described by a previous Guardian bio on her) had been uninvited from a speaking gig at Cambridge University because she had "she planned to publicly question the uk trans politics", being called out a terf. the opinion piece soon goes into what is described as the "schism between queer and feminist principles [that] so many seasoned activists shy away from" that schism being "contradictory ways of defining gender. Queer politics positions gender as an innately held identity. The radical feminist understanding is that gender exists as a political system, not an identity. Recognising gender as innately held, a factor that should be enshrined as la protected characteristic, totally contradicts radical feminist principles." As an academic it sounds to me that both positions are "logical" and worthy discourses to debate. While not agreeing, I intuitively feel that it is not right to dismiss ontological and epistemological underpinnings that rest on viewing gender as political system. Someone like Bello, are coherrent to the extent that they take the logic to the end, considering race, class and gender as political systems rather than held identity, and that everything should be geared towards not reinforcing them (which is a very radical take (to me it sounds more radical than typical 2nd wave stuff)!which I do not agree with but recognize as a legitimate discourse for debate) she writes on her
blog:
I have no clue how representative she is in the UK and terf logic, probably not much, but perhaps it shows it might be problematic to dismiss all critique of trans-politics as trash? There is loads of stuff in her thinking I disagree with, and she does come across as downplaying trans suffering, but if your starting point is to denounce gender, you are going to have serious issues with a large body of trans-politics, which can be contested but it is not "illegitimate"...
