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Popular Lesbian/Bisexual Women Feminist Media Site "AfterEllen" Has Become a Transphobic Hellscape
- Thread starter excelsiorlef
- Start date
The old left and the right both have huge issues with terfs, mainly because they're old radicals who don't understand the present.
It's an issue in the Labour party because of all woman shortlists. The terfs say that trans women shouldn't be allowed as it defeats the point of an AWS, which is obviously bollocks and a transparent attempt at kicking the ladder down.
I must be doing trans wrong. I transitioned 4 1/2 years ago and have never once encountered a TERF online or irl. 🤔 Guess I can count myself lucky.
User banned (1 Month): excusing transphobia
All I'll say on this topic is that I personally believe this TERF's vs Trans shit is a perfect example of the left wing community dividing itself and infighting amongst themselves while the right attack united.
You're all on the same side. (mostly)
I will get crucified for this but I think there actually is a "both sides" contingent to this that is actually relevant, unlike the both sides arguments of e.g. Charlottesville.
There is a massive massive amount of grey area, nuance and honestly difficult conversations to be had in this area but we've now just ended up totally divided within the left wing with people taking sides and calling anybody that wishes to engage with these discussions TERFS. On the other side people like Graham Linehan that have decided to signal boost a side they think is worth listening to but doing it in a dividing, hamfisted and offensive way that generalises all trans people.
In my honest opinion when it comes to feminism men (Graham) need to move out of the way and let women talk (which I understand the irony of because I a cis man am also weighing in).
This a discussion that needs to be had between Feminist Trans Women and Feminist Cis Women in a way that doesn't involve shouting from across the aisle on twitter because it just lets right wingers run amok.
I genuinely hope I don't get banned for this comment but if I do, it's not meant with malice, I support all women and I genuinely think there is a middle ground here.
You're all on the same side. (mostly)
I will get crucified for this but I think there actually is a "both sides" contingent to this that is actually relevant, unlike the both sides arguments of e.g. Charlottesville.
There is a massive massive amount of grey area, nuance and honestly difficult conversations to be had in this area but we've now just ended up totally divided within the left wing with people taking sides and calling anybody that wishes to engage with these discussions TERFS. On the other side people like Graham Linehan that have decided to signal boost a side they think is worth listening to but doing it in a dividing, hamfisted and offensive way that generalises all trans people.
In my honest opinion when it comes to feminism men (Graham) need to move out of the way and let women talk (which I understand the irony of because I a cis man am also weighing in).
This a discussion that needs to be had between Feminist Trans Women and Feminist Cis Women in a way that doesn't involve shouting from across the aisle on twitter because it just lets right wingers run amok.
I genuinely hope I don't get banned for this comment but if I do, it's not meant with malice, I support all women and I genuinely think there is a middle ground here.
I don't know where to begin here. Much like a white supremacist, "debating" with TERFs accomplishes nothing. There's no meeting in the middle here; one group simply wishes the other didn't exist. Twitter is full of angry women - and men like Graham Linehan - who think that I'm trying to subvert their rights and make a mockery of their struggle. They want to call me a man in a wig; I just want to be left alone. Fuck the middle.
While I understand the sentiment, the problem is entirely with the terfs. They are the boogeymen feminists that the alt right cries on about and it's not worth tolerating their nonsense. So far as I'm aware, there is no major organised movement of trans women to stop cis-women from holding offices.
Yeah and I think that if anybody does that it's unacceptable and they are being horrible, you should be left alone.
I know you're trying to bring some good faith and naunce into the discussion, but a TERF literally does not believe trans women are women, and that the existence of trans women is harmful to the feminist movement and (cis) women as a whole. There's no middle ground to be had.
And the idea that the term "TERF" is a slur is amazing. It's like a racist being offended at being called a racist. I've been called so many horrible things by TERFs that they're lucky that that's all I'm calling them.
I think it's more of an underground/Internet movement. They're not welcome in the usual queer spaces because most lesbians don't seem to take to kindly to bigots.
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All I'll say on this is that you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.
TERFs believe transwomen are not women. They are. There is no possible middle ground.
Whilst it's anecdotal I've seen TERFS be friendly to Jordan Peterson when he's referenced their articles/books. It wouldn't surprise me if there are some parts of the community that consider their anti-trans agenda more significant than their 'feminism'.
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I like that it amounts to unlike being a white supremacists and hating black people there are valid reasons to hate trans people.
Then you support trans women and realize that TERFs are bigots?
There's no middle to be had here.
It genuinely does not sound like you support trans women at all, and I didn't get even a hint that you do from your original post
But is this actually the case? Have you taken a look in who these people associate with? Oddly, they tend to support other right-wing causes too. They also tend to associate with alt-right leaders. Weird, for such "leftists".
A lot of terfs are *not* left. They pose as it, sometimes they even give their groups feminist-sounding names, but if you look at their actions, you see a pattern. One of bad faith.
Err, a good chunk of Terfs not only proudly did so, Terfs also tried to undermine and sabotage the irish vote on abortion while posing as feminists, and have sabotages at least one pride event in britain.
Note what happened here. The site died, was grabbed up by new people, who got a new staff...and *suddenly* the transphobia appears. This isn't a coincidence, and we've seen it in other places too.
This is like saying All Lives Matter to take attention away from cops shooting black people.
The middle ground is that cops kill half as many black people. Or that trans women are only allowed to half-exist
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There are a lot of them who are genuine leftists, AfterEllen for example is still a genuine feminist left wing site, it's just a site that also happens to hate trans people.
There is a huge risk at just acting like all the trans hate is a product of the right wing...
AfterEllen hasn't been popular in a long while as AutoStraddle has taken their spot they use to fill
Oh, there's plenty of hate for transfolk among the left, don't get me wrong - britain in particular is notorious for the garbage way leftish media treated transpeople.
It's just incredibly foolish to assume that it's all or mostly left, when we can see immediately how many of these are fraternizing with the alt-right directly. And the reason for that is that we can *already* see the American Right use Terfs to push antifeminist agendas. Again, just look at Ireland, where we saw this *directly*.
That wasn't irish feminists - those were the ones that rejected Terf points outright. It was Terfs from Britain, with ties to Ukip and US-Evangelicals.
It's a tactic. Transpeople were seen as the easiest minority in the LGBT umbrella to attack (since as you rightfully point out, the T has the least support in general, and has plenty of leftists mocking or outright hating against the T), and they're using that to rope people in to attack other aspects, too.
If someone can be lured to priorize hating transfolk over all other, they can easily be used to attack, say, abortion and other left causes.
Best solution is, of course, to call Terf hatred out as what it is, regardless where it comes from.
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People envious of the right's "unity" fail to realize that it's because the right excuses all kinds of hate that people reject them. It's not only because they believe in the "left", but they believe in a vision of the "left" that doesn't tolerate hate. So when elements of the "left" are engaged in hatred, well, the solution is to call them out, not brush it under the rug in the name of "unity".
We dont see many trans men in media for some reason. I imagine there would be plenty of threatened cis males acting shitty if we saw more succesful transmen in the forefront.
transmen are too hot to be seen on film. melts hard drives, we must go back to tapes
all some of then need is an excuse to feel a threat, then they'll act out. but since they're cowards, I actually think they would think twice about coming after transmen.
Gay trans men tend to have a rough time. There doesn't seem to be much talk about it anywhere besides the odd blog post here and there. I think the media is still focused on trans women because we're not at the point of full acceptance of them and TERFs are making it their life's work to disavow them.
Is there any statistic on how common trans men are relative to trans women? Of course my experience is anedoctal, but the difference in representation is astonishing. I've gotten to the point where I assume there's simply fewer of them.
Unfortunately, the only really vitriolic commentary on trans men I've heard happened during a conversation between two male gay friends (one of which used the word "trap").
Not as easy for the media to sexualize trans men vs trans women is why.
Years and years ago, I used to read AfterEllen every day and it was an important part of my pop culture life. Then they suddenly became terrible and real right-wing assholes, and all the good writers left. I remember mentioning it to my friends and they were like, yeah, it was sold off to some douchebags. I stopped visiting it immediately, not that it was really a choice it had become so bad, but it was the right decision as it appears they only got even worse.
It seems the right-wing are good at taking things we build, killing them, wearing their hollowed out corpses, and parading around to mock us. It still makes me angry.
It seems the right-wing are good at taking things we build, killing them, wearing their hollowed out corpses, and parading around to mock us. It still makes me angry.
The way I see it is that these terf types see trans women as a threat to their existence as in they think trans women are men trying to invade their space so to speak, were as cis men don't seem to feel threatened by trans men at the moment that is, plus they maybe genuinely less trans men than trans women hence the lack of hatred towards them compared with the huge amount of abuse that trans women receive.
I am probably completely wrong so anyone please feel free to tell me I am talking crap which is usually the case, so apologies in advance.
oooh I thought TERFs were like exclusively on the left (US left) because they are "feminists"
I seriously don't get this, how does a transperson identify in such a scenario they're arguing?
if they're arguing transwomen aren't women, and transmen aren't men, what then do they think transwomen and transmen are (in this case, themselves)? Like... I seriously don't understand what they're trying to say.
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I need to save and use this in the future because it's the illusionary crux of every centrist argument. They claim that a middle should be reached by people who just want to exist as equal humans and those that literally want them destroyed but are too ignorant or disingenuine to define what that "middle" looks like. Like Llyranor mentioned above: minorities aren't up for only being considered half-human or being 50% equal to placate bigots. So the middle ground doesn't and cannot exist. I just wish more of these "both sides" types realized that there is such a thing as fundamentally opposed ideologies. There is such a thing as "politics" that literally cannot mix.