Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
The thing you have to understand about TERF ideology is that they think:
So naturally they think trans women are evil rapey men trying to infiltrate women's spaces, while trans men are weak-willed stupid little girls who've been seduced into Gender and don't know any better.
Very feminist, much radical.
it's so clear and so sad how accurate your words are
Well, I'm aware of that. I'm just baffled by how little TERFs care about those "stupid little girls seduced by gender".
In their worldview, they are "women" entering a space full of "evil men", which sound worse than a "man" entering a space full of women.
I don't hear them talking about trans men and toilets (I guess they think they're st risk, but it's their own fault?) but I've heard lots of criticism of trans men as telling women they aren't allowed to be masculine, or erasing lesbians, or other poorly informed things.
There’s a subset of TERFs that are lesbians, they’ve seen a lot of butch lesbians transition fairly recently (from what I’ve collected on the TERF forum I’m aware of) and they seem to point to that a lot. They seem to just consider transmen to be butch lesbians who “bought into gender ideology” and consider them to be quite delusional for doing so. I don’t get any sense of particularly “protecting butch lesbians from themselves” they seem to frame it more as those women are lost causes and the way to “protect them” is by not allowing them to be “infected” by trans identity, they definitely talk about them like they’re “asking for it” if anything bad does happen to them because they do believe they are women entering a world of evil men but have no way of physically preventing it.
I don’t consider myself a TERF, I do consider myself to be a fairly radical feminist (no we aren’t automatically trans exclusionary) so I do sometimes see them in rad fem spaces and was genuinely curious about the perspective but it seems fairly not cohesive there’s tons of conservative think in it, lots of “crunchy” women etc. TERFs honestly seem to care way more about the TE than the RF, they don’t seem to have any uniting ideology…
The F stands for Fuckwit not Feminist.
yoink!
thanks, I'm stealing that :)
Excellent explanation, and happy cake day, if that’s a thing we say.
Every time a women came into the men’s bathroom I just assumed it was urgent and that the women’s bathroom was occupied or closed. Never had any different thought.
Edit: I don’t think any sane man would care if a female, trans, cyborg or alien would go pee.
I remember being at a bar... Queue out the door for the ladies, mens almost empty.
One of the girls in the queue said something like "I wish we could use the mens" as a comedy throwaway.
I said "do it, if you're comfortable doing so, we don't care". I mean, there are still stalls with doors right?
Half a dozen very relieved ladies bolted for the mens.
I like to think I made some people's evening just a little better that night.
That's the really crazy thing: the entire bathroom issue was manufactured in the first place because the damn signs on the doors never had any legally-enforced meaning to begin with!
My wife followed me into the men's room last night in Vegas cause the ladies room was closed for cleaning. Didn't realize anyone was in there, but a dude that happened to be going number 2 bolted outta there like the flash, it was kinda funny.
Terf ideology more or less boils down to
Transwomen are predatorial men
Trans men are foolish women who were tricked
They probably don't believe in enbies.
Trans men are foolish women who were tricked
A couple of months ago I was trying something with a second account on Facebook. Gave myself a gender neutral name, used a profile picture where it's hard to tell, and set the non-binary flag as my banner.
Ended up in an argument with a TERF at one point. She was so convinced that I was a biological woman falling prey to "trans ideology" that she even showed up on my profile the next day, commenting on something and trying to convince me to change the path that I'm on. And just because it's relevant to this story, I feel like I should mention that I was shipped with male factory parts.
So yeah, I experienced that first hand with a TERF who can "always tell", who was convinced that I was one of these foolish women being tricked.
It was pretty affirming at first but as time went on it felt less like a win and made me feel awful and deceptive. Because I didn't once mention anything about my sex but didn't correct her either and just let her keep making assumptions. Deleted that account not long after that.
Edit: fun fact, not long after that on my main Facebook account that uses my very gendered real name, in another argument with a bigot, I was accused of being a woman pretending to be a man online.
What are enbies?
Non Binary, or NB
Oh, thanks.
Nope. Because it's about policing women and the appearance of women and the gender norms of women while pretending to be so very very concerned about the safety of women.
Look, we need to protect the sanctity of women's sports, while paying them about 1% of whatever ludicrous amount men get, so they can play at empty stadiums.
I'm normally against gatekeeping but I fully support demanding people "concerned about the sanctity of women's sport" actually name three women's sports teams.
Then double down to challenge them for three trans athletes on women’s sport teams. Anywhere
But the best time for a womens soccer game is 11am on a Wednesday! I am sure everyone interested enough will take the day off to go watch and if the stadium is empty, thats because womes sports are uninteresting and the men play better.
Ding ding ding. It’s just another form of the “won’t someone think of the children” fear mongering that gets used to restrict freedoms.
I’m a dude and have used the women’s room a lot of times.
Sometimes you gotta shit and dudes rooms don’t always have seats.
I dare you to live on the road with a punk rock band and only use one genders bathroom for the whole tour.
You’ll shit your pants.
No. They should be considering this, given that plenty of trans men look like large and intimidating men (because they are), and they'll be forced to use womens' restrooms if the TERFs had their way.
Ultimately, the restroom issue is only superficial. TERFs (and other bigots) will pick issues like this, but they don't actually care about the issues they're yelling about. What they really care about is keeping their privilege and their sense of superiority. And that requires having a "them" group to put down and exclude, to clutch their pearls around.
So when you see irrational takes like the restroom thing, remember that it's irrational because it's not actually important to them (though they themselves likely don't realize that).
They also care about ruining trans people's lives in any way possible. I'm sure there are plenty of transphobes who simply haven't thought the bathroom thing through, but don't forget the other reason they'd be happy to put passing trans men in women's bathrooms: it forces them into an impossible decision. When an angry mob drags a trans man out of the women's toilet, you think they're going to listen to protestations of being AFAB? If anything, that'd just rile them up further. So a when someone is faced with the decision of choosing either the room they're least likely to be noticed in, or the one the law technically assigned to them, they may instead choose to stay home. They may even start considering detransitioning. This is a feature, not a bug.
I mean, *phobes have little problem with also being hypocrites.
Well they have to get the idea to self-project from somewhere. Like US politicians and paedophilia
TERFs don't want trans people using any toilet. TERFs want to push trans people out of public life, and ideally to stop existing all together, by making existing in it as difficult as possible.
Amazing how hard it is to express the TE in TERF is an absolute.
I think the main reason people aren’t as concerned about trans men using men’s restrooms is that they don’t pose any more physical threat to the men in there than any other man would. A trans woman using the women’s restroom, on the other hand, is seen - fairly or not - as potentially introducing a physical dynamic that some people find more concerning.
I mean, even a cis woman could walk into a men’s restroom and most guys wouldn’t care. At my local swimming hall, there’s often a cleaning lady washing the floors in the men’s locker and shower area while guys are completely naked around her, and no one bats an eye. Now imagine the chaos if a 50-year-old male cleaner walked into the women’s showers - completely different reaction.
For the same reason most don't care if a trans male athlete wants to play against cis men but they do care when it's the other way around.
I think one thing that most people can agree on is that they prefer walking into an empty public restroom. ~~Nobody~~ few of us like using the facilities while under observation.
As far as I can tell, no. No one ever seems to care. I can only assume it's because they view men as the "dominant" sex and women as "weak".
It's not a TERF thing. Nearly no one cares about who goes into a "Men's" Restroom and it's always been that way.
They celebrated when Noah Ruiz (a trans man) was assaulted by men for being in the “wrong” bathroom (he had been told to go to the woman’s.)
They don't want trans men in women's bathrooms either. They want trans people to not be able to use public bathrooms at all.
Here is a video in which Katy Montgomerie (a fairly well know trans campaigner) discusses this: https://youtu.be/vmH6S_jwbl4
Doesn’t this just follow long established gender norms (self referential joke intended)?
As a thought exercise assume two genders and consider your reaction toward using the wrong restroom.
So it actually does make sense for this issue to be an outgrowth of long standing societal norms, but maybe it’s an opportunity to have a deeper discussion about why we do that and whether/when it’s warranted at all. We had shared bathrooms in college and everyone survived (although I was always frustrated that I never used it as an opportunity for “fun”)
They’re seriously more bothered about there being a trans woman in a different cubicle where you can’t see each other than if it was a lesbian perving on your sounds, or a gay man being at the stand ups and sneaking a look at your winky (12” flaccid before you ask). This is not stuff normal people care about.
