1. Iâm tired of this but here is a post with some links answering related questions. Anyway, Iâve decided to do something unfortunately long-winded in this answer.
2. The term âterfâ was created in 2008 by Viv Smythe, a self-described âcis-hetâ woman who ran a feminist blog. She would post feminist news and events to this blog. In February 2008, she made one such post about a party to celebrate the Michigan Womynâs Music Festival. A few comments were left on the post decrying Michfest due to the controversy over the festivalâs policy on trans inclusion. Smythe replied: âI donât intend to censor any mention of a feminist group or event simply because their feminisms may not be my feminisms.â A trans woman commented on the post saying that Smythe should have included a disclaimer: âAn editors note saying that this festival was problematic. Very simple, and beyond fair, methinks. As in Note: This festival excludes a highly marginalized group of women, and is considered by some as problematic. As much as I loathe the actions of this crowd, they too have a right to be part of the plurality of feminisms⊠even at the cost of trans womenâs lives (as in dead from lack of services) that have been lost to the atmosphere of exclusion promoted by their transphobic ideas.â Smythe updated the post with such a disclaimer.
An organizer for the party also commented on the post saying, âTo report, we spoke with MichFest â They do not have a written policy, or any policy for that matter on Trans. Trans womyn are welcome to the party.â Smythe did not find this sufficiently convincing, saying that Lisa Vogel, organizer of the festival, needed to make a clear statement on the issue.
3. In her guardian piece on creating the term âterfâ, Smythe explains that the February post about the Michfest party led to the creation of the term as âcommenters sent me on a rapid learning curve regarding trans-exclusion issues both specific to Michfest and in general.â If you look to the actual post, it generated a very limited response: 7 replies from 4 users and they were all specifically about Michfest.
In any case, on August 17, 2008, half a year after the Michfest post, Smythe wrote a blog post denouncing âterfsâ (the first use of the term) in regards to the internet discussions on gender identity going on amongst other feminist bloggers. These discussions had nothing to do with Michfest and were in no way a continuation of the discussion going on in the comment section of the Michfest post six months prior. However, though the denouncing terfs post is linked in the guardian piece, the specifics of these feminist blogging debates are not mentioned at all. Instead, Smythe depicts Michfest as the start and center of the âterfâ term creation story. Indeed, she highlights the fact that a few days after the denouncing terfs post, she made another post about âterfsâ, this time apologizing for having posted about Michfest at all and committing to never promoting a trans-exclusionary event again. She quotes herself as having written on Michfest: âI am aware that this decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), but it must be said: marginalising trans women at actual risk from regularly documented abuse /violence in favour of protecting hypothetical cis women from purely hypothetical abuse/violence from trans women in women-only safe-spaces strikes me as horribly unethical as well as repellently callous.â In so doing, Smythe emphasizes that âterfâ was created to describe and denounce Michfest.
4. In the guardian piece, Smythe compares âterfsâ to racists: âMuch of the factional divide here comes down to yet another gatekeeping argument about purity in feminism, perennial since the womenâs suffrage movement, and this one has uncomfortable echoes of Elizabeth Cady Stantonâs arguments against extending voting rights to black men.â
It is unclear to me how a music festival organized by lesbians can be seen as equivalent to saying black men should not be allowed to vote, or how a music festival somehow results in anyoneâs death from lack of services, or how wanting a female-centric music festival can be described as horribly unethical and repellantly callous. Disagreeing with Michfestâs policies does not make any of these statements make any kind of sense. They are more than hyperbolic; they are distortions. However, this has been the narrative consistently chosen and advanced about Michfest. Similarly, Jill Solowayâs Transparent directly compares Michfest to Nazi Germany. Somehow lesbians organizing a female-centric music festival in the woods is equivalent to white supremacy and genocide. Indeed, in an editorial for the The Bilerico Project, Barbra Siperstein somehow managed to compare Michfest to the Westboro Baptist Church (in addition to accusing Michfest organizers of penis envy).Â
5. The exact details of what happened at Michfest are not hugely important to this post. There are a number of resources that one can look into: Emi Koyama, TransSisters, Bonnie Morrisâ The Disappearing L: The Erasure of Lesbian Spaces, Riki Anne Wilchinsâ TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress ... and Won! etc. Iâve drawn my own conclusions but what matters here is how did a lesbian music festival become made into such a flashpoint? And the one and only answer is lesbophobia.
As Lisa Vogel reflected in 2018: âMichigan became a tool that trans activists and gay activists could wield against a larger homophobic mainstream culture. They could say, âThis is an example of intolerance even in our own community.â Gay men donât come from a radical lesbian analysis so they donât understand why we believe what we believe. [...] The press covered Camp Trans wildly, and I would try to respond. [The portrayal] was in a way that is straight up misogyny â by the gay press and the straight press. We cannot forget how defensive everybody is about having womynâs space. It was kind of perfect for the straight press and the gay press to have someone hammering us about having exclusive space that was supposedly [from] within the community. All kinds of things happen within the gay male community that is exclusive of trans people, that is exclusive of womyn, that is exclusive of, for example anyone except bears. They have complete autonomy of whoever they want to include. Itâs frustrating that this [exclusivity] is only held against womyn, I think it was used as a tool by the all-of-a-sudden exploding trans community to be pitted against these ânasty lesbian separatists.â [...] The reality is that Michigan already did not have the support of the gay community and we were an embarrassment to the gay organizations, who were all trying to be mainstream. And we were not trying to be mainstream, we are trying to live a different ethic and a different politic. No we wonât fly an HRC flag. No, we wonât do that.â
This also accords with the specific way that lesbian separatism is demonized. Lesbian separatism was literally modelled after the separatist movements created by people of colour. And indeed, many lesbians separatists were women of colour. In lesbian film-maker Pratibha Parmar's A Place of Rage, Angela Davis (also a lesbian!) specifically talks about the importance of separatism to women of colour. Yet lesbian separatism is viewed as some unique evil produced by uniquely evil dyke minds instead of a rational response to lesbophobia within feminist organizing and to misogyny within gay rights activism.
6. I think the history of the term âterfâ is important to understanding how it is used today. The woman who created the term has put forward a narrative where it was created in direct response to a lesbian musical festival in the woods; she does not say it was created to address transphobia amongst radical feminists, she does not say it was created to protest housing or employment or healthcare discrimination. She specifically tells us that discussing Michfestâs policies was where it began. Thus, while never naming lesbians, she advances a mean lesbians narrative. She, along with many others, advances a narrative where lesbians having a female-centric music festival is equivalent to denying people of colour their basic civil rights. And that is how it continues to be used today. We see lesbians being attacked as âterfsâ for literally being ourselves (being exclusively attracted to other female people) and for things of absolutely zero consequence (for saying that we would like to live with our partner in a house with a garden and a cat, for using the venus symbol, for joking that we donât need birth control etc) and all of this is absolutely in keeping with how and why the term was created. Lesbian existence, lesbian culture, lesbian history becomes âterfâ violence. The mean lesbians are at it again. I have no interest in granting legitimacy to this term when its very origin is tied to demonizing lesbians and believe other lesbians shouldnât either.
blakekathryn
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vaporwave
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