just any rububble opinion you wanna share
YOU ARE TRYING TO GET ME CANCELLED BY TEENS ON THE INTERNET!!! anyways i had a really interesting conversation today about how the way we handle terf discourse is broken, because
1) exiling “terfs” eliminates opportunities for growth
2) often “terf” is thrown around a little too casually, which de-emphasizes how actually bad terfs can get, like, our biggest problem is not becky the seventeen year old blogger who has been gay for six months and is being problematic on twitter, our biggest problem is the way terfs are aligning themselves with far-right ideology and lifting up eugeniscism and white supremacy, etc
3) and this is the MOST IMPORTANT one, shunning anyone who is terf-y is a shortcut to not confronting how deeply transmisogyny is woven into the fabric of lesbian culture. disavowing adreinne rich is not going to make lesbian culture less terf-y, the only way to be less terf-y is to actively work against transmisogyny in all that we do, just like we always have to be anti-racist and de-colonial, its an ongoing process that requires us taking a nuanced look at our own relationships, our writing, our music, our art, etc
4) and this is why i think lesbian separatism actually has something really critical to offer us still! these kind of self-critical conversations about lesbian culture can’t happen effectively when we’re also having to defend ourselves against patriarchy and heteronormativity. having space for just lesbians (where, and THIS IS CRITICAL, a lesbian is defined as ANYONE WHO WANTS TO BE ONE) to come together and work through our issues together is i think maybe the only way to positively move forward as a culture
