I saw the leaflets the TERF infiltrators were distributing at London Pride last weekend and noticed that theyâd referred to trans men as âyoung lesbiansâ, as per. Yet it seems that many people still see TERFs as a group which just has a âsimple difference of opinionâ at one end, or as a group which behaves transphobically at Pride but behave normally the rest of the year at the other. In reality, TERFs are a classic example of an extremist hate group, and I want to show how they operate as such by sharing my personal experience and research on a subset of TERF groups that focus their hate on trans men.
These particular TERF groups operate mostly online and are dedicated to delegitimizing trans men so as to legitimise their brand of feminism. DirtyWhiteBoi67 [Do not look at her website] is a particularly distressing example of someone who has hurt me, my friends, and community. These TERFs use textbook hate group processes to permeate and destroy us and our communities. They seem to work as follows âŚ
Most TERF groups insist that weâre butch lesbians forced to transition by misogyny and patriarchy. At the more extreme end, some groups insist weâre straight women forced to transition for the same reasons, in combination with assumed sexual abuse. Either way, they insist that weâre women for various reasons, including that they want to blame someone for the reduction in traditional butch lesbian communities that they were once part of, and we are an easy target. They position this ideology as loving and caring about young girls suffering from structural or intimate abuse and who need to be saved from transition. In reality, this is largely incongruous with our own life experiences as queer/gay/straight/etc men â life experiences we make freely available online, but they choose to ignore as it undermines their ideology.
To prove their ideology, these TERF groups dedicate a lot of time to stalking trans men online. They steal trans menâs photos and videos of our transitions, our hormonal chest, and genital changes in particular, and create dossiers on individual trans men. They use these to create catalogues of âevidenceâ for various uses; to prove that weâre self-hating and self-mutilators; to out us to employers; to have power over us; to degrade us. Pages and pages of screenshots of random trans menâs genitals with various dehumanising slurs alongside. They have done this to me and my friends and thousands more. It is very distressing. They claim to be interested in our medical procedures out of care and concern for us. In reality, this is predatory stalking with the ultimate goal of coercing us into detransition.
These TERFs distribute their supposed evidence in leaflets and online. Like most hate groups, their websites aim to inform members and the public; encourage participation; claim divine calling and privilege; promote in-group love and accuse out-groups of being the problem. While most TERF literature is usually explicitly hateful towards trans women, this literature tends to show apparent care and concern for trans men. In reality, this is a façade to make their ideology more palatable.
Like most hate groups, these TERF groups use pseudoscientific and in-house evidence to claim that we are not trans/men. âScientificâ evidence is often used by hate groups as it has more weight to erode oneâs sense of self. Often, these TERFs are white middle class ex-academic types, so are very capable of using intellectualised language to convince people that they are knowledgeable. And as women, they can also convince people that this knowledge comes from a caring approach. They twist, ignore, and erase our lived experiences; our transness, masculinities, sexualities, dysphoria, terminologies etc. They use tactics such as gaslighting on weaker people and sealioning on stronger people. Their aim is to exhaust us and make us more malleable to their own brand of trans healthcare; reparative therapy. In reality, this goes completely against all best practice guidance published by trans communities, academics, and medical bodies.
While they take our photos, they never take the context. So where a trans man might share a video about top surgery being the best day of his life, a TERF will use that same photo and call it âmutilationâ. A trans man might share a video about how his genital growth has helped to reduce dysphoria; a TERF will use that video to call our genitals âbotchedâ and âunnaturalâ. They say gross things about our minds and bodies. They pretend to be concerned for our welfare while simultaneously degrading us and rewriting our life experiences from their own cis viewpoint. They claim that hormones and surgery are hurting us. In reality, hormones and surgery saves many of our lives.
TERFs reduce us to up-close photos of our scars and genitals and call us freaks of nature and other slurs. They like to talk in graphic detail about all the risks involved in coming out; losing your family, healthcare, surgical problems, sexual function etc. They tell you youâll never be a normal person. One of the reasons they do this is to try and scare young trans people away from medical transition. In reality, it is TERF-like attitudes that make being trans difficult, not being trans itself.
These TERF groups aim to emasculate firstly because they hate men and masculinity, and secondly because they believe that if they destroy our sense of masculinity, we will return to their sisterhood and thus uphold their ideology. They do this by threatening that weâll become bad men if we use testosterone, pitting us against cis men, being cruel about surgical outcomes, saying weâre unattractive or sexually dysfunctional, calling us degrading names, finding our âbeforeâ photos, using feminised language etc. They insist that trans people reinforce sexist stereotypes while simultaneously insisting that we should perform a femininity that conforms to the sexist stereotypes they claim to be against. They also claim to care about our supposed self-hate. In reality, they instil self-hate to coerce us into detransition.
A major tactic of these groups, and TERFs in general, is the desexualisation of trans men, parallel to their hypersexualisation of trans women. They theorise trans men as asexual children and trans women as sexual predators. This is rooted in their perceptions of the genitals imo, while simultaneously claiming that women should not be judged on their physical attributes and that vulvas are no less sexual than penises. For example, they will take porn a trans man has willingly made and spent 17 hours uploading, to claim that the video shows sexual abuse. Again, this is all done apparently in sympathy for us. In reality, this completely ignores our own autonomy and our own sexualities.
They try to turn trans men against trans women and non-binary people. They try to convince us that other trans people keep us oppressed. In reality, it is of course the cis.
These TERFs also use blame and shame; they say we go against feminism by transitioning, and that we let women down by joining the patriarchy etc. They know that if you are made to feel guilty for doing what you need to do just to survive, you might become more malleable to detransition and/or recruitment. They also blame us for more tangible things, such as the closure of traditional butch lesbian bars. In reality, there are numerous causes; the passing of time, for example. The barring of butch trans lesbians from such establishments is another good example.
While TERFs approach trans women with overt violence, these groups approach trans men with covert violence. Like most hate groups, they prey on the weak and vulnerable members of the community and promise to make them strong and powerful. If a trans man shares a post about a problem, top surgery not going well for example, they will be sympathetic and complimentary. They say you donât need the surgery, you are a beautiful woman as you are etc. They say they can help you to recover from your self-hate. The aim is to theorise trans as the root of oneâs problems rather than structural transphobia, and that detransition will solve all your problems. In reality, this is gaslighting and forced gendering/detransition, which fucks people up â but they do not care.
Once theyâve messed with your own sense of self, gender, sexuality, community etc., they can further coerce you into detransition and potential recruitment. Like many hate groups, those who might be at risk of coerced detransition or radicalisation tend to be the more weak and vulnerable members of the community. Those struggling in life or with transition, those late to transition, those who are isolated or donât fit in with their local trans community, those who have low self-worth, those who are easily influenced, and those who lack good role models or grew up around toxic masculinity. They will tell you that life is better on their side. In reality, itâs not. And if it was, we wouldnât want to transition.
These TERFS combine apparent intellectualism with apparent care to convince trans men that they can help us. They say they want to help you become a woman again because they care about women. But just like MRAs say they care about men as a cover for hating women, or white supremacists say they care about working class people as a cover for hating people of colour, TERFs say they care about women as a cover for hating trans people. They want to make us obsolete so as to legitimise their ideology. In reality, conversion therapy is condemned by most health and research organisations e.g. the Memorandum of Understanding of Conversion Therapy in the UK.
In summary, TERFs prey on vulnerable people using Discourse; Doxing; Dissemination; Delegitimisation; Degradation; Dehumanisation; Demasculinisation; Desexualisation; Division; Blame; Gaslighting; Grooming; Conversion therapy. This includes tactics such as pseudointellectualism and pseudoscience, love-bombing, bullying, humiliation, sealioning, and coercion.
These are all the classic components of an extremist hate group according to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Centre, both of which research and monitor extremist/hate groups in America. While ideologically different, operationally TERFs work similarly to more well-known hate groups such as KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, C18, NF, NA, ATM, Westboro Baptist Church, Family Research Council, ACT For America, Alt-right MRAs and Incels, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front etc.
We should not dismiss TERFs as just banner-waving loonies; transphobia is not a mental illness, it is a choice. We should not dismiss them as âmisinformed lesbiansâ of a generation gone by; the information is there, they just donât want it.
We should reject excuses made by Pride and other LGBTQ events organisers who allow TERFs to spread their hate. We should demand that events and community organisers take an absolutely zero tolerance approach to them. We should call upon organisations and allies to be actively inclusive and supportive of trans women in womenâs spaces and of trans people in general. We should urge organisations and allies to educate the wider public on how to report or challenge TERFs. We should pressure web moderators to ban TERF social media accounts and websites that promote transphobia. And we should all publicly condemn them for the hate group that they are.
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