I see a lot of people say things like “TERFs aren’t real feminists” or “We should call TERFs something besides feminists,” and I understand where this viewpoint comes from, but as a transfeminine person, I honestly don’t like this approach.
I feel like when people utilize this approach, they’re trying to see TERFs as a problem from the outside rather than a problem within. We cannot build a better, more inclusive, and more intersectional flavor of feminism if we assume that problematic tendencies such as transphobia are inherently beyond feminist thought.
Is TERF ideology flawed and misguided? Absolutely, 100%. Is it not feminist? On some level, I see why some would say it isn’t, but at the very least, it’s in the name of feminism. Although TERFs are incredibly sus with their hyperfocus on trans people, especially transfeminine people, and very minimal focus on actually advocating for women’s rights, TERFs are not exactly stemming their transphobia from a viewpoint that conservative Christians, for instance, might stem their transphobia. Their viewpoint is tied to a certain interpretation of feminism, even if that interpretation sucks major doodoo ass.
We have to remember that even mainstream, liberal feminists are not exempt from some problems that TERFs embody. These kinds of feminists can often have transphobic and bioessentialist ideas as well. The difference? They are often more implicit and mask-on with these problematic tendencies. If they’re not outright transphobic in their thinking, they, at the very least, tend to be very erasing of trans struggles, as they usually are with all other kinds of intersectionality. Their major issue with failing to grasp intersectionality is painfully obvious with how much they focus on white cishet women, failing to demonstrate that they don’t even have a single place in their mind concerned about black women, trans women, and other more marginalized groups of women. I see these feminists as a problem obviously (because libs suck), but I certainly wouldn’t say they’re not feminists.
I’m functionally at a point where I can only trust feminists that are truly intersectional and communists, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t say that outlook comprises most self-identified feminists. However, I wouldn’t say that any feminist that deviates from the most helpful outlook on patriarchy isn’t a feminist. They’re just, in some way, a failed one in desperate need of education.
I’m in the same boat largely. Are terfs in practice working towards the most awful, antifeminist goals? Absolutely. It lies in the nature of the terf rabbit hole that fighting against our rights turns people into single-issue obsessives that are willing to compromise any and all other issues besides transphobia and enter alliances with openly anti-feminist orgs, because that’s where all the campaign funds are. But that doesn’t change that historically, terfs represent what used to be a major wing of feminism. To write that off for the sake of a simple gotcha like so many people do eschews the possibility for needed feminist self crit and creates blindspots in the understanding of feminist history and intra-feminist struggles. Terfism is one of the worse acts of mental contortionism out there, but it does come out of the gender essentialist wing of 2nd wave feminism that also was the root for political lesbianism and swerfism and that origin story is inseperable from their specific brand of transphobia. That they have backed themselves up into a discursive corner doesn’t change how they got there in the first place.
That said, i’m also cautious to give terfs too much credit. I’m absolutely not saying that you’re doing that, this is not my impression, but i run into a lot of people both offline and in discourse about trans rights that overestimate how many terfs are actually out there, how important they really are in anti-trans activism and how much influence they still have on feminism and lesbian* spaces today. So i think this is worth noting when we’re having a discussion like this one: While cis feminism urgently needs a more thorough critique of its cisnormative biases and expectations, while there are areas where the movement needs to incorporate more of a trans perspective, i generally find that feminists, particularly lesbian, bi and pan feminists, are among the best allies i have out there. A lot of the offline spaces i feel safest in are operated by them and when i sit down at a table with cis people where i feel welcomed, it’s usually a table in a deliberately feminist venue. And on the opposite end, when i look at how anti-trans movements are structured, terfs are tokenized figureheads for a movement that is overwhelmingly made up of and almost exclusively funded by rightwing white cishet dudes that deliberately hide behind the protective veneer that the weaponization of issues like “women-only” spaces offers them.
But it’s worth noting that the feminist allies i’m talking about are the ones that are leftists instead of liberals, that are accutely aware of and critical of white feminist bias and take effort in welcoming PoC in their spaces, that have early on grown into a part of the movement that has consistently been open to impulses outside of white, affluent, cishet voices. Safe communities are always built on taking each others’ experiences seriously.