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My statement still stands about sane people. Radlibs are very annoying and hurt the overall image of trans people.

TERFs are a different beast entirely, because of the "accepting" part, not just the attraction part.



Yeah, I am going out on a limb and I'm going to say that "you're never obligated to have sex with someone or pretend you're attracted to them" is probably the mainstream opinion of the vast majority of transgender people.

It's the Internet, I'm not going to say that nobody feels that way, but... I mean, the LGBTQ+ movement is not traditionally a fan of the argument "pretend you're attracted to someone." That was historically a pretty big issue for them. So it's certainly not an argument that I run into, but I'm sure it's popped up on forums before.

I have seen some conversations talking about the degree to which the question of "are they datable" reveals some level of both societal transphobia and serves to reinforce gendered roles and expectations about women. I've seen people suggest that an aversion to dating transgender men/women might be something to self-examine, the same way that an aversion to dating Asians would be. But that's a very far cry from saying that someone should be obligated to date someone even though they're not attracted to them.

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TERFs are... well, that's a different subject. I think a lot of it is exclusion and community policing of gender norms and gender alignment dressed up as feminism. That would have to be a longer conversation, but it's hard for me to understand what the "feminist" angle is of a philosophy that often strays into biological essentialism; and I've seen even cisgender women get caught in the cross-fire of communities deciding whether they present too masculine or work out just slightly too often and are therefore worthy of suspicion. I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but I don't think TERFs are as a whole are tearing down gender norms; I think they're reinforcing them.

It's curious how often when I read TERF literature that it falls into this trap of describing men and women as almost different species, and species that are naturally hostile to each other. I very often have to take a step back and check on what I'm reading. If someone had sent me "Pronouns are Rohypnol" before I knew that it was an influential piece, I would have assumed the piece was trying to set up a straw-feminist to tear down. If somebody had sent me passages of "Irreversible Damage" to read without the full context of the entire book, I would have assumed the book was intended primarily to argue for Christian Complementarianism.

But again, much longer conversation to have there.


Precisely. The philosophy of TERFs is a very oddly hypocritical one.


I am not shocked at all, that for them, allowing men to colonize their personal life is unacceptable. Do these Women not have the right to avoid a penis?


Bathrooms are a messy issue, and personally I'm in favor of a pivot towards individual genderless stalls, but one important thing to consider is that trans women are much more at risk when using the men's room than women are when trans women use the women's. There's also the issue of how you're going to legislate passing trans women from using the women's room.

I also generally dislike TERFs because they're partnering with right wing reactionary groups that might be helping now but don't want women's rights in the end either.


Honestly I am not sure why we haven't moved to unisex bathrooms. it makes the whole trans-bathroom issue a moot point.




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