“TERFery is predominantly a belief of privileged women - in other words, the women who have benefited most from feminism's successes - and yet who have come to define womanhood by suffering. And many of them have suffered! but when social progress reveals that suffering to be something we can decrease or eradicate - when conditions for women get better - it threatens that notion of suffering as inherent”
“it's no coincidence that TERF rhetoric increased just as feminist circles were finally beginning to have productive conversations about intersectionality & how historical feminist successes had largely benefited white women, straight women, cis women, wealthy women, able-bodied women, neurotypical women. Suddenly, a whole bunch of white feminists were told, 'hey, perhaps your voices aren't the ones that need centering right now. perhaps you should pass the mic.'”
https://nitter.42l.fr/fozmeadows/status/1510022794796404737#m
Thanks for sharing Meadows' thread. I need to print it out and hang it on my wall.
Wow, really love convantaged.
@ghost_bird i just had the thought that this is probably part of the reason TERFs are so dead-set on making it hard to impossible for trans men/transmasc people to transition, as TERFs see transition primarily as an attempt to "escape painful experiences re: womanhood". they cannot accept that people, some of which *have* also suffered from misogyny which they view as a distinctive and defining factor not only inherent to their womanhood but as almost(?) some sort of virtue, are *not* women.
@crowlad Very much this - I think I’ve talked before about the “masculinity is hurt/femininity is healing” dichotomy that underpins their particular kind of feminism. And I think the idea of “rescuing” people who they see as damaged women appeals to their sense of privilege too
@ghost_bird oh definitely, it fits right into the patronizing "i know better what's good for [group of people] than them" benevolent dictator attitude.
@crowlad Hence the prevalence of TERFs in the UK progressive establishment - or so I’ve seen it suggested
@crowlad @ghost_bird the racism, classism, transphobia, and yes, outright misogyny, leave so much room to actually be a woman in, that i can't believe no-one is noticing what an utterly wretched project TERFism is.
Just had a dickhead from glindr try to reply to this - maybe check your follows if you boosted it