Don’t accept scraps from the rich » « Self care Saturday, November 18: Shots fired in the war on pineapple

Meghan TERFy licks a frozen pole

Alternatively: Bites off more than she can chew, etc. Meghan Murphy, the intellectual bankrupt fountain of bile running Feminist Current, recently took a swipe at trans historian Cristan Williams. Williams is no stranger to trans exclusionary feminist bullshit, however, and published a comprehensive fact-check of Murphy’s nonsense:

I began encountering the “TERF is a slur” slogan in 2013, around a year after the political Right experienced a measure of success with its 2012 “homophobe is a slur” campaign.

The case was made that when discussing anti-queer hate in the news and anti-bullying efforts in schools, the term “homophobia” should not be used to describe the very specific type of anti-queer hate and oppression faced by LGBTQIA people because the term was an offensive slur.

By the end of 2012, the Associate Press banned the term “homophobe” from its news coverage and right-wing religious groups were working to ban the term in anti-bullying school materials because, they claimed, “homophobe” was a “made-up” term that promotes “hate and contempt for Christians.”

Without terms like “homophobe” and “homophobia,” the queer community’s ability to communicate and reference a specific anti-gay culture is hobbled, caged inside of rhetorical parameters defined by those who work to empower anti-gay culture. After “homophobe” and “homophobia” were deemed by a heteronormative culture to be too toxic to use, the queer community’s languaging of the hate it faced each day disappeared from most mainstream media use.

…

Around this time, TERFs began pushing the false history that “TERF” was coined by trans people as a slur. Note how this rhetoric closely mimics the 2012 right-wing rhetoric that “homophobe” was a “made-up” term that promotes “hate and contempt for Christians.”

Makes ya think.

Read more here.

-Shiv

 

Don’t accept scraps from the rich » « Self care Saturday, November 18: Shots fired in the war on pineapple

Comments

  2. says

    “homophobe” was a “made-up” term that promotes “hate and contempt for Christians.”

    Wow, so even if I stopped using that one, I’d only have 283,182 different ways of expressing hate and contempt for christians. And that’s without flexing a creative muscle.

  3. Pierce R. Butler says

    Admittedly I haven’t made a study of the question, but the “TERF” label does seem a bit dubious: from the quotations cited here and a few other blogs, little or nothing of the arguments propounded by so-called TERFs seems to deserve the venerable adjective “radical”.

  4. rpjohnston says

    The implicit argument being that it is illegitimate to treat “those people” (homophobes) with contempt. Hell to the no. It’s quite the opposite – give them all the sneering, condescending contempt we can muster. Turn all the shit back around on them – THEY’RE the ones who are disordered, THEY’RE the ones who are a threat to society, THEY’RE the ones who no decent society would treat with acceptance.

    If there’s one thing that I’ve taken out of the Trump era, it’s the final nail in the coffin my belief that endless good-faith debating is all that worthwhile. Make a statement about reality with CONVICTION and people will accept it.

  5. Siobhan says

    @3 Pierce

    It’s about acknowledging that they often consider themselves radical feminists. While I agree it would be easy to argue their objectives contradict most forms of feminism, there isn’t any traction on which to really declare someone not feminist.

  6. Pierce R. Butler says

    Siobhan @ # 5: … there isn’t any traction on which to really declare someone not feminist.

    And damn little on which to declare someone radical (or not).

    Uncle Karl had it right: all that is solid melts into the air.

  7. Silentbob says

    I just saw one of the most awesome cis-friendly takedowns of TERF rhetoric on twitter, and I have to share. By “cis-friendly” I mean the analogy is one most cis people, I think, will get. Here’s the thread: https://twitter.com/GuildingLilly/status/932374824181227524

    Here’s the content:

    Imagine if TERFs and other “gender critical” types used the similar arguments to define “mother” as they do “women” and applied it to women who adopt.

    “You can’t call yourself a ‘mother’ because your DNA rendered you infertile, and you can’t change your DNA.”

    “Just because you adopted a kid doesn’t make you a mother. You were socialized as childless, and you’re invading moms’ spaces with that childless privilege.”

    “You weren’t pregnant. You have no idea what it’s like to birth a child and therefore you can’t call yourself a mom.”

    “You and your kid are delusional. Society coddles mentally ill people who think they can call themselves a mother when they can’t have kids.”

    Think of how cruel society would see someone who would say such things. If only more would see the same cruelty in those who use similar arguments against trans women.

    And imagine these people were committed to harassing adoptive parents and adopted kids. Imagine if they had websites where they would “expose” them for more harassment.

    Imagine those people yelling at children they see who don’t look like their parents, “that’s not your mom! You don’t have a mom! You need a psychiatrist!”

    Imagine living in a family where you get to hear people advocating for tearing your family apart regularly.

    Imagine your children hearing they should be forcibly removed from you in national media every day.

    Imagine always being one election cycle away from having this all become true.

    That’s a fucking awesome analogy to get through to the cis, I reckon.