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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Personally I think a lot of TERFs became that way because they get misgendered a lot (by other humans mostly) especially when they dress butch. (She's not dressing butch here, and ftr I would have guessed female.)
They have decided it's transwomen who are at fault because their existence opens people's minds to the idea that a person's chromosomes might not match their clothing. People are just trying to address them as they're presenting.
The real problem is that there's still societal stigma attached to being misgendered. And still more societal stigma attached to being trans. Which they're internalizing, and then making worse, instead of working to recast it as a simple error in judgement by the person using the wrong pronoun.
The ones who are really at fault are those who for generations have purposely misgendered other people as a slur meant to wound. Who've cast femininity as weak and masculinity as ugly. Especially now when they should know better. They make it worse for those of us who might make an honest mistake or even just want a polite way to ask. If every first conversation started with telling each other one's pronouns, and every reference to an unintroduced person used they/them, you'd be able to ask without seeming to cast doubt on who they are.
And the other problem is the imbalances of power and privilege attached to gender in general of course. It would hit a lot different if a person's gender wasn't treated like a big part of who they are and where they stand in humanity.
Tldr: TERFs aren't just mad about being misgendered as men, (wrong but at least higher status) they're mostly mad about being misgendered as trans (wrong and lower status).
Stick, 🚲, "Trans did this!"
Interestingly, my first conversation with a teenager (I wasn't related to) in about 15 years began with asking about pronouns. It's very painless and easy to normalize as long as you don't have a reactionary person nearby.
Also, the kids are alright.
Exactly! Even if you're meeting an adult and you aren't sure, and you don't want to make it so obvious that you're not sure (in case they'd be offended) you can start by introducing yourself by name and pronouns. If they only give their name, and it's not gendered, you can then ask what pronouns they prefer and at worst you come off as "weird and woke" and you know what to think of them as well as what pronouns to use.
I assumed most terfs were cis het gender conforming people. Is there data showing that one way or another?
Cis yes, and I'm not sure about the rest. But saying they get mistaken for trans wasn't meant to imply they're mostly lesbian either. (Although I did stumble into a TERFy lesbian discussion on Reddit once back in the day and that's probably where I heard the part about more when looking butch.)
As a cis het nonterfy feminist old woman who sometimes wears dresses but never makeup, and a buzzcut, I don't care when someone mistakes my gender or sexuality. But that's probably because I yeeted a lot of my fucks along with my uterus many years ago.
Most are, yeah. IIRC, cis lesbians are the demographic most likely out of anyone to support trans rights outside of trans people themselves, by a large margin.
Eh, TERFs in particular really lean on three things: "men bad/dangerous/evil/predators", "women good, but need protected from predation" and "you can't change which one you are, if you think you can it's either mental illness or a ploy."
It's why they focus so heavily on trans women (and generally ignore trans men), especially trans women in spaces that are traditionally women-only. It's why their language around the topic is so heavily drenched in the notion that trans women are "men in dresses" who are dressing up like that to get access to women's spaces - the whole presumption is that trans women are sexual predators in costume to get access to prey in more vulnerable situations.