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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   26710 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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TERFs like to engage in a particular kind of revisionist history that claims that men in women's sports are yet another insidious ploy by the patriarchy to keep women down. When confronted with the argument that men in women's sports are simply the natural outcome of decades of feminist propaganda claiming that any and all biological differences that disfavour women are the product of a misogynistic culture and nothing else, they employ the usual gaslighting: Nobody thinks that, you are delusional, it didn't happen and if it did that's a good thing.

I don't necessarily think this is a good characterization of TERFs.

There is not just one "feminism" - it is a bunch of different ideologies with different starting premises, and different conclusions about what is to be done. While there's variety within so-called "TERFs", many of the people who get called TERFs that I'm familiar with online tend to be of the opinion that "the thing that makes you a woman is the combination of being a biological female in a world run by biological men, with all that entails." (AKA difference feminism as opposed to equality feminism.)

Now, I do acknowledge that TERFs themselves are a diverse group, and if I had to break down the TERF pie based on what I've read and seen, I would imagine that the grouping consists of some combination of the following:

  • "Old school" difference feminists who were fighting for feminism in the 1960's through 1980's, and whose beliefs just haven't moved on since then. (Think Janice Raymond and her book The Transsexual Empire.) Some of these are the only actual "radical feminists" in the TERF camp.
  • Modern difference feminists who often started as postmodern feminists or equality feminists, and who were "burned" in some way by those movements. (Either they had a string of blackpilling relationships with men that soured them on mainstream liberal feminism, or they were cancelled or ostracized and then ended up in a bubble that made their views more "radical" over time.)
  • A small handful of social conservatives LARPing as feminists. Could be grifters, could be an example of horseshoe theory.
  • A small handful of postmodern feminists, who, as /u/RococoBasilica suggests, believe almost everything progressive gender-focused feminism believes, but who arrive at the conclusion that transwomen are another form of patriarchal male oppression.

Maybe this is a subset of your first group, but also transhumanist weirdos like Shulamith Firestone. That's what radical feminist used to mean, but like almost any term that gets politicized, it's been mangled so often so many different ways that nowadays it basically means whatever the speaker wants it to, like Carrol's Humpty Dumpty.

I mean, sure. But that distinction is about as meaningful as the difference between a groyper and a Christian Nationalist is to a California progressive.

A movement is what it does. And what feminism does, despite all protestations to the contrary, is to decrease the cost of women's actions and expand the extent of female privileges (almost always at the expense of men). What those privileges are varies depending on which feminists do the feministing and may range from unearned professorships to higher salaries for professional soccer players. Thus, "difference" becomes important when circumstances particular to the female condition demand special attention (and resources), while "equality" is the rallying cry when it comes to "equalizing" the spoils men and women are entitled to (without ever equalizing the corresponding duties). That another kind of woman, namely that of the Y-chromosome variety, has hacked that system is somewhat amusing. It is also the reason wokeness seems to have peaked for now. It is still legacy women who call the shots and you cannot go against their interests for all too long.

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