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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I think there just needs to be an acknowledgement that when people talk about TERFs, they are conflating two distinct, though thus far allied, categories. Quoting myself from the old forum:

I think the thing is that there are really two categories - let's call it TERF 1 and TERF 2 - which are obviously related but still separate.

TERF 1, or actual TERFs, are classic radical feminists who fully share all the viewpoints of the ideology - there are two distinct classes of humanity, men and women, these are defined by their biological features related to reproduction, nevertheless they don't have mental differences and the subservient societal status of women and the related cultural factors are explained by the history of male oppression of women to control their reproduction etc (ie. patriarchy). They usually make zero bones about their absolute opposition to men as a class, tend to advocate female separatism from to as good a degree as possible, and their opposition to trans rights activism flows from their belief that any attempt to obfuscate the biological reality of men and women can only be another facet of patriarchy preventing women from organizing as a class. Or that's how I've understood this ideology, at any rate.

TERF 2, or TE"RF"s, do not actually fully share the previous view. Instead this is an inchoate category of people, in great majority women, who for one reason or another have come to dislike trans rights activism and have latched to the movement established by TERF 1 types since there's nothing better for them.

(The alternatives are religious conservatism which is unappealing if you're not religious, have a liberal religious perspective, have a non-mainstream religion or otherwise don't wish to share the religious conservative conclusions, the sort of far-right nationalist ideologies that just come off as reification of assholishness and are right out if you're an ethnic minority, and Quillette/IDW-style anti-trans rationalism that often just comes off as too autistic for most people and seems like too thin a gruel anyway for someone who wishes for something more solid and uncompromising.)

Even if TERF 2 types might not share the full set of ideas by TERF 1 types - they don't wish to fully separate from men but instead have relationships and even marriages with them, they might browse FemaleDatingStrategy style sites and engage in performative femininity etc. - they can often pick and mix whatever they like, typically related to anti-trans and anti-sex-work rhetoric, and combine it to an unwieldy soup with various bargain-bin liberal ideological shibboleths, the sort of conservative tendencies they might not even admit to themselves, and the sort of "the men are SO stupid" style flippant rhetoric that often passes for feminist analysis even though it's just the sort of a thing women have really talked among themselves throughout the entire history, relating to the fact that men are, indeed, often stupid.

What might also attract TERF 2 types to TERF 1 ideologies is that TERF 1 ideology represents what might be called "ossified progressivism" - it's a veritable historical time capsule of a point of view that was cutting-edge in the 70s, but which the onmarch of progress, so to say, has then bypassed. One can see it easily when browsing TERF forums, there's a constant befuddlement about how feminist movement achieved many of its goals in the 70s but now the new crop of progressives is, from their point of view, throwing them away.

This sort of ossified progressivism might not be big-c Conservative, but since it, indeed, conserves a certain sort of an intellectual output of a previous era, it can appeal to people who feel a (usually unconscious) conservative impulse within themselves, but cannot identify with any actual ongoing conservative movements, for reasons listed above.

TERF 2 types are, for obvious reasons, more populous than TERF 1 types, but since they don't really yet form an organized tendency within the movement, the TERF 1 types still stay in charge and can exert some control over the movement, also of course hoping to affect TERF 2 types so that they can become consistent TERF 1 types. This might change if some group realizes the TERF 2 types are a separate group and manages to create a whole new ideology and movement on its basis. I think the "conservative feminists", for instance, are trying to do just this.

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