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Deconstructing TERF Tropes

The Strawman Shuffle:

TERFs tend to behave much like a right wing echo chamber so that once a new anti-trans strawman is created, it is quickly disseminated and replicated until the trans community and/or the trans allied community attempts to address the fallacy. When the discourse shifts from the original topic and onto the stawman, TERFs have succeeded in colonizing the discourse and will point to the colonized discourse as evidence that the original topic never existed.

Below are deconstructions of colonized trans discourse:

 

The Cotton Ceiling:

TERFs assert that Planned Parenthood helped teach trans people how to force lesbians to have sex with them and this amounts to corrective rape.

Trope Deconstructed

The Transsexual Empire:

TERFs assert that a medical-technical apparatus, in service of the patriarchy, is moving to subsume the female form and this amounts to rape.

Trope Deconstructed

Trans Surgery is a Creation of the Patriarchy:

TERFs assert that men, acting in service to the patriarchy, created MTF/FTM trans surgery and, in this way, it is the ultimate rape of the female form.

Trope Debunked

Cis was created by trans people as a slur:

TERFs assert Cis and Cisgender are recent creations of trans people and that it is a slur and represents one of the ways the patriarchy subjugates women.

Trope Debunked

TERF was created by trans people as a slur:

TERFs assert TERF was created as a slur against lesbians, women, radfems and/or feminists and as such, represents one of the ways the patriarchy subjugates women.

Trope Debunked

The Evergreen College Incident:

TERFs assert all trans women should be viewed as a potential risk because a trans woman had, on multiple occasions, stripped nude and paraded her genitals around in front of 6 year old girls.

Trope Debunked

The Florence Colorado Incident:

All trans women should be viewed as a potential risk because a 16 year old trans girl was actually a boy pretending to be trans in order to gain access to the girls restroom in order to sexually harass cis girls.

Trope Debunked

45 Comments

  1. Dr Ford Dr Ford

    Just wanted to say that my partner and I have just stumbled across this website, which is incisive, brilliantly designed, and very effectively articulated, and definitely doesn’t get enough attention. It needs some updates, in particular one on the GRA in the UK and the infiltration of ‘men’ into women-only prison populations in order to assault women. There are quite a few articles that debunk this myth, including this one: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kzjp4w/we-debunked-the-transphobic-myths-about-gender-recognition-act-reform The common denominator in all of the trans myths is that they take dangerous *people* – flashers, sexual offenders, violent offenders, psychopaths, etc – and focus on the ‘trans’ part of their identity. This is like saying that all people with moustaches are dangerous because many famous dictators had moustaches: https://listverse.com/2012/12/21/top-10-mustachioed-dictators-who-brutalized-modern-history/ It’s taking specific examples of dangerous people or negative events and claiming they somehow reflect on trans people – and actually, it doesn’t really matter whether these things happened or not (which is often the focus of your debunking articles), because that’s just not a valid method of arguing anyway. Trans people are people. Some are sexual predators, violent offenders, drug dealers, etc. That’s because they’re people, and some people are bad – it doesn’t reflect on their identity in any way.

    4+
    November 29, 2018 Reply
  2. k k

    I have a question: All of the things TERF’s believe are terrible to me. However, I came to this site because I am a cis woman who has trouble relating to the womanhood of transwomen. Regardless of whether I relate or not, I believe in their access to healthcare, their validity, and the authenticity of their experience. I don’t think there is any conspiracy afoot. However, the years of being raised with societal imprint of the gender assigned at birth, i feel, leaves a mark. Does it make me a TERF to think that our experiences of womanhood is not the same? I don’t have any desire to delegitimate transwomanhood, but it seems inaccurate and un-nuanced to claim it is the same experience as ciswomanhood. I think it is not the same experience of womanhood. I also understand that even within cis-womanhood the experience of womanhood varies, but the fact remains that there is a set of information passed to FAAB kids that isn’t passed to MAAB kids and vice versa. Until the way that we grow up is without gender-reinforcing cultural influence, the experience of gender is real (even if the thing itself isn’t). I don’t know where else to have this conversation because I have no interest in offending my immediate community, and I feel like this is a dangerous conversation to have. If anyone wants to engage me, I would be happy.

    1+
    May 28, 2018 Reply
    • Admin Admin

      Does it make me a TERF to think that our experiences of womanhood is not the same?

      Nope, it doesn’t. Cis women’s experience of phenotype is different than an intersex woman’s experience of phenotype, which is both different from the trans experience of phenotype.

      3+
      February 6, 2020 Reply
  41. afn afn

    how do you deconstruct the radfem trope that men are not women? if it is true that men can become women then debunk it!

    your “transmanifesto.doc” says that “Raymond [claims] transsexuals are constructs of an evil phallocratic empire and were designed to invade women’s spaces and appropriate women’s power.” If what radfems are saying is that MEN AS A GROUP are part of an evil empire and are designed to invade womens spaces and appropriate our power, AND than transsexuals are part of that group of all biological MEN. Then lets start from there. Debunk it and many will read and consider it.

    As for the Evergreen and Florence debunking, what about all the hundreds of cases of men dressing as women and assaulting women in restrooms. Many of those cases were also reported on fox news or other major news outlets. Were the details misreported there too? Men videoing women, stalking them, spying on them, assaulting them etc. If we’re all missing something, debunk it. I would read it and consider it.

    I am a radfem and i just read your whole website. We can talk about it.

    0
    April 29, 2016 Reply
    • Admin Admin

      Well, first of all, that’s not a radfem trope; it’s a TERF trope. The Lesbian Tide, Cell 16, Olivia, Sisters, etc were all radfem collectives who rejected that trope. Dworkin, Wittig, Delphy, Hershberger, MacKinnon, etc are radfems who reject the sex essentialism you seem to support in favor of class consciousness.

      As far as the file you reference, I don’t know what you’re talking about and as far as “hundreds of cases of men dressing as women and assaulting women in restrooms”, there aren’t “hundreds”; that’s a factually false statement. As for the handful that’s been reported, none of them were there because of trans nondiscrimination policies and all were prosecuted because that behavior is, and always will be, illegal.

      4+
      May 15, 2016 Reply

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