I probably shouldn’t be surprised about this, but a lot of people missing the point here. the joke isn’t “terfs calling Sigourney weaver, a hot woman, unattractive” and tbh I think seeing this post and going “terfs are so stupid because Sigourney weaver is obviously gorgeous” is even potentially harmful or at least hurtful
the joke here is terfs seeing a picture of Sigourney Weaver, famous actress and cis woman, but because they were told its a picture of a trans woman they’re immediately yakking about how ‘clockable’ she is
this pride, I’d like to remind everyone how thoroughly the aspec community was obliterated on here. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the whiplash of going from literally creating a tumblr to learn more about aspec identities and being so excited to finally have a place where I wasn’t broken—to watching the lgbt community and surrounding ‘allies’ utterly destroy what we had, watching blogs delete or quietly re-closet themselves, and being afraid to put anything regarding asexuality or aromanticism in my bio. I started blocking people once I started having nightmares
it’s still so hard to get people to take aphobia seriously, and ‘aphobe’ is constantly treated like a joke. I get anxious about mentioning my qpp in anything, I’ve seen how far people will go to tell someone their relationship is fake or ‘cringe’. sometimes it seems like noone remembers what it was like before, when we weren’t afraid. that we came looking for acceptance, and were thrown out on our asses for being largely neurodivergent.
I’m so glad we’re rebuilding, but I’ll never forget what that felt like. what it feels like
okay. i’ll bite. tell me, how does it hurt everyone? if you can come up with a good reason, i’ll stop.
this is not a bad question and i want to give it a good faith response:
i think if you look at the history of feminism, there are a lot of examples of radical & separatist feminists who vilify other women based on their proximity to masculinity. even when men aren’t around, butches & other masculine (or “”“”“masculine”“”“” if you’re critical of those definitions) women are stereotyped as dangerous, toxic, unfairly powerful, etc. when you place a moral weight onto distancing yourself from “maleness” as much as possible, then even in the absence of Actual Men, the women who seem most-similar to them end up being punished for it. if you care about women, surely that must mean all women, including the ones who are brash, buff, horny, loud, aggressive, “masculine,” whatever, right?? hopefully we’re on the same page on that, that at least women deserve to exist as themselves in the full range of ways a woman can be.
i also think that a philosophical framework that places Gender as the primary hierarchy that runs the world assumes– like, to pick a specific example– that white women are incapable of having power over nonwhite men, which to me seems, uh, dangerously racist. this misunderstanding of power differences is what leads people like Central Park Karen to think it’s justified for her to call the police on a black man minding his own business in a public space. even viewing her with empathy and assuming that her fear was genuine, it’s still a fear that came to exist in the context of racism. if you think that all men are inherently dangerous, it leads to racist conclusions– like, white supremacists in the past have lynched black men for daring to even look white women in the eye, racists already paint all poc men as rapists, do we really want a feminism that cosigns that?? i don’t!!!!
i don’t know if you give a shit about trans people but even andrea dworkin made room for us in her theory, sort of, so it’s worth a shot: vilification of men also leads to problems for trans people, for the same reasons it causes problems for butch women– trans women are stereotyped as too masculine, other women police them for excuses to say that their emotions and their appearances are Too Masculine. trans men fret about whether they can be trans and good people at the same time, ppl who want to take T are made to fear that it’ll ruin their minds and bodies, etc etc
i’m a trans man, and while i assume zero radfems care about my emotional experience in the world, i do feel solidarity with all women re: things like abortion access and bodily autonomy and like whatever-you-call-the-struggle-to-get-doctors-to-take-you-seriously, and i want to be able to fight with them for our shared needs without having to sacrifice my gender in the process or endure humiliation and derision and distrust. a lot of the Actual Fucking Laws that ruin the lives of cis women also completely screw all trans people– radfems are super keyed into issues of medical and reproductive justice, which is dope & which i also really really need, but i can’t really show up side by side with people who literally don’t want me there!!
like i really sympathize with radfems and i think yall are right about more shit than you get credit for, but i think the biggest misstep i see from radfems is that a lot of yall blame individuals for structural problems. like every individual man is supposed to bear the weight of all of patriarchy’s sins, even tho he was born into this shitshow against his will, same as you. you can’t imagine a future where we get to have gender without hierarchy, and in order to obtain that future, you have to exterminate most of the planet– this is never going to happen, its cruel and inhumane to wish for it, and fantasizing about it ad nauseum is a waste of your fire. like really there’s nothing that you can say that will get past the fundamental failure that, in order for radical feminism’s goals to be met, you have to valerie solanas half the planet lmao. there is literally no one constructing a path forward to that future so you just end up punching whatever masc-type person is within reach out of rage, and that’s never gonna liberate shit
so that’s why it’s bad for everyone, because it takes a bunch of fired-up feminists who could really whoop ass and convinces them to waste time dunking on every individual man who annoys them instead of promoting a real picture of a better future for humanity. bc it encourages women with privilege to treat marginalized men like trash. in fairness, this is also mostly what contemporary liberal feminism does, so it’s not like you’re failing in some unique way just because you’re more radical about it. but there are a lot of men and man-adjacent-types who do have inner lives and deserve humanity and who share your struggles and would stand with you for the things that really matter, even the things that don’t affect them personally!! but you have to drop the revenge fantasies to make that happen, and most radfems i’ve seen won’t do it.
Legit, the one time I post something genuine about myself, and fifty bigots come for me because being who I am attacks their fragile sense of reality. So fucking done.
