Full offense but identities such as genderfluid, asexual, aromantic, queer-platonic (like wtf) aren’t LGBT. You are LGBT if you are a lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Also you’re LGBT if you’re trans. Nobody ever got killed for being genderfluid, aromantic, etc.
Bsshg, nobody can tell if you’re genderfluid unless you’re wearing a pin saying I’m genderfluid (even then people just think ya weird). You legit just look like ya androgynous and going through your emo phase. I used to call myself genderfluid and then a transboi, and then a nb girl. I was just a lesbian w/ internalized misogyny.
welp we’ve entered word for word terf rhetoric now, abandon ship
If you’re not being murdered at this very second you’re not valid uwu
(their former urls are birobotic, aromasterchief, transkrem, bimonsters, zemyatta and robotcas)
don’t go and harass them, this is just a warning to people they’ve given off a lot of red flags and generally dismissed transmisogyny
made a post trying to reappropriate the idea of terfs to create the spectre of “Terfs 2.0″: “women and fem aligned NBs” who support trans women but are oppressive to trans men and masc NBs.
convinced that any transmisoginistic reading of their post was putting words in their mouth even after they admitted their post was vague and unclear
blocked me and @anarchotransfem and claimed they were being abusive, again just for asking them to clarify the meaning in their poorly worded post
whatever the hell happened in this reply they sent immediately after they blocked me, claiming that transfems being concerned about transmisogyny in their post was a purposeful attack on their mental health, that this was a concerted effort to gang up on them. it’s basically textbook “how not to react” after people tell you that you’ve fucked up.
even after the original post got clarified, they seem to genuinely think fem aligned NBs are oppressing masc aligned NBs on the basis of masculine alignment, which is, convoluted to say the least
while a lot of their posts about how trans men’s access to male privilege is highly conditional is stuff i agree with, it does start to give a bad impression when coupled with; their dismissal of transmisogyny, their near constant assertion that cis women are their main oppressor on the basis of gender (cis women specifically rather than cis people generally), and their assertions that cis women and trans men have identical experiences of misogyny. basically, it starts to look like the common truscum assertion that trans masc people can’t possibly hold power over trans women (and the corollary, that trans women who talk about transmisogyny are misandrists). they outright claim “trans people have no power” in reference to trans men having no social power for being men.
tbh i don’t think they’re even aware that what they’re saying could have these implications, and by no means do i think they’re actually a truscum or absorbing any truscum rhetoric. please don’t harass them, this is just to get the word out to other people not to interact with them concerning transmisogyny, because it looks pretty futile and i don’t want any more transfems to have to deal with their childlike behavior.
the rest of this horrible interaction and related screenshots under the cut
This is…..some pretty gross accusations and more than one of your “receipts” is presented with a misleading description that shows you have a personal, petty agenda against this person. Seems like you’re mad they blocked you and that you didn’t understand them, and scrolling their blog there are a lot of explanations that say the opposite things of what you’re implying about them. Idk, this callout seems iffy and less about “warnings” than being vindictive to me
I would say that it is indeed a personal agenda! As personal preservation from a person that keeps on talking over transfems, and reinforces trans men’s male entitlement would be hard to not take personally!
And yeah like not all of these are straight up bigoted things.
But I am highly concerned with how this person keeps on writing really vague shit and trying to make misogyny about men with such desperation.
Like, I’d highly just advice people to stay away from this person instead of trying to excuse them, because this person is clearly in some kind of echo chamber of transmasc self-victimisation, and latches on to the “you all are using radfem rhetoric!” argument while using radfem rhetorics.
like look at this person’s blog. they’re clearly trying to shape trans men as having authority on misogyny. and i don’t know about you, but when they keep on insisting on crypto-radfem rhetorical use, they really should be analysing how their words and actions might be do similar things when they pull the same shit terfs do!
if you say misogyny is about trans men, maybe you should analyse what that says about trans women. how do trans women not have male privilege within a frame where trans men and all dfab people are targets of misogyny, and should be the authority of it.
this all isn’t an attack jfc. it’s concern. because this person is making no effort to look at their own words and how their words carry implications.. even when multiple transfems independently go “hey.. what the fuck.. have you maybe thought that the rhetorics you’re spreading carries a transmisogynistic undertone”.
Please stop saying “transfem” when you mean trans women, for frik’s sake
Hi I’m transfeminine and affected by transmisogyny but also not a trans woman
I got blocked for this reply omfg
hey hang on. my op was literally about gaypeachs refusing to address transmisogyny that impacts nonbinaries. literally their rhetoric was specifically aimed at ‘fem nbs’ with no regard for transmisogyny or power dynamics. limiting the subject to binary trans women would just make my post incomprehensible, and is basically the same as the problem this post was meant to address; erasure of transmisogyny aimed at non-women/non-binaries. gross.
name a more cursed Discourse than: don’t use (umbrella term of people affected by a thing) when you mean (specific term that doesn’t include everyone you’re talking about)
bonus: accusations of erasure when you’re relying on erasure to make that statement
bonus bonus: the actual worst is likening inclusive terms to some kind of plot. like “wlw is destroying lesbians”
@eyeshadow2600fm it’s pretty standard shorthand to refer to trans women and nonbinary people who experience transmisogyny. it’s meant to be about gender experience and i’ve never seen it intended to imply any of us have to be feminine but if you have a better word i’m all ears
‘fem’ literally means feminine, and I already know people who see this to be exclusionary
I am not a dictionary and I’m not an inventor of words, I’m just saying this isn’t good
cool, that’s entirely unhelpful. i’m not misgendering nonbinary people because you’ve read into a word
there’s this whole subsection of cis (and sometimes fem aligned nb) feminist we need a fucking term for, because they’re a step below TERFs in that they don’t preoccupy themselves with attacking trans women and act like they’re accepting of nonbinary people (to an extent,) but they’re still hugely dangerous because they aren’t overly critical of the feminist rhetoric they consume and support, leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,) and a good deal of them are also SWERFy or “kink critical” and a whole myriad of other gross things, and the only real separation between them and TERFs is they’ll probably have “no TERFs allowed” in their descs and accept trans women so they can use them as pawns in their arguments. But the danger of them is very real and they are literally the gateway to TERF acceptance, as much as they get angry at you for saying so. We need to be equally as able to point out this danger and their bullshit, because so far saying “you’re being transphobic” is getting us nowhere because they respond “only to men who are our oppressors we love trans women uwu” and get away with it.
Forgive me if I’m misreading this but why would radfem ideology primarily hurt trans men and why would transfem nb people be perpetrating it
Hey gaypeachs, I respect you and think you say some good shit and what not… But I have to say, this might be one of your iffiest posts?
Sometimes it feels like you’re talking about trans women, and like you just edited to cis woman last moment, and with the addition of fem nb, I’ve got to say that this post just looks very explicit in this sense.
I’m having a hard time reading it, due to it being a wall of text, so I might be misunderstanding this… But it sounds like you are trying to place trans men at the bottom here, and like they’ve been put there by non-men?
“leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,” this is also a bit of a confusing section..?
But either way, what cis woman is more accepting of trans women than trans men to a point where it has become such a huge problem that we’ve got almost terfs 2.1?
Am I missing something?
i’m also struggling with this post. i’m sure this is about those types that have “terfs don’t follow” in their bios and are pretty sure they’re fighting for trans women but end up consuming terf rhetoric anyway (especially if it’s rhetoric aimed at specifically nonbinary people and less obviously trans women, like ‘mogai gender’ shit) so i think i got the basics.
but i’m really struggling to follow this mainly because you’re sorting nonbinary people into “equivalent to trans men” and “equivalent to cis women” which aren’t really categories that have any use, aren’t categories that i see nb people applying to themselves and don’t have actual real world implications. and you’ve made a post that looks like a big question mark to anyone applying this dynamic to camab or non-TME nbs
my point to writing it that way is that is how these people are treating nbs (as basically men or basically women, and that anyone non woman/fem aligned is basically men to them.) sorry if that wasn’t clear
So “basically women” enbys are equivalent to cis women in perpetuating this type of transphobia primarily against trans men and “basically men” enbys?
wow you’re so good at twisting words.
they didn’t say that. they didn’t say that fem aligned enbies are basically women, or that we’re attacking anyone. they said that those terfs (cuz im going to call these cis feminists terfs like i always did) are the ones imposing their bs binary on us all and attacking anyone they don’t see fitting their vision of women, cuz they don’t actually believe we enbies exist, and that means trans men and masc aligned men. and that means gatekeeping the sapphic community from anyone who so much id as masc, like genderfluid ppl, for example, or agender ppl who use he/his.
recent example of this: that one enby person who im not gonna name who was accused of lesbophobia and reduced to “basically a man” by cis shithead fake feminists, so they could bash them as they would do a cis man, which is fucking gross, but super convenient cus no one is gonna try to debunk accusations of lesbophobia thrown at a man. basically, misgendering so they can attribute nonexistent man privilege to ppl who don’t actually have it, but could pass as having it to shitty ppl, aka trans men and masc aligned enbies.
they’re not saying anywhere that we fem enbies are perpetuating that shit. they’re implying, rightfully imo, that we’re being misgendered to “basically women” because that’s the only way those new waves terfs will respect us, by treating us like misguided ppl who should just say we’re females or some shit. like. fake tolerance of trans ppl because they can still assimilate us in spite of everything.
I get the premise. except this post is nearly confusing than the OPs.
“cuz they don’t actually believe we enbies exist, and that means trans men and masc aligned men.” “nonexistent man privilege to ppl who don’t actually have it, but could pass as having it to shitty ppl, aka trans men”. these quotes read like something from an alternate universe. they’re fucking incomprehensible. you’ve called all trans men nonbinary. you’ve said “man aligned men” whatever that is, aren’t men. I get that you’re talking about misgendering NBs to suite cis feminists needs but, you’ve kind of misgendered every trans man who isn’t also nonbinary.
but reading around that. i do really appreciate your last paragraph in pointing out how it affects transfems, and it does make sense of the OPs sentiment for me. I still think u’ve got to use something other than TERF to mean “cis feminists and NBs who engage in tactical misgendering” though if they aren’t transmisoginistic. can i suggest ‘binarist’ or something. though i think this does fit under exorsexism already
that’s…..actually all I was trying to say. that we need a term other than “TERF” for these people. and “binarist” is specific to binary enforcement on Native people, so that term actually does not work. but I was informed there are existing terms for this that I’m now looking into.
yeah cool. i’m glad we agree. please next time think about the implications you could be implying about trans women and transfem nbs, or get ask to bounce your ideas off of us first on posts like this. because “there’s a new kind of terf who love transfems but hate trans mascs” is kind of gross in the context of how actual terfs and truscum operate, by minimising transmisogyny and trying to say “””only bio females could ever be oppressed””“. you know like the old “transmisandry” rhetoric. and not assuming hostility on our part too would be great.
If your bad hot take is tme people are being oppressed the most in the trans community by transmisogynists you should at least make it compact enough to read
there’s this whole subsection of cis (and sometimes fem aligned nb) feminist we need a fucking term for, because they’re a step below TERFs in that they don’t preoccupy themselves with attacking trans women and act like they’re accepting of nonbinary people (to an extent,) but they’re still hugely dangerous because they aren’t overly critical of the feminist rhetoric they consume and support, leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,) and a good deal of them are also SWERFy or “kink critical” and a whole myriad of other gross things, and the only real separation between them and TERFs is they’ll probably have “no TERFs allowed” in their descs and accept trans women so they can use them as pawns in their arguments. But the danger of them is very real and they are literally the gateway to TERF acceptance, as much as they get angry at you for saying so. We need to be equally as able to point out this danger and their bullshit, because so far saying “you’re being transphobic” is getting us nowhere because they respond “only to men who are our oppressors we love trans women uwu” and get away with it.
Forgive me if I’m misreading this but why would radfem ideology primarily hurt trans men and why would transfem nb people be perpetrating it
Hey gaypeachs, I respect you and think you say some good shit and what not… But I have to say, this might be one of your iffiest posts?
Sometimes it feels like you’re talking about trans women, and like you just edited to cis woman last moment, and with the addition of fem nb, I’ve got to say that this post just looks very explicit in this sense.
I’m having a hard time reading it, due to it being a wall of text, so I might be misunderstanding this… But it sounds like you are trying to place trans men at the bottom here, and like they’ve been put there by non-men?
“leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,” this is also a bit of a confusing section..?
But either way, what cis woman is more accepting of trans women than trans men to a point where it has become such a huge problem that we’ve got almost terfs 2.1?
Am I missing something?
i’m also struggling with this post. i’m sure this is about those types that have “terfs don’t follow” in their bios and are pretty sure they’re fighting for trans women but end up consuming terf rhetoric anyway (especially if it’s rhetoric aimed at specifically nonbinary people and less obviously trans women, like ‘mogai gender’ shit) so i think i got the basics.
but i’m really struggling to follow this mainly because you’re sorting nonbinary people into “equivalent to trans men” and “equivalent to cis women” which aren’t really categories that have any use, aren’t categories that i see nb people applying to themselves and don’t have actual real world implications. and you’ve made a post that looks like a big question mark to anyone applying this dynamic to camab or non-TME nbs
my point to writing it that way is that is how these people are treating nbs (as basically men or basically women, and that anyone non woman/fem aligned is basically men to them.) sorry if that wasn’t clear
So “basically women” enbys are equivalent to cis women in perpetuating this type of transphobia primarily against trans men and “basically men” enbys?
wow you’re so good at twisting words.
they didn’t say that. they didn’t say that fem aligned enbies are basically women, or that we’re attacking anyone. they said that those terfs (cuz im going to call these cis feminists terfs like i always did) are the ones imposing their bs binary on us all and attacking anyone they don’t see fitting their vision of women, cuz they don’t actually believe we enbies exist, and that means trans men and masc aligned men. and that means gatekeeping the sapphic community from anyone who so much id as masc, like genderfluid ppl, for example, or agender ppl who use he/his.
recent example of this: that one enby person who im not gonna name who was accused of lesbophobia and reduced to “basically a man” by cis shithead fake feminists, so they could bash them as they would do a cis man, which is fucking gross, but super convenient cus no one is gonna try to debunk accusations of lesbophobia thrown at a man. basically, misgendering so they can attribute nonexistent man privilege to ppl who don’t actually have it, but could pass as having it to shitty ppl, aka trans men and masc aligned enbies.
they’re not saying anywhere that we fem enbies are perpetuating that shit. they’re implying, rightfully imo, that we’re being misgendered to “basically women” because that’s the only way those new waves terfs will respect us, by treating us like misguided ppl who should just say we’re females or some shit. like. fake tolerance of trans ppl because they can still assimilate us in spite of everything.
I get the premise. except this post is nearly confusing than the OPs.
“cuz they don’t actually believe we enbies exist, and that means trans men and masc aligned men.” “nonexistent man privilege to ppl who don’t actually have it, but could pass as having it to shitty ppl, aka trans men”. these quotes read like something from an alternate universe. they’re fucking incomprehensible. you’ve called all trans men nonbinary. you’ve said “man aligned men” whatever that is, aren’t men. I get that you’re talking about misgendering NBs to suite cis feminists needs but, you’ve kind of misgendered every trans man who isn’t also nonbinary.
but reading around that. i do really appreciate your last paragraph in pointing out how it affects transfems, and it does make sense of the OPs sentiment for me. I still think u’ve got to use something other than TERF to mean “cis feminists and NBs who engage in tactical misgendering” though if they aren’t transmisoginistic. can i suggest ‘binarist’ or something. though i think this does fit under exorsexism already
there’s this whole subsection of cis (and sometimes fem aligned nb) feminist we need a fucking term for, because they’re a step below TERFs in that they don’t preoccupy themselves with attacking trans women and act like they’re accepting of nonbinary people (to an extent,) but they’re still hugely dangerous because they aren’t overly critical of the feminist rhetoric they consume and support, leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,) and a good deal of them are also SWERFy or “kink critical” and a whole myriad of other gross things, and the only real separation between them and TERFs is they’ll probably have “no TERFs allowed” in their descs and accept trans women so they can use them as pawns in their arguments. But the danger of them is very real and they are literally the gateway to TERF acceptance, as much as they get angry at you for saying so. We need to be equally as able to point out this danger and their bullshit, because so far saying “you’re being transphobic” is getting us nowhere because they respond “only to men who are our oppressors we love trans women uwu” and get away with it.
Forgive me if I’m misreading this but why would radfem ideology primarily hurt trans men and why would transfem nb people be perpetrating it
Hey gaypeachs, I respect you and think you say some good shit and what not… But I have to say, this might be one of your iffiest posts?
Sometimes it feels like you’re talking about trans women, and like you just edited to cis woman last moment, and with the addition of fem nb, I’ve got to say that this post just looks very explicit in this sense.
I’m having a hard time reading it, due to it being a wall of text, so I might be misunderstanding this… But it sounds like you are trying to place trans men at the bottom here, and like they’ve been put there by non-men?
“leading to the spread of heavily radfem concepts that actively ends up with them harming trans people (trans men and non fem aligned nonbinary folks mostly,” this is also a bit of a confusing section..?
But either way, what cis woman is more accepting of trans women than trans men to a point where it has become such a huge problem that we’ve got almost terfs 2.1?
Am I missing something?
i’m also struggling with this post. i’m sure this is about those types that have “terfs don’t follow” in their bios and are pretty sure they’re fighting for trans women but end up consuming terf rhetoric anyway (especially if it’s rhetoric aimed at specifically nonbinary people and less obviously trans women, like ‘mogai gender’ shit) so i think i got the basics.
but i’m really struggling to follow this mainly because you’re sorting nonbinary people into “equivalent to trans men” and “equivalent to cis women” which aren’t really categories that have any use, aren’t categories that i see nb people applying to themselves and don’t have actual real world implications. and you’ve made a post that looks like a big question mark to anyone applying this dynamic to camab or non-TME nbs
Lesbophobia is real. It’s the prejudice, bigotry, and oppression that exists at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny. Let me say it again: Lesbophobia is real. Hate for lesbians is real.
However, it is essential to acknowledge and understand that the term lesbophobia has been co-opted by a loud and growing contingent of LGBTQ women in communities that share troubling ties and ideology with factions that exist inside the alt-right movement — worse, the dangerous dogma that’s attaching itself to word the lesbophobia has found a new home at AfterEllen.
I first encountered the word lesbophobia in response to the post I wrote called Queer Women Take Over The 2016 Emmys. Her Story got a revolutionary nod for Outstanding Short Form. Kate McKinnon took home a trophy for Saturday Night Live. Sarah Paulson won for The People vs. O.J. Simpson. And Jill Soloway scored another victory for Transparent. On social media there was a small outcry that I hadn’t chosen the headline “Lesbians Take Over the 2016 Emmys,” despite the fact that Kate McKinnon was the only winner who explicitly identifies as a lesbian. (In fact, Sarah Paulson is on record saying, “I refuse to give any kind of label just to satisfy what people need.”) The reasons the handful of dissenters gave for my decision to call the Emmys queer was that I am a lesbophobe, an espouser and executor of lesbophobia.
To be very honest with you, I shrugged it off. The most unwinnable battle we have at Autostraddle is labeling LGBTQ people in a way that satisfies everyone. It’s such a constant struggle, we laid out an explanation about labels in our official comment policy. Recently on a Pop Culture Fix, I wrote about the new queer characters coming to The Good Wife spin-off. One of them will be a lesbian, according to the show’s writers; the other’s sexuality has not been labeled. So, I said, “The Good Wife spin-off will prominently feature two lesbian, bisexual, gay, homosexual, or otherwise queer-identified women.” Just to cover all my bases because it was almost Christmas and I was tired and I didn’t want to have to argue about labels. And yet, the cries of lesbophobia came in again. I got a couple of emails, a dozen or so tweets. Essentially: “Lesbian is not a dirty word! Saying queer is lesbophobic!”
So, on December 26, I tweeted something I think is a true, fair, and accurate analogy:
Yelling “lesbophobia!” when someone says “queer” is like yelling “war on Christmas!” when someone says “happy holidays.” Come on, y’all.
A couple of days later, AfterEllen’s official Twitter tweeted at me and said: “@theheatherhogan oh, agreed. It’s like yelling “biphobia!” and “transphobia!” when someone says lesbian.“
“AfterEllen is three weeks shy of transforming their website into an online support group for victims of wyt lesbian genocide. This is honestly the most ridiculously entitled white lesbian coated petrified bullshit I have seen in a long time. And if you don’t think white supremacy has reached out its dirty little fingers and touched a few groups of marginalized white folks, well. Keep an eye on their feed here and there. Keep an eye on their former writers. They aren’t just trying to Make Lesbianism Great Again… They are asserting their strength. They are erasing the visibility of the defectors. They are sliding their salty little asses into spaces and feeds where they must know they are clearly not wanted or cared for. I was never a fan of AE but this new image they’re building for themselves is a little too Nazi-adjacent for my galaxy Blaaaack aaaass.”
Dickens was, of course, correct. And her point was proven once again the very next day when an article blasted out to the 125,000 followers of AfterEllen’s official, verified Twitter account cried: “Lesbian Spaces Are Still Needed, No Matter What the Queer Movement Says”. It suggests that trans women and bisexual women’s desire to be included in queer women’s spaces is to blame for the decline of lesbian-specific spaces, which lesbians need to stay safe from trans and bisexual women.
That kind of rallying cry feels very much like the “Save Our White Neighborhoods” rallying cry of the alt-right, so I went on a deeper dive to try to find the origins of what I called “the lesbophobia movement” on Twitter. And what I found was more horrifying than I ever imagined.
A few weeks ago AfterEllen — which everyone presumed dead after the company that owns it effectively fired everyone, including longtime editor in chief Trish Bendix — announced it had acquired a new editor named Memoree Joelle. In October, Joelle, tweeted a Change.org petition that she’d signed called Take the L Out of LGBT. The petition is a direct response to a previously failed petition that called for GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, HuffPo Voices, The Advocate, etc. to Drop The T from LGBT. The most popular supporter of the petition is a guy you might know called Milo Yiannopoulos. He signed it, tweeted about it, and dedicated 3,000 words to it in a post on Breitbart. Thanks to Milo’s urging, Matthew Hopkins, one of the main perpetrators of Gamergate, wrote a post called “Why #GamerGate Should Help the ‘Drop the T’ Campaign” on his personal blog. Hopkins called it “one of the most politically important campaigns of our generation.”
In addition to signing and tweeting about the petition, Joelle commented her approval. When former AfterEllen writer Elaine Atwell brought Joelle’s support of the petition to light, Joelle’s comments disappeared from the petition, and so did Elaine’s byline from the hundreds of articles she wrote over the last five years at AfterEllen.
The comments on the Change.org petition mention lesbophobia multiple times and equate it with trans activism, as do the subreddits that discussed Joelle’s contribution to the petition. “Part of lesbophobia is hating us for our same-sex attraction, but another very big part of it is hating us for our rejection of men,” one user wrote on /r/GenderCritical/. (Trans women are almost always referred to as men on this particular subreddit.) Another Redditor on /r/actuallesbians decried the “male entitlement and lesbophobia” of protesting the petition. “The moment we talk about your rape culture or your male violence we’re ‘transphobic’ or ‘biphobic.’” (The men in this comment are actually trans women and “rape culture” refers to the constantly espoused idea in TERF communities that trans women are male predators.) The lesbophobia tag on the blog GenderTrender is a deeply disturbing trip down an anti-trans rabbit hole. The lesbophobia tag on the website 4th Wave Now is horrifying; it equates allowing trans kids/teens to come out and live openly as their true gender with child abuse, ideas that are — again — shared with Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos. Reddit and Tumblr are absolutely flush with lesbians using the word “lesbophobia” to back up the ideas presented in these “Drop the T”/“The L Is Leaving” petitions.
These spaces that use the word “lesbophobia” to attack trans and bi women or people who use the word queer share more than than an ideology with Breitbart. You’ll find them saying things like “trans women want to colonize the lesbian community.” You’ll find them using the phrase “SJW” (meaning Social Justice Warrior), a pejorative term coined by the Men’s Rights Activist movement. And you’ll find a lot of talk about how the correct “biology” is the thing that allows people access to the protections of the majority. And lots and lots and lots and lots of just truly sickening propaganda leveled at trans and bi women. It’s very much about creating an in-group and scapegoating an out-group through tried and true tactics that have been — I’m sorry — utilized by Fox News and the alt-right for years.
I wrote about these things on Twitter, and you can read Dickens further unpacking them here and here. (You should read that last thread before you jump in here and call her “my black friend.”)
Look, we didn’t just wake up one day with an openly racist, openly sexist, openly xenophobic, openly ableist, openly anti-semitic president in the White House, appointing the leader of the most dangerous white supremacist website in history to his top advisor position. We watched blatant and unabashed white supremacist language and ideas slowly take over the movement from the inside. We watched the most powerful scapegoat the most vulnerable. We watched Fox News make heroes out of the white men who murdered unarmed black children and terrify people with their whole War on Christmas bullshit and equate all Muslims with terrorists. A Nazi didn’t walk into the West Wing and have a seat; the slow creep of white supremacy laid the path for him.
Vox did a fascinating interview with former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes earlier this year. He quit over Trump. But the whole interview is him agonizing about how, to him, the GOP had always been about fiscal conservatism and states rights and he believed in that ideological purity so deeply that he fooled himself into believing that’s what the GOP was about to everybody, despite the fact that he saw the white supremacy and fascism slowly gaining power and momentum until it took over.
To realize, first of all, that you’re part of a movement that was not the movement you thought it was, that you’re aligned with people that you didn’t really understand you’re aligned with, and to realize that everything that you thought about the conservative intellectual infrastructure was really piecrust thin. You thought you had this big principled movement and then suddenly along comes Donald Trump and you realize that it was just was just the pastry on top. So I think disorienting is a great term. Disillusioning is not too strong either.
To me, what we’re talking about with lesbophobia is a similar thing. Is lesbophobia a term some lesbians have rallied around to protest the prejudice and bigotry that exist at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny? Yes, of course. Absolutely. HOWEVER. I had to go searching for people using the word lesbophobia like that because my entire experience with the way the word kept popping up in my timeline and in my comments and in the comments sections of other websites was to decry the use of the word queer and to espouse anti-trans and anti-bi ideology. And that includes every single person who landed in my mentions on Twitter when I started talking about this. I did not click on a single profile without finding anti-trans, anti-bi language; or ask a single person if they believe trans women are women and have them say yes.
If you are a woman who is using the word lesbophobia to NOT do those things, and you’re more angry at me for pointing out that it’s happening than you are at anti-trans/anti-bi people who have hijacked its meaning, I … I truly don’t understand. What’s happening at AfterEllen is terrifying me. Maybe the website is technically dead, but it still has clout and power and it’s using it to push some really dangerous ideas about lesbian exclusivity, and those ideas are shared by a very loud group of people who use the word “lesbophobia” on their blogs, social media, Reddit, etc. to vilify the people (like me) who stand against them.
I don’t want to cause anyone pain. I don’t want to make anyone feel unsafe or unloved or unaccepted. I DO NOT BELIEVE LESBIANS ARE NAZIS. I AM A LESBIAN. If you truly think that’s what I was saying when I unpacked these ideas on Twitter, I’m sorry. It was not my intention.
I do think, however, that it’s imperative for you to open your eyes to how the word lesbophobia is being used to persecute and oppress trans and bi women in very vocal and influential spaces that have direct ties in ideology and language with the alt-right.
An incredibly important read.
Via Crystal; language in propaganda is important, and often subtle.
Lesbian trans woman here and I appreciate this post, and I really hope TERF infiltration stops sometime soon
Does straight even mean anything at this point? Same with het/hetero? Like it feels really pointless of a term at this rate, at least as an out-group term.
But you see how people so inconsistently apply either to people or behaviours, they’re simultaneously treated as really self-contradicting things.
And I just feel like they’ve lost their meaning, in the same sense cishet has. I mean with cishet, people seem to have come to use it to avoid talking of cis privilege while somehow acknowledging it.
In a societal sense, we detach straightness from heterosexism, and we seem to have this odd idea of what straight privilege means. People often seem to call non-straight people for straight, more than they call straight people for straight.
I mean seriously, look at this site, straight as a term is completely detached from straightness. People have painted this idea of straight people of a diversity and openness much larger than that of the LGBTQ+ community.
People talk like straight is a bi person who’s dating certain people, straight is a non-binary person who doesn’t fit oddly specific social theories.
And they talk as if straight people would see someone with no attraction or attraction to various genders and go “yup, this person is for sure straight”.
People talk as if society centres heavily traumatised and erased people, closeted people… That “closeted” is a centred class in society, not “literally cis straight person with nothing to hide” being a centred class.
Straightness is talked about in such an odd way, I feel could only happen if you detach your way of talking about it from straight society… It’s like we build our theories off our own, and set up frames within frames… And it goes in a loop until it looks nothing like what we actually experience.
And of course, I’ve over-read it, I’m too literal, and I am obviously naive enough to think people actually mean this shit… But let’s be real, either it’s ignorance, or people are choosing to adapt skewed views of straightness…
Or at the very least? They’re choosing to spread skewed views of it. Views that benefit an ignorant agenda, an exclusionary agenda that punches down on people.
Like come on, since when was straightness so open and fluid? Shit is so high performance, that I really, really feel like they’d not accept or idealise the things people claim they do.
A lot of acceptance is momentarily or per-luck, not by LGBTQ+ people being the straights 2.0 (sometimes). Maybe, just maybe… The real straight people…. are straight people?
Straight has really lost its meaning, hasn’t it?
“People have painted this idea of straight people of a diversity and openness much larger than that of the LGBTQ+ community.”
I like this point a lot. There is definitely a problem when ‘straight’ starts to be used as an umbrella term that has more gender and sexuality variation then the actual LGBTQ+ community.
Especially when actual straight people/society certainly isn’t a safe place for all the people being shoved into the ‘straight’ label
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