the “terfs can’t be lesbians” post rubs me the wrong way and i can’t quite articulate why
afaik the op isn’t transfem, otherwise it would be an entirely different context, and the fact that they aren’t kind of makes me feel like the post is trying to distance itself from intracommunity transmisogyny. not that i’m any authority on the lesbian community, but the same goes for almost any community within lgbt circles
This site’s culture around transmisogyny is condensed around the premise of being “anti-terf” to the point where if you argue that someone is being transmisogynistic there is an immediate backlash because of how they associate such with being a radfem. It’s performative and we need to stop creating these posts that boil down to “i dont like radical feminists” and maybe boost the actual theory and sources trans women create and provide about these situations and realize how transmisogyny doesn’t come from a single group.
I understand the problem of people performing anti-terf politics while not addressing wider transmisogyny but I don’t think it’s right to just slap that accusation on a post just because it was written by someone who is not a trans woman and I certainly don’t think it’s a reason to dismiss a good post.
I get the impression from this as if people that are not trans women couldn’t write about terfs at all? which is fucked up. Like, they’re here. If you’re a vocal queer person on Tumblr, you will run into them. All of us run into them and see their hate and it’s disgusting. We are allowed to call out how shitty they are. TERFs are constantly trying to dominate lesbian Tumblr, maintaining a culture hostile to them is essential.
@dreamslikefallenleaves is a non-binary lesbian on Tumblr, so of course they encounter terfs and of course they get pissed about it and of course they post about it. Dreamslikefallenleaves also posts about other trans issues a LOT on their blog. Most posts focus on non-binary experiences because hey, those are their own experiences, but they also share work about transmisogyny and work by trans women.
I could find nothing of the sort on your blog @genderists . You don’t seem to tag much but google didn’t yield much either. It’s quite possible you do lots offline or that you have a whole side blog or whatever else but the same could be said for dreamslikefallenleavess. So why the accusations? I don’t wanna turn this into a game of ‘who has the right to speak the most’, I just wanna point out that that’s kinda what you seem to be doing.
The post about terfs was great because it was spot on. It put into words the basic truth that if you define your sexuality by loving vaginas, your sexuality does not meet the definition of the word ‘lesbian’.
I don’t think calling a post performative without reason or claiming that it was written by the wrong person is helpful, it just shits on a great post for no reason. A non-binary lesbian wrote a great post that helps keep their space hostile to TERFs. In itself this is a very good thing. If the same person tolerated transmisogyny from non-TERFs, I’d call them a hypocrit and I’d call their terf hate performative, but there is nothing of the sort going on here.
QueerAnarchism 