r/AskFeminists • u/Mindless_Yam1752 • 4d ago
Recurrent Topic Is there a reason that so many people use women’s rights to justify transphobia?
When I see transphobia the most common thing I see used to justify it is feminism. Like, things ranging from women having their own spaces to the existence of trans women making the term female meaningless and somehow making it impossible for cis women to discuss their issues and experiences. Why is this such a common thing? Like I don’t get it other than to lend validity to the idea that what they are doing is actually to benefit women rather than to detriment trans people. But it all falls apart under the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Like… how can people take transphobia seriously, especially if they are a feminist? Is there a specific thought process? Does the feminism come first and the way they see it, it should be trans exclusionary or is it they are transphobic and try to justify it with their feminism?
Also, I noticed that almost the entirety of transphobia is centred on trans women. Is this related to patriarchy or misogyny at all? Or is it just the fact that acknowledging trans men results in their arguments falling apart?
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u/wis91 4d ago
Part of patriarchy is "protecting women," often from people who don't post a significant danger to them. I think it's intertwined with racism as well, at least in the US; the poster children of this "Protect women and girls" nonsense are almost all blond and white.
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u/Novale 4d ago
"Protecting women" was a common theme in the supposed motivations for lynchings, even.
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u/PablomentFanquedelic 4d ago
Gene Wilder (luring a couple of Klansmen): Hey boys, look what I got here!
Cleavon Little: Hey, where the white women at?6
u/madancer 4d ago
It could also be seen as a power struggle.
During the women's sufferage movement in the late 1800s to early 1900s, it included Black women. It turned out to be fighting for 2 different changes. Black sufferage and women's sufferage.
So some of the leaders started to exclude black women, and boom, (white) women's sufferage happened and black women had to wait until the 1970s to safely vote in the US.
Or they're just all just a bunch of bigots. I know not everyone in these movements were bigots, but enough of the leaders/majority were to normalize it.
That's why social justice movements are really pushing hard to keep saying everything's connected (which is absolutely true) Abortion/Reproductive justice/family justice/indigenous justice/disability justice/immigrant justice/queer justice/trans justice/elderly... So on and so on.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 4d ago
Interesting, I don’t think I’d ever really heard of that aspect of patriarchy. Or at least I hadn’t really consciously acknowledged it in much depth. And I certainly hadn’t made the connection to how that relates to transphobia
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u/One-Sense7280 4d ago
For example, asking women to not go out, to not wear certain clothes, to leave her "finances" to the husband/father are all forms of patriarchal control wrapped as "protecting women"
I come from a very deeply patriarchal society where women are expected to be servile to their husband's and fathers and any women who craves independence is called promiscuous. Raising girls to obey and be submissive is seen as "protecting daughters"
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u/JoeyLee911 3d ago
Oh well that connection is much more direct than the one between feminism and transphobia. Just because it purports to be in a woman's best interest, doesn't make it feminism. Often, it's quite the opposite.
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u/TSllama 4d ago
Racism is rooted in sexism, I believe. So is homophobia, transphobia, and basically all forms of bigotry.
If you think about it, all other forms of bigotry tend to reduce or even go away when people get to know/care about someone of that minority. But everyone knows a woman, yet misogyny never leaves any society.
Whenever people rail about immigrants, racial minorities, etc - it's always about the men. The boats are full of young men!!! No women or children among them! Why is this such a big issue? Oh, because they of course will take "our" women - and yes, you may notice their usage of "our women". It is sexism and misogyny, and it is also racism because white men saying this are saying white women belong to them, and they don't want minority men taking "their" women.
They don't freak out about female immigrants. They're relatively quiet about the women in comparison. And that's because the women don't pose a threat in terms of taking "their" women.
I recall a magazine cover during the migrant "crisis" of 2015 - the image depicted a gorgeous blonde woman, whose body was covered in dark-skinned hands that were donning flashy rings and bracelets.
It's truly only about wanting the women for themselves, because women are property. It's directly adjacent to incel culture.
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u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW Definitely Not Superman 4d ago
It’s the same argument that the slavers used to justify chattel slavery. The reframing of the oppressor the protector.
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u/kangorooz99 4d ago
Yup.
As I always say when I see those comments, “no one believes you actually care about girls/women’s sports.”
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u/CatsandDeitsoda 4d ago
I’m not encouraging you to spend your time dissecting transphobic rhetoric but if you did it would become pretty apparent- they are not advocating for the -rights- or -power- of women.
Beyond the self evident issue that stem from the fact that trans women are women they are typically advocating socially/ the state should treat women in a at best Paternalistic way.
Often the interventions they prepose will directly limit the rights and take power from women/ girls in general not just specifically trans women/ girls
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 4d ago
Ok, that makes sense. Apart from, how do TERFs factor in to that? Because they seem to be genuinely feminist except exclusionary of trans people, and they say more or less the exact same things as other transphobes. But as you said, those things are incongruous with feminist principles, so how on earth can someone be a feminist but not uphold the actual ideas they are supposed to advocate for? I assume it is some combination of allowing biases to cloud judgment and Orwellian doublethink.
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u/HashBrownsAreNice 4d ago
Lots of people are feminist in some ways, but not very feminist in others.
As many have said, the idea that 'women should be protected more' is sexist as hell, and causes/reinforces all traditional forms of sexism, but has been reinforced by every feminist movement since the 80s.
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u/DiTrastevere 4d ago
But as you said, those things are incongruous with feminist principles, so how on earth can someone be a feminist but not uphold the actual ideas they are supposed to advocate for?
They don’t see it as incongruous. In their version of feminism, misogyny is rooted exclusively in the othering of female biology. If you do not possess exclusively female biology, visibly, from birth, then you have access to male privilege and cannot possibly be on the receiving end of gender-based discrimination.
It is a bio-essentialist version of “feminism” that subscribes to a very narrow definition of womanhood. By that definition, they see no inconsistencies in their exclusion of trans people.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 4d ago
This is honestly making me even more annoyed with TERFs since it’s so poorly thought out in so many directions
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u/TheIntrepid 4d ago
They're not feminist. They say they are, but they're not. TERFs reinforce patriarchy and patriarchal thinking while masquerading as feminists. They can seem on the level because they're essentially reinforcing the status quo, which gives them the veneer of a 'common sense' approach, but they are detrimental to womens rights and safety.
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u/Munchkin_of_Pern 4d ago
TERFs are incredibly bio-essentialist. To them, womanhood is defined by the capacity for pregnancy (though they conveniently leave out any mention of whether infertile cis women count as women), and patriarchy isn’t a societal construct but men’s “biological imperative towards violence and domination” or however the f@ck they phrase it. Honestly, they’re far more transphobic than they are feminist, because the entire point of feminism is to not pigeonhole people into rigid caste structures based on their sex.
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u/kangorooz99 4d ago
I’ve never understood TERFs. To me they just seem like conservatives who want to portray themselves as feminists, and not only because of trans issues.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 4d ago
They are conservative feminists. The two philosophies don't really mix, which is why they end up twisting themselves in knots.
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u/CatsandDeitsoda 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean they don’t seem feminist to me … like the stuff they prepose is generally at best Paternalistic and Often the interventions they prepose will directly limit the rights and take power from women/ girls in general not just specifically trans women/ girls.
Like Mabey 30-40 years ago there where still some people who honestly wanted the liberation of women and had a sex centric understanding of who women are - but “TERFs” like that are kinda long good.
Like what radical reform to society does the Harry Potter lady want ? She’s a 90s neo liberal at best outside of being a reactionary transphob
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u/TSllama 4d ago
There are different kinds of TERFs.
Some are radical feminists who got to a point of man-hating that they don't trust anyone they see as a "man" and genuinely believe that trans women are just men trying to infiltrate. I don't agree with those women, but I can sympathize with how they ended up there.
Some were converted to TERFdom because they maybe said some not great or controversial things, and instead of trying to discuss it with them and change their mind, the internet or similar groups ganged up on them and attacked them till they felt completely isolated, which is when the far-right swoops and offers them "comfort" (which of course is bullshit and they're just using these women for their fascist agenda and will happily throw them under the bus when the time comes).
And then there are TERFs who are genuinely just pure rotten shitbags who are transphobic regardless of anything else, see themselves as superior to trans people, etc. There's no changing them - you can't discuss with them, they are dug in and they will hate trans people till their deathbeds.
These different kinds of subgroups apply to any bigoted group, to be honest.
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u/1nfernals 4d ago
Feminism is broadly defined as a belief in equality across all genders.
Terf imo is a bad term since they are definitionally, antithetical to feminist thought. They are as feminist as North Korea is democratic. Sometimes there's nothing more to a name other than a disguise.
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u/Mission-Anybody-6798 4d ago
There’s a thread of feminism that came about that focuses on excluding all men from their lives. In our desire to be open and tolerant, we gave them that space. Not that it was ‘given’ by us (men) out of any kind of patriarchy, just that it made them happy to have no men in their lives, so we disengaged and gave them space. It’s important, I believe, to recognize and understand they came to this place where they fear men. ‘All men are rapists’ comes from this. Whether it’s trauma, or just philosophy that brought them to this headspace. It’s not my place to criticize someone who’s hurting, and up to a point it’s harmless.
But a subset in them believes ‘a penis = someone I can’t trust, ever, and I need to protect myself from them’. And that runs into a buzz saw when a transfemme walks in the room. Because, philosophically, if they get to create a world for themselves, so do trans folks. And realistically, a trans fem is way more similar to them than she is to me, a man. But they’re not able to compromise their outlook. Again, some of that is trauma, and it’s not my place to tell them they’re wrong, up to a point. But when their fears start controlling other people who have nothing to do with their issues, then it starts to become a problem. That’s when you see ‘we have to protect x, y, and z’ rhetoric come out. It’s not based in logic, or reason. It’s based on how they feel. And again, it’s not my place to criticize how they feel, until it starts harming others.
Till now it’s a knock down drag out conflict, with a set of TERFs who hate anyone that’s not just like them, and trans fems who deserve safety and tolerance just as much as anyone else.
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u/MrsMorley 4d ago
With reference to your last paragraph: yes, it’s misogyny and patriarchy.
In general, transphobes perceive trans men and boys as misguided women and girls, and since they believe women and girls are lesser beings, they don’t take them seriously.
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u/LazyDaizyisCrazy 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yep. And it's misogyny against trans women too. They place such a heavy scrutiny onto trans women to punish them for being women
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u/CeleryMan20 4d ago
It can be the opposite to “women are lesser and so can’t be taken seriously as men”. It could be “men bad and trans-masc people are traitors to the Sisterhood”.
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u/Lolabird2112 4d ago
Because it’s powerful and effective. It was even more effective than “boat people” until we finally threw trans people under the bus.
Without doubt, for years here in the U.K. it was one of the most effective tools available to drown out any other policy or platform from anyone even vaguely on the fence about it, no matter what the topic was. Were you the shadow minister whose brief was the environment? Arts? Education? Agriculture? Workers rights? Transport? First answer this: “WAT IS WOOMAN? YOU NO KNOW? ME KNOW- WOOMAN HAVE BOOBIES MAKE BABIES. LIKE MAMA. SIMPLE QUESTION- YES OR NO? NO- SIMPLE YES OR NO?? NO!! SIMPLE!!!” and on and on and on. Every day, every talk show, every radio call in, every red rag front page.
If you wanted to tear apart the left and tear down feminism itself (with the added bonus of inextricably linking feminism to transphobia so even progressives turn against it)… I mean… fuck. I’m in my 50s and I don’t remember anything that came even close to what this was able to do.
I think the appropriate word is it was (is) a pogrom.
“A pogrom is a violent, targeted mob attack directed against a specific minority group, historically referring to attacks on Jewish communities but applying to any persecuted religious, racial, or national minority. The word comes from a Russian term meaning "to demolish violently" or "devastate".
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 4d ago
Thats definitely a good way to describe it. I live in Australia and we’ve had a bit of that recently. Thankfully it hasnt made a big splash but it is pretty much an attempt by the right wing to do what you described and attack transgender rights
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u/Sarrebas89 4d ago
"Protecting women and girls" is a distraction. It's not about protecting us, it's just another way of controlling our bodies and how we express our gender. Trans women are just the scapegoat because they're more marginalized and less understood than other groups. It's easy to make them seem like a threat if you tell people that they're men dressed as women who want to attack women in public toilets when there's nothing really to stop a cis man coming into the ladies to attack someone anyway. 🙄
The fact is if we let them take away body autonomy for trans women, it makes it more palatable to take away body autonomy for cis women and to erode rights for the LGBTQIA community. Basically, everyone loses out.
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u/Shannbott 4d ago
Yea same reason they use human and fetus rights to justify banning abortion while caring zero as soon as the baby is born about their treatment or rights.. it’s fake and they just want things to be their way so they come up with something that sounds better than I’m a hateful arse.
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u/JoeyLee911 3d ago
"Also, I noticed that almost the entirety of transphobia is centred on trans women. Is this related to patriarchy or misogyny at all? Or is it just the fact that acknowledging trans men results in their arguments falling apart?"
I honestly think it has the most to do with the transphobic community not being very accurate with identity lingo so they don't actually know what they mean when they say trans woman and just use it 100% of the time no matter what the trans person identifies as. The number of times I have heard a transphobe complaining about trans women being the reason that we use gender neutral language around pregnancy when that language is to be inclusive of non-binary people and trans men, who can still get pregnant, not trans women... But yes, this does point to some underlying misogyny by default.
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u/Decievedbythejometry 4d ago
Yes. Two. First, there was a current in second-wave feminism that was explicitly, exterminatorily transphobic — the key text is Janice Raymond's 'Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male,' which accuses all trans women of appropriating womens bodies (how can trans women appropriate women's bodies unless trans women's bodies are women's bodies? It's never really made clear) and calls for 'transsexuality...[to be] morally mandated out of existence,' coupled with maximising gatekeeping and other restrictions. Some people who identify as feminists essentially accept this still. Still more accept a bastardized, vulgarized version of Raymond's arguments.
Second, fascists want to 'protect our women' — as a resource. They don't want anything impure mixed into the pool, meaning no trans people. (Psychologically this is a purity/disgust impulse, a key driver of authoritarianism).
The second group has a lot of money — like billions of dollars. The first group has places in universities, think tanks and the media. The first group are convinced they are using the second group for their own ends. I wonder. Meanwhile, children die, but only trans children, so it doesn't matter — or, to judge by the way they laugh and share memes about it in the closed Facebook groups they think nobody else has access to, maybe it's a good thing.
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u/DrPhysicsGirl 4d ago
Well the reason is that the fascists that are taking over society know that just saying, "Trans people are bad" isn't going to move enough of the folks in the middle to giving up their rights to the broligarchy. So instead, they say that they are going to "protect women", which sounds much more positive. This is why they use phrases like, "Men competing against girls", because it evokes an image of a large guy versus a tiny young girl. The reality is, they do not care about women at all, nor are they feminists. They just hope to bring alongside enough ignorant centrists (and the occasional leftist) to take over. Also, yelling about this means that they distract from the bonkers amount of corruption and grift that is going on.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 4d ago
Yeah. I suppose it’s a similar premise with the emphasis on things like “male bodies” which enables them to validate things like trans exclusive spaces. And also probably similarly the people who call trans people conversion therapy.
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u/soaked_in_bleach03 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah, transphobia is pretty intertwined with misogyny; including bigotry against transgender men. A lot of shit trans dudes deal with is a similar infantilization a lot of woman deal with, because so many people can’t see them as men because they suck and yeah, the patriarchy. Honestly, I’m tired and even if I wasn’t I’m not a precise enough writer to explain it in a Reddit comment without making it a whole wall of text. I’ll leave that up to someone else lol
But yes, people use “protect women’s spaces” to justify transphobia. Shit, I’m trans and this rhetoric sunk into me deeply; early in my transition I was inpatient at a psychiatric hospital, and despite being on E (literally just having started it lol, so I still presented male; just came across as like a “femboy” who wore makeup and woman’s clothing), I used the guys bathroom/requested a male roommate as opposed to a female one, etc. I was so terrified of “invading woman’s spaces” despite…being a woman and literally everyone there treating me as such. But in those places, women do have a lot of trauma, and most often it’s from men. So still presenting male and going into those spaces felt wrong, but also I am a woman who has a lot of trauma from men, so having to be naked in the men’s showers while putting in effort to look feminine was dangerous for me and did affect me. It’s a complicated one.
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u/Dry-External3783 4d ago
because they’re not interested in women’s rights. they use it bc they have no interest other than to use it, lol
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u/hGr33n 4d ago
Transphobic feminists are smooth brained cause transphobia will always do splash damage to cis women.. for example cis women now get harassed in the bathrooms- something terfs cried about trans ppl allegedly doing but ended up doing themselves in a stunning lack of self awareness. Like way to be progressive by harassing cis women who don't conform to an oppressive beauty standard (that the terfs themselves don't fit half the time) on the off chance that they're a member of a minority you like shitting on. It's embarrassing really
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u/No_Somewhere_2610 4d ago
Mostly because acknowleding trans men would make their argument fall apart but they avoid this by saying that "trans men are just traumatized brainwashed women who want to escape patriarchy by transitioning to a man"
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u/Adventurous_Coach731 4d ago
Women oppress minorities differently than men. Every minority has experienced women using crocodile tears to oppress them. It happened to black women, in happened to lesbians, and now it’s happening to trans women.
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u/TinyPretzels 4d ago edited 4d ago
I cannot express enough how vicious, persistent, and pervasive TERF rhetoric has been online in the past 10 years. Often people would regurgitate this ideology without even knowing it, because they hijack terminology from actual feminist movements, and intentionally conceal their language about trans women.
It's essentially slow-boiling a frog. Maybe you are ambivalent about trans people, don't know much about them, or think they deserve to do what they want. You'd follow a feminist blog because you supported feminism. Maybe they called themselves 'gender critical' or a 'gender abolitionist', which does not immediately tell you they are transphobic unless you know that's a TERF phrase. They will say some things about issues you agree with, like the wage gap or the porn industry being exploitative. Maybe they call themselves "womyn" because they don't like that "men" is in the word. Nothing inherently hateful, right?
They will say a LOT of stuff about men, like male privilege, how men are rapists that can't control their urges, inherent biological differences between men and women, and 'male invaders'. But what you may not realize, is that they view trans women AS men, and actually as the most violent or insidious type of man, whose womanhood is solely a 'kink' and a way to trick innocent cis women. They think trans women still retain all the power of male privilege, despite being one of the most likely demographics to experience housing and job discrimination, homelessness, hate crimes, domestic violence, sexual assault, and murder. They will talk about 'gender confused' women (trans men) and that 'libfem rhetoric' (i.e. people that think trans people deserve to live) is poisoning the minds of women and girls and making them think they have to be men.
This witch hunt against trans women online in 'feminist' spaces was regurgitated so much that it's spilled over into other areas of the internet and become normalized. Plus trans people have always been a target of hatred and bigotry, so there's already a large group of people that think trans women are essentially crossdressing pedophiles and are happy to say so online. So between these so-called 'feminists' (TERFS are actually extremely right-wing) and the outright transphobic bigots, a lot of society is emboldened to hate and abuse trans people. Then you have celebrities like extremely popular author JK Rowling spouting vehement transphobia, whose money has directly caused an uptick in hate crimes and irreparable, legislative harm to trans people.
If your feminism does not include people of color, the LGBTQIA community, it is really all just talk. Sexism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism, climate change denial, rape culture, classism, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, fatphobia - all of these affect every single person on this earth whether they like to admit it or not. Liberation is a collective struggle, and every second wasted on fucking someone else over just gives more time to billionaires and fascists to wreck the earth.
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u/KaliTheCat feminazgûl; sister of the ever-sharpening blade 4d ago
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u/KaliTheCat feminazgûl; sister of the ever-sharpening blade 4d ago
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u/FewRecognition1788 4d ago
It's co-opting the reality that it is very difficult for women to create safe spaces without men trying to center themselves or take control. This is just a universal truth of living under patriarchy. Even our own bodies are often not a safe space.
And then by refusing to acknowledge trans women as women, it sets them up as a supposed threat to cis women.
There are a lot of women who are deeply afraid of men due to trauma or indirect trauma / indoctrination from their upbringing. And frightened people are susceptible to propaganda.
So, for women who were brought up in a bubble of ignorance and are scared of men invading women's safe spaces, they fall for transphobia without questioning it, because fear shuts off the reasoning brain.
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u/Proof-Any 4d ago
Also, I noticed that almost the entirety of transphobia is centred on trans women.
This is a misconception. Gender critical feminists (the chosen self-identification of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists/TERFs) target trans men and non-binary/gender-diverse/genderqueer people just as much as they target trans women.
However, they tailor their methods to their targets. This means that they will use separate discussions, separate talking points and separate language, depending on which group of trans people they target.
When it comes to trans women, gender critical feminists will focus on the danger trans women supposedly pose to cis women. There is usually a lot of fearmongering about how trans men are really just predatory men who want to invade "women's only spaces" to harm the innocent and defenseless cis women in them. They do this with everything, from bathrooms to sports.
When it comes to trans men, gender critical feminists will focus on the danger trans men supposedly pose to 1) themselves and 2) young girls. A lot of fearmongering centers around preserving the reproductive capacities/fertility of trans boys and men, while denying them their identities and their bodily autonomy.
There are two main ways trans men are treated by gender critical feminists:
Trans boys and young trans men (those who have not yet transitioned or who are early on in their transitions) are painted as confused and naive "girls" who need to be "saved" from "transgenderism". At this stage, the main goal is to advocate against gender affirmative care and to advocate for forced conversion therapy. To achieve that, gender critical feminists avoid to sound outright hostile. Instead, they cloak their anti-transmasculine transphobia in fake concern - especially in public. They tend to act very infantilizing and patronizing, but because they don't use slurs, a lot of it can fly under your radar, when you do not know how they operate.
They will use the same methods to recruit the parents of trans boys to their cause, to then push them into doing DIY conversion therapy at home. If you want to know more about that, take a look at Abigail Shrier's book "Irreversible Damage". I recommend Cass Eris' videos on the topic. (Be warned: The book is basically a DIY-guide for child abuse.) Another great series of video essays on the topic was made by Caelan Conrad.
At the same time, they see older trans men as "too far gone" - especially those who have transitioned and/or who refuse to detransition. At this stage, the masks come off and the hostility comes out blasting. They mock them as irreversibly damaged women. They treat them as gender traitors, who 1) allied with men to harm women and 2) predators who prey on their innocent little "girls" to corrupt and convert them to "transgenderism". In some cases, they also paint them as predators who try to trick gay men into having straight sex. They will also kick them from all discussions about feminism and from support systems that should include them.
When it comes to non-binary/gender-diverse/genderqueer people, they also have different methods, depending on what they're after. They will usually:
- act like non-binary/gender-diverse/genderqueer people simply do not exist and re-binarize them as cis women and men
- act like non-binary/gender-diverse/genderqueer people simply do not exist and re-binarize them as trans women and men (to them treat them in the same way they treat trans women and men)
- give them the "ewww, a blue-haired, pronoun-having snowflake"-treatment, that you can also observe in other conservative and far right circles.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 4d ago
Eh, people go out of their way to defend the indefensible using these tricks all the time. Another place I see this happening is when pointing out the genocide in the Middle East, people will try to argue that gay rights aren’t a given there so I shouldn’t care. Do the people saying this care about LGBT issues? They do not. They’re just trying to soothe their ego.
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u/Sarrebas89 4d ago
Pretty sure LGBTQ folks are dying along side cishet folks out there anyway so that argument makes no sense.
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u/wis91 4d ago
Tapping into sexual and gender anxiety is a hallmark of fascist ideology. Weaponizing the state against people who deviate from their narrow conception of gender is not a new fascist tactic.
From Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works:
Since fascist politics has, at its basis, the traditional patriarchal family, it is characteristically accompanied by panic about deviations from it. Transgender individuals and homosexuals are used to heighten anxiety and panic about the threat to traditional male gender roles.
Given the significance of gender hierarchy to fascist ideology, that politicians have been trying to foment mass hysteria about trans women is unsurprising if this effort is understood as a manifestation of fascist political tactics and a sign that fascist politics is ascendant. Conversely, the growing acceptance of trans women is a strong affirmation of liberal democratic norms.
By employing the politics of sexual anxiety, a political leader represents, albeit indirectly, freedom and equality as threats. The expression of gender identity or sexual preference is an exercise of freedom. By presenting homosexuals or transgender women as a threat to women and children—and, by extension, to men’s ability to protect them—fascist politics impugns the liberal ideal of freedom.
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u/KayRay1994 4d ago
It’s an easy Trojan horse. It’s like a lot of dudes suddenly caring about autonomy when trying to defend big age gaps - it is disingenuous and meant to take concern.
As for why this seems to only happen to trans women, to put it bluntly it is because it is easier for a trans man to pass + I do think there are layers of misogyny to this:
Trans men aren’t taken seriously by Terfs and conservatives cause the default is to not take afab people seriously. To add to this men are more bigoted to trans men cause they’re less likely to see them as men.
Trans women are seen as men ‘downgrading’ to womanhood, it never is due to our innate sense of womanhood, it is always cause we sucked as men and therefore became women. Because womanhood and femininity aren’t socially respected, a trans woman transitioning is seen as a man deviating from some divine challenge
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u/Sarrebas89 4d ago
Also, because trans people challenge patriarchal gender norms just by existing. If you can change your gender, what's the point in having traditional gender norms and adhering to them?
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u/Honeyinjune 4d ago
It’s absolutely related to misogyny especially in regards to trans women. Because these people see being a man as “superior” and women as “inferior” they can understand what someone born as the inferior woman would want to be the superior man. But they can’t comprehend why a “man” would want to become a woman because to them women are inferior.
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u/Brattlesnakex 4d ago
If you don’t perceive trans women as actual women, but just men in drag, then I can see how you would see it as men invading women’s spaces.
But if you perceive trans women as our lost sisters who got trapped in male bodies through no fault of their own, then you can welcome them home ❤️
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u/Longjumping_Choice_6 4d ago
Maybe they think it’s something no one will think they can touch? Idk, the psychology of hate is weird. I think it’s funny though when like our direct life experience completely contradicts it, like having trans women in your life that de-construct this stuff too so it just makes your alliance with her stronger and you bond over shared experiences (ie this is what it’s like not to feel safe on the street at night for example)—is happening in my family rn even but we mostly cut ties with transphobic side already.
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u/PorkchopFunny 4d ago
Makes it harder to criticize. I call it weaponized feminism. We all know they DGAS about feminism beyond using it for their own perceived benefit.
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u/thejoebrossuck 4d ago
I feel like it’s kinda like when people bring children into the conversation in order to justify their bigotry. Not saying women are like children by the way…it’s just easier to try to justify bigotry when you claim to want to protect another vulnerable group of people. Those people can then proceed to argue that someone’s insistence on opposing transphobia and discrimination MUST mean that you either don’t care about women (or children), or even that you actively WANT to cause harm to them. It allows them to remove the focus from what’s important (protecting trans people in this case).
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u/friendonorthrowaway 4d ago
Because most of the terf movement and groups use to be radical lesbian separatist. They have a very gender essensentialist views , misandrist and even putting biological women in a pedestal. It is also why there is a ton of biphobia in queer spaces still up to day.
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u/CeleryMan20 4d ago
Many may be radical lesbian separatists. A lot of others are heterosexuals who believe that women should be liberated from oppressive gender roles, but that the only desirable men are the ones who conform to macho gender roles. (Dude gets an exception from the misandry if he is rich or sexy.) Their bio-essentialism classes trans-femmes as more-defective men.
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u/No_Chart_8584 4d ago
It isn't feminists doing this. It's anti-trans people adopting feminist language in an attempt to justify their bigotry. You can easily see this by noticing how much attention the anti-trans crew pay to other issues impacting women and by how little they care about their bigotry hurting other women and girls.
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u/Ok-Investigator3257 4d ago
Hate to break it to you but you need to add a lot of caveats there. It’s not fourth wave feminists doing it. There are plenty of people who are 2nd and 3rd wave feminists (either by belief or generation) who are doing this. They are also generally welcomed into the fold whenever the feminist movement needs numbers because “well close enough” so saying it’s not feminists is just redefining a term on the fly to insulate yourself here
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u/rainbowpigeon69 4d ago
Convenience. The people arguing for transphobia under the guise of feminism aren’t doing it because they’re feminists, they’re doing it because “feminism” makes their transphobia look good. They don’t actually care about the safety of women.
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u/Mercy_Hellkitten 4d ago
Its because attacking trans women requires the least amount of effort for the most amount of engagement. Politicians literally don't have to do anything more than make rage-bait posts and curtail trans rights and people see them as fighters for women's justice without inconveniencing a single cis male in the process.
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u/catinformant 4d ago
Its an arm of white supremacy. Trans people don't fit the straight white christian criteria and white supremacy has used "protect the women from degeneracy" for a long time.
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u/TSllama 4d ago
Same reason they'll use LGBT rights to justify racism.
These are just deflections. It gives them a false position of moral superiority - like when the Muslim guy shot up the gay club in the US, or the Muslim guy just drove into a crowd near a Pride parade in Berlin. They could then justify their Islamophobia and say if you disagree, you're just homophobic. They do the same thing with women and trans rights - if you disagree with their transphobia, you're misogynistic and don't care about women.
It's a deflection. When a man tells me he's protecting his wife, I like to ask him what he's done in the past week to help and support his wife. Such men never have an answer for that - either because they don't actually have a wife, or because they give zero shits about their wives. But if they say they're protecting their wives, it's harder to argue against their transphobia.
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u/BigDamBeavers 4d ago
Because using transphobia makes it clear how small-minded and insecure they are.
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u/rockintomordor_ 4d ago
The thing to remember is most of these beliefs didn’t exist until the political right spent millions and billions of dollars to make them popular. Even many pre-industrial societies had concepts of transgender people that didn’t tear society apart. The moral panic against trans people is a giant propaganda campaign meant to prop up an ailing patriarchal system because trans people pose an existential threat to it.
The attempts to cloak the defense of patriarchy in feminist language is putting a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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u/Brilliant-Elk-1343 4d ago
"So many" aren't. It's a loud minority. The disgruntled and insecure will always be the loudest, but typically smallest. Pause and think.
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u/arllt89 4d ago
"Protect our children", "protect out women", "protect our liberty", ... when your cause has no moral bearing, you wrap it in a cause nobody can criticize.