The Hind End of Space

queerrapunxel:

I’ve just had a pretty nasty encounter with some TERF-symapthising feminists (hey they might actually just be TERFs, splittin hairs right?), and among all my angry thoughts on the subject here is one:

when we share the blogs and the names of TERFs, to warn and protect other trans people, a lot of the time we’re met with the argument from non-TERF but inevitably slightly clueless cisgendered feminists, that we should try and engage with them. they’re feminists and women too, and shouldn’t we all try and work together? shouldn’t we try and engage with them and educate them on trans issues? well, harsh truth ladies. a lot of these people are very educated, they’ve read tons of feminist theory, and they’ve deliberately dissected the decent stuff and found how they can twist it and use it against trans women. if you try and engage with them, while disagreeing, they’ll tell you YOU’RE not educated enough, that you clearly haven’t read enough and your life experiences count for squat. they frame everything as survivors vs. attackers, so those who disagree with them are not counted in their books as ‘real’ survivors of abuse/rape, they are instead accused of perpetuating the very things that may have seriously damaged them. this is what they do. all the time. they don’t need educated, they need to be outed and shamed as the dangerous transphobes that they are, and cut completely from feminist movements and spaces. we do not need women who see some other women as inhuman, and go out of their way to ruin their lives. we cannot build feminism on that, on spaces where trans women cannot safely exist.