I had never heard of them until two weeks ago if that makes you feel any better, and no one i asked after i found out had heard of them either.  It doesn't seem like most people who aren't trans or deeply into feminist theory have ever heard of them.

I don't think so. Sure, maybe things will get worse for trans women in the lesbian circles for a while as these radfems come out more...but very few people actually take these women seriously in day to day life. They just see them as angry man hating lesbians.

Quote from: birkin on August 07, 2014, 09:35:03 PM
I don't think so. Sure, maybe things will get worse for trans women in the lesbian circles for a while as these radfems come out more...but very few people actually take these women seriously in day to day life. They just see them as angry man hating lesbians.

this is the first I ever heard of them. The articles that have been popping up on Huffington Post, but some of the statements I've seen about their views on transgender people is like there's been no social progress for the past 50 years and their implication of what transgender means comes straight from the sewer. I do pray they are ignored and seen as perpetrators of hate and bigotry.

I myself know little about the TERF's, mainly because I can't see wasting any of my time on people like that.  But my impression is that they're a (very) minor irritant and nothing more, especially compared to other threats such as religious fundamentalists.  I can't imagine that anyone outside academic circles would pay any attention to them.  E.g., in the little town I live in people are very friendly to me, very accepting.  You're talking about plain old people--post office clerks, supermarket cashiers, that sort--who don't have anything to do with any sort of feminism, let alone the radical crowd.  If the TERF's came into this town trying to stir up opposition against me, people would think they're the crazies, not me.

I came across one measure of their support not long ago.  Now you probably know of organizations like All-Out that often start up petitions in support of various LGBT causes.  They've got their act together, and whatever the petition, they can get tens of thousands of signatures in a matter of days.

Yet there was once an incident in which Catherine Brennan got tossed out of an LGBT pub.  Her supporters tried to get a petition of protest going.  When I saw the petition, it had been posted on line for a year and yet had only about 50 signatures.  Fifty in a year, compared to the tens of thousands our side can get in a few days.  That's the measure of support the most famous of TERF's has worldwide.

Aisla : Oh, not at all! Well, maybe a *little* paranoid, but it's really hard not to be when there's people who genuinely are out to get us...

When I look at the my circles of friends/social media, they're actually pretty often a subject, but I figure that's disproportionate to the bigger picture - that people who are worried about TERFs focus on them a lot, and so they are taking up a bigger part of the conversation than they deserve relative to how much genuine influence they have.

To me:

People who fight for rights but also deny another group rights.
Just to not have a moral  ground to stand on.
They are just as bad as the group who is denying them any rights.
They therefore will lose any desire on my part to support their rights.

TERFs are becoming more and more marginalized thankfully. But you have to remember that thirty years ago, it was TERFs who convinced the Reagan administration to remove the right to have SRS as a valid medical procedure from Medicare, and shortly thereafter all insurance companies did likewise.

They aren't that powerful now but it's always wise to keep an eye on haters because they will always try again and again to harm an oppressed group, in this case us, as trans people.

Most people recognize that radical feminists are as crazy as religious fundamentalists.  Both groups have a lot of members that say things that are absolutely insane.  When they say things such as, "Men who refuse to call themselves feminists are worse than rape threats" it's pretty clear that nobody is going to take them seriously except for other radical feminists.

I pretty much give these people the same response that I would to any other group that hates us:

Screw you
Get a life
Take a long walk off a short pier.

These wankers don't mean crap to me.

Unfortunately they do still get a hearing, sometimes in places that pride themselves on their impartiality. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cfgrj from about 10 minutes in.  Please don't follow that link if you are feeling at all delicate.

Rosie

Yeah, I'll avoid clicking on that link.  I don't go out of my way to get annoyed.

Quote from: Ms Grace on August 07, 2014, 02:53:01 PM
They are damaged haters. They're usually massive misandrists and are marginalised within feminism anyway, so no.

This reflects my exact thoughts.

Quote from: H, H, H, Honeypot! on August 09, 2014, 01:14:30 AM
Unfortunately they do still get a hearing, sometimes in places that pride themselves on their impartiality. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cfgrj from about 10 minutes in.  Please don't follow that link if you are feeling at all delicate.

Rosie

thanks, wow, that one lady sure could talk fast

After taking a class on feminism, or two (technically the first one wasn't a feminism class, but that's what our teacher taught ;P) I can say that to the best of my knowledge, TERFy people don't really understand what feminism actually means, or what the people like Beauvoir actually were aiming for when they formulated the ideas of feminism. Feminism has never been solely about women being made equal with men, its purpose is to analyze and affect change towards the reduction and alteration of othering in the modern class system.  It is about treating people as human beings, regardless of anything else, and that any traits upon this are not inherently indicative of some sort of superiority, nor of any other trait.

Will it wipe out progress? Only if we let it.

I fear the trans movement fights TERFs rather than the larger issues, because they feel it is a battle that can be won. That is also, why I feel TERFs fight trans folk.

We actually have separate causes, that only barely overlap.

The TERFs would love to abolish gender. Good luck with that. But it would not hurt trans folk to live in a genderless society. I would still want a vagina. But...

I am sure it varies a lot by location. I have not followed these intellectual debates too closely. But from what I hear from average people , read in the mainstream media and hear from politicians , the attitudes about our community have improved tremendously just in the last decade or so. Most of these terfers seem to be of older generations , often having been active in that field for decades. They still might voice their views but generally younger people coming onto the whole feminism scene are less likely to have those views at all.

Quote from: stephaniec on August 07, 2014, 01:43:17 PM
I just read an article by a trans woman who has gone to Michfest a few times since 2011 and says she's noticed a more prominent number of radfem supporters at the festival. I was just wondering how potentially damaging you feel this group is to trans rights

No damage at all really. We were here before them and we will be there after everyone has had enough of their ridiculous ideas. We have medical issues that we are dealing with. They have political/hatred/ignorance issues to deal with. We have endured whereas they have burned out some time ago and the remaining hardcore few are looking at other outlets (us for one) to hate.

Nothing to worry about. I pity them as I am moving on with life as are most of us here on Susans. I guess you would call that progress ?

Quote from: H, H, H, Honeypot! on August 09, 2014, 01:14:30 AM
Unfortunately they do still get a hearing, sometimes in places that pride themselves on their impartiality. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cfgrj from about 10 minutes in.  Please don't follow that link if you are feeling at all delicate.

Rosie

*shudders* Oh my goodness, I was listening when that popped up. It utterly stunned me. As somebody that has tried to read parts of Jeffreys book for the sake of knowing the opposition, I wrote a complaint containing some of the most horrendous quotes, asked them whether the BBC would give airtime to somebody that wrote a book claiming gay people are likely to be sex offenders or paedophiles, compared it to inviting somebody that uses cherrypicked studies to advocate for reparative therapy for sexuality, and tried to highlight the dangerous habit of equating impartiality with absurd arguments to moderation. Sadly, I expect I'll get a nonpology, if I get anything at all, or something generic if lots of people complain but I think it's worth trying, isn't it?

I'm glad you made it through the beebs somewhat tortured complaints process Lonicera. I did as well, picking on a couple of (hopefully different) quotes that I found particularly objectionable. I felt that the most unfortunate part of the debate was Jenni's uncritical acceptance of Prof Jeffreys (provably wrong) statements. Unfortunately Jenni has some form in that she engaged in some  slut shaming about a month ago.  I would hate to come across as ageist but it seems (to me) as though Jenni's ideas about feminism calcified about 30 years ago.

Rosie

My big worry would be TERFs joining forces with religious extremists.  Politics does make for strange bedfellows after all.  The TERFs need allies, and the religious extremists might find themselves using the TERF presence to validate their transparent denials that they are anti-woman.

If we see these two groups joining forces, it's going to be bad news for our community!

Quote from: Rose City Rose on August 09, 2014, 08:27:52 PM
My big worry would be TERFs joining forces with religious extremists.  Politics does make for strange bedfellows after all.  The TERFs need allies, and the religious extremists might find themselves using the TERF presence to validate their transparent denials that they are anti-woman.

If we see these two groups joining forces, it's going to be bad news for our community!

Huh religious extremists embracing lesbians to fight transsexuals.  Don't see it happening, but it would certainly be interesting