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[–]thea 37 insightful - 1 fun37 insightful - 0 fun38 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I peaked a few years ago due to an intersection of a few different things happening. In the past, I had been a very dedicated social justice advocate (including hosting a workshop on gender and identity in undergrad - with what is now a defunct "gender"bread person) and the idea of being considered bigoted or a TERF was terrifying to me. But in 2017 following the women's march I began to see a lot of criticism of the march being cis-centric and cis-sexist. Two women in my graduate program (one of whom identies as a nonbinary he/them) were laughing about the pussy hats and uterus/reproductive pun signs and how ridiculous the idea of them were - because they weren't inclusive of transwomen and were obviously indicative of white feminism. Why, I thought, were those women being ridiculed? For caring about their reproductive rights? For acknowledging the biology we are so shamed for? Overhearing their conversation unnerved me badly although I couldn't put my finger on exactly why yet.

Around the same time, I saw this post on celeb gossip blog ONTD. Well, I saw the first post which has since been deleted. Writer Chimamanda Adichie expressed quite eloquently imo that women and trans women are not the same. We have different experiences, different struggles, and require different activism. ONTD lost its collective mind, calling her TERF, transphobe, bigot, and (incredibly) a white feminist. Some user chided another to just "go back to gendercritical" essentially calling them a troll. What, I thought, was gendercritical? That led me to the subreddit. A later post accusing JK Rowling of following transphobes on Twitter led me to Magdalen Berns. And this post Pose Actress Indya Moore starts Twitter Debate "Trans Women's Penises are Biologically Female" fully woke me up to the full ridiculousness of gender ideology.

I eventually called my younger sister (herself in undergrad at the time) to fearfully confess that I thought I might be gender critical - a "coming out" more frightening than telling her I was a lesbian a year before. She accepted it without much thought but we have since had an incredibly difficult crossways conversation about the subject. The reason? I brought up r/gendercritical getting deleted! We have mutually decided not to speak on the subject again to stay civil but that conversation pushed me to find where all the other gendercritical women had gathered!

[–]RevengeOfTheCis 28 insightful - 1 fun28 insightful - 0 fun29 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Doesn't the TRAs' ridicule and condescension towards women's reproductive imagery remind you of conservatives, lol? They both hate it!

And Chimamanda Adichie is not the only WOC I've seen called a "white feminist"! It's insane. It proves they only use the "white feminist" label to silence women. And ironically, if anyone's feminism is "white", it's obviously theirs, since all this TRA bullshit started thanks to the dominance of English-speaking, majority-white countries.

I hope your sister comes around. She sounds young, so hopefully with time she'll learn.

[–]thea 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It is truly absurd! Yet another reminder to fight against post-truth philosophies: "gay" and "lesbian" have nothing to do with sexuality, "female" is literal violence, brilliant WOC activists are white feminists... I hope you can sense my eyerolling as I type.

I think in her own time she will. There's a bit of an age gape between us and in so many ways we are in political/philosophical agreement (liberal daughters of a conservative father). Honestly I think my slight pushback ("I think this is a disagreement of definitions. What do you suppose the definition of woman is?") frightened her in a way. When gendercritical and/or radfem women have been so thoroughly slandered as fascist "TERF"s responsible for the epidemic murder of transwomen, I can see how her own sister bringing up a "TERF" talking point forced her to suddenly reckon with me possibly being one of the "baddies."

Yet I remain the same liberal sister she's always known. Nothing else to do but hold the line I suppose!

[–]RevengeOfTheCis 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I bet there's also a possibility that your sister is afraid that answering your question won't only make YOU one of the "baddies", but might make her recognize that if she thinks about the trans issue long enough to answer your question, she'll discover she's one of the "baddies", too!

And to be fair, it sounds like she's in the age group where being outed as a TERF (or even being related to one) is social and career suicide, so it's understandable she's afraid to discuss it.