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[–]reluctant_commenter 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Completely agree. I appreciate you making a post about this; I've been meaning to for ages.

Radical feminism and transgender ideology are not so different from each other in one very important respect:

  • Political lesbians say: "Anyone can be a lesbian!" They are anti-science: they deny the reality that sexual orientation is determined by genetics.

  • Trans lesbians say: "Anyone can be a lesbian!" They are anti-science: they deny the reality that it's impossible to change what sex you are, that men can't become women.

In doing so, both groups perpetuate a bunch of harmful stereotypes. Such as...

  • Political lesbians: "Being lesbian is a moral choice!" When in reality, sexual orientation is not a choice, and there is nothing moral or immoral about being lesbian, straight, or bisexual.

  • Trans lesbians: "Lesbians are soft and just want to hold hands uwu" When in reality, we have sex drives and are just like anyone else.

[–]cryptoterfthrowTomcattin' 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Unrelated, but another similarity between radfem and trans circles I've seen online is about brain sex/gender. Trans people saying your sex/gender is defined by your brain (brain dictates entirely), and some radfems saying there is absolutely no brain difference between females and males, besides size (brain has nothing to do with it). There's an all-or-nothing approach, unfortunately, and it will lead to dissociating from your body. Or meat-sacks, as I've seen people refer to it in both camps.

[–]reluctant_commenter 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sorry, I'm way late to responding to this but wanted to because it's such a good observation to make-- yeah both approaches are so black-and-white. Splitting, it's sometimes called. It kinda blows my mind how sometimes people who are otherwise smart and thoughtful will jump to that sort of extreme viewpoint and refuse to consider any evidence to the contrary. I do understand why they do it, though... in the case of many transgender people, a lot of their sense of self-worth is tied up in this idea of being "born in the wrong body" and belonging to a community of martyrs. People really resist information that threatens their entire self-concept. The real trouble with gender identity ideology is that reality threatens it at every turn... it's gotta be a tough existence hanging your entire sense of self on of a framework of unrealistic dogma.

Or meat-sacks, as I've seen people refer to it in both camps.

Yeah which is so dehumanizing. "Bodies, bodies, bodies," like hello those are people, not objects...

edit: a word