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[–]Q-Continuum-kin 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

This isn't really true unless you consider feminism to be all the things that every person cumulatively refers to as feminism today. The radfems have always been anti-man and this exact reason is why they became the canary in the coal mine and then the front lines against TRAs. They are rooted in second wave feminism and are advocates for women's only spaces which was one of the core issues of the second wave. At the time there were often no bathrooms for women in public places and women who left the home were often harassed by men who treated them as sex objects.

The most toxic transgender people are the autogynephiles. They are sexually aroused by seeing themselves as their idea of an "ideal woman" which is basically just a mindless sex doll. These are still heterosexual men who are going to threaten women's privacy by gawking at them in the toilet with a weird sexual gaze. Radfems were second wave feminists who became rather extreme in their anti male bias and defense of women. They ended up slamming head first into the TRA autogynephiles a good decade or 2 before anyone else had caught on.

All the people today espousing 3rd and 4th wave feminist ideas are almost antithetical to what a 2nd wave feminist was fighting for and this part isn't really surprising because TRAs are best at parasitically stealing credibility from all other movements. Yes they stole terminology from intersex people and stole history from gays, but they also ran off with feminism. The AGPs in particular were obsessed with being feminists because it was another layer of being a "woman". This whole field of intersectionality is about proving how MtFs are even more important in feminism because they can layer all of these labels on top. They took the antimale terminology from 2nd wave and spun the exact same words to be about transgenderism.

[–]JulienMayfair 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Good post. I worked in academia from 1990-2010, and one of the strangest things I witnessed was how Women's Studies departments surrendered -- sometimes enthusiastically -- to gender theory and became Gender Studies departments in the 2000s. The radfems sounded alarms, but it seemed to make no difference. (As far as I could tell, true radfems never had that much power in academia.) I think part of it was that second wave feminism had accomplished many of its goals and was worried about becoming moribund, a movement without an objective. At the same time, gender theory seemed to be the cool, new, hyper-intellectual thing, so they embraced it without considering the outcome. It was a true Trojan Horse moment.

It is a strange thing to consider that women calling themselves feminists were both the biggest enablers and biggest critics of the rise of all things trans.

And it continues. At my alma mater, the vocal advocates for trans women in female sports are all women.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

was worried about becoming moribund, a movement without an objective.

Or people associated with it were worried about not enjoying the level of power and influence that they'd been accustomed to. When everyone who previously hung on your every word and opinion suddenly starts drifting away and paying attention to someone else, it probably sounds like a good idea to convert and become a fiery advocate yourself to regain what's been slipping away.

And then you get a taste of just what you can do with that new stuff, like getting entire companies to bend a knee to it and enact policies around it; sure, they do it cynically for their own profit, but they do it. Or getting to have massive sway over governmental policy, maybe to an extent greater than what you ever could manage before.

Heady stuff.

[–]JulienMayfair 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In academia, specifically, prestige carries a lot of weight, and in the 1990s, the gender theorists like Butler and others seen to be on the cutting edge of something, even if they were just selling a line of bullshit wrapped up in sophisticated-sounding jargon.

I once attended a lecture by Fred Jameson, probably the highest-paid Marxist theorist at the time. All the professors were there. Afterwards, I heard them joking amongst themselves that they hadn't understood a thing he'd said. It was all about being seen to be at a Fred Jameson lecture.