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FOUNDING MEMBER
P E R S P E C T I V E : A D y k e A b r o a d
Using “TERF” Randomly
& Other Signs
Your Misogyny Is Showing
BY KELLY COGSWELL
Don’t get me started about
all of you die-hard Berners
who swore in Election
2016 that you would love
to vote for Elizabeth Warren rather
than Sanders if only she were running,
but still supported the ineffectual
blowhard “socialist” man in
2020. No matter that in his 30-year
run in the Senate he has been the
primary sponsor of just seven bills
that became law, two of them renaming
post offi ces in Vermont.
Neither will I mention how pathetic
it is that you queers gave Sanders
and his surrogate AOC a pass when
they stumped for some nice white guy
against Sharice Davids, the Native
American dyke in Kansas — a perfect
example of why all our talk about intersectionality
is 100% Grade A crap.
But to get to my point. The real
problem for me is how the whole LGBTQ
community has made a virtue of
hating “TERFS.”
I don’t defend the position of actual
ones, that very tiny number of socalled
“Trans Exclusionary Radical
Feminists” who oppose all trans identities
and would be happy to see trans
people disappear. But there’s bigotry,
too, in the zeal with which you attack
them. As if they were somehow worse
than the straight, male transphobes
who actually hold power. As if these
women who collaborate with the right
wing in the political sphere are even
more terrifying than the men who actually
stab trans women to death and
leave them in dumpsters.
The real proof of your misogyny,
though, is how you quickly you popularized
the word TERF, equating it
with lesbian. Like how conservatives
have managed to equate the word
Muslim with terrorist. Now, all I have
to do is mention lesbians and somebody
trots out the sneery word TERF.
Like my fag friend who brought it
up in the comments responding to a
cheerful Facebook post about dykes,
and when I asked why, why, why he
had no explanation. None. It’s Pavlovian
now. Ubiquitous. You should be
so proud.
I’ve known something was wrong
since that time a few years ago when
I interviewed a trans woman in Turkey,
and out of the blue she starts
slamming all lesbians as TERFS, as
if I wasn’t there in front of her trying
to support her work. Then there
was that article I wrote for Gay City
News about queers in Chechnya — in
which I took care to mention that it
wasn’t only gay men getting targeted,
but trans women, and lesbians, too.
And a reader commented that it was
suspicious that I didn’t mention that
trans women can be gay women. And
in a second comment reported that
she’d googled me and discovered that
I almost always use that evil word
lesbian, instead of queer, so I must be
a TERF.
And let’s not forget the time that
after actual TERFS interrupted Pride
in London a few years ago, a real life
friend implied that I didn’t have the
right to denounce the lesbophobic
backlash unless I swore allegiance
to trans people fi rst, beat my breasts
and apologized for what somebody
else had done as if I were guilty by
contagion. Which was interesting, because
the same (former) friend would
never ask a Black person to apologize
for the homophobes in their community,
never ask a Muslim to denounce
random terrorism, but dykes are
fair game. Because we’re apparently
all fucking TERFS. Who should be
punched. Who should be raped. Who
should be burned alive. (Threats regularly
tweeted to TERFS.)
I’m transfi xed, too, by how the
LGBT people and the oh so queer
community ignores this violent language,
these fantasies about harming
females, raping us, killing us, by
saying it’s no big deal. It’s only TERFS
exaggerating — and besides, women
online talk about killing men, too.
Yeah, it’s hilarious how you overlook
the glaring difference. Namely
that men — that males — so often do
rape women, men so often do kill us
in the real world. As for women, well,
the only time we kill men is when
they’ve been beating the shit out of us
for years. For that matter, I’ve never
seen anyone remark on the proportion.
I know policy can kill, but do
you really think that when someone
questions your identity or interrupts
a parade you should have the right
to… torture and kill them?
Now when I see the word TERF, it’s
a fl ag. Not of transphobia, but of sexism,
of misogyny, of a deep DNA hatred
for women, the fear that a woman
or a dyke somewhere is stepping
out of line. A fear that makes women
among some of the worst enforcers.
Just last week, a gaggle of cis lezzies
and bi women kindly warned me away
from “TERFY” writers and “TERFY”
articles, which I increasingly embrace
the more the concept of transphobia
is expanded to include any lesbian
who admits to liking “boobs and vaginas
and not penises.” In short, to
having a sexualorientation.
Because now a vocal minority of
trans activists and their allies have
declared that gender is everything
and sex is defunct. In fact our bodies
mean nothing in the world, and
the only thing that matters is gender
— the soul and the brain. Our sex is
merely assigned. No matter that the
random implications of “assigned” is
really just accurate for intersex people
who most researchers estimate
at being close to 0.018 percent of the
population, though one outlier puts it
at more.
I’d laugh it off, but the tail is wagging
the dog, and queer theorists are
the ones making laws now, swapping
in gender for sex, and perhaps
unintentionally, by erasing sex, are
also erasing sex-based gains, and the
sexism that they were designed to
remedy — i.e. sex-based discrimination,
maleviolence, male privilege and
misogyny.
Their latest theoretical pearl is
that, because there is no sex, there
➤ TERF WAR, continued on p.23
March 12 - March 25, 2 22 020 | GayCityNews.com
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