CW: discussing TERF/transphobic ideology

One of the major reasons TERF/transphobic ideology is so pervasive is that it presents the simplest wrong answer in contrast to a much more complicated correct answer.

Let me explain.

Many school textbooks and even some university textbooks still print the tongue taste map. The theory that specific areas of the tongue can taste specific things. And the joke it that it's just wrong.

The reality is that there is *some* truth in the theory, but it is functionally incorrect, at least 1 in 3 people's tongues to not conform to this model, and it doesn't take the extraordinarily broad range of human experience into account.

But it's in text books.

It's in my high school text book.

It's in my first year medical text book.

So...?

This is where prescriptive knowledge and descriptive knowledge immediately fall at odds with one another.

Consider the way sex and gender is discussed at school, in text books...

It completely focuses on dyadic cisgender heterosexual function of the body. Completely. It ignores people with sexualities that aren't heterosexual, it ignores intersex people, it ignores trans people.

But you'll still get people who point to a high school text book and make a ring with their one hand and point a finger with the other hand and make obscene gestures and whine about how their textbook says peepee goes in hoohoo.

This is the easy answer. This is the <if you'll excuse me> the 'textbook' answer. It's easily repeatable. It's easily accessible. And that's because that's what this information's job is. To tell the most simple story in the most understandable way.

But humans aren't that simple

Sexuality, gender, biological sex itself isn't that simple. Even our distinctions between biological sex and gender are not that simple and no distinction satisfies anyone at all because these terms were built around white dyadic cishetero patriarchy.

And, the simplest answers are often wrong, because they function by way of explicitly excluding people who don't fit into a very particular narrative, and when that narrative belongs to white dyadic cishet men... it's going to be a broad stroke of exclusion there.

Take human genetics at it's most basic. You'll get these transphobes screaming their heads off about XX and XY, when completely ignoring the swathes of humans who a) don't have XX or XY genomes...

b) People who have XX and XY genomes but hormonally or epigenetically didn't present primary or secondary sex characteristics usually assigned 'male' or 'female' at birth at a glance usually by doctors who don't know 99% of this shit.

[ie. you know, intersex folk who are about as common as red haired people]

c) Transgender people.

And the thing about TERF ideology is that it's grounded in the white dyadic cishet male story. The simple story, the easy story, the wrong fucking story. Because the white dyadic cishet male story is rooted in the abuse and oppression of others.

The term is Kyriarchy coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (1992), was a term to explain how patriarchy affects people beyond merely gender lines, but also... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy 

"...encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, speciesism and other forms of dominating hierarchies..."

This is why we say TERFs aren't feminists when they weaponise wealth injustice against trans people, racism against trans people, the prison system against trans people, etc etc etc...

TERFs love the simple story of the petite infantalised pure white cis little girl whom they fetishise as 'politically lesbian' to be pedalled off for their cause. It's no leap of the imagination to draw a straight line between this ideology and stories of TERFs trafficking women.

They have this story of womanhood as the patriarchy, as the kyriarchy tells it. It's the textbook womanhood. It's the simple story. The easily repeatable story. And it harms trans people so much.

It harms trans women because they are the antithesis of the kyriarchal story of what women "should" be.

It harms trans men because they are the antithesis of the kyriarchal story of what men "should" be.

It harms nonbinary people because we fuck up the kyriarchal story of gender roles.

TERFs playing into this single story is the reason why they treat trans people the way they do, they treat trans women like men because to them men are foundationally, biologically, essentialistically evil.

It explains the way TERFs treat trans men, the reason why TERFs infantalise and erase and silence trans men, because TERFs think this is how women should be treated. Women should be silent so trans men should be too.

<Please note, I'm not agreeing with TERF logic here, just repeating it for the sake of my argument>

It explains why TERFs treat nonbinary people the way they do, as freaks, aberrations, rare things that can be cast aside for the kyriarchal hegemony.

TERFs have bought so extremely into the kyriarchy that they don't see a way out of it.

For many of them they've dug a hole so deep they'll never see the sun.

This is why the lived experiences of trans people don't matter to them.

This is why the reality of trans people don't matter to them.

This is why they'll engage so willingly in stochastic terrorism.

To them, trans lives are disposable for the kyriarchy.

I don't really have an answer for you here.

TERFs are by no means distinguishable than any other rabit hate group, they're indistinguishable from Nazis because they push the same ideas, the same rhetoric, the same lies, the same violence.

I believe TERFs can be saved from this cult of theirs, but for TERFs leaving their cult, they need to come to a very swift and burning realisation that trans people might never trust them again, and they should still do the work of fixing the harm they did.

This goes double for trans people who push TERF bullshit.

This is a fantastic tweet by @jcdandaly that illustrates 'the simple' story quite effectively, how a simple but wrong idea becomes easier to digest for bigots rather than the more complex realities faced by people, which is why bigots repeat it so easily https://twitter.com/jcrdandaly/status/1294377768071974912

Enters example number 1. Account which has existed for less than a month provides the simple answer that excludes vast numbers of people and that lies about the frequency of intersex people. Easily repeatable but wrong. Also blocked.

Also another way that a simple wrong story can be very misleading is how TERFs misrepresent numbers. Even if intersex people were that rare (they're not), 0.01% of the world's population is still a fuck ton of people because that's how big numbers work.

And even if the numbers were even less generous (they're not) intersex people are still fucking human and don't deserve the stigma and medical abuse they receive.

While we are here. Most conservative estimates of intersex people's numbers start at about 1 in 300 people (0.33%) and some ambitious estimates put that figure much higher at 1 in 70 people (1.4%).