Do you actually understand what radfems believe? I don't think you do (and no, vague callout posts don't count)
*record scratch*
This is the point where you benevolently instruct me on what radical feminism “really” is, invoking a no-true-scotsman fallacy for the vast majority of radical feminists I have encountered, educating me into a benevolent version of radical feminism that is “just” about recognizing women as an oppressed class, “just” acknowledging biology, “just” about protecting the lesbians that are under imminent threat of being raped by men that use trans inclusive legislation to “access women’s spaces.”
At which point I am supposed to go, “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I guess the whole TERF thing is piggybacking on a long trend of people hating feminism for no reason!”
Unfortunately for you, you’re not the first person to try this, nor am I unfamiliar with the so called Radical Feminists, and I know that what probably appears and feels like innocent and important critical thought is the mouth of a deep pit with hateful bigotry, batshit assumptions, and oppressive, restrictive bio-essentialism at the bottom of it.
You possess only benevolent concern for trans men, until you start calling recipients of mastectomies and hysterectomies “ruined” and “mutilated.” You just want to stop abuse, until a woman is alleged to be an abuser, and this doesn’t seem possible to you. You just want to acknowledge the reality of biology, until a person born with two X chromosomes and a vagina and labia who also has facial hair and a deep voice wants to use the bathroom, and it feels to you like she shouldn’t.
The radfem understanding of “biology” and its importance is wrong. There is no need to “affirm” or “deny” biology. It just is. No matter what your opinion on the nature of intersex conditions, a strict biological sex binary in human bodies objectively does not exist. We are talking about science. There is no “should.”
To consider the conditions necessary for reproduction, or anything that is evolutionarily advantageous, as a moral imperative is bonkers. It is not “better” to conform more to a sex binary. God is not watching. My uterus does not “make” me a woman because it’s not “for” anything. I potentially CAN become pregnant but biology does not “want” me to, evolution has not made me “for” being a woman, evolution does not think or want or intend ANYTHING. Categorizing people based on which size gametes they could produce under ideal circumstances is 100% a choice.
To judge human reproductive biology as a moral ideal is survivorship bias; yes, we “have to” have “biological sexes” (which really doesnt mean anything outside of having differentiated gametes) to cOnTiNuE aS a SpEcIeS. No, this does not mean that everyone does fall into one of two categories, or that everyone should, or that we should care about the consequences if we don’t. “Humans have two sexes except for disorders” is not the objective statement you think it is. On a cosmological scale, life itself is an anomalous disruption of equilibrium. We are disorder.
Y'all are like 4% away from being far-right evangelicals in MANY of your ideas. When you assert that trans men only “identify” as men because they’re unhappy and you’re only benevolently concerned about them, you’re repeating something that homophobic fundamentalists very much do say about lesbians (and the most threatening thing about lesbians to these fundamentalists is their gender non-conformity!) The same group of people cites human reproductive biology as evidence that no one is “really” gay.
And of course, if you take producing eggs as both the fundamental defining quality of a woman and as more sacred or defining than anything else, and you feel entitled to the bodies of trans men to the extent that you think you have any say at all in what medical procedures they do or don’t have, you fundamentally don’t support reproductive rights. You don’t support the rights of women to their own bodies, you don’t support the rights of men to their own bodies, and there are indeed many self-identifying “pro-life radfems,” who have taken this idea to its logical conclusion.
Do not do this. Stop. Your ideas about trans people are repugnant, don’t get me wrong, but fundamentally this stuff hurts everyone. I would not be a “radfem” even if it wasn’t for the bigotry toward trans people. The whole ideology is ass backwards. And it is stuffed to the brim with people who are willing to hurt anyone, even those they are supposedly defending, in order to hurt the people they hate.
