The Evolution of a TERF
From Known Trans Ally to Despised Transphobe
As I document what I jokingly refer to as my mob of cyber bullies, I’ve been doing a lot of shaking my head and asking myself how I got here. Literally somebody in Australia took time on Christmas to create a Facebook group about myself and Kaylee. In some weird circles of the internet, we’re famous! As this continues to spiral more and more out of control, and as I continue to reflect on what a ride it’s been, I figured I may as well put it into words.
A year ago, I was every woke person’s favorite trans ally… the cis person you asked about trans issues to spare requesting “emotional labor” from a marginalized person. I explained trans issues in depth, answered questions, etc. I earned this reputation in a leftbook shitposting group, arguing trans issues all day, because they were what I knew the most about… this made it easy to practice discourse.
See, I will argue for fun.
When I was 12–16, I spent a lot of time in Yahoo instant messenger chat rooms, arguing about Christianity, religion as a whole, and the Bible… with adults. As it says in Proverbs, steel sharpens steel; naturally, I got quite good at debate.
Fast forward to 2017 (me at 24) and I was spending time debating political and social issues with people on Facebook, but wasn’t very good at it anymore. Finding the previously mentioned shitposting group gave me a space where I could constantly test my ability and practice making concise, nuanced points… as well as the ability to communicate clearly and effectively to people of different demographics and debate styles.
When I engaged in transgender discourse, I played a lot of semantics games. There was a whole new language and set of rules to learn in order to effectively communicate with TRAs and SJWs! I was depressed and needed a mental diversion from real life, so I committed entirely to it. But when the scales tipped and the mainstream transgender discourse got to a point where Kaylee and I were seeing the denial of common sense and material reality everywhere we looked (sometime in 2018), we decided to see if we could fix some of it. It sounds pretty big-headed of me to say, but I knew we were respected, and we actually liked a lot of these people! I started a page, we both spoke their language, and I carefully worked to influence the intra-community discourse.
Then I went too far too fast, got cancelled on a mass scale, and got screenshots of people talking shit about me for weeks. Whatever, oops, sucks to lose the community of the groups I was mass banned from, but I took quite a few of my favorite people with me… and some people who are now my favorite people followed after.
My time in Leftbook LGBT Exclusionist spaces (TRAs and their allies) didn’t help my existing sex dysphoria (I’ll talk about that some other time), and also slapped a label (gender dysphoria) onto my feelings after having misogyny directed at me. For a brief time earlier this year, I was certain I was going to take low dose testosterone to masculinize myself a little. I was finally allowing myself to wear what I wanted, and being mistaken for a man on occasion. I figured, I wouldn’t mind any of the side effects of a short stint on testosterone, and if it would make me “pass” occasionally, I wouldn’t be treated like a gender nonconforming freak so often. In gender-speak: if I took T short term, I would pass in some circumstances, especially if I was mindful of how I dressed. A chance at escaping some misogyny seemed okay to me, and for a few weeks I was actively telling myself I would do it. Knowing it was historically such a prevalent thing in american butch culture among sex dysphoric females (some of whom would go on to ultimately identify as men) and/or working class butches didn’t hurt. It didn’t last long, because I was already actively disagreeing with most (all?) things going on in the mainstream transgender community, and actively seeking out radfem spaces. Before, during, and a little after this time, I leveraged my desire to transition to gain “lanes” in discourse, which further helped me influence the narrative of what’s often referred to as the cult.
Anyway, here I am now, getting out of the gender religion spaces and into gender critical spaces made me acknowledge the fact that I never really was going to go on T anyway, and I let go of that very quickly.
I don’t regret my extended stay in these spaces, nor do I regret playing by their rules for a time. Kaylee tried to warn me about the dark underbelly of the mainstream male transgender community, but I didn’t understand the gravity of the misogyny, homophobia, and hatred until it was being directed at me… for what? For disagreeing. For trying to compromise. For speaking about my own trauma as a lesbian raised in a conservative evangelical home. I was raised to be a “fisher of men,” I will NOT be bullied into silence.
The mainstream transgender community is waging a war on women and girls, and the hard-earned victories of feminism. The corrosion of sex-based rights and female-only spaces, as well as the obfuscation of the realities of sex, are dangerous to women.
I am a “terf” because I have seen the harm being done by gender ideologues, and I have experienced a small amount first hand; I’m a terf because if I had been five years younger, I would have found myself in spaces on Tumblr and Reddit that told me transition would be the treatment to my sex dysphoria; I am a terf because I am married to an mtf transsexual who would have matured to be a normal bisexual man if she’d gotten the mental healthcare she needed as a child, and no child going forward will get that care if we trans them first. I am a terf because we cannot truly heal from traumatic experiences and circumstances while becoming medically dependent (and sterile!) to chase a “sex change” that isn’t even possible.
I am a terf because when I met Kaylee, her “support community” was telling her that her life expectancy was 35 because she was likely to be “hate crime”d to death in Washington state. I am a terf because I in-depth researched surgical options and had to be the one to tell her the community was lying to her; the success rates were made up, the reality was far from even being livable.
I am a terf because I’ve seen the statistics, and I know that statistically male-pattern behavior doesn’t change in trans identified males; because females are detransitioning left and right and speaking out about how the community and their own medical providers lied to them. I am a terf because I will not allow lesbians and gay men to be harassed for their homosexuality.
I am a terf because I will always prioritize women, and I will never concede that trans women are female, that single-sex spaces shouldn’t exist, or that children should be medically experimented on.
I’m a terf… why do you say it like it’s a bad thing?
