content warning, I'm going to be glib and talk about misogyny and transphobia in a joking manner - I don't mean to harm anyone, and I don't want to upset anyone.
OK hear me out: trans-exclusionary radical feminists, at least the actual radfems who are often middle-aged and still stuck in second-wave feminism, should love gender-affirming care ... doesn't it do exactly what they would love to do to men? Like, a lot of these women are cultural feminists, they essentialise men and women and view women as superior and men as inherently violent, oppressive, and bad. At least that's been my experience.
So, for example, if a man wants to suppress testosterone and take estrogen, shouldn't TERFs' fear about violence from men and the (admittedly simplistic) narrative that testosterone is responsible for that violence and aggression motivate them to embrace enabling as many men as possible to suppress their testosterone and chemically castrate themselves with estrogen?
Even if they don't believe that makes the man a woman, shouldn't they believe it's an improvement?
It just sounds like a revenge fever-dream concocted by second-wave lesbian separatist: a woman goes about secretly injecting abusive men with estrogen to calm them down ... it just sounds like a revenge fantasy they would be into.
The plot of The Gate to Women's Country literally centers around this fantasy of castrating men to make "good" men.
And if that's not compelling, I know they love the stories about chopping off dicks - come on, if they really believe trans women are a bunch of men, shouldn't they support access to gender-affirming care like vaginoplasties that do exactly that?
TERFs should support gender-affirming care even if they don't believe trans women are women. If men are the enemy they should be the biggest fans of chemically castrating and cutting the dicks off men.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
yeah, agreed - TERFs are mostly not feminists
but I do think the anti-trans movement that styles itself as feminist picks up a lot of average people who are like I'm describing, middle-aged second-wave feminists, and they are duped into anti-trans positions. However, the ideological core of TERFs is now anti-feminist as far as I can tell.