Thread by @unknownmetric

#peakterf is managing the cognitive dissonance to state simultaneously that trans women aren't women, AND that ~some~ trans women aren't the problem in bathrooms. This is 100% based on passability as a woman, in turn based on idealized beauty standards. Such rad, v. feminist. 1/x

Here's the lovely part. Let's say for a sec that hormonal transition is minimum required to make a trans person even provisionally valid (which it totally fucking isn't, but it seems to be in their heads, so). They're also vehemently opposed to children who know they're trans 2/x

doing anything remotely related to transition, even just taking puberty blockers (NOT trans hormones) while they figure it out, as well as backing shitty rhetoric that requires trans folks to be massively dysphoric—and KNOW it, which not all of us do—to seek any kind of care. 3/x

Turns out, one of the most common ways people who transition in adulthood are invalidated by doctors, society, and the media, besides the dysphoria requirement, is not knowing they were trans as kids. They even have a bullshit name for it: rapid-onset gender dysphoria. 4/x

(cw: sui)
Well, no shit it's rapid-onset, you took gender-nonconforming kids and shoved them into a box until they forgot they were trans. That repression doesn't last a lifetime—unless it causes someone to take their own life—and eventually something's going to give. 5/x

(Then you have people lamenting the increase in trans-identifying kids, as if it's a sign of a massive liberal conspiracy. But it's exactly the same as the number of left-handed people "suddenly" spiking once we stopped forcing them to be right-handed in schools.) 6/x

All that is background for this statement: TERFs have built a perfect, end-to-end repression engine for denying trans people their identities, their bodies, and the commons. 7/x

The TERF strategy:
1. Deny trans kids their transition pathways.
2. Make overcoming gender repression a pathology.
3. Invalidate trans adults for not "knowing" when they were kids.
4. Create strict passability standards, which adult transitioners have a harder time meeting. 8/x

It's perfect—now all you need to do to be welcome in a woman's restroom is know you were trans before puberty, have a parent who will let you transition despite being labeled as abusive for it, fight profound bureaucracy to get surgeries you may not even want, and be pretty. 9/x

Women have face and body hair. Women have pot bellies. Women have complicated genitalia. Women have inabilities to menstruate. Women have strong jaws. Women have masculine presentations. ANY woman has a chance of experiencing these things. NOT just trans women. 10/x

TERFs are not just "thinking of the children." They are NOT thinking about the safety of women. They are NOT trying to affirm or uphold womanhood. They are NOT rational, not logical, not scientific, not even really "gender critical". They'd burn down everything to get at us. 11/x

Feminists: think about who you keep company with. Who you invite to your events. Who you allow to assume your label. Who you allow to have a platform. And how TERFish rhetoric shows up in every corner of society. People who aren't friends to trans people are NOT real feminists.