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Comment by da39a3ee | Hacker News Reader

Does "being a TERF" mean that you side with women like J.K. Rowling defending traditional positions on gender debates rather than siding with a minority of vocal pro-trans activists who are deliberately causing trouble and don't represent all trans people? If so then I'm a TERF, my mom's a TERF, in fact all mom's I know over the age of 50 are TERFs. Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. So I don't think it's surprising that Dave Chapelle might be a TERF and I don't see why you're talking about TERFs as if they are somehow to be looked down upon or despised.

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> Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF.

Many non-western nations traditionally had third gender (Hijras in India, Kathoey in Thailand, many Native American Two-Spirit Identities). When these places were colonized these identities were used as a justification, and generally punished harshly. The argument that "only people in western nations tolerate this", is bad-faith, and doesn't recognize that anti-trans hostility in a lot of the non-western world was largely created by the colonial overlords this argument is meant to rebuke.

I've been excited to see a growing movement by indigenous people to reclaim their ancient understandings of identity in general, and gender in particular now that colonizers have lost the energy they had for suppression in past decades and centuries. A lot of it is just gone, but the nice thing about a living culture is it can rebuild and recover and build new concepts in the gaps.

>Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF.

I don't think you know a lot of the meanings of words you're using. Firstly "TERF" ideology is pretty new and not the "traditional position of gender debates." It branched off of recent feminist movements. Most of non-western countries are not TERFs, probably not even feminist by most current definitions, and definitely not radical.

The definition being used is in the first sentence of my post. Yes perhaps it's non standard, but "TERF" is a pejorative invented by pro-trans activists.

TERF was a term coined by TERFs who then backed away from it when it started being used derogatorily.

Oh, OK, sounds like you know more about it than me. I'm just talking about the position of retaining a concept of women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children, and being a feminist meaning recognizing that the group thus-defined has been severely mistreated by men over the centuries and to the present day. I honestly can't really believe that any of this needs explaining, it's just surreal.

> women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children

This definition also excludes:

* humans with one X chromosome (1 per 2000 to 5000 humans born [1])

* humans with three X chromosomes (1 per 1000 women born [2])

* infertile women (6% of married women under 45 in the US [3])

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X

[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/infertility/

Yes! Exactly that's the point. Biology's complicated, of course there are edge cases. That in no way alters the fact that the core concept is that a woman is an XX human.

Re infertility, don't be silly. Yes I didn't word it perfectly, I meant "XX, i.e. the sex that bears children in mammals". Do you know what anisogamy means? This stuff wasn't complicated 20 years ago and funnily enough the science hasn't changed.

> I meant "XX, i.e. the sex that bears children in mammals".

There are fertile XY females among mammals (including humans.)

Can you post a link to what you’re referring to? I don’t think I was aware that there were fertile XY females in humans.

But in any case, the point is that biology is messy and always has rare exceptions. As an engineer I’m sure you appreciate the value of simple definitions that capture 99% of the diversity accurately.

I found one paper describing one case. Is that what you're referring to? If so I'm guessing you haven't had much exposure to biology -- definitions always have counter examples in biology. The important thing is to have simple definitions that get at the core conceptual structure. "Females are XX humans; males are XY humans" is one such definition, questioned only by a small contingent of non scientific social activists in western countries in the last decade or so.

> Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF.

Not everyone outside the West is a feminist, much less a radical feminist, trans-exclusionary or not.

(Though, to be fair, most people accused of being “TERFs” are at most moderate bourgeois feminists rather than radical feminists, but still even that is pretty unusual in lots of non-Western countries.)

this is the same exact reasoning people use to justify being homophobic

No, you must surely can see that these are not symmetric: no-one questions whether gayness exists, and no-one questions whether people exist who identify with a gender that's not their birth sex. But there's HUGE disagreement across the world about whether to use the word "woman" for a person born male who identifies as female. Even if you are very clear where you personally stand on that question, you surely see that vast numbers of people across the world believe the answer is "no"?

There's no analogous question regarding homosexuality.

Going with that comparison, it's like having an especially vicious rage towards feminist women who are homophobic, despite almost everybody else also being homophobic.

Transphobia is contradictory to any definition of feminism rooted in the actual history of feminism. TERF ideology depends on the belief that trans women are confused men, trans men are confused lesbians, and nonbinary people are just confused.

Well, I've been hanging around feminist women for some decades and my perception of events is that a significant proprtion of women who used to just be called feminists now get dragged for being TERFs.

My feminists can beat up your feminists. Seriously, what is this, third grade? Yes, some people latch on to movements without really understanding them. Not everyone reads theory. It's inevitable with movements that try to be inclusive, and preferable to the alternative. They can still call themselves feminists, and I can call them bad feminists.

> My feminists can beat up your feminists.

They in fact have in the past.

I promise more cis women have attacked trans women than the reverse. Sometimes they even go after women they assume are trans! A weird side-effect of the new wave of transphobia is that even people who consider themselves cis but present in a non-conforming way are being attacked in bathrooms. And not by trans women.

Well that sounds bad if true. I have never heard of this happening and the only violence I'm aware of in my circles has been in the other direction (there is an actual criminal conviction involved).

Do you have sources/links for that?

I wouldn't use the word "confused" because it sounds derogatory. But substitute that with "trans women are men who feel that they are female", and that's a perfectly reasonable point of view isn't it? You may not like it very much, but you surely agree that it's understandable and not malicious or cruel? It is after all the position of the vast majority of people on the planet, and that of most people in the usa and western europe, except for a left-leaning contingent under the age of 40. (That statement is approximate of course)

Sounds like the TERFs have a very reasonable position that doesn't involve the rest of society changing the definitions of words based on extremely questionable socially and politically motivated soft sciences.

The difference being that pro-gay activists are not doing any of the bad and absurd things that pro-trans activists are doing: attacking freedom of speech, denying the biological basis of sex in the ape species Homo sapiens, ending people's careers who disagree with them, attacking feminism, damaging pro-gay movements, canceling people, etc. You don't get to assume that people aren't angry about the behavior of pro-trans activists or are too scared to say so publicly: they have behaved awfully in recent years.

The same people will claim bi people are damaging the pro-gay movement, so I don't put much stock in their views. Gatekeeping is absurd when the people it keeps out just want to live their lives.

Also? There are trans women who say I'm a trans woman who hides behind nonbinary to avoid the difficulty of transitioning. That position is just as harmful and ignorant, and I still fully support binary trans people. That some people are butts is not an excuse to dismiss an entire group of humans.

this is basically the “angry black man” defense - just because some people aren’t protesting in a way you approve of doesn’t mean it’s ok to hate the group indiscriminately

I hope this doesn't need saying, but it's the activists I am criticizing -- the majority of whom are not trans. I have no criticisms whatsoever of anyone on the basis of their gender identity or sexuality.

But yes, if the activist community fails to disassociate itself from / speak out against radicals who are harming people, then that activist community is going to receive criticism.

it’s not a singular community, there’s no spokesperson - this is like trying to hold “anonymous” accountable… it’s the same old rhetoric people have been using to discredit all activists

That'd also go for TERFs (or GC people or whatever), right?

I sort of agree, in that the groups are composed of individuals and it's not entirely fair to hold them responsible for things they didn't personally do. I also think if you see a political community as having some sort of problematic culture it's reasonable to say so.

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