As A Gender Nonconforming Cis Dyke, Ive Received A Lot Of Weird Hostility In Bathrooms. Like, A Lot.

As a gender nonconforming cis dyke, I’ve received a lot of weird hostility in bathrooms. Like, a lot. The mild but frequent stuff is when people see me, do a visible double take, and go check the sign again. The not entirely common, more aggressive stuff is when people verbally question why I’m there. More than once I’ve had someone call me “it” or confront me about my gender in public settings. I’ve had people try to tell me to leave.

But the only place I’ve had someone physically try to remove me from a bathroom was in London.

Some random middle aged woman thought that she had the right to put her hands on me simply because I don’t match her ideas of what femininity is, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened in a place where transphobia is running rampant. Of all the weird stuff that’s happened to me in pretty conservative parts of the US, they simply are not as emboldened here as they currently are in the UK; but don’t think for a moment that they don’t intend to get there.

Trans people are reason enough to fight these bigots. It’s a good enough reason. Trans people deserve respect, dignity, compassion, and protection. But if you think they’ll be satisfied with only pushing trans people back into the closet, you’re utterly deluded. They want absolute conformity, simple as that, and they’re increasing their push here too.

Any lesbian who aligns herself with transphobia is a traitor. Simple as that.

Went to block another TERF and saw a “ladies, here’s how to spot one of those sneaky stealth trans women on dating sites” post that very genuinely read like satire even though it clearly was not. One of the listed bullet points was (honest to god) “Men have longer bones than women, so check their femur length!” so I guess TERFs are really out here trying to examine people’s fucking bones like you can really tell how long someone’s femurs are through their god damn pants.

There was also a whole other section on identifying post-op vulvas (which, like…if you’ve already gotten to this point, clearly the bone length thing failed you) and one tip was like—I’m paraphrasing here—“If there’s hair near their anus they’re probably a man! Women sometimes have this too but their butthole hair is way more feminine so it’s easy to tell the difference :)” so I’m pretty convinced that whoever wrote it has never seen a naked woman in their life (cis or trans). Possibly they have never seen another human being before; it’s really unclear by the way they seem to think men and women follow the same phenotypical principles as the orcs in World of Warcraft. Like they deadass watched Pixar’s Brave and accepted the sex dimorphism of Merida’s parents as biological canon.

The other list items were like… ‘tall’, ‘has a lot of body hair’, ‘deep voice’, ‘small butt’ (?), so I guess I’m trans-woman-passing now despite being AFAB, which at least means I don’t need to worry about dating a TERF by accident.

You know what I usually like to call the assumption that women are naturally dainty and hairless? Misogyny and racism! If you have the barest ounce of material understanding it’s obvious that biological essentialism is antithetical to the goals of dismantling misogyny and achieving gender equality. But hey, don’t worry—TERFs are the real feminists here for sure! You can tell by how short their bones are.

Someone: **makes a transphobe/TERF blocklist**

Some crusty ass radfem with 0 personality: OMG, OP thank you for the free list of great people I can follow 😊 ☺ ❤

The blocklist: Full of racists/white supremacists, rape apologists, and suicide-baiters

Can TERFs just stop?

Please.

anyway I think it's funny when people accuse me of being a "crypto-terf" when like half the harassment I get is from TERFs

can yall tell the TERFs they're supposed to love me & support trans men or whatever cause I think they missed the memo