We all agree terf has not been a useful term for a long time, it implies they're feminists, it implies they're for women, it reinforces their arguments that they're on the side of women and gives them space to hide their more extreme elements.

Why not something like cis-supremacist? Something that is far-right adjacent would be useful in making people properly make this connection, especially given who they're allying with lately.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I think this acronym has always been too humourous to be taken seriously, and plays into the "its a slur" thing they once tried to do with varying levels of success.

    • pooh [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      and plays into the “its a slur” thing

      It depends on the audience, but I think sometimes slurs are useful and deserved. This is especially true for people like that who shamelessly co-opt terms like "feminist" in bad faith. Reminds me of that Sartre quote about anti-semites:

      Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

      I'm not always one of those "bullying works" people, but sometime it does work to forget about being reasonable and just go all out in rightfully demonizing people who deserve it, like fascists, transphobes, etc. I totally agree of course that "TERF" doesn't make sense, but I also don't think we should avoid smearing them for the shitbags they are. I think using those kinds of tactics to isolate them from broader society helps to make people not want to associate with them.

      As an example, "chud" is unironically a huge contribution this community has made to online discourse. It's an unpleasant-sounding word that rolls off the tongue, and connotes a high level of derision and disgust towards the right in a way that sticks with people on an emotional level. For these reasons I think, it seems to be spreading and I've already seen it show up in places I wouldn't expect. Cis-supremacists/TERFs/transphobes absolutely deserve similar treatment.

      I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but hopefully that makes some kind of sense.

      • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        :stfu-terf: made some brits mad enough to whine about twitter memes in parliament

        I think it's decently separated from the actual acronym at this point tbh. If you're trying to explain that terfs are fash-adjacent shitbags / fash in feminist-face, then yeah it's not worth risking muddying the waters. But that's just one of many audiences, when your audience is terfs you call em terfs because they're terfs and they hate being called terfs and it gets other people calling em terfs too.

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Also they arent marginalized enough for calling them this to be making them look ridiculous, they're actually representing a wave of transphobic reaction so for me it just pisses me off if someone starts going like "oooooh the icky icky poo poos are here", like shut the fuck up dont you know what the fuck they're trying to do right now?