• danhakimi
    1•9 months ago

    This article is really not convincing.

    like, fuck terfs, fuck the anti-trans movement, but the connection between the anti-trans movement and fascism is framed in this suuuuper abstract way that no meaningful definition of fascism would allow. It kind of just makes fascism sound like “statism.”

    There are plenty of terfs (again, fuck terfs) who are not calling for government action, but trying to exclude trans women from feminist spaces on non-governmental levels, arguing for a limiting social or academic definition of feminism or of a woman and holding exclusionary events. Fascism is an incorrect label for that behavior.

    Furthermore, to call terfs fascists implies that they are generally for other things fascists are for, like a command economy, which I don’t think is common.

    And to be clear, there is an overlap between terfs and fascists, and an even bigger overlap between anti-trans people in general and fascists. We all know the Nazis fucked up a lot of good gender research, but they were never pretending to be feminists.

      • danhakimi
        1•9 months ago

        … did you link to the wrong article by mistake? that article doesn’t really have anything to do with fascism, except insofar as most fascists also happen to be racists.

        • FfaerieOxide
          1•9 months ago

          I could link articles all day but I have better things to do than entertain (presumably) a cis guy while he plays devils advocate about the people who want my friends thrown in camps not being fascists.

          • danhakimi
            1•9 months ago

            that’s literally the first article you linked to. Do you have a point at all? You can link to articles all day, but only two of them, and only one that argues for your point at all, which I’ve already addressed?

            I’m not advocating for terfs or fascists, they’re both villains, but to say they’re the same is like saying the KKK and the muslim brotherhood are the same. Just because they’re both evil and there are some common threads between their ideas doesn’t mean they’re the same. I think we should learn how to talk about the terrible groups out there instead of just equating all of them and dancing around our own ignorance. I’m not advocating them, I’m advocating against them as strongly as I can, and you’re promoting ignorance instead of responding to the one damn point I’ve made.

            • FfaerieOxide
              1•9 months ago

              that’s literally the first article you linked to.

              Yeah I thought maybe you would read it this time.

              • danhakimi
                1•9 months ago

                I read it, and responded to it. You’ve been ignoring my response because you don’t have an answer to it. So again. The core argument that terfs are fascists is:

                To that end, Butler does a good job of laying out that the anti-trans movement ultimately is about strengthening government oversight — restricting access to medical care and generally seeking to ban LGBTQ+ people from the public sphere, which fits pretty neatly into just about every standard definition of fascism. That includes gender critical feminists, the self-professed “leftist” equivalent of the more extreme right-wing fundamentalists.

                Which, again:

                • Pretends the entire social-focused aspect of the anti-trans movement doesn’t exist, when it obviously does, and there are obviously many, many terfs focused on non-governmental oppression. The article itself describes governmental forms of oppression, but this does nothing to imply that the anti-trans movement is actually all about focusing on government oppression
                • identifies an extremely superficial relationship between two positions as both being statist and therefore being the same. The police state is also about increasing government oversight. A command economy is about increasing government oversight. The founding of the CFPB was about increasing government oversight. Having courts is about increasing government oversight. These are not all forms of fascism.
                • fails to describe fascism at all. Fascism is a specific thing with a specific definition, it’s not just the idea of having an active government. Fascism is a form of nationalism with a dictatorial government, a strong military focus, a hard command economy that exists to support the state and the military, expansionist policies, suppression of opposition to the government, denigration of the individual in favor of the collective in the form of the state… Now, the terf movement, overall, is doing some of those things, but the article doesn’t reference any of them.
                • fails to establish that most terfs, or the core proponents of the terf movement, or terfs in general, are fascists, let alone that a terf is categorically a type of fascists.

                If you have a point, then instead of linking to the same article again or linking article that isn’t about fascism, please make your point.

                  • danhakimi
                    1•9 months ago

                    who gains from making up a new definition of fascism? why do you want people to be ignorant?

                    know thy enemy.

                    I’m not nitpicking here, I’m not being pedantic, your article didn’t even vaguely touch on what fascism is. Maybe the underlying article did, but I’m having trouble imagining what the point is.