Transphobes, Gay And Straight
By: Ephrom Josine
Tags: Transgender, Transphobia, LGBT

TERF: Trans people Enjoying life? Reeeeeeee For I do not — @VaushV, Twitter, 1/1/2020

On 12/1/2020, Actor Elliot Page (formally known as Ellen Page) announced that he was a female-to-male transgender induvial, and planned to start transitioning into a man. Considering Page previously a lesbian in a same-sex marriage, this managed to anger all the right people. If one frequents certain spaces of lesbian culture, you’ll notice one of their biggest concerns is that the straights and the men are coming in to steal from them. Previously, the massive boogeyman was bisexual women, who were going to cheat on them with men or something. Now, the big fear is that female-to-male trans-people are going to erase the very concept of lesbianism — somehow.

Mind you, this theory is not only promoted by lesbians. J.K. Rowling once warned that “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.” Of course, nobody is saying that “sex isn’t real,” nor is anyone even saying that gender isn’t real, just that biological essentialism for gender is nonsensical. Mind you, many of these people love to strawman supporters of transgenderism, usually under the warning that allowing transgenderism will “erase the concept of woman.” Of course, feminists used to fight for women not have their own “unquiet lived experienced” because they knew that was often the excuse for misogynic behavior. Some of these people will admit this, which can sometimes have rather humorous results, such as when The Handmaid’s Tale author Margret Atwood said she supported trans-rights, and a TERF replied with “How did the people in Gilead know which people to make into Handmaidens?”

My favorite self-own happened at the end of 2018, when the transphobe Brittany Pettibone released a book titled What Makes Us Girls: And Why It’s All Worth It. Considering What Makes Us Girls does not simply say “the fact we have XX chromosomes,” I think it’s fair to say Pettibone has given into radical gender theory.

Conservative views on gender often fall apart for this reason. Many of them view transgenderism or non-binary identities as impossible because men and women are simply biological realities. However, egalitarianism is also impossible because those two categories are not just biological realities, you silly materialist, but also vague metaphysical properties. Of course, something cannot be both physical and metaphysical, as metaphysics is quite literally about things that cannot be observed physically.

But that doesn’t mean some gay people aren’t taking the bait. When Page came out, lesbian YouTuber Arielle Scarcella warned that “Some lesbians are internally misogynistic and want to be anything other than a woman,” after tweeting “I still wonder where all the lesbians are going.” Of course, if one were to call Scarcella “internally misogynistic” for her anti-feminist views, then such a complaint would be dismissed by her. The same day, she tweeted out “Lesbians are an endangered species,” (actually the percent of people in all forms of LGBT, lesbians included, have gone up over the past several decades) warning about the future extinction.

On 12/5/2020, after days of doubling down, Scarcella tweeted “I can tell you from direct experience that most women attracted to women are no longer calling themselves lesbians. They’ll use ‘queer’ ‘bi’ ‘pan’ or ‘NB’ more than ‘lesbian.’” (By the way, if someone is pansexual or bisexual then they are not a homosexual, by definition.) But even if this is true, so what? Not as many people identify with the same sexual orientation Scarcella has, and this is suppose to be the end of the world? What are these bisexual and pansexual suppose to do, identify as lesbians even if they are still attracted to men? Is this the gay agenda I was once warned about?

Mind you, the only reason I pay any attention to the LGB Alliance (a group of gay people who do not want to be associated with trans people who Scarcella has expressed support for) is because they have goals which actively set the movement back. Historically, the point of activism has been to be allowed greater acceptance into society at large, but these LGB Alliance people at best seem to wish to be segregated from it. A sympathetic article about them in Spiked (carrying the headline “The Trans War On Same-Sex Attraction”) made this clear when it noted “Today there are no longer any mainstream services, groups or even dating apps that are exclusively for those who are same-sex attracted.” “The result is that,” they warn “this year, ‘Chiyo Gomes’ — a female who has had a mastectomy — is a finalist in next year’s Mr Gay UK competition.” (Oh no!)

Of course, one can clearly see why segregating yourself from society is a bad way to gain rights. Some of the more worried might think this is the idea, especially considering The Heritage Foundation brought many TERFs to a 2019 panel to rail against The Equality Act. The event in question was moderated by Ryan Anderson, author of What Is Marriage? Man And Woman: A Defense, a book which only exists to argue against gay marriage. The book became rather popular among social conservatives, and was even cited by Justice Samuel Alito in his dissenting opinion on United States v. Windsor.

In November 2019, The American Mind, an offshoot of The Claremont Institute, ran an article titled “TERF Wars: How Radical Lesbians Are Braver Than You Are.” Here is the most telling section of the article:

One of the biggest online refuges for these women — gay and straight — is Gender Critical on Reddit, with over 45 thousand members. Spend a few minutes on it and you start to wonder if you are at a conservative Christian message board, if conservative Christians had anything to say about the culture.

But even if that is not the purpose of this new group, the fact that it would have this end result is rather horrifying. The fact is, when I can connect your own social liberalism with blackjack and hookers to Samuel Alito — something has gone horribly wrong.

Alito endorsing them (albeit indirectly) actually brings my argument full circle. Alito has said in the past that despite his opinion that Obergefell v. Hodges was wrongfully decided, he would have no issue with states legalizing same-sex marriage if they so choose. Again, gay people are allowed to exist I guess, but only in certain states. (Rick Santorum once took that one step farther, saying he wouldn’t want to ban adoption for gay couples nationwide because gay couples only exist in certain states.) Personally, I find the idea of only having rights in certain parts of this country to be rather horrifying, but the LGB Alliance would likely consider that preferable.

One must wonder why they’re doing this — I believe it’s because they’re raging egotists. The idea that their acronym or their flag no longer just represents them, but now this new icky group, is simply too much for them. Once again, once upon a time bisexuals had to struggle to get in the LGBT community (David Bowie once called himself a “closeted heterosexual” for this reason) because they couldn’t have someone who dated that dirty other sex in their movement. To this day, a lesbian who thinks bisexuals are out to get them is so common it’s a stereotype.

Coming as a bisexual with a boyfriend, I do not want my own special place in society, nor my own “services” or “culture” whatever those two things actually mean. I want to be seen as a human being, and luckily for me, society has been much more willing to see me as one than it has previous generations of my kind. I got to live in a tolerant civilization not because of the efforts of those who seek to alienate me from everyone else, but for those who fought tooth and nail for normalization and acceptance. While this is not me saying I have no respect for what was considered “gay culture” twenty or so years ago, I do feel the concept has since become outdated and counterproductive to what any movement for human rights seeks to do. If saying this means I’ll lose some beauty pageant or something, then I see that as a worthwhile tradeoff.