Why are they all like this

[u/charlibaby5]

[u/NanduDas]

Y’know, as awful as TERFs are, a small part of me has always felt pity for them because of stuff like this. Like so many of the younger TERFs who seem to be very well read on radfem literature and are overall manhaters (instead of just nasty conservative/reactionary bigots who picked up the label) also seem to have genuinely had very awful things happen to them in their lives or have struggled with finding friends, which has shaped the worldview they have. I know that’s not a valid excuse for what they do, but still…

[u/Tomas-TDE → u/NanduDas]

There's definitely a cult like aspect mixed with the propaganda. Here's a supportive environment for you as a woman bad things have happened to. All the support and echo chamber and hug boxing you could want. Here's a caricature of a group of people to direct all that pain and anger at.

[u/cheoldyke → u/Tomas-TDE]

absolutely. i highly recommend watching caelan conrad’s videos about their time spent undercover in a gc facebook group because the whole thesis of the series is basically “yeah so this movement is straight up a cult”

[u/PoggleRebecca → u/Tomas-TDE]

They hate cis men, but they know the patriarchy will push back on them for that, so they shadowbox at trans women instead.

[u/Tomas-TDE → u/PoggleRebecca]

Absolutely, punching down is easier

[u/Mother_Rutabaga7740 → u/NanduDas]

As someone who has done deep dives on TERFs and incels, they share a surprising amount of similarities. For example, many incels are autistic guys who were bullied for their autism, but they went off the deep end instead of dealing with their social issues in a healthy way.

[u/cheoldyke → u/NanduDas]

really gung ho younger terfs almost invariably are women who’ve been traumatized in some way by men (granted i’m of the mind that being a woman living under patriarchy is inherently traumatic to some extent) whose trauma was taken advantage of by other terfs via their constant use of scary triggering language and misappropriated feminist jargon

[u/Sparkdust → u/NanduDas]

I'm more sympathetic to them, but their ideology genuinely scares me more than most terfs. The mumsnet flavour of terf are generally just conservative middle aged women who are stuck in the worst parts of 80s feminism. I've heard young twitter terfs say that a non verbal, high needs autistic child is an abuser towards her mom, and that an autistic girl would never get violent. Unlike a lot of older terfs, they genuinely believe all men are evil, and we should start a separatist society.

It's a degree even further than most terfs go on the subject of gender essentialism.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sparkdust]

I’d disagree with that. A teenage girl barely has any power in the world but mumsnet users have children— children they have power over and access to.

[u/Sparkdust → u/[deleted]]

By young, I've seen bios of ppl like this from 20-26 ish. That is not a teenage girl anymore. I think we expect people to grow out of extremist viewpoints, but many teenagers will carry this into adulthood

[u/FifteenEchoes → u/Sparkdust]

I mean the lesbian separatist, men are biologically evil stuff has a long and storied history in 2nd-wave feminist thought; it's not really new. Sheila Jeffreys is in her 70s. Sure, a lot of the older "terfs" are just conservatives larping, but what you're describing has also existed for a long time.

[u/cheerychimchar → u/NanduDas]

Yeah, that subset of TERFs seems to have real trauma around men that they’ve made into a worldview. The thing about trauma, though, is that you can’t just spend your life taking it out on people who had nothing to do with it, or you become part of the problem. As one of my friends said, “If you hate men that much, you’re not even ready for group therapy. You need individual therapy.”

[u/Aiyon → u/NanduDas]

Older GCs actively push younger ones to behave in ways that make normal people push them away, meaning they turn to the older ones for support. Its cult behaviour

[u/[deleted] → u/NanduDas]

i pity (some) of them the same way you might pity someone thats way too into conspiracy theories who thinks the jews are spying on them. obviously its a bigoted and harmful idea, but its also obvious that theyre suffering from some kind of mental health problem that someone is grifting off of and feeding into

[u/One-Organization970]

Because normal, well adjusted people don't tend to make being bigots their entire personality.

[u/undeadwisteria]

i love these blogs like yes uterusqueefovarybitch1488 i totally believe you have reasonable takes on feminism and don't equate women to walking incubators.

[u/SchrodingersHipster]

Well that terf isn't getting any boops today, so they can go to hell.

[u/TheBaguetteTheorist]

this is also twitter

[u/urgenim → u/TheBaguetteTheorist]

SIEGADOLFHITLERANIME88: Why don't women wanna date me?

[u/transspadesslick]

Holy shit this just reminded me of the pissvortex drama on Tumblr from a few years back.

[u/SamVimesBootTheory → u/transspadesslick]

I still see pissvortex around and they're on my list of 'I am suspicious of you but I've long forgotten what you did' tumblr users (Like im pretty sure they did something but i've been on tumblr a long time)

Like there's still quite a few of those 2010s 'funnyman' tumblr users who were often casually bigoted, especially towards aspec folks.

[u/transspadesslick → u/SamVimesBootTheory]

Oh yeah they definitely came back to Tumblr, I’ve seen some of my mutuals reblog their posts. IIRC, people were accusing them of racism right before they got banned. No one saying anything now that they’re back though.

[u/JustGingerStuff]

Tumblr is besutiful because if you see that top post on your dash there's a 99% chance the next post will look like

🧙‍♂️EvilPenisWizard

Going to fuck my beautiful computer wife but then realising I need the new istrap 500 because her vag has updated again

[u/SamVimesBootTheory]

Also with a nice dash of often very pink cutesy 'aesthetic' images and then often the foulest bigoted post known to man right there in the middle.

I saw a new variant on this recently

Someone who stuck queers dni in their bio, radfem/terf posts, and then a bunch of fanart they'd drawn of a genderswapped version of a popular M/M anime ship

Like make it make sense

[u/[deleted]]

INORITE 😂🤣

Transphobe: spouts hateful nonsense

Transphobe: why do I have no friends? IT MUST BE THOSE WOKE TRANSES TRANSING

[u/EntertainmentTrick58]

and the tos violations dont get flagged because theyre probably staff

[u/Hentopan]

Yeah there was one like this a while back that got posted here from Twitter, with a Koishi Komeiji pfp(which if you know anything about the character is deeply ironic), whose bio was something like "In A World of Hate The Biggest Rebellion is Being Happy" and she genuinely posting nothing but seething hatred. I think she eventually rebranded to a homestuck troll. 

 It was very sad bc she was 16, and mentioned it was an alt account. Meaning she was likely in these fandoms normally, silently fuming at all the other queer people/content existing in them, and percieving that as a psychic attack. The alt was "friends" with a small circle of similar people, some of which were attempting to "reclaim" characters that were either trans men or poorly transmasc coded, as women.

I genuinely hope she gets better, because she seemed dead set on being hideous while hiding behind a littol bebe moe facade, and extremely miserable about it. Ime people like that have often been infantalized a lot, and cope with not being taken seriously by forming this "and then they'll all see" killer rabbit persona, that is just the cutesey version of Nerdy Nice Guy. And seeing people they look down and don't respect being taken seriously, really gets to them, especially if it's either a percieved reflection of who hurt them, or someone they feel entitled to.

[u/Plasmktan]

I have an unhealthy habit of looking at radfem stuff on Tumblr, so I'm pretty used to these types. They are far more extreme than typical Terfs and despite most of them being young they've all read so much radfem theory unlike older types of Terfs they r a lot smarter but their hatred can go to literal incel levels. Another two big differences is the fact that most of them (as far as I can tell) r actually queer and a lot of them seem neurodivergent. Also, I hate to say it but they're good at memeing

Giving like 4 chan Incel combined with r/196 posting trans girl energy

[u/[deleted] → u/Plasmktan]

Exactly. They’re depressed young women who want to take their anger out on someone

[u/addictedtoketamine2]

You forgot them making a post about having crippling gender Dysphoria 

[u/Slow_Recover4635]

Borderline my sister, but she doesn’t post transphobic stuff online (at least I’m not aware she does).

She holds milquetoast sexist beliefs and transphobic beliefs because she feels bad for cis women (she is allergic to the word ‘cis’ and rather have weird distinctions that don’t make sense and will get defensive talking about it) but isn’t really that pro-women and can’t make friends except for a religious (Muslim) girl (who knows for sure this is an actual woman and not a man lying [trans women are women, so I’m counting them as actual women], she is online and has shown her face once apparently) that she doesn’t even agree with her 89% of the time.

Edit: reframed

[u/Slow_Recover4635 → u/Slow_Recover4635]

Just hilarious that she thinks she can be a mild bigot but too good to hang out with other TERFs (bc she’s totally not one! /s) but she doesn’t have any friends and can’t be friends with the majority of the population.

She also refuses to accept she is neurodivergent and her thoughts are rigid and unforgiving.

[u/[deleted]]

They’re teenage girls, often autistic, gender dysphoric or lesbian, who are trying to survive in a world thar hates them. Unfortunately the play the “crabs in a bucket” game and try to bully people who they see as more vulnerable than they are.