By: Abeni Jones

In reply to L..

Gotcha, did I do that in the post or in my comments to Sabertooth or are you responding to something they said? Either way, I’ll respond to you.

TERFs aren’t primarily “to blame” for murders of trans women that they don’t commit, and I don’t think anyone here ever claimed that?

The point of this article, though, is that focusing on murder isn’t doing us any favors. It’s things like TERF ideology that contribute to the daily violence and discrimination we face, that affects our mental health etc. We’d do better to focus on discrimination and mental health if we want to support trans women than focus on who’s murdering us.

So anyway, it’s really absurd to claim that TERF ideology isn’t violent or doesn’t contribute to violence against trans women. When I say “I’m a woman” and TERFs say “no you’re not, you’re a deluded, mental ill man who’s trying to access women’s spaces in order to rape and kill women,” that’s… violent. Did you read the part of my post about expanding what we consider “violent” beyond just physical harm?

Also, TERF isn’t a slur and it doesn’t describe people who “critique gender ideology.” All feminists critique gender ideology. TERFs are essentialists who have drawn a box around what “woman” is based on body parts (that not all cis women have, btw) or childhood experiences (that not all cis girls experience, btw) in order to specifically exclude/exterminate trans women.

So, fuck TERFs but yeah I didn’t focus on them in my article. I do think their ideology is worthy of critique, contributes to violence against trans women and is on the spectrum of violence I mentioned in my post. Let’s focus less on murder and more on how we can support trans women in their daily lives.