Let's Not Celebrate TERF Week

Hurray for TERF Week!  Another celebration of rhetoric over compassion.  For those of you in the real world, TERFs are Trans Excluding Radical Feminists.

I know.  In the day-to-day, what’s the purpose of excluding trans folk?  Well, let me tell you, more than you’d ever expect.  Thank God for TERFs who are fast overtaking Anne Coulter in The Big Crazed One category.

Okay, here’s the story.  Let’s take Kellie Maloney, a recent celebrity transition.  In hir sixties, Frank Maloney was a patriarch of an incredibly macho field.  Pugilism, for fecksake!  Which brought hir happiness, right?  Nope.  Frank Maloney had one more goal to accomplish in life. 

The rape of feminism.

Yes, what you read is what I wrote.  Kellie Maloney, a figure in the public eye, a person of privilege and substance tossed all that away, underwent nasty medical procedures and risked ostracisation by not only family, but the Daily Mail in order to what?  Rape feminism.

Rape.

Feminism.

Trans-advocacy aside, isn’t that a big fuck-you to any and all survivors of sexual assault? 

So what about trans-men, you say.  Totally crushed by the patriarchy.  A case of, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  

Right.

(For more hilarity, Google Cathy Brennan or TERF.)

Have any of these TERFS ever sat beside a trans-person before, during and after a transition?  Not saying a word, mind you, but actually experienced what is required?  Actually witnessed the utter misery that comes with being trans in western society?  The rejection.  The violence.  The hindrance to employment.  The banjaxed sex life.  The emotional zap of having two sets of hormones doing the jerk in your system until some medical person somewhere decides to fix all that with a very painful surgery.

Trans-folk are commando humanists. 

So many trans-women go stealth into male lives, become boxers, bomber pilots, racing drivers, non-paediatric doctors, mechanics, bronco busters, infantry.  They knock everyone’s socks off in these fields and then say casually, Oh by the way, I’m a woman. 

How cool is that?

So many trans-men do the same thing disguised as women, go into professions usually restricted to penis holders, survive an uphill battle filled with tomato-throwing spectators to prove they’re better than cis male peers.  When they say, Oh by the way, I’m a guy, they’re told, forget how shitty you were treated; being male’s the real reason you succeeded.  And while you’re at it, stop emoting.  Toughen up, dude. (Can I see your penis?)

Trans lives show us that the arbitrary and artificial definitions we put on people, whether for gender or race or their favourite cigar, these definitions are false.  By choosing to live, whether stealth or fully transitioned, trans folk lead us to a more genuine society where each and every person stands a better chance of reaching their potential, contributing to the greater whole. 

Stop throwing ill-informed rhetoric at other human beings and learn from these acts of heroism.