The Transphobes, Terfs and Assorted Anti-LGBTQ+ Sorts thread

[RedTwoster]

I’m sure someone will have said it here before, but the most stupid thing about ‘trans people should use the toilets/changing room of the gender they were assigned at birth’ is that it surely makes it easier for predatory men to hoax their way into so-called safe spaces. What’s to stop a biological man from sauntering into a woman’s toilet in that scenario and claiming to be a trans woman? How are you going to prove that they’re not? 

It’s all so ridiculous and logic-free.

Edited December 16, 2025 by RedTwoster

[Devon Malcolm]

1 hour ago, RedTwoster said:

I’m sure someone will have said it here before, but the most stupid thing about ‘trans people should use the toilets/changing room of the gender they were assigned at birth’ is that it surely makes it easier for predatory men to hoax their way into so-called safe spaces. What’s to stop a biological man from sauntering into a woman’s toilet in that scenario and claiming to be a trans woman? How are you going to prove that they’re not? 

It’s all so ridiculous and logic-free.

There's very little that's logical about their arguments and, as such, searching for any logic in them is a waste of time.

I'm glad @deathrey has commented on this topic and made the point about internalised misogyny because it really is important to understand that transphobia does come from different places from cismen and ciswomen. With the latter, it's most often as you've said, @deathrey, because it's too simplistic and easily debunked for it to be about bathroom issues. And yes, misogyny does play a large part on the male side of things, too. Traditional masculinity's rejection of any traits that could be considered as traditionally feminine in a birth-assigned male, but amplified.

Like I say, with most people it's always in there. Same applies to racism, homophobia and so on. Linehan didn't suddenly become like this. Only someone who is already there would write that IT Crowd episode. And Katherine Parkinson is going to be in the new Harry Potter series. 

[BomberPat]

I wonder how much of the bathroom panic started in America, where their cubicles are absurd with visible gaps two feet high at the top and bottom of the door, but has just been wrapped into the more TERF-y brand of transphobia we produce in this country.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to two things - if they wanted to completely exclude all trans people from public life, there is no single definition or guiding principle they could come up with which would successfully exclude every trans woman and no cis women, and that should be enough to illustrate that these things aren't as simplistic as they want to present them as.

The other is the John Oliver quote - why would a rapist go to the trouble of pretending to be trans in a culture that generally treats rapists better than it does trans women? I know several women who have been assaulted in public toilets, and in not one of those instances was it by a trans woman, it was by a sleazy bloke who saw there was no one paying attention and brazenly just walked in after them. On the other hand, I know cis women who have been confronted and questioned about their gender, or my brother's ex, who - on account of being very tall - was stopped in a bathroom and congratulated on how well she passed; it was a positive interaction, but it still shows that she was read as trans, and so that could have gone very differently. 

[organizedkaos]

Partly i think it's just the latest iteration of "minorities are coming to rape your women and/or children". I think I've mentioned it before but the documentary MLK/FBI gets quite into the tactic of trying to establish whichever minority you're trying to subjugate as being sexually deviant.

It's reiteration of the idea that an entire group is inherantly deviant and wrong and thus doesn't need to be about the practicality of the act as much as establishing the idea the "other" is bad and thus any discrimination against them is justified.

Edited December 17, 2025 by organizedkaos
https://redhot.bandcamp.com/album/tra-a

[Chris B]

It's all about portraying trans people as perverts rather than people, and the whole thing being about a fetish rather than gender. While it's separate, it's tied into the same extremist right-wing attitudes to gay people - that we shouldn't talk about gayness around kids, because it's obviously about fucking rather than love - and the trad-wife patriarchy weirdness.

There's a really weird attempt by TERFs to present women's bathrooms as some kind of massive communal shower, where everyone changes and chats while washing mooncups out in the sink, rather than all about separate cubicles anyway. And this is all why the perverts want to get in there.

It's all so deeply weird. And, crucially, boring.

[The Gaffer]

In a lot of cases (all the ones you see making horrible noise) there's an ingrained social caste system people will just work their logic around. It doesn't matter to certain people what Donald Trump does, as the fact that he's the one doing it enshrines it in morality. Similarly, it doesn't matter what trans people aren't doing. It's already been dialled in that they're of a lower order. 

It's just insecure reptile brain bullshit weaponised into hatred. The former can be mediated with to an extent if someone is genuinely open to good faith dialogue and the notion that being an adult comes with responsibilities to take a look inside yourself for the excess baggage you can leave behind. The latter is a conscious decision to go out of your way to act on that baggage to try and make life miserable for people. And those people can get fucked. 

Edited December 17, 2025 by The Gaffer

[Supremo]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I wonder how much of the bathroom panic started in America, where their cubicles are absurd with visible gaps two feet high at the top and bottom of the door, but has just been wrapped into the more TERF-y brand of transphobia we produce in this country.

It definitely feels that way. I have vivid memories of a bunch Tech Bro idiots I used to work with trying to, “debate,” this after hearing Joe Rogan talk about it, but that must have been at least seven to ten years ago. At the time, it felt very much like an American thing, with everyone with a brain in the office quickly shutting them up by explaining a rapist isn’t going to waste their time pretending to be trans in order to attack women.

To see how it's became a thing over here, to the point my boomer aunties and uncles are now badly trying to tackle it, having to have the same exhausting, “discussions,” with them, seeing the same frozen confusion when you introduce the concept of trans men to the conversation, it’s like the bigot version of your mum sending you an Instagram reel six months after you already saw it on Tik Tok.

Edited December 17, 2025 by Supremo

[Chris B]

Part of the problem is that the TERF response to trans men is that they've made their choice and should be mostly treated as men anyway. It doesn't matter that it attacks their own logic. It's about creating outsiders.

[Carbomb]

Thing is, what we're seeing now can be mapped on to a historic trend as the latest stage in conservative/right-wing politics, which usually requires some form of threat to push against to get people to support it. There's that well-known adage that "a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet". Some of the most hateful politics is created out of a sense of threat, whether real or imagined, and the level of hate is proportionate to the intensity of the sense of threat. Every new hate campaign the right espouses is a marker that they've lost a previous battle or threat and have pivoted to fight a new one.

Back in the 19th century, it was whiteness - there was a point when even German Americans weren't considered white, let alone the Irish, Italians, and Poles. One of the origins of the term "Black Irish" in America is because the Irish were kept as poor as the blacks, and the two communities helped each other to survive. Then the right lost that particular battle, so they pivoted - they admitted all of them to whiteness, to split them off from the blacks, and then they targeted the blacks via the KKK, Jim Crow, etc.

They also lost the battle to deny women the vote, so they pivoted and split the women's suffrage movement from the black suffrage/emancipation movement, sadly successfully. 

The Nazis were beaten in WWII, so they pivoted to "Reds Under The Bed" and McCarthyism to split the working class.

They lost the battle of the civil rights movement, so they pivoted to targeting gays and abortion rights to split the feminist and rainbow movements from the ethnic minorities.

They lost a key threat to push against in the Soviet Union, so they targeted Muslims, once again to split the working class.

They lost the battle on gay rights/marriage and abortion rights, so they've now pivoted to targeting trans people, to split gay/lesbian/bi people and women from them. 

 

What's really quite horrifying is how a lot of the so-called GC movement aren't just targeting trans people. Look at how they've treated Imane Khelif - she was born with everything they say a woman needs according to "biological science", but they still call her "he/him" and say she's a man who shouldn't be allowed in a woman's sport. Look at how they treat trans men - by their own logic, FTM men should be considered women, but they're not. Look at how they treat intersex people - they're literally, biologically in-between, but TERFs insist they have to "choose a side" and that that can only be one side, which is male.

The sheer amount of gatekeeping to womanhood going on with that lot is staggering; seemingly, almost nobody outside a specific, narrow definition is allowed to be a woman. They use phrases like "womanhood is sacred", completely mysticising it and taking it into the realms of religious belief.

As far as I'm concerned, it's particularly reminiscent of one other group of people who talk like that: toxic males.

Edited December 17, 2025 by Carbomb
Predrag Mijatovic

[BomberPat]

21 hours ago, Carbomb said:

What's really quite horrifying is how a lot of the so-called GC movement aren't just targeting trans people. Look at how they've treated Imane Khelif - she was born with everything they say a woman needs according to "biological science", but they still call her "he/him" and say she's a man who shouldn't be allowed in a woman's sport. Look at how they treat trans men - by their own logic, FTM men should be considered women, but they're not. Look at how they treat intersex people - they're literally, biologically in-between, but TERFs insist they have to "choose a side" and that that can only be one side, which is male.

The sheer amount of gatekeeping to womanhood going on with that lot is staggering; seemingly, almost nobody outside a specific, narrow definition is allowed to be a woman. They use phrases like "womanhood is sacred", completely mysticising it and taking it into the realms of religious belief.

This is what I have in mind when I talk about how they couldn't possibly come up with a legal definition that is inclusive of all cis women and exclusive of all trans women, or vice-versa, any attempt at legislating gender always impacts on cisgender women as well as trans women - and I'd rather people see the dehumanising of trans women as enough reason to stand up against it in the first place, but sometimes it takes "but this will hurt you and your friends too" to make it mean something to people, so it's a point worth reiterating. And because all of these things are intersectional, and because of how ideas of gender have been constructed, it's overwhelmingly women of colour and queer women who will be targeted as not being sufficiently womanly, regardless of their actual gender identity.

And that comes back to the stupid bathroom policing as well - you see, time and time again, stories of cis women being stopped for looking too "manly", and more often than not it's because they've got short hair and are wearing trousers, they're not performing a children's storybook idea of their gender. But that doesn't even fit with the TERF logic that's motivating these people - I thought the danger was that men were going to put on a frock and a wig to sneak into the bathroom, but you're stopping a middle-aged lesbian in combat trousers and a cardigan?

Edited December 18, 2025 by BomberPat

[Mr_Danger]

I’d certainly be willing to hear a genuine and sincere argument and concerns for why a bio lady might feel at threat sharing their safe space with a trans person but as it is I’ve never heard one and the only argument I’ve ever heard is based on fear and hate. As with old JK it’s a way to sound reasonable whilst hiding their true prejudices. 

[Chest Rockwell]

I've heard genuine expressions from bio women that trans women don't necessarily have the same lived experiences as them and the prejudices they have faced are different, but that has never translated in to fear of trans women in the conversations I've had.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I once did some work with a rape and sexual abuse crisis centre, several years ago, and there were talks about transwomen attending support groups and/or living within shelters with ciswomen and how to ensure that everyone could be properly supported. There were a small, but existing, number of ciswomen who struggled with the inclusion of transwomen. While I was there nobody had a good answer on how to properly solve this issue. I dont know what they ended up deciding as policy as I finished the work I was doing for them and left. 

[Mr_Danger]

2 hours ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

I once did some work with a rape and sexual abuse crisis centre, several years ago, and there were talks about transwomen attending support groups and/or living within shelters with ciswomen and how to ensure that everyone could be properly supported. There were a small, but existing, number of ciswomen who struggled with the inclusion of transwomen. While I was there nobody had a good answer on how to properly solve this issue. I dont know what they ended up deciding as policy as I finished the work I was doing for them and left. 

And that’s the type of reservations I have all the time and sensitivity in the world for. It’s an experience I and 99.9% of other blokes can’t comprehend so it’s really not fair to judge any sort of perceived prejudice on their part. The issue I have is that the actual bigots will have you believe that rape victims are being cast out of crisis centres in favour of trans women and that this sort of thing is the norm and regularly happens and I’m sure it’s not but it sure does strengthen their argument to believe so.

 

2 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I've heard genuine expressions from bio women that trans women don't necessarily have the same lived experiences as them and the prejudices they have faced are different, but that has never translated in to fear of trans women in the conversations I've had.

Yeah and it’s undoubtedly true that being a woman from birth is a lived in experience and any benefits that have been earned from that have been hard fought for. Being trans is clearly a different experience with a differing set of challenges. It’s reassuring that my four daughters who are all under 20 treat it like a non issue and going forward you hope the world will be a lot more understanding and supportive of this issue as us dinosaurs die out and are replaced by a much more enlightened generation. The wrestling fans amongst them will probably still poo wrong though.

[Carbomb]

Conversely, it's that lived experience that has me really horrified at the TERF/GC attitude towards trans men. There are a lot of reports of them having to suffer similar violence post-transition in addition to what they suffered before it.