star-anise:

This post about TERF ideology by a former TERF is good shit but OMG SOOOO LONG, so I’m just gonna quote my favourite bit here:

It was two things that made me realize, intellectually, that I was wrong, and not just dislike their methodology but disagree with them on a fundamental level.

1.) understanding what fascism was. I knew that other leftists thought I was a shitty bigot, like, obviously TERFs are aware that other leftists hate them and want them dead, but that just makes them feel more oppressed, honestly. The conversation I heard that made me realize I was a fascist wasn’t anything about TERFs, but it was about the definition of fascism and the definition of politics. The speaker defined politics as, basically, the way we decide who gets to live and thrive in our society, and who in our society is an acceptable target for violence and whose lives are disposable. The speaker said that leftists think that everybody gets to live and thrive, everybody except for people who would try to deny other people that same freedom, aka, fascists. And the only thing fascists have to do to be able to live and thrive in a leftist society is to stop being fascists, which they can do at any time. Fascists, on the other hand, think that the only people that get to live and thrive in society are people like them. White people, able-bodied people, straight people, whatever it is. And there is no way for people that are caught outside of that to ever become white, straight, cis or able-bodied. So fascist ideology is inherently violent. And it wasn’t until it was explained that way that I could easily sort through what was ‘fascist’ and what was ‘non-fascist’. I could use that to measure up my anti-racist activism… not fascist. LGBT/queer rights? Not fascist. Disability activism? Inherently leftist, actually. But TERF-ism? There was no way for men or trans women to ever be entitled to live and thrive in a TERF world, which made me realize that TERFs are inherently fascistic. I didn’t want to be a fascist, and fascism sucks, and doesn’t make any sense, and is cruel and harmful. So, that was what really made me do a 180, intellectually, about TERFism, was seeing the parallels between what fascism definitionally is, and what TERFism definitionally is, and how one can be defined by the other.

Point no 2, and much else, is at the OP.