I don’t know how to tell the most absurd fandom brained fools that lesbians – especially trans lesbians – talking about how they feel alienated in fandoms dominated by cis male M/M content or are upset about the way media about lesbians and other queer women get treated by the professionals running studios… are not inherently terfy. 

It’s the second time since February that I’m watching people in fandom – who aren’t  trans femmes themselves for the most part – call trans lesbians TERFs or accuse them of having/utilizing “TERF rhetoric” for pointing out discrepancies in content volume or criticizing cis women or trans masc co-opting of “TERF” and “TERF rhetoric” to divorce them from trans women/misogyny in particular and claim that any slight criticism of fandom (of misogyny, of a lack of F/F, of racism) is in and of itself TERFy. 

And it’s the same people doing this. 

The same people insisting the only TERFs in fandom are the ones who wanna take their precious BL/porn and force all the fujos into the M/F or F/F writing mines…

The same people who will say “fandom isn’t activism” and “without BL/slash i wouldn’t know how to handle the trauma of cis womanhood” at the same time…

The same people talking about how they need BL and slash because otherwise how else would they deal with the fact that, even though they are queer women or trans mascs, vaginas are disgusting nasty trauma sinkholes so they can’t write F/F (but they sure will write a trans masc with a sloppy taco situation). 

There’s no pointing out “okay but you’re not a terf target because you like BL/slash, you’re a TERF target because you are trans or you publicly support trans people”. There’s no pointing out that a lot of the people supporting them in their vicious pushback against trans lesbians… are open and eager TERFs. 

(And this isn’t me reading into this, I just saw a whole ass TERF say that there were a bunch of TERFs in proship/BL/etc twitter today, last year, Bree revealed the danmei terfs who were reading/writing trans masc characters, and then in 2020 there was a reveal that BTS RPF twitter had a terf community actively creating events to highlight and center their view of the celebs-as-characters. 

And those terfs aren’t writing F/F anymore than the rest of fandom are. They’re writing cis dude M/M or the occasional trans masc.)

I don’t know how to tell you that lesbians asking why fandom will always find a dude to fixate on or noting how these spaces ostensibly populated by queer women don’t create content about them… aren’t exhibiting “man hating”, something that TERFs… don’t even do? 

These lesbians – in this specific situation – are complaining about not being seen or not feeling supported by other queer women who are often in relationships with queer women. It’s not “man hating” to be like “oh man i wish fandom wasn’t as focused as it is on male celebs/characters”. 

But  again, “man hating” isn’t a core defining trait of TERFs – even if it is a noted stereotype of (radical) feminism, broadly, that man hating is a core feature. 

Yes, some radfem groups like the defunct (?) Korean community Megalia engaged in that behavior incidentally or on the surface… but TERFs don’t actually hate men. They pretend to. They are accused of it. 

What they do to trans femmes and how they talk about trans mascs and afab nonbinary people isn’t man hating. It’s a total denial of identity and desire to oppress or remold them… man hating is performative and rarely carried through to anything that would oppress cis men unless they are also marginalized in some other way.

And I’m sure there are a handful of TERFs in the bunch of the fandom discourse accounts demanding purity of pussy because fandom is part of the (deeply transmisogynistic and broadly transphobic) world… but that goes for the people who are out here screaming that trans lesbians are entitled and think they’re oppressed in “women’s spaces” when they talk about things that bother them or pop into their minds.

(Newsflash, they are oppressed and them talking about visibility/representation even in fandom isn’t a sign of entitlement unless they are telling YOU DIRECTLY that YOU DIRECTLY must write F/F and even then… that’s a stretch.)

I’ve talked about it before and will one day turn those threads into something more cohesive, but it’s clear that queer fandom doesn’t know what TERFs are.

It’s clear that they’ve redefined TERF so that it is as meaningless as proship/anti and can be wielded against other people as a punishment label.

(Despite this being the most I’ve talked about TERFs and trans identity as a nonbinary person trying to figure their shit out still, I’ve been accused of being a terf of holding TERF rhetoric for years… by people who clearly wouldn’t recognize a terf if the terf made a post complaining about entitled trans women in fandom… all for writing about racism in fandom.)

I have watched self-identified TERFs admit that they are in fandom to these people… who despite arguing with those users… go on to claim the only TERFs in fandom are antis (which can range from people who talk about racism in fandom to people who really hate sebaciel or plantcest). 

Be for real: the TERFs are telling you they’re in your space and that they agree with you about trans lesbians [being mean and entitled and encroaching on women’s spaces] and you… don’t learn from that? 

Not even a little? 

You don’t learn from trans women in fandom sharing their experiences or observations because some MFA with rancid air bubbles for brains has scraped “three years of radfem tweets” and thinks that makes them a research god… one that can talk over trans femmes in fandom?

That is absolutely ridiculous. 

You don’t have to write F/F if you don’t want to – I write it infrequently and I don’t read it often because of a variety of reasons absolutely unrelated to any pussy trauma – but the way people insist on talking about F/F and lesbians in fandom (even when talking to trans lesbians) remains a huge problem that I wish people took into consideration. 

These are people who go “oh well terfs agree with you” when a sixteen year old makes a tweet about age gaps in fiction that radfems hop onto… ignoring that self-proclaimed TERFs are thanking them for showing the supposed entitlement of trans femmes to “women’s spaces” of… slash fiction, M/M, and BL. 

COME ON, NOW??