This is the Central Flaw in TERF “Logic”
A friend reached out for advice dealing with TERFs and this was my response:
“The central TERF critique is that patriarchy is designed to control the reproductive habits of women, marriage is about owning the womb as a baby factory, the wage gap is about financially disempowering women so they can be made dependent on men and thus marriage, etc… and since trans women don’t reproduce using wombs, they aren’t targets of patriarchy in the same way.
“It’s true that they’ve chosen an especially disgusting and transphobic way to package this understanding, and I don’t pretend that it’s okay to legitimize the overall narrative. But I think some compassion that starts with acknowledging the central point can be helpful. It’s true that transmisogyny and regular misogyny have somewhat different motives.
“However there’s also something false about that, and this is very important because it explains why feminism and queer liberation are inextricably linked. Patriarchy controls the binary as the foundation of heterosexuality to make sure that queer women still marry cishet men and produce babies for them; to compel queer men to marry cishet women for the same reason; and both because that benefits the patriarchal warfare state.
“Thus, the impulse to control queer bodies is a direct extension of the patriarchal impulse to control the womb and to dismantle one is to dismantle them both. I would see if there’s a moment of calm to explore the rational side of these questions and see if you can illuminate that nuance for your friend.”
