lesbians who are terfs will never make any sense to me crying about the supposed exclusivity of the “female experience” like my brother in christ she experienced an othered, lonely, confusing childhood where she was made to feel inadequate in her gender, sexuality, or both just the same as you and instead of letting this unify you against patriarchy you just enforce it on other people to maintain the sliver of “power” you think you have. how do u not see how dumb this is oh my god

The understanding of feminism on this site is absolutely terrible. To the point where people have no idea of what feminism even is. It’s especially annoying when people on here claim to be feminists, but contradict basic tenets of feminist thought.

And to be fair, feminism is a complicated and not united ideology at all. But let’s try to explain anyway. A basic tenet of any feminism is that society is a patriarchy. Women are oppressed and exploited, and men are the oppressor class. Men gain advantages for being men, which is what male privilege is. And feminism is about destroying this system of gendered oppression, the patriarchy.

This is as basic as it gets. And that we live in a patriarchy is easily proven. Patriarchy theory is a theory, but it’s a very well-supported one. Basic statistics and other evidence prove women are disadvantaged and discriminated against, and that men prosper in comparison. Misogyny is real, it’s an oppression that definitely exists.

Yet this basic understanding consistently eludes people on tumblr, even as they claim to be feminists and say “fuck the patriarchy.” People are at best reluctant to acknowledge misogyny as being real and lack understanding of it.

Talking about misogyny will get you accusations of being “terfy” when it’s just basic feminism. Even transfems get these accusations. I’ve already lamented that many people who are anti-terf (which you should be) don’t know what a terf is. What is actually “terfy” is having biological determinist and cisnormative explanations of who women are and what causes misogyny. In reality, trans women are very much women, and have to navigate the world as such. We constitute an especially oppressed subset of women, due to suffering from an intersection of both misogyny and transphobia: transmisogyny. The recognition of misogyny as an oppression we experience is needed to explain our experiences and suffering. We are not men, and are exiled from manhood and it’s privileges due to rejecting it and not performing masculinity.

Particularly disturbing are people who claim to be feminists and yet argue that “misandry” is a real thing. It’s often not said to be “misandry”, I’ve read words like “antimasculism” (more or less explicitly) used as substitutes for the term “misandry”. It is often phrased in terms of “the patriarchy hurts men too.” That the patriarchy is just harmful gender norms that oppress all genders more or less equally.

And those who adopted this have abandoned feminism, often without acknowledging it. They have abandoned the most basic feminist tenets, such as we live in a patriarchy, a society that benefits men. The idea that men do not gain privilege from being men and are in fact hurt by it is an anti-feminist idea.

It’s an incoherent way of analyzing gender. The question of who is the oppressor class in this analysis is eluded entirely. Who benefits from oppressing men via gender norms? Feminist theory is clear about men being the oppressor class who benefit as a class from the oppression of women. It’s a basic question, yet studiously avoided, sometimes in terms of blaming it on the system, understood as some impersonal monster, not as a system that exists to benefit certain people.

It also misunderstands how masculinity works. Sure, being forced to adhere to masculine gender norms hurts, I’ve been badly bullied myself for breaking them. But even if the patriarchy hurts men, it more importantly benefits them. It privileges men, because that’s the literal definition of patriarchy.

Masculinity benefits men, that’s why they perform it. The proper performance of masculinity is needed for being recognized as a man and thus given male privilege. It gives them power over women (cis or trans), even other men (like gay men) and degendered others, the ability to commit violence against them with impunity. Men who perform it are not the primary victims of masculinity, the victims of the violence done to prove masculinity are. And privilege is what men are afraid of losing if they appear non-masculine. It’s the fear of losing their status, of experiencing just a smidgen of the horrors trans women are given everyday. Men will do violence to avoid that. I don’t wish to downplay the horrors of being an openly gnc man (especially if they are also gay or queer in some other way). but they still have a privileged position compared to women in general, and especially transfems.

Of course, men are oppressed too, but it’s not for being men. Working class men are oppressed under capitalism. A long list of oppressive systems like racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and so on do oppress the men who are affected by them. Men thus often find their male privilege curtailed by these oppressions, especially if they are affected by several at once. And because of this there are indeed situations where women can hold power over men (white women do often hold power over black men in white supremacist societies for example). This does however just curtail their male privilege, not negate it entirely. You just need a more complicated analysis, that takes those factors into account. Still, all else being equal, men hold power over women. It’s when comparing gay men and lesbians, comparing disabled men and women, and so on, that you can truly see the privilege these disadvantaged men still hold despite the real oppression they experience. Women are also affected by these oppressive forces, and their effect is made worse by intersecting with misogyny. Men in oppressed communities still have power and privilege over the women in that community. Their experience of oppression looks different, but that’s due to the absence of misogyny, rather than the addition of any misandry (as another tumblr post put it, and which I can’t find now, so I can’t give credit. Would love to be given a link if you can find it).

And we have to be careful when talking about oppressed men, because their experiences are often exploited to justify anti-feminism. The fact that the oppression is real is exactly why it’s useful, because it can be decontextualized to argue that men are oppressed for being men. Propaganda often lies by omission, than by outright making things up. Warren Farrell, “the father of the men’s rights movement”, used the experiences of working class men dying in dangerous jobs and as soldiers in war to argue that male power was a myth, and in fact “men are the disposable sex” or “the expendable gender.” Those deaths are real, but the context that it’s due to capitalism exploiting the working class is removed, and instead attributed to their gender. The facts that working class women also suffer and die from exploitation and that capitalist men benefit from the exploitation of the entire working class are ignored. It also eludes why women don’t die as these men do. Women are kept out of many “dangerous” jobs and the military in order to justify their subjugation as “the weaker sex.”

It’s a terrible argument, and Farrell and the men’s rights movement he helped create are openly anti-feminist and deeply misogynistic, denying women’s oppression. Yet I’ve seen variations on Farrell’s argument posted by supposedly “pro-feminist” blogs. Queer bloggers here will hold up the sufferings of gay and trans men as proof misandry is real, that men are oppressed for being men, ignoring that their oppression is due to homophobia and transphobia. And still against all reason still use the word “patriarchy” and being feminists, despite denying the analysis of society as a patriarchy where men are privileged for being men.

At least Farrell and his fellow proud MRAs are honest about rejecting feminism and believing patriarchy is a myth. I’m glad at this point that I was and am a fan of David Futrelle’s blog criticizing and mocking the men’s movement, because that has enabled me to recognize and criticize the arguments they use, a thing some people here clearly need some help with.

Often these bloggers bring up the ancient anti-feminist accusation of feminists not being a movement for equality at all, but about hating men and their masculinity. Anything critical of men as a class who holds power over women is understood as “misandry” or “terfy”, and so is any criticism of masculinity as a gender role. Criticism of masculinity are only made in the context of “toxic” masculine norms hurting men, never in terms of how it confers men power and privilege and how the misogyny of hegemonic masculinity hurts women and other people. I suppose in this kind of thinking my earlier criticism of masculinity as a tool for gendered violence is enough for them to call me a misandrist. And like I’m not. All men benefit from patriarchy, but if you are a man and don’t abuse women or are a misogynist, you are okay as a human being in my book. What else can I say?

These criticisms are not just taken as misandry, but as some kind of widespread norm, despite really only being made in feminist and queer spaces. So making a tumblr post saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s okay to be masculine.” is seen as reasonable, despite that being literally what the vast majority of society already believes (including the feminist spaces that can reasonably be targeted by this statement). It’s a bizarre statement to make in a patriarchal society that favours men and expects them to be masculine. It again echoes MRA complaints about how society has been captured by a feminist conspiracy (with anti-semitic undertones, as any conspiracy theory has, that’s how MRAs answer the question of “who is oppressor class for misandry?” btw).

It illustrates how a bad understanding of feminist theory leads people into some rather right-wing positions, all while clinging to the banner of being a feminist or progressive. Our society is a deeply misogynist one, yet in response to feminist gains it likes to cloak its misogyny in a kind of superficial feminism. And acknowledging misogyny is a real oppression is hard when you grow up and live in a society that justifies it. It’s especially uncomfortable to do so if you benefit from it. It’s more comfortable to deny misogyny. But it’s work that needs to be done. Or else you can turn into basically an MRA while still believing yourself to be a feminist, which seems to be the trajectory of some people on this site.

i keep seeing thing about how we aren’t addressing that the patriarchy needs to be dismantled systemic and not by asking individual men to change or “just go to therapy” and it’s like a system is made up of individuals. You can’t have one without the other. Every change happened because a bunch of weirdos decided they wanted a change and then found each other and yelled at the world enough to push it in the right direction. People of all genders do need to individually dismantle their own learned patriarchial brainworms to dismantle them. The revolution starts inside, and you can’t join the fight until you see it for what it is and are ready for commit to it. Only then can you actually start on the systemic change part, which requires like minded comrades, and a fucking lot of them. This isn’t the same as saying “just go to therapy lol” but that people who have not addressed their own reactionary thinking imprinted on them will not be able to dismantle the damage systemically. Educate - if you vibe with being a man in some way, set a fucking good example and show other people how to do that, and educate them on why patriarchy bad. Regardless of gender, you can still educate people in your life. Agitate - Keep yelling at the patriarchy and how it hurts people. Refuse to tolerate patriarchial nonsense when possible (turns out consequences actually make people learn!) and Organize - there’s places like menslib that are already starting on this step, simply having a place to find each other is a good starting point for discussion and activism to be done. I don’t need to tell people how to organize, they’re perfectly capable of starting protests and boycotts and supporting anti-patriarchial causes themselves. And therin lies another problem. Everyone fighting for civil rights has had to and oftentimes currently still are actually doing the hard work of organizing, agitating and educating nonstop because we simply do not have the choice to roll over and let ourselves be oppressed. Yet we are getting endless conversation  about how we need men to be babied just a bit more and they can’t be expected to change until the system does magically, and we can’t expect them to do the real work that past generations of men have already done for different causes. What? Real world gay men, black men, communist men, trans men, labour activists, eco-warriors had to unlearn the toxic things they were taught individually before they could even start punching back systemically. Patriarchy bad, but we’re already fucking fighting it. Men and Women and Enbies are already trying to systemically push back. And there is literally hundreds if not thousands of years of history to draw upon in terms of tactics. Radicals usually make up a small minority of weirdos, until they don’t. They seem extreme, until they don’t. All this hand-wringing around if we can ask men to actually do praxis for their own benefit is not only infantalizing them, but disrespecting the generations of men who did organizing before this, and buying into the idea that men are incapable. Men should be the ones deciding for themselves how to dismantle the patriarchy, because they see it hurts them, not us telling them what to do for their own good. You see how fucking patronizing that would be if it was happening to a group of marginalized people? Men need to pick and choose for themselves what parts of the patriarchy to be dismantled first and find self-empowerment in pushing back for themselves. As non-men, our role is to educate, agitate, and support the organizations and individuals pushing back against patriarchy. For example, as a afab i literally never considered the draft. However, that is at the forefront of oppression for many people with an M on their state mandated ID. We also gotta keep in mind that while men and any gender is oppressed under the patriarchy, it also benefits quite a lot of them, and a lot of them get lot of social benefit from the reactionaries setting the goals and boundaries of the anti-patriarchy movement. Like any movement it can and will be co-opted by capitalism to be less dangerous. For example, women are fighting for gender pay parity but... we shouldn’t even fucking have to labour for basic goods at all? All genders are oppressed under a system that views us each of us as an insignificant cog in a machine. Men are used as pawns in war and for manual labour. Women are broodmares (for more labour to exploit) and used for domestic labour. Enbies are simply shafted into either of the two mandatory gender labour groups and disregarded. I guess the point of my post is: People who claim to want to make things better shouldn’t need tips for their own self-liberation if they were actually committed to it, and in fact would be really fucking patronizing if they were actually doing anything real. “Every Man Needs To Go to therapy and that will solve Patriarchy” IS patronizing because it doesn’t address the root issue: that a lot of men are reactionary due to the personal benefits offered to them under patriarchy and that’s not going to change unless they are given a reason and educated to be better, and that’s going to be a LOT of work for everyone, both at the individual and systemic level.

Past all the other waves of feminism and progress, we're at a point where we can address that gender essentialism is, and always has been, a problem. If you think that men and women have inherent traits that make them good or bad, then you're not for progress and equal rights. Gender essentialism is an idea that was brought about in the patriarchy that so many claim to fight. It's an idea that benefits the oppressive system, and no one else. It's an idea that benefits white supremacy.

Just think about it for two seconds. What do people gain by being frightening other than to manipulate you? There's nothing that's gained by men and masculine people being seen as the predator, rather than for people to manipulate the narrative. People down below, queer people, people of color, trans people, individuals, they don't gain anything. And you don't gain anything either by not healing from trauma. I know it's generational trauma.

Have you ever heard of the racist bullshit that a white woman accused a black man of assaulting her? What do you think happened to the white woman? Nothing. What do you think happened to the black man? What about when people treat black women as the angry black woman? Is it because she's predatory? Is it because she's masculine? Is it because she's somehow impure? How about the queer woman? The butch lesbian with short hair, do you think she's inherently mean or rude? Is she not gentle? Is she frightening to you? How about the trans man? Is he a lost girl? Does he have privilege despite growing up as afab? How about the trans woman? Is she scary with her masculine traits? Is she invading women spaces? Is she predatory?

You can see how being viewed as evil or impure or "masculine" isn't a fucking benefit you people make it out to be. It's not. We all know how misogyny effects people, we all know about internalized misogyny. We all know about toxic masculinity, but misandry fucking hurts people too. Including the men, including cis men, being told that they cannot be abused, that they they're meant to shut up about their emotions. Women can be evil, women can be abusive, women can be predators, women can be bad people and they can oppress others. Y'all refuse to see that and it benefits noone but the patriarchy you claim to fight.

What the fuck is up with this narrative that there's a real boy and real girl, what's up with the idea that men and women are opposites? Those are fucking lies. They're different, but they're not complete opposites. We're pit against each other and it benefits none of us. Of course men have privilege! But so do white women. So do christians. So do straight people. So do cis people. So do rich people. So do abled people. But that doesn't mean we inherently benefit or like the system. It keeps us divided.

Intersectionality is the future of progress, and it was always needed. Trauma doesn't exempt you from taking accountability. And it's not just about woman's rights anymore. It never was just about women. Of course, it's a focal point, but we need to support all movements for progress. We're stronger together. We all deserve to heal.

What do you think are some of the pitfalls of modern day feminism and how can we improve feminism? I don't think the current feminist movement does enough to help lower class women who are more likely to deal with things like sexual assult, domestic violence and restricted access to abortions. I think the transition from an academic setting to the blogosphere has lead to a lot of feminist terms being misused or overused. What do you think?

Fun fact, I tried to answer this question three times and every time something happened and I lost all my writing.  But yes, great question, but sort of difficult because there isn’t one form of feminism, my critiques of Second Wave Feminism are totally different from my critiques from 4th Wave, or my critiques of Marxist feminism, its like having a single critique of every form of goverment, technically possible but the specifics matter a great deal.  Some forms of feminism focus exclusively on lower class women, others do in fact ignore them.  That being said, there are a few broad critiques I can make of the movement, but a few caveots i want to make clear first.

     Firstly, every movement, regardless of its ideals, are going to have stupid people, simplistic people, and bullies within its ranks, and there is no real fix for “some feminists online are dumb”.  The question when it comes to a movement is “are these just idiots attached to the wrong cause” or “is the cause itself rotten” which isn’t true of feminism the way that White Natioanlism is fundementally broken 

     Secondly, every movement interested in human rights struggles with intersectionality, it is not a uniquely feminist thing, intersectionality is hard both practically and psychologically, and that is something I think all of the movements are struggling with, feminism has done better than some with its active efforts to incorporate queer efforts into its larger movement.  

Ok so actual critiques 

1) Branding.  Feminism has major major problems with its image, one thing I notice constantly is that various feminist ideas and terminology might be easily accepted by people because they are objectively useful, but when people hear that they are feminist, suddenly people are like “eww no” .  Feminism really needs to rebrand itself to try to be more approachable, especially in regards to the usefulness of the ideas, because many of these concepts are just make life objectively easier to understand, but also there need to be active attempts to countermand the way feminists are depicted in the media, especially that sort of man hating militant 

2) Clarify terms:  THis is actually for the larger left wing movement, but the reason why the right can so easily strawman/co-op our rhetoric is that we aren’t specific about it . I mean take privilege for example, the fact of the matter is every person on the planet has some privilege in some context, a trans lesbian lower class black women in the Us still has privilege of being able bodied, or American citizenship.  A wealthy white man might still have down syndrome, privilege isn’t like a bioware morality system with most privilege vs. least, its a complicated interconnected system of power relationships.  

Or the Bechdel test, it isn’t just a scoring system for sexism, its a way of measuring an observable reality of the film industry, its a measurement of a larger trend rather than a condemnation of any specific movie.  The more vague these terms are, the more they can be strawmanned and approprated by reactionaries.

3) Tell Terfs to fuck off: Terfs suck, end of story 

4) Drop the moon goddess shit: This is more of a 2nd wave feminism issue, but i notice a lot of people perception of feminism comes from things like feminist fantasy or the sort of 2nd wave rements online, and its just utterly absurd.  All of the sacred femininity, primordial matriarchy, feminine nature magic stuff is extremely dated and makes the whole movement come off as a neo pagan nonsense movement.  Facts are on the side of feminism, embrace those 

5) Embrace complexity.  Again this doesn’t really apply to academic feminism, but more the way it is understood by tumblr folks, but we need to be more comfortable with larger complexity.  Bad people can make good art, somebody can be problematic in one regard and useful in another, simplicity remains as always a tool of the right, so that needs to just be abandoned. 

6) Explain utility: How is Feminism useful to me?   Yeah this one kinda sucks, because when it comes to basic human rights, there is something kinda upsetting about having to be like “oh yeah, these people are being fundamentally oppressed but here is how caring about their plight can help men” like that fucking sucks.  Problem is though, a lot of people are selfish, and if we can’t get them to support this cause, they will drift towards reactionary causes.  Fact is, for men, it is beneficial to them to support sexism on the surface, they benefit from it, and feminism is never going to win out if you don’t draw more men away from opposition.  So as much as it sucks, feminism needs to explain how patriarchy hurts men, how toxic masculinity is actually really destructive for men, how many of the issues that MRAs pretend to care about are issues caused by patriarchy rather than by feminists, how embracing gender equality is actually better for everybody involved.  

7) Finally and maybe most importantly, embrace humor, I think the “humorless angry feminist” sterotype  is one of the greatest weapons of the reactionary right, so we need to drop it.  I admire what Anita Sarkeesian is trying to do but beyond the fact I think her videos are simplistic, she is really really boring and utterly without humor.  Which i think weakens the movement as a whole, if feminism is funny and approachable, it can win adherents, cause again, the facts are on itself, it doesn’t need to hide its core identity the way that reactionary movements do.  

Bonus Round: Feminism should not be equated with other causes, feminism isn’t necessarily communist or pacifistic, 

Edit: 

Ok one thing I think I should add here, and this isn’t really the task of feminism but I think this needs to happen for Feminism to figure out where it go next.  There needs to be a clearer way for men to relate to the world feminists hope to build.  Now I don’t mean that in the sense of “oh no feminism hopes to oppress me and leave men obsolete” and all that conservative nonsense, I mean that when patriarchal gender norms are challenged and broken down (as they should be) it isn’t necessarily clear where men should go.  And many times they return back to reactionary hyper conservative gender norms, because those are simply and easy ad all that jazz.  Like, this isn’t the fault of feminism, its more of an unintended consequence that happens when change comes a calling, like how ebay has been putting malls out of work.  But while men should be able to come up with their own purpose once masculine identities are torn down, creating new identities based upon themselves rather than vague socialist expectations...that clearly isn’t happening, so feminism would do well if they could offer suggestions and try to address those anxeities.  Which....isn’t fair.  I mean its totally not fair at all that feminists have to both care for the needs and interests of a systemically oppressed under class....AND spend time trying to address the emotional needs of the oppressive class but you know...life isn’t fair.  And its just easier, if men, episodically young boys, can’t find a new purpose and identity, they are going to drift back to conservatism, this is how MRAs recruit.

   Honestly, a Men’s movement focusing on how to address men’s issues within the context of feminism and addressing the legitimate issues facing men (suicide, toxic masculinity, sexual insecurities etc) would be a really great thing, but that has largely been co-opted by MRAs as a way to recruit troubled young men into a reactionary hate group.  It shouldn't’t be feminist job, but finding answers for the anxieties of these young men will help them greatly in the future, its just more practical to address that from the outset rather than let them be corrupted by simplistic conspiracy theory narratives about the castration addicted matriarchy bent on white genocide.  

wondergirrl said:

what is this about. anti what?? am confused please aid me VonBond

This is pretty long and I apologize, but I feel like I need to go all the way back and talk about TERFs, for reasons that will hopefully soon be clear.

As I'm sure you know, TERF stands for 'Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist'. There are still TERF communities within feminism, but generally speaking, TERFs are far less numerous and their ideology has far less sway than it used to have. Part of the reason for this was people going out of their way to proactively explain why TERF arguments are wrong before their fellow feminists encountered TERFs, which made it a lot harder for TERFs to spread their ideology.

Which is great! But I think that for the most part, feminists have argued against the transmisogynistic aspects of radical feminism, and to a lesser extent the sex-worker-exclusionary aspects of radical feminism (SWERFs), but kind of failed to see the coherent whole that TERF-flavored feminism belongs to, what sort of thinking causes it, and why it's wrong. "Being anti-TERF" nowadays has largely been reduced to stuff like putting "no TERFs!" in blog descriptions and popular posts, and it rarely takes the form of scrutinizing TERF logic to understand how they went wrong and how we can avoid making similar mistakes against other people. Which is why I'm writing this now.

(I've tried very hard to articulate what I think are two distinct flaws in thinking that seem to me to give rise to just about every TERF position, but I do feel like I'm not quite right on the money, so if anyone has better ways to say these two things, I'm all ears.) In general, TERF positions are the result of 1) rigid, black-and-white, binary thinking and 2) ignoring people's consent, especially their 'yes'es. Take transmisogyny: they believe that trans women are men and therefore oppressors. Now, this belief is readily debunked by observing the world, but TERFs have divided the world strongly into oppressors and oppressed, and have a lot of rhetorical tools to dismiss and ignore anything said by "oppressors" or that seems to favor "oppressors". And because trans women are "oppressors", they justify violence and harassment that ordinarily common sense would never condone.

A lot of other central TERF positions have to do with ignoring people's 'yes'es. Sex workers say, "No, this line of work isn't without its problems, but I want to be empowered to address those problems, not kicked out of my livelihood." AFAB trans people say, "I'm not a woman, I'm another gender, and I want to transition." Subs (in BDSM) say, "I enjoy being submissive." Heterosexual and bisexual women say, "I want to date and/or sleep with men." And TERFs' response to all these people is, "That's just your internalized misogyny talking." (And when these people fail to stop wanting the thing they want, TERFs decide that they've taken the side of misogyny and are now valid targets for harassment.) TERFs don't pay attention to people's stated wishes and what they actually are or aren't consenting to. Instead, they decide what women must want, or what wishes would best further the cause of feminism, according to their views of feminism and patriarchy.

Which brings me, finally, to antis. Antis come from two main sources, and one is the anti-kink/anti-BDSM/anti-porn aspect of TERF-style feminism. The other is, as ridiculous as it sounds, ship wars. Ship wars have existed since the beginning of fiction, of course, and what's going on right now is that some people in fandom harass others using the intellectual framework laid out by anti-kink/anti-BDSM/anti-porn radfems. The targets are usually people who ship things (or create/consume other content) that's dark or unrealistic. (E.g. if you ship an abuser with his victim, that content is either going to be dark, if they have an unhealthy relationship, or unrealistic, if they have a healthy relationship. This also often includes non-ship-related dark content like characters getting killed.) The harassers believe themselves to be morally superior to their targets, based on the justification that "no one could really enjoy this content unless they were either enacting oppression or internalizing oppression".

This is particularly obvious when they talk about survivors of abuse and trauma. As you might know from debunkings of the "violent video games" moral panic, dark themes in media tend to be a way for people to emotionally process horrible things that happen in real life. There are lots of ways this plays out, according to the specific needs of the individual, but to speak from my own experience, taking things that were inflicted on me nonconsensually and fictionalizing them -- bringing them into a context where I have complete control -- is really important to healing and growing past that experience. Now, everyone, no matter their specific experiences, has fears that they might choose to process through fiction, but survivors of abuse and trauma are necessarily people who have experienced some of the worse things the world has to offer. Antis' response to this is the same as TERFs' response to people who want or need things that are politically inconvenient for them: "That's just internalized oppression." "That's an unhealthy coping mechanism." "You're taking the side of oppression, so it's okay to harass you."

Antis tend to have other beliefs that are inherited from radical feminism. For example, like TERFs, they tend to conceptualize heterosexism as "homophobia, which also hurts bisexual people because they're attracted to the same gender" rather than "heterosexism hurts people of non-heterosexual orientations in a variety of different ways". As such, they tend towards aphobia, biphobia, and nbphobia. Many of them are aphobes/exclusionists, and they tend to support a short list of acceptable non-straight identities (e.g. "LGBT") rather than accepting categories that are loose or flexible like "queer", "LGBT+", "QUILTBAG", etc. I've also found that, even when acknowledging NBs, they tend toward rhetoric that puts people into two categories based on their gender, like "men vs women/NBs" or "women/transfeminine people vs men/transmasculine people". Again, they have very binary thinking, and disregard people's stated wishes not to be put on one side of a gender binary.

They also have a particular way of talking that leans toward bullying and ideological abuse. They tend to interact with anti-antis even when they're not in a place to do so in a non-harmful way, and tell people who disagree with them to go kill themselves ("drink bleach", "jump in a fire", etc.). They tend to overuse words like "gross", "nasty", "scum", "garbage", etc. that provoke a disgust response, and generally exaggerate wildly ("literally advocating for child abuse", that kind of thing). There's a distinct lack of emphasis on anything that could potentially break the grip of black-and-white thinking, such as recognizing gradations of harm, or weighing the harm of something against the benefit it has.

I don’t want to go overboard and replicate the exact same patterns by implying that “calling something you don’t like ‘garbage’ is supporting ideological abuse” or anything like that. At the same time, I'm pretty sensitive to all this stuff, and pick up on it easily, even when I would rather ignore it. I can't stand to see people harassed for something as trivial as their taste in fanfic, and I also tend to be particularly vulnerable to ideologically abusive rhetoric because of some of the stuff I've gone through. An easy way to avoid interacting with people who harass others for their dark fic (or who support that framework of moral inferiority) would be to hang out with people who create and consume dark fic. But I actually find most of that content stomach-turning, so I wouldn't want to hang out around people who are posting it and talking about it all the time.

tl;dr: To avoid “TERFs minus (most of the) transphobia”, I might try hanging out with people who like fucked up fic, but I don’t want to do that because it would be unpleasant.

(this is a bunch of stuff on my gender and how i present myself and describe my gender and how that actually matches up with what my gender is. feel free to ignore this.)

The weird thing about my gender is that it’s fairly constant, but if I describe it to someone else they might not believe me?

I feel more “feminine” or “masculine” sometimes, but it’s not affecting my presentation or my gender. It’s just a feeling that layers on top of my gender, not changing what it is at it’s base or even shifting anything. And it also happens rarely enough that it doesn’t feel like it matters a lot. I don’t describe my gender as fluid because I don’t feel like it is, at all, but I’m not even sure what fluidity of gender feels like, anyways. So, you know, maybe it is actually fluid, but I don’t want to describe it that way.

Whatever.

And then on top of all this I’m not quite sure where I fit with fem-aligned and masc-aligned, because the thing is, that’s, uh, something I’ve been treating as a way to stop binary people from seeing me as not-female while still being nonbinary. I’ve been holding fem-aligned as my own little safe-haven that makes sense to me and also doesn’t feel Automatically Bad. Because the thing is, I don’t actually feel all that fem- or masc-aligned unless the whole is-it-or-is-it-not-fluidity is happening, and the reason why I’ve said that I’m slightly fem-aligned is because that makes me feel better than masc-aligned.

Besides that, I do feel neutral, but then there’s me being bi, and I want to think of my sexuality in binary terms because that feels easier to me, I want to be able to say that “I’m so gay for [insert female character here],” but where does my gender fit into that? And I know I can do that without a binary gender, I can do that with a neutral gender, but it’s still weird. I’m not doing this because people are giving me shit about my gender, either, but...

I don’t want to think of myself as a girl, because I’m not, I don’t think. I’m definitely not a boy, in any case, but I just. ugh. I don’t know what to think anymore because I keep doubting myself and, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, I guess, because all of that is only in my head. Part of it is me wanting to be a binary gender, because that would be so much easier. So, so much easier.

Not happening, though.

I just feel so uncomfortable in mostly-female spaces, though, and I’m unsure how to fix all this. I’m a feminist, for example, but I feel uncomfortable in irl feminist spaces, because everyone looks at me and sees a girl, and I’m acutely aware of that, every single moment I’m there. Because I deal with the problems about the patriarchy too! As an AFAB person, who is also not male, I get no benefits! It’s not really only women who are hurt by men being viewed as superior, but anyone who isn’t male, after all (and there’s some bad things for men too, don’t get me wrong, but I’m focusing on violence, money, opinions being seen as valuable, etc. which men get the upper hand on). Also, other stuff, like being invited to a girl’s club or told that women’s colleges were good and maybe I should consider going to one when I’m older, but I can’t do either of those things because I’m not a girl.

I don’t want to experience pain when I’m called a girl, but I do, and so I cling to fem-aligned to lessen that, I suppose. Because I can’t be angry if I really am a girl, even though I’m not. I want to be a binary gender, I really, really do, but it just. Isn’t a thing that’s possible. I would even take being a boy, because at least then, even if it was tough as fuck, I would be at least recognized as a boy by more people than would recognize me as nb. Not to say that trans people have less problems than nb folks, but it would eliminate problems like me feeling excluded in any gendered space or group.

I want to accept that I’m not as binary aligned as I thought myself to be, or pretended to be, but it’s hard. I’m trying.

Queer Voices Respond To Deferred Candidacy

After a two-month wait, just as World Barista Championships got underway, the Specialty Coffee Association rocked the coffee world with the announcement that three major world coffee competitions will remain in Dubai this year, despite the numerous protests of the US coffee community—especially those who are LGBTQIA+ or allies. As an amendment to their initial rollout, SCA officials added the new Deferred Candidacy Policy, which allows candidates to defer to another year if they cannot attend world competitions for reasons of safety, health, or unforeseeable circumstances, pending approval from WCE’s World Championships Committee.

Widely criticized in the queer coffee community, this decision and added policy have led many to reconsider their involvement with SCA. I talked with some of those who felt the deepest impact from this decision: queer coffee professionals who have invested their time, money, and energy in the SCA, its guilds, and its competitions. These are their voices.

James McCarthy, Espresso Technician, Counter Culture Coffee World Brewer’s Cup Champion, 4 years competing, 2 years organizing, 1 year volunteering, several years SCA member

The SCA’s deferred candidacy policy is shameful. First, they decided not to move next year’s event to a place where queer/trans people feel safer—a place where anti-queer/trans laws aren’t on the books. This policy doesn’t just put the onus on the competitor to out themselves, it effectively punishes them by making them wait until the championship is not held in a place that is dangerous to them. It equates being LGBTQI with having a death in the family—can we pause on that one? To this board—or, to the majority of this board, because this was voted as a majority vote—being queer/trans is equal to dealing with the tragedy of familial death?

If the year I won the US Brewer’s Cup, the competition was being held in a country that had anti-queer/trans laws on the books, I would have been very nervous to travel there, and I know that I would not have gone. I have an F on my driver’s license and my passport; both still have my old name on them. Travelling is always nerve-wracking for me, even within the US. I would not have travelled to a country where it was very likely that the fact that my gender presentation doesn’t match what it says on my ID could land me in jail. I also need to acknowledge that these laws, in practice, end up being used on trans women, GNC, and those queer folks on the feminine spectrum overwhelmingly more often than on masculine of center folks, and on people of color way more often than white people.

With this new policy, I would have to prove possible discrimination to a committee before getting my deferment approved. They get to pick the host city, and then it falls on the competitor to work around the limitations caused by mostly white, cisgender, straight, male board.

This isn’t just international: I know that there are places in the US where queer, trans, and people of color do not feel safe traveling for coffee events—would I have wanted to go compete in Durham, NC if the bathroom bill was still standing? I know that my class and whiteness protect me, but what about others who would feel less safe? Why should we have to prove to a committee of mostly cis, white, and male folks that our safety and comfort matters?

They should have reached out to their queer and trans members more, and really listened to us. There is a way to support the global coffee community without putting some of their members in danger or singling them out as other. I also hope that the white coffee community doesn’t demonize the people of these countries because of these laws—I’ve seen more than one comment calling these countries themselves “backward,” a word which has a lot of shitty colonialist history attached to it, and also classist and racist implications. As we stand against the SCA in our opposition to this policy, we need also to stand with the coffee people living in these countries with anti-queer/trans laws.

I don’t see any part of this policy as beneficial, and I plan on removing myself from all SCA activities until they prove they will support and protect their queer and trans members.

Christina Snyder, Roaster 2 years SCA and RGA member, 1 year competing, 1 year volunteering

In my brief time as a member of the SCA and RGA, I’ve witnessed the institutions of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia mirrored throughout the events and policies enacted by these organizations. I have chosen, often defiantly, to remain a member in hopes of creating visibility and amplifying the voices of marginalized community members. The news of the selection of Dubai for the world events not only forced me to withdraw from competition but ask if my efforts and the efforts of many brave others have been in vain.

The deferred candidacy policy is a direct act of oppression on the LGBT+ community. By forcing the work onto queer/trans individuals, the hierarchy of heterosexual, cis males is maintained. It is appalling to place the burden of proving one’s identity onto any queer/trans individual; it is inconceivable to ask this for the sake of their safety.

By continuing to hold the events in Dubai, the SCA Board of Directors has made clear that their priority lies in monetary investments rather than the welfare of its members. The outrage of the LGBT+ community is loud, it is justified, and it is an appeal to the heart. I am saddened that only the wallet has listened.

Sam Penix, Owner, Everyman Espresso 10 years SCA and BGA member, several years competing, judging, coaching

I had to read the statement several times because I just could not believe my eyes. The statement sent a painful shock wave of cognitive dissonance throughout my body. How do I reconcile the community that I myself have benefited from and fostered all these years with the condescending statement released last week? However polite the language, it’s clear that the action or lack thereof sends a message which I as a trans person received as, “The SCA is not willing to sacrifice financial gains to maintain safety for its LGBTQIA members.”

I would like to have seen a statement that was fully transparent and answers the questions I have surrounding the lead up to the decision to choose UAE as a location for the international coffee event. I would like to see a investigation into the members of the SCA who selected Dubai as a location. Were there bribes involved? What legal or financial obligations does the SCA have to the venue in UAE?

How dare the SCA tell me this is my problem; how naive and untrue. We the members of the SCA will not tolerate the hosting of events where SCA members cannot safely attend. I am the SCA, because without members there is no SCA.

I do acknowledge that there are many countries for various reasons that pose a conflict for members. There must be a policy in place to address this. It’s just clear that this location was not thought through and/or decision-makers were corrupted with cash incentives. I hope that the SCA reconsiders this position, cancels the event in Dubai, and launches an internal investigation to find out what the fuck is going on.

Everyman Espresso will not renew its membership with the SCA and BGA and is strongly considering withdrawing from the 2018 barista competition circuit. We await further clarification from the SCA in light of our community’s response to their decision.

Dani Goot, Head of Coffee Strategy, Bellwether Coffee  2 years on Roasters Guild Executive Council, 15 years RGA member, several years volunteering, 1 year competing

It’s hurtful for me to know that all the work I have done to be my true self still leaves me unsupported by the organization I have worked to develop. I have avoided working with the SCA years prior because of the ways patriarchy showed in the organization. Things appeared to shift and balance out a bit, so I ran for the Roasters Guild Executive Council and was voted in by the Roasters Guild members. I ended up resigning a few months ago and still feel very good about that decision due to my political views and personal ethics. This deferred candidacy policy has put the queer community back a few years from all the work we have done with breaking down gender inequality in coffee. I am asking for you to stand with the LGBTQIA folx that do not feel safe or included in any coffee events including and not limited organizations such as the SCA or WCE. We as a community need to support each other as a whole. If we can’t do that, it isn’t a community worth being a part of. Where do we go from here as queer people within the coffee community?

Jasper Wilde, Coffee Educator, Ritual Coffee Roasters 3 years BGA member, I year competing, wanted to compete or judge every year but could not afford to do so

I am devastated that the most influential coffee organization is choosing to view me and other queer people as non-essential. I am shocked that this decision was approved by their board of directors. I am particularly offended at the extreme sense of othering that the SCA is asking its members to subject themselves to. What is obscene is the need to gain permission by the Deferred Candidacy Policy. This is extremely harmful and repeats a long history of requiring queer, particularly trans people, to gain favor with the people oppressing them. This is respectability politics: the SCA wishes for us to out ourselves, come to them as gatekeepers, and prove our worth and vulnerabilities before we are given the honor of representing the country we are from. One action that I will take after this decision is to boycott the SCA. I will also be discussing with Ashley, my co-host of Boss Barista, if we wish to use our platform to help lead others to boycott. On a more broad level, this decision makes me question my future career in specialty coffee. I had once hoped that I would work at the SCA to advocate for worker rights as an industry leader but this decision has created a deep mistrust and I would never consider working with them on any level.

Bailey Arnold, Director of Education, Gregory’s Coffee 4 year SCA member, 1 year judging, 2018 preliminary winner, competing in 2018 qualifier

The idea that SCA is relying on competitors to be in the same work/life situation the following competition season is absurd. Confidence, morale, and support are all great contributors to performance, and this undoubtedly affects all three negatively. Even if someone is up to waiting around to compete at a location where they feel safer, what are the odds they’ll be as motivated, excited, or mentally prepared? It’s an automatic disadvantage on top of everything else.

As a first-time competitor unlikely to advance to an international level anytime soon, whose fees are already paid for NOLA, with the main motivation for competition to be able to coach a new competitor from my company in a subsequent competition season, I’m conflicted. If I were an independent competitor I would likely consider pulling out, not wanting to support competition until the SCA’s actions align with their stated policies. However, I’m not competing solely for myself, it’s for my company and ultimately for our less seasoned baristas (potentially of a less visible demographic, as around 3/4 of our company is made up of POC) to get more engaged and excited about working with coffee.

Additional points have been made that if currently signed-up competitors pull out, people who are waitlisted can/will sign up, which yields even more profit for the SCA. At the current time I plan to continue on the “road to competition,” while keeping in mind any action I can take while participating. I’m a huge proponent of visibility and I’m “out.” I live in New York City, my family is tolerant, I’m white, I’m cisgender, I’m buoyed by tons of support, and I have a pretty solid bill of mental health. I’m in a place of considerable privilege and willing to take on this emotional labor while participating, whatever that will look like in the moment.

Jenna Gotthelf, Barista, Everyman Espresso BGA member, 3 years competing, 2018 preliminary winner, competing in 2018 qualifier

The deferred candidacy policy lacks the same foresight as the initial decision to hold WCE competitions in Dubai. It is absurd to have to qualify and approve someone’s legitimate safety concern. It’s not right to force someone to come out like that. I don’t think it is a logical solution to the problem. Deferring for a year is not what competitions are about. It doesn’t work like that in sports. In the pursuit of championship, it is important to carry the momentum of a win into the next round expediently.

The best solution here is to turn back time and undo the decision to host in Dubai, but that is not an option. The SCA is a business. Dubai is a money country. From what I understand of the recent regional competition structural changes over the past few years, there is a budget issue. I image there is a huge financial investment here, and forfeiting completely would result in an astronomical loss. I am not saying this isn’t upsetting, but it is unrealistic to think that the SCA would pull out of Dubai completely.

I do not believe there is malice behind the SCA’s decision. They have stated that moving forward, infrastructural changes will be implemented to avoid something like this from happening again. The most important part of making mistakes is acknowledging and learning from them. The SCA made an egregious error that they have acknowledged, and will end up paying for in backlash of the community. I support my peers who will be boycotting the SCA and competitions moving forward. I will not be doing so. I don’t compete because I am gay. I compete because I want to win, and if safety is another hurdle then that is unfortunate, but if every member of the LGBTQ+ community abstains from participating in these events, who will rise?

Shannon, Operations Consultant 10 years on-off BGA, RGA, or SCA member, judge for the first time at 2018 preliminaries 

This year was the first time I’d ever attended or judged a SCA event. Occasionally over the last 10 years I’ve held RGA or SCA membership, this year was my first as a BGA member. The SCA has never appealed to me; in the early days the amount of money it cost to be a member in exchange for the services received seemed preposterous. All marketing material featured white, middle-class heterosexual men and the occasional cis woman. I could not see myself in those faces. All they have had to offer was competition and high-cost educational classes. This decision is confirmation that the SCA is not for queer or low-income bodies. I will not renew my membership unless this decision is overturned.

Michelle Johnson, Barista Hustle 2 years SCA member, Level 1 SCA-certified barista, Barista Camp attendee, 1 year Expo attendee (including panel hosting and Symposium attendance), 1 year attending World of Coffee, 1 year attending WBC, consulted for SCA in Dublin on SCA’s strategic planning

When I first heard that there were going to be multiple coffee competitions in Dubai, I knew damn well I wasn’t going to go. As a Black woman who learned the hard way (sexism but more notably, racism) in Budapest, Hungary this year, the anxiety and extreme hyperawareness that comes with being who I am in certain countries—and honestly, international industry events, in general—isn’t worth it.

When I learn more about why Dubai was a problematic place to hold an event, through Sprudge and my own research, I felt that it just further pushed me and so many others away from being able to attend and support events like that. As someone who spent most of my coffee career as a barista from DC and Arizona, the idea of going to international industry events was always cool, and I felt they could help enrich my learning and expand my view of coffee on a global scale. But after attending several and the Dubai decision, I haven’t felt all that welcome.

The Deferred Candidacy Policy is just trash. Echoing what I just said, it just further boxes people out of those spaces. And I feel the most for nonbinary and trans people, especially those of color, where the opportunity to even be a part—as a competitor, supporter, general attendee, etc—isn’t even remotely available to them in Dubai. It’s also discouraging as fuck to just be pawned off to another year (if they’re a national competitor) and it’s harmful as hell to make people have to “justify” themselves through outing for being deferred in the first place. I think it’s fucked.

Having just moved continents, I’m definitely still in a transitional and recharging stage but I’m working to create more space for those more affected than I to voice their hurt and concern (mostly through the Barista Hustle Facebook group), amplifying and boosting events happening around the world, and the BH team has been talking a lot about what we can do, too.

Izi Aspera, Roaster, Wrecking Ball Coffee 4 years volunteering, SCA class attendee, 2 years competing, 3 years Expo attendee

The SCA’s decision to hold World events in Dubai and their deferred candidacy policy were superficial. As much as SCA has advertised their global reach, they often lack global awareness and how their investment in said region promotes complacency to the exploitation of migrant workers and violence towards the LGBTQIA locally and abroad. It made it clear that there is little hope for the LGBTQIA community to be represented on just allyship alone and the SCA must engage more in the communities they occupy for these events.

I already struggle every year to afford booking a flight, guarantee time off for the event, a place to stay, and a ticket to the annual convention and SCA classes. That being said it is very easy for me to back out of continuing to financially support the SCA going forward. There is no reason for me to continue to support an organization that finds my support expendable or value my contributions beyond their financial gain. If anything the SCA’s actions have made me realize how important it is to invest in local organizations that reflect my own core values.

Oodie Taliaferro, Barista, Cultivar Coffee Bar 3 years SCA member, 2 years attending Coffee Champs, 1 year Expo attendee, 2018 regional competitor, competing in qualifiers for 2018 cycle

I think that the Dubai decision was naive, frankly. For an organization that is home to so many different types of folx, it’s up to them to make sure that we can attend events, not only as competitors, but volunteers, judges, etc. I understand that the outrage is pretty American-centric, but each country’s own governance (former SCAA, SCAE, et al.) is responsible for their constituents, and this time, now that it’s affecting us, we have the opportunity to make change. If anything, this decision has given more opportunity for smaller community events to crop up, and that’s really neat.

I’m still competing. I’ll speak out when given the platform to do so. I’m working in the Dallas metroplex area and greater south central region to promote more inclusive, more progressive events and discussions more often.

Colleen Anunu, Director of Coffee Supply Chain at Fair Trade USA and Director for SCA 8 years volunteering, 2 years on RGEC, 3 years on SCA board, Vice Chair of Research

The deferred candidacy policy raised a lot of red flags for me and you can be sure that I voiced all of my concerns on multiple occasions and very loudly. I was, and still am, not in favor of the policy for a number of the discriminatory reasons that many people have already written about, as well as for more complex reasons related to my interpretation of my duty of loyalty as a governor of the association.

We owe the members of the association a lot of information, and I am committed to pushing for it without spin and without filter.

From the outset I have volunteered to take part in the Review Panel to ensure that the perspectives from my community of peers reached the desk of the President’s Council of the board. That task force had a discrete number of activities and timeline, but there is still so. much. work. to. do. in terms of ensuring that those voices are not only heard but are understood. We are stating from a 101 space where terms like “outing” and “passing” and the letter Q aren’t understood, let alone the dynamics at play in identity based discrimination. The numerous conversations that I have had with both the board as a whole and individual board members have shown mixed results. To be clear, there have been aha moments, so some of what I’m focused on now is getting those people to champion the work. I try to maintain accessibility and non-judgement for my colleagues to ask honest questions, but a strong position when my informed perspectives from lived experience are disregarded.

One of my main non-preassigned priorities on the board is to support the work being done on embedding concepts of inclusivity and diversity throughout the association: HR, guilds, events, and governance.This includes the policies and procedures for event selection, as well as guiding philosophies on governance, creating pathways to leadership for marginalized folks, and ensuring that staff and volunteer leaders are supported.

I have a personal mission to demystify the association: structure, strategy, governance, who to contact (and how amazing the staff are), and on and on and on. I want members to have access to their association leaders and to take full advantage of their rights and benefits. People can reach out to me at any time to talk.

RJ Joseph (@RJ_Sproseph) is a Sprudge staff writer, publisher of Queer Cup, and coffee professional based in the Bay Area. Read more RJ Joseph on Sprudge Media Network.

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