So, I don’t know why it wasn’t until this that I realize it, but now I see that some TERFs seem to think that reacting to a (perceived) loss of privilege is not actually transphobic; that an inclusive feminism somehow (inexplicably) cheapens hard-won feminist advances. But let me just respond to one point directly.
Twitter is obviously not the ideal place to conduct a nuanced argument but even by its standards there’s been a remarkable amount of “reading in” to her tweets. In the one that sparked the current shouting match, she suggested that phrases like “people who menstruate” (or, by analogy, “pregnant people”) tend to erase women’s identity. Is she wrong?
She is wrong, and the suggestion that “people who menstruate” erases “women’s identity” pretty much literally exemplifies TERF thinking.
What an inclusive feminism does is expand and correct “women’s identity”. None of the hard-won feminist advances somehow are despoiled if a more modern expansive thinking transforms you specifically into a cisgender woman rather than exclusively woman.