No Stupid Questions

Damn, you see those worms? What did you do to the can?

Look, this is a very hot button subject. So I have to make a disclaimer.

Trans rights are human rights, full stop.

TERF: trans exclusionary radical feminist.

There's two parts to that. The first one is "radical feminist". That ideology is where the people that hold to it believe that society as a whole has to be restructured to eliminate patriarchy and male domination. Those two things are damn near identical, but there's enough difference to matter for some things.

The other part is "trans exclusionary". As should be obvious, the concept is a rejection of the principle that trans women are women.

Now, the term terf has expanded to include any woman that rejects the womanhood of trans women, even if they aren't actually radical feminists.

So, no, not all terfs are actually feminists. But only because the terminology has shifted. At this point, I think it's fair to say that it's shorthand for transphobic women despite its origin.

That being said, yeah, radical feminism is an accepted aspect of feminism as a whole, so technically any terf that is a radical feminist isa feminist.

That's the strict answer to your question

Here's the problem with that.

Who decides what is and isn't womanhood? Who decides what is and isn't acceptable in defining feminism, or who is and isn't a feminist?

Within the framework of radical feminism, and only within that framework (see my initial disclaimer for my belief), trans women being born with male anatomy can exclude them. There are inclusionary radical feminists that see trans women as a natural extension of the principles. Some of those, however, also lump trans men as enemies because they've abandoned their womanhood to submit to the patriarchy.

Radical anything tends to be about absolutism. It's all or nothing.

And that's where terfs fall. That's where radical feminists fall, no matter who they do or don't include/exclude. So, it's actually difficult to peg them as transphobic, because the underlying belief system is not the same as other forms of transphobia. It does still fall under duck rule (they walk and quack like transphobes), but when it comes to deconstructing their arguments, you have to come at it from a different angle when combating their attempts at enforcing their beliefs. It's like trying to fight a grease fire with water if you don't come at it right.

I know that's beyond the scope of your question, but I think it's an extension that matters.

Right now, the war is about survival. And that war currently is one that needs minds changed. If you go at terfs as standard bigots, you run afoul of women that aren't terfs, but can be influenced by them when they can claim to be targeted as women.

In their heads, it's a battle to keep men out of women's spaces, to keep the invasion of men into yet another aspect of women's lives. Since the fallout of misogyny and patriarchy is actually a constant pressure to fall into line, any attacker becomes the enemy. You can't sway the undecided when you are actually attacking the terfs as bigots, dismissing them yet again for being women, for not acquiescing to external controls.

You have to go specifically at their arguments, surgically. You aren't going to sway the terfs. But you can sway others by deconstructing their arguments, in a way you can't with a "normal" transphobe that's using religion or arbitrary hate (woke haters mainly) as their driving cause.

I'm not saying that you can't counter terfs. That you have to accept their belief as valid. Again, see my disclaimer. I'm only talking about how to frame the war of words to limit their effectiveness.

Part of that is accepting that they are a branch of feminism, or can be.