Nobody Enjoys Mocking Women’s Appearances More than Transphobes Concerned with 'Protecting' Us

There isn’t a single woman alive who hasn’t been mocked for her appearance. It’s one of the true universalities of the gender, up there with wage disparities and the ceaseless threat of rape culture. Regardless of what you look like, how stunning you are or how much to fit into the increasingly narrow boundaries of societal standards for beauty, you’ve been made fun of. For a lot of us, it’s become more a tedium than anything else, an undoubtedly unpleasant experience that we’re as used to as the setting of the sun. So, it’s surprising to literally nobody that transphobes are obsessed with policing women’s appearances.

Here on TERF Island, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak eager to push forward even more laws restricting the rights and freedoms of trans people, it feels like we have a new transphobia drama every f*cking day. Between the wizard books lady’s usual nonsense and that bleach blonde misogynist palling around with literal Nazis, it’s been a smothering hell to live through. The British media is keen to prop up the most bad-faith anti-trans arguments possible, the leader of the opposition is a spineless careerist who won’t stand up for marginalized voices, and various sporting organizations are in a race to ensure that the tiny handful of trans people who play anything will never again be allowed to do so. How could things get any stupider? Hold my beer.

Daniel Radcliffe, the short king actor who was once in those movies with the scarred kid who could do magic, has long been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. Recently, he collaborated with the Trevor Project as part of a conversation with young trans and non-binary voices. It was a sweet moment, with a major star standing up for vulnerable people who are currently being bombarded with social, political, and media-driven hate. The transphobes have long been furious with Radcliffe’s basic human decency, declaring him to be ungrateful and sexist because he isn’t constantly cowering at the feet of the multi-millionaire transphobe who wrote the books that those films he was in were based on. Apparently, your parents signing a film contract for you means that you’re never allowed to dissent on any topic the rich lady dictates to you. So, not satisfied with just attacking Radcliffe himself, the losers went after his partner, the actress Erin Darke. Apparently, she looks, you know…

Look at this person - who is a writer apparently - policing the appearance of other women. This is Erin Darke, an American actress. A short search on the internet would reveal this information unless, like Seddon here, you've got an axe to grind. https://t.co/Fp2c3bYYFr

— TonyCross (@Lokster71) April 6, 2023

See! Look at how the ungrateful little Danny boy is dating a woman who is *checks picture* taller than him and apparently not suitably feminine enough for her to be cisgender. Checkmate, Potter!

Erin Darke is currently heavily pregnant, by the way. Not that it matters. If she were trans, that wouldn’t be an ace up the sleeve of TERFs everywhere to silence someone who rightly thinks they’re all trash.

I’ve long lost count of the number of traits that transphobes have used to ‘prove’ that some random cisgender woman who they’ve targeted is an eeeevil trans activist. It’s a shopping list of misogyny, casual eugenics, and baffling delusions. Some examples include: thick eyebrows, broad shoulders, a large skull (?!), a strong jawline, large feet, long legs, small breasts, large and possibly surgically augmented breasts, being taller than 5 foot 9, having a deep voice, and strong upper arm muscular definition. Any physical quality that could be twisted to be defined as ‘masculine’ is on display here. This doesn’t even include other favoured targets of transphobes, such as colourfully dyed hair, piercings, visible body hair, and tilting your head in a selfie. If you’re wondering why this screed is near-identical to the garden variety misogyny lobbed at women by creepy dudes online every single day, that’s because they’re using the same tactics.

And let’s not forget the racism of it all, with women like Caster Semenya and Michelle Obama consistently abused as not being ‘womanly enough’ and the former facing near-total exclusion from athletics through no fault of her own. Every time you see these thunderf*cks cutting the trans colours out of the pride flag, they always make sure to cut out the stripe dedicated to our Black comrades (and the AIDS memorial one too, funnily enough. It’s almost like they hate the entire community and want to slim down the numbers through any means necessary.) I keep expecting these losers to crack out the phrenology skull at some point. Hey, enough of them are Nazi-adjacent nowadays that it wouldn’t even be a shock.

Nobody hates women more than these transphobes. They may claim that they’re eager to eradicate trans people in the name of our safety but all they’re truly concerned with is reinforcing the same old misogyny that has kept us back for centuries. They’re so bloody excited to be as lazy as possible with their hatred, copying the tools of the bullies who would throw them under the bus at a moment’s notice. As if they’ll be saved when those they tried to oppress are rounded up. You’ll never actually end up being the Aunt Lydia, guys.

There is no right way to be a woman, but transphobia is dependent on strengthening a false binary through any means possible. The goalposts are always moving to ensure that nobody is ever satisfied. Transphobes love to talk about how they’re actually super against the pink/blue demands of men versus women but they’re the first to crack the whip and demand they be adhered to. Trans women are lambasted for not looking appropriately feminine as well as being called minstrels if they do. Bathroom bills designed to keep trans women out of public spaces are used as battering rams to attack butch women all the time. Athletes like Katie Ledecky are attacked as being ‘secretly trans’ for the crime of being tall, strong, and good at their job.

All of this intersects with the other ways that women and the LGBTQ+ community are attacked. Queer and bisexual people are vilified in the same way they’ve been derided for decades, their identities outright denied for not fitting into the status quo. For all their talk about how they want to elevate the voices of (cis) lesbians, transphobes sure seem weirdly elitist about who gets to be attracted to who. Scratch the surface of any transphobe and, for all of their bellows about protecting women, you’ll just find a garden variety misogynist who wants to kick down at those who have dared to ask for a seat at the table. They’re just as enthusiastic about reducing women to breeding machines who are lesser to men as the hard-right abusers who want to make that definition the unbeatable law. Absolute loser behaviour. It’d be funny if these tactics weren’t working among the highest powers in the land.