Parallels no one is going to be happy with, part 2

[feotakahari]

"You say you're an atheist now, but you haven't unlearned any of the bigotry and hatefulness from when you were a fundamentalist. You have no real respect for other genders, sexual orientations, or for that matter, religions. Frankly, you still think you're better than everyone else, and that comes out in how you treat other people."

"You say you're trans-inclusive now, but you haven't unlearned any of the bigotry and hatefulness from when you were a TERF . . ."

Comments

[entanglingbriars]

I don't think this is a fair parallel. Stopping being a TERF implies a rejection of TERF ideology and the transmisogyny that comes with it (although theoretically you could stop being a TERF by becoming a liberal feminist transmisogynist). Stopping to believe in God doesn't require a rejection of anything other than God.

[feotakahari]

I think they’re both unfair. If someone’s being a jerk, they should be called out for the things they’re saying, not some other thing that tonally resembles what they’re saying. And let’s face it, it would be really easy to assume I’m an ex-fundamentalist just because I’m angry and obnoxious.

[sigmaleph]

There is a thing that is more-or-less... TERF with nominal support for trans people?

You see it a lot on tumblr where like. 'OP is a TERF so I stole this post from them' is a meme. where the post itself doesn't say anything about trans people but it's very clearly using the same gender essentialism TERF ideology derives from? But since they don't say 'trans women are men' then it must be fine.

I think the more likely pipeline here is 'buying into TERF gender ideology minus the explicit transphobic parts' -> 'full TERF' than the other way around, though.

[feotakahari]

I’ve seen a couple people speculate that the “stole this from a TERF” blogs are sockpuppets for the TERFs they “steal” from. It would explain some things.

[wingedcatgirl]

I know that some of the first few of those blogs shut down because they got a lot of people saying "plagiarism is inherently bad and you are bad for doing it even if you're only plagiarizing from terfs and nobody else". A terf-sockpuppet version of these blogs wouldn't have that problem.

[are_youready]

These both actually seem like reasonable sentiments to me, but I don't think they are totally analogous.

The atheist, by rejecting fundamentalism, never explicitly claimed that they were also rejecting bigotry. The TERF explicitly claimed that they were rejecting anti trans bigotry (if their thing is, as implied by this post, "i'm trans inclusive now" and not, as seems to be weirdly common for ex-TERFs, "i'm a right wing tradwife now"). If the atheist failed to reject fundamentalist bigotry, that doesn't make them a failed atheist, just an asshole. If the ex-TERF claims to be trans-inclusive but remains transphobic, that makes them a failed ex-TERF.

But, for both, I also think it's reasonable to say "your beliefs seem to in practice line up with a set of beliefs that are prominent in at least one of your formative cultural spaces, and which contradict your stated values." For example, I think it's reasonable to point out that modern tumblr anti-sex panics look a lot like conservative homophobia, and point out that given that conservative homophobia is a big belief in American culture, people nominally against it but seeming to align with it in practice might be being influenced by it, especially if it was a big influence on their upbringing.

So I actually think both of these analogies are fine, although they don't quite line up.