By now you must be aware that the phrase “transphobe” is routinely used as a rhetorical cudgel to browbeat many women into silence and submission, women who want nothing more, in many cases, than to be allowed to use the bathroom or locker room or shelter free from the presence of biological males. By denying that Andrea Dworkin was a “transphobe” you were by contrast lending credence to the notion that these other woman are in fact “transphobes.”
I’ll spell it out. The women I know who have been called “transphobic”—and who have been threatened with rape, other forms of torture, and murder by many of the very same biological males who are labeling these women as “transphobic”—are not, in fact, “transphobic” in that none of them wish to exploit or wish any harm on people who identify as transgender. They don’t want for them to be murdered. They don’t want for them to be imprisoned. They don’t for them to be raped. They don’t want for them kicked out of their homes. They don’t want for them to be harmed in any way. They don’t want for them to be exploited. They don’t perceive them as inferior. They don’t care with whom they sleep. They don’t care what they wear. They don’t care how they organize. They don’t care how much money they make. They have no desire to control the lives of these others.
They just disagree that those biological males who identify as “transgender” are women, and they mainly want to be left alone. And for that they are labeled as “transphobic.”
Disagreement is not hate speech, and disagreement doesn’t imply “phobia.” Any hatreds being manifested here are by those who threaten rape and murder when women do not submit. But that’s a story we’ve all heard before.
I’m not suggesting that transphobic violence doesn’t occur, but those who perpetrate it are a whole different set, a whole different politics, and a whole different sex.