Before I become one, I used to think transphobic rad fems were totally out of touch with reality. Couldn't understand why they thought trans people were in league with the patriarchy. I used to hate read rad fems for years because I found them so ridiculous.
Transphobic feminism only became compelling after I went through several disruptive events in my life and it started to seem like it could fulfill my needs. A huge factor was that conflict had ripped through my personal community and I no longer felt like I could trust people.
My old community no longer felt safe, so I was on the look out for a new one that could meet my needs. I was questioning my gender and unsure of how to live as a woman after living for years as a trans dude. I also was quitting drugs and trying to work through old trauma.
Basically I was going through a lot, in an emotionally vulnerable place, my old community/support system had been disrupted and I was pissed about it, I wanted to detransition but didn't know what that would look like.
When I looked for detrans women, most of the ones I found were rad fems who'd also had bad experiences with the queer community. Their criticism of radical queers spoke to the anger I felt at the time. Rad fems in general were eager to support me as a detrans woman.
I ended up turning to transphobic radical feminism to try to fulfill my needs. It gave me a place to belong and express my anger, it gave me structure and purpose. It seemed to solve my problems. Finding a place to belong was one of the biggest draws and the hardest to give up.
When it became apparent that the rad fem community had a lot of problems, when it didn't live up to my expectations, I lost faith in the ideology pretty quickly. I still tried to believe because I felt a stronger connection to the detrans community that was harder to let go of.
There's so much that I used to believe that makes little sense to me now. But when I look at what I used to get by voicing those beliefs, the belonging and status I got as a detrans rad fem, it makes way more sense. The ideology was a means to an end, a way of meeting my needs.
This why I want to create more resources for detrans people, people dealing with gender dysphoria and trauma, transmasculine people dealing with the effects of living in patriarchy, etc. I want to address the problems that cause some people to turn to transphobic ideology.
People get into transphobic ideology for many different reasons and you'd need to study those people to get a deeper understanding. I only understand some of the motivations of some of those people. There's a lot that still confuses me.
I've found it useful to read about how and why people join other hate groups, like white supremacists. There are a lot of parallels and it's helped me understand my own experience. The ways both groups recruit people online is very similar.
Also, many transphobic people are not going to change their minds because they get way too much from being involved in anti-trans groups to give it up. There are many I wouldn't bother engaging with at all, just try to figure out how to counter any threat they pose.
