Thanks for this article. I am glad that you included the information about autogynophilia at the end as, in my mind anyway, this has been the basis of a lot of the points made by TERFs about the reasoning behind the male to female trans mindset. Here is some general information about the theory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology which may help those not super familiar with it.
The problem here is that it reduces a group of individuals very personal thoughts, feelings and emotions about their identities and ways of being down to one thing — a fetish. It assumes that it is men objectifying and fetishizing femaleness to the point that they want to be come one themselves so that they can live in a state of constant arousal, which is debasing to those who find themselves trapped in a body that they not only do not identify with, but one that constantly jars on their psyche because their biological presentation does not jibe with the way that they think, feel and act within themselves.
TERFS are so obsessed with the image they have of the evil male that they have become obsessed with themselves as the targets of male machinations. They have made what is a very personal and often painful journey for many trans people all about themselves, rather than taking the live and let live approach that you think would be something that they would find appealing. But obviously their agenda is not that of the traditional feminist principals of equality for women and by extension equality for everyone. They have instead created some kind of nefarious agenda that once again makes them the victims. They sound like the pearl-clutching women of a small-town sewing circle, gripped by the bogie-man of many a moral panic.
Sure, there are people out there that do fetishize women and present themselves in ways that enable them to do this, just as there have always been conmen or hustlers who have cloaked themselves in the guise of some or other profession or social class to victimize others, but these people should be treated on a case by case basis as the personality disordered individuals that they are, rather than representative of a group of people that, on the whole, just want the basic human right granted to them to be — and be accepted as — the person that they are.
For a group of people to take such a simplistic and exclusionary approach toward another subset of society says a lot more about where they’re at, than it ever could of the people they are targeting. Call me naive but you have to ask what they are afraid of losing by letting others live as they wish when doing so takes nothing away from anyone else, but adds so much to the happiness of the world.
