Babes In TERFland: Part 1
I spent several weeks in trans-exclusionary radical feminist online spaces. Here's what I learned. This week: Ovarit
Note: This purpose of this series is to highlight the serious nature of radical feminist-aligned transphobia online, so there will inevitably be upsetting transphobic hate speech featured. If this is something that has the potential to upset you, please prioritise your mental health and scroll past, or avoid reading it entirely.
Having quit my job at the end of January, I’ve found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands, and there’s only so many hours you can play The Sims before you start to lose your grip on reality. Which is how I found myself spending the past few weeks lurking in radical feminist and gender critical online spaces across a variety of platforms.
For any radical feminists reading this, I do not pretend to be an impartial witness, much like I’m not impartial when it comes to other forms of bigotry. I do not think journalism (or whatever this it is that I’m doing here) needs to be neutral in the face of oppression and injustice in order to be effective.
It all started after I became inspired by Gothamshitty’s TikTok videos on how she became a radical feminist, and how she realised it was a hateful ideology, as well as the Media Matters report that came out late last year that proved that TikTok’s algorithm was leading users from transphobic content to alt-right content. I wanted to try and replicate their results myself, and it grew from there into a wider examination of online radical feminist spaces.
My hypothesis was that the stuff I was occasionally seeing on Twitter (largely in JK Rowling’s mentions, since I don’t typically seek it out) was only the tip of the iceberg, and not representative of the younger cohort of radical feminists. Many zoomers see Harry Potter and its associated fandom as passé, so the JK Rowling-worshipping radfem crowd seems to skew slightly older. Much has already been written about transphobic feminists on forums like Mumsnet and in the wider media, particularly in the UK, so I knew I wanted to focus on other spaces that hadn’t been as widely discussed.
To get as comprehensive a picture of what radical feminist online spaces were like, I observed them on the following platforms: Twitter, TikTok, Giggle, Spinster, Ovarit, and Discord.
Twitter, TikTok, and Discord you’re probably familiar with. If not, I’m not sure how you know what Substack is, but if you got here by accident, I can only apologise.
The other three are less widely known, for good reason: they’re platforms created by radical feminists specifically to talk about things that would see (and have seen) them expelled from other platforms.
Ovarit was created in 2020 in direct response to Reddit’s crackdown on hateful subs, which saw r/GenderCritical and any associated subs removed from the site.
Giggle, an app that comes with a website that features the URL ‘female spaces are necessary dot com’, was created by Bond University graduate Sall Grover in 2019.
Spinster, billed as a radical feminist-friendly alternative to Twitter, was created by MK Fain, also in 2019. Fain was also involved in the creation of Ovarit, and runs the radical feminist publication 4W.
What I learned after weeks of monitoring the conversations on these platforms was that my hypothesis was largely correct: the quality of discourse taking place in relatively out-of-sight locations was abhorrent. But I also learned that the quality of discourse on mainstream platforms was worse than I’d previously thought - people had just become more adept at getting around filters and censorship, i.e. by simply making new accounts whenever theirs were removed for violating community guidelines, or by replacing letters with asterisks, or by using obscure lingo that moderators with little knowledge of the radical feminist community would have scant hope of parsing.
That brings me to my next point. Before I go any further, I unfortunately need to give you a bit of a vocabulary lesson. There are some terms you may already be familiar with (like radical feminist, gender critical, or TERF) and others that will be completely foreign to you, for good reason. I’m going to briefly define as many relevant terms as possible, assuming that people reading this are not chronically online and plugged into various discourses at all times.
Radical feminist: refers to practitioners of the second wave of feminism that had its heyday in the 1970s. Key tenets of radical feminism include a focus on the patriarchy as the source of all societal ills, a radical decentering of men in women’s lives (this tenet led some to become ‘political lesbians’, that is, women who weren’t lesbians but were choosing to eschew men as praxis, as well as lesbian separatists), an opposition to sex work and pornography (considering them exploitative and objectifying), a belief in sex being immutable and inherent, and a belief in women’s oppression being the basis of their biological sex, not their gender (thus calling themselves ‘gender critical’ or ‘GC’). Many radical feminists are also gender abolitionists. Popular theorists include Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon (both of whom, despite their popularity among TERFs for their anti-sex work views, have expressed support for trans women, surprisingly enough).
The term has become synonymous with TERF - trans-exclusionary radical feminist - because of how vocal they are online, but TIRFs - trans inclusionary radical feminists - do also exist. bell hooks and Audre Lorde were also writing around this time, and while their beliefs have some overlap with the radical feminists already mentioned, their more nuanced (and intersectional) approach doesn’t suit the needs of modern day TERFs, and thus their names are not invoked anywhere near as often as Dworkin’s (fun fact: the username I used on TikTok, Twitter and Spinster was a variation on her name, because I knew that was a quick way to make me seem like a radfem) or MacKinnon’s.
Occasionally, TERFs will argue that they do include trans people, but typically they only mean trans men and non-binary people who are AFAB (assigned female at birth); in their eyes, trans women, being AMAB (assigned male at birth), cannot be women, and thus cannot be feminists.TRAs: trans rights activists. While anyone regardless of gender can advocate for trans rights, this term is primarily used against trans people, and more specifically, trans women (because trans men are wayward souls who just need guidance, and thus they’re less willing to alienate or insult them right off the bat).
TIM and TIF: trans-identified male and trans-identified female. The former refers to trans women, the latter to trans men. Just another way to ignore people’s identities and bring everything back to biological sex.
Moids: This is one I hadn’t heard until joining radical feminist groups on Discord; it’s a derogatory term for men, which naturally means they use it when talking about trans women as well. Charming!
Troon: An anti-trans slur, like tr*nny, but one that fewer moderators are aware of, allowing users to use it without fear of getting their account banned for violating community guidelines.
Gyns: Does not mean gynecologist. Is used the way other people use ‘guys’ to refer to a group, to refer to fellow (female) travellers. Comes from the ancient Greek γυνή, the root for words like gynecologist and gynephilia.
Gendies: A derogatory term for anyone who ‘identifies as’ a gender instead of accepting that their destiny has been predetermined by their assigned sex at birth.
Peak (or peak trans): A verb. It refers to the moment you became fed up with trans activists/the movement as a whole. e.g. “I peaked when a trans customer was rude to me in my lingerie store”.
Detrans: Someone who previously identified as transgender but no longer does.
Desister: Someone who previously identified as transgender, but never medically transitioned, and no longer does.
🚂🦵: train, knee. Tr*nny. I only saw this used on Twitter.
Febfem: A bisexual woman who has made the choice to only date other women; essentially a 21st century revamp of political lesbianism. There’s a flag and everything.
Libfem: Liberal feminist. It’s the dominant flavour of feminism in society, so it’s more likely than not the kind of feminism you’re most familiar with.
GNC: Gender non-conforming. Using radical feminist logic, trans men, for example, are simply gender non-conforming lesbians with internalised misogyny and homophobia they have yet to unpack.
SW: Sex work.
SWERF: Sex work-exclusionary radical feminist. By their very nature, most radical feminists are both TERFs and SWERFs.
With that out of the way, let’s dive in to our first case study: Ovarit.
Ovarit
Like I mentioned earlier, Ovarit was created in response to Reddit’s decision to ban the subreddit r/GenderCritical in late June 2020. The Atlantic article I linked to provides you with a pretty comprehensive overview of the site’s origins, but I just wanted to highlight MK Fain’s involvement in establishing the site, since she’ll come up later as the founder of both Spinster and 4W, a radical feminist online publication.
r/GenderCritical was banned on June 29, 2020 for violating Reddit’s rule against promoting hate. Far from prompting self-reflection on the part of its 64,000 users, its biggest devotees and administrators quickly sought out a replacement. Enter: Ovarit. As in, over (Redd)it, and ovary, because females have ovaries. Funny, right? Got the whole squad laughing.
While r/GenderCritical is memorialised on the Wikipedia page for ‘controversial Reddit communities’ alongside r/FatPeopleHate, r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse, Ovarit is thriving. Sort of.
Its header informs us that it’s still in the Beta stage almost two years later, running on an open-source platform called Throat. As Kaitlyn Tiffany explains in The Atlantic, Throat was developed by Ramiro Bou in 2016 as an alternative to Voat, which itself was designed as an alternative to Reddit. You’re confused? I’m fucking confused, bro.
Tiffany asked Bou about the site, to which he said that they’re “nice people” and currently one of the most active communities on Throat.
Meanwhile, its footer contains a quote from Sheila Jeffreys, who my fellow Australian feminists might recognise as a former University of Melbourne professor of political science known for her radical feminism. Dejan, a former student of hers, told me that she was explicit in her views, saying, “she'd speak to the "perversions" at the centre of what she called "transsexuals" and use heaps of really bogus anecdotes (particularly around the bathroom hysteria). She was incredibly transphobic.”
The quote displayed on the site is, “All space becomes male space unless females maintain a concerted effort to mark a space for themselves.”
Ovarit represents that concerted effort, I guess. Per their about page, “Ovarit is run by a team of radical feminist women dedicated to safeguarding women’s ability to have community with other women and speak freely about issues that matter to us as individuals and as a class.”
It’s hard to get an accurate read on how popular the site is; SEMRush says it gets 15k hits a month via search engines, while Similarweb says the site itself received 2.4 million visits in January. Similarweb also categorises it as a website about pet food and supplies though, so.
Of the subforums, o/Announcements has the most subscribers, at 6700, meaning that less than 20% of their membership from Reddit appears to have carried over to the new site. The highest upvoted post on the entire site had just 353 upvotes and 50 comments.
There are 19 subforums, including o/Cancelled, o/GenderCritical, o/SaveWomensSports and o/TERFIsASlur.
On the first day I visited the site, I looked at the top 100 posts under o/all, and noted that 83 were about trans people and issues, and 13 were about JK Rowling specifically. It’s not immediately clear how bra fitters complaining about customers or women complaining about their partners transitioning “uplifts women as a class”, nor how putting a Scottish billionaire famous for writing children’s books two decades ago on a pedestal benefits women as a whole, but maybe that will become clearer in time.
Interestingly, Ovarit’s rules include a ban on the use of transphobic slurs (as well as misogynistic and homophobic ones). Terms like ‘TIM’ and ‘TRA’ are fine though - referring to a trans woman as a man is acceptable as long as you do so politely.
That veneer of respectability slips away with alarming frequency, but a post that received 212 upvotes caught my eye.
On March 31, Trans Day of Visibility, last year – a day created to serve as an “annual international celebration of trans pride and awareness, recognising trans and gender diverse experiences and achievements” – user visits_radio made a post in o/GenderCritical that read,
I just wanted to wish everyone a great Terf Day of Visibility! I know it has been tough supporting women's rights in this climate so every terf (out and closeted) deserves appreciation.
Hope each one of us has a lovely day today and celebrate the fact we are still fighting and that we will never give up!
Other users in the comments were quick to join in on the joke, including user hatshepsut, who wrote, “thank you! But I will NOT rest until we have a terf day of remembrance, terf awareness month, radical feminism visibility week, terf and terf adjacent mothers day, terf day of undying love and support, crypto terf day, rudefem day, nicefem day, gender critical day of mourning and finally the most esteemed holiday JK Rowling Day >:(((“.
User harripan responded with, “And a Peak Trans Remembrance Day where we reminisce about our peak trans moments”. Transgender Day of Remembrance takes place on November 20 each year and is intended to remember and honour trans people who have lost their lives that year.
Tiffany found a similar post, mentioning it to Fain and in her Atlantic article:
After we spoke, I sent Fain a link to a thread on Ovarit, in which women were discussing their disdain for Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual observance dedicated to the memory of people who were killed directly by anti-trans violence. In 2020, the number of deaths is at least 40 so far. “How many fucking invented holidays do they have at this point?” one asked. “They should change it to Every Day is a Trans Day because they don’t let us stop reading or hearing about them for even a minute,” wrote another.
I asked Fain if this kind of mocking, angry speech was concerning to her at all, and she wrote back to say no. “As I’m not a [moderator] on Ovarit, I don’t feel I’m in the best position to comment on specific content,” she said. “More generally, though, I think humor and anger are both very common ways for people to deal with pain and oppression.”
This response from Fain doesn’t explain how trans people are oppressing the users of Ovarit by dying, which would justify the usage of gallows humour using her logic.
One thread I found particularly illuminating was a recent one titled, “Persuading Normal People: Keep the focus on women and girls, boundaries, and consent” (I like the suggestion that people spending chunks of their days on a message board dedicating to bathroom panics aren’t normal - some slight self-awareness slipping through?)
The poster discusses how they’ve managed to persuade friends of theirs to come around to their way of thinking, and people in the comments also share their tips and tricks, which include focusing on consent or male entitlement, depending on the audience.
This thread, combined with comments I found elsewhere about the way users have struggled to remain friends with people who disagree with their transphobia, or even trans people they know personally who are apolitical and keep to themselves, made it clear to me that despite what they claim, and despite their tendency to accuse trans activists of intolerance, TERFs are not comfortable maintaining relationships with people who disagree with them on this issue. Trading tips and tricks and discussing the best way to convert friends and family to your way of thinking is not something typically done by someone secure in their views.
As you can see, the suggestion that trans people who keep to themselves and aren’t politically active aren’t a threat was quickly shut down. It’s blackface, they’re sexual fetishists, they hate women, they want to expand their dating pool.
Overall, Ovarit seems to be a pretty small fish in the radical feminist internet pond, although many people know of it, even if they don’t use it. Membership numbers are a fraction of what they were on Reddit, which I think is largely due to the fact that people can’t be bothered going to an entirely new site as opposed to sticking to Reddit and having access to thousands of subs whenever they want. This problem of attracting and convincing users to use platforms designed to serve such a niche purpose is one also being played out on Giggle and Spinster.
My next post will look at the similarly closed communities of Giggle and Spinster: an app and a website created specifically to serve as social media alternatives for those who feel alienated by mainstream platforms like Twitter.
If the content in this post has left you feeling outraged, consider donating to a trans person’s GoFundMe, or to an organisation that advocates for or supports trans people in your area.
Came here from Ovarit where I lurk quite often. Honestly I think a lot more could be said about Ovarit, where the TERFs determine the conversation for themselves instead of latching on to other threads. For example, the second most popular subject on the website behind transphobia is Islamophobia, which I find very interesting. On the surface it's consistent with their stated ideology. Patriarchy bla bla. But none of the posters live in Muslim countries. It seems to me that it's another important aspect of their hall of mirrors, where minority groups are much easier targets for hatred than the actually powerful people of the societies around them.