One of my friends is becoming more involved in feminist activism, and recently some of the stuff she posts is becoming... iffy in the terfy department. Nothing outright transphobic outside comments other people leave on her posts, but a lot of complaining about "this pretty feminism for men's consumption that pats men's heads when they want to barge into women's spaces". it was sparked by a sort of complicated situation - a cis man, who identifies and mostly presents as a cis man, with a full beard and everything, got the right to use women's bathrooms and a social name id with a feminine name. He is a anthro/sociology phd student, something like that, and gender critical; but he explicitly said he identifies as a man, is a man, is not a trans woman still in the closet. he just likes wearing makeup and accessorizing his beard. and like... i have my criticisms about his attitude. but i'm seeing her getting into this terfy feminism and i'm getting worried - i like her, but we're not close anymore. i'm not sure how to approach the subject with her, i guess.
I think one of the best things you can do, when people are getting into these early stages of being railroaded into one opinion, is to be a consistent source of the well-reasoned opposition. That doesn't mean necessarily engaging her in conversation, but just... casually, without a fuss, occupying the same online spaces she does while unapologetically not agreeing with some of the stuff she's being fed. Be a source of things that introduce complication - yeah, an unabashedly cis guy deciding that some feminine presentation allows him unlimited access to women's spaces totally sounds skeevy, but the stance of "there are problems with that guy's demands and I don't like it" can totally coexist with a stance of "trans women seeking access to women's spaces aren't like that guy, and that's a different conversation we need to be having." I think so long as she's still aware that those disagreements are there, and are valid, you two can probably stay in the territory of "we are both feminists with slightly different viewpoints on men's role in feminist spaces." A huge danger in online space, in my experience, is when people are able to curate a space so it only contains the things they've decided to agree with. Of course all of us do that to some degree, it's normal, but when it turns from "she's leaning more heavily TERF-y" to "she is rejecting on sight anything that comes into her view that does not fit exactly this viewpoint and can no longer recognize that there is nuance in this conversation," I think it's much harder to pull back. So just being a presence who reminds her there's life outside of TERF tumblr could be really beneficial.
i had a similar situation where an online friend became a terf gradually, and by the time i noticed the stuff she was posting/rebloging had gotten really agressive and uncomfortable. she also became aggressive twoard bi people. i ended up unfollowing her because i was stressing out constantly and was scared to reblog any kind of trans positivity posts. also i openly ID as trans so once i realized i got really really uncomfortable because i didn't know if she had seen that and what she thought about it part of me understands why she attatched herself to that ideology, but it was like. a misdirection of her anger. she was angry at men, but instead became aggressive twoard all amab people, ignored trans men, and developed a hatred of bi people. normally im very against ghosting people but we already hadnt talked in months and i didn't want to start shit, so, yeah. and i agree a lot with what @raydelblau said!
