Even the ones that don't encourage the violent, rapey rhetoric still can't help but defend it.

and i do believe most of the time, the intention is totally good! (I won’t even touch the exchange a few threads above, talking about “showing a terf a bad time” or whatever - it could even be fake, it looks like the kind of thing terfs screenshot and share on twitter to agree with each other about gross “men” in women’s spaces. but that isn’t the majority of what i see, by far!) stuff like this is most often meant just as a pithy way to put down a deserving political enemy, and align ourselves unequivocally with our trans sisters. which on its surface is great! I do think it’s important (maybe especially in These TimesTM) to state unambiguously and with your full chest that you support a vulnerable minority and reject the position of a powerful, oppressive majority, especially if you belong to that oppressive majority’s demographic and you’re stating your allyship. I think the people talking this way usually just aren’t thinking, you know? they’re just repeating rhetoric that floats around in our culture without examining what it really means and what it does. I don’t like it, and want it to stop, for all the reasons already said. but I’m also not reading its presence here as evidence of “male violence” from trans women invading into women’s spaces or whatever. it is some gross male-sexual-violence-coded rhetoric, that has invaded the speech of some percent of trans and cis women alike, because we can’t help but have the culture around us rub off on us, for better or for worse, and if we don’t do some deliberate thinking about it, we end up saying stuff we would not mean if we thought about it for even a minute (eg the whole concept of internalized misogyny or internalized any-kind-of-bigotry). because in case this needs saying, these kinds of rape jokes making women generally feel unsafe and uncomfortable means trans women as well as cis women. many of the people who i’ve talked to who feel like me, that they want to see less of this kind of talk, are trans themselves *edit: i’m already rambling on a bit, but this comment a ways above by u/blinkingsandbeepings articulates it quite well, more succinctly gets at what I was trying to say - kind of assigning collective “blame” diffusely across our whole society, the memetic way ideas and language spread; that it’s not intentional/malicious and not an individual thing

✓ It's fake!

✓ But if it's not, their intentions are good!

✓ But if they're not, they weren't thinking!

✓ But if they were, they can't help it because culture!

✓ But if they can, they don't mean it!

✓ But if they do, it's not their fault!

This defensive reaction is just the finishing touch to all the "evidence of 'male violence' from trans women invading into women’s spaces or whatever".