A Classic TERF Meme Stash

For history

As part of my historiographical research, I am collecting classic TERF memes. Memes are internet propaganda, a term I am using in its neutral sense of images and text designed to affect human psychology. For example, here is a meme that I made a few years ago. It is meant to provoke laughter, yes, but also thought. What is the ‘trans man’ trying to project when she adopts the costume and mein of the ‘monster father’?

This meme was floating around about four years ago. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then this picture contains a million words that describe the process of learning what autogynephilia is, and why it makes some men struggle with reality. Among critics of genderwoo, the term ‘peak trans’ refers to the highest point of the roller coaster. In most ‘peak trans’ stories, learning the reality of AGP stands out as a big moment in the process of learning the truth.

Some memes are genuinely dangerous. Do not, repeat, DO NOT post the meme below on social media. Your post WILL be taken down and your account probably suspended for being too funny and on-point. I probably shouldn’t even put the whole thing here, so I am clipping the bottom of it.

Memes and cartoons are not the same thing, but there is much overlap because the medium provides a comic rhythm. For example, a four-panel strip is the perfect venue for exposing the thought-terminating clichés of genderwoo while highlighting the disturbing origins of the ideology.

Then there is this four-panel strip which rocketed around the internet about six or seven years ago. I am told that the Russian-born radical feminist who created this perfect meme was doxxed and harassed within an inch of her life for it afterwards, disappearing from the internet. Another case of humor cutting too close to the bone for the leftist men who hate women and the liberal women who love them.

Macros are another common meme format. A good meme starts with a classic reference, that is, some sort of image that is already shared by the cultural consciousness, and juxtaposes it with whatever social/political trend is being satirized. Occupy Wall Street transitioned into Wall Street Pride parades, corporate virtue signalling, and rainbow-washing. People noticed and made memes about it.

Some memes do not age well because they capture transient moments in the discourse. To explain a joke is to kill it, and some jokes require explanation for those who were not there to understand the time in which it was made. When comedians score cheap laughs by referring to contemporary trends, usually they are not making comedy that lasts.

Luckily for historians, exceptions do happen. For example, during 2022, genderwoo censorship reached its absolute zenith on Twitter and Reddit. Refusing to be silenced, TERFs came up with “super straight” and associated “super gay” and “super lesbian” identities and hashtags, successfully baiting TRAs (trans rights activists) into demonstrating the hypocrisy of their identitarian politics. It was all summed up with a Tom & Jerry reference, something universally understood.

Online communities refer to their favorite shared cultural material. The results are then spread across the internet between like communities, creating ‘online culture.’ Meme image origins are global because the internet is everywhere. For example, lots of memes use Japanese anime references that ‘normies’ are not supposed to get.

But again, the best of these memes work regardless of whether someone has seen the original work. For example, you don’t have to know this character’s story arc to get the joke. You don’t even have to understand that the original joke involved misidentifying the butterfly as a pigeon. You don’t have to know anything about anime, or even enjoy it. The medium is the message.

Doge memes are also widespread on the internet. Kabosu, a female Shiba Inu dog, became the first Doge meme in 2010. The Dogecoin cryptocurrency was launched three years later. Those were the heady days of the free internet, when everyone still believed in free speech, before the Great Wokening made it ‘stunning and brave’ to cancel people from platforms over pronouns. Today, the BBC can’t go five minutes without a drag queen and NPR can’t discuss any topic without examining how it affects trans and nonbinary people.

Some memes are simply shared cultural material with a TERFy twist. The story of Little Red Riding Hood has been invoked a million times by now in critical commentary on the inherent safeguarding problems created by transgender ‘identification.’ I have also seen a number of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ memes.

Foxes in henhouses are another common TERF meme. The phrase “trans chickens” contains a load of commentary. These ‘ancient wisdom’ memes can spark some of the most hostile reactions from people in the genderwoo cult because they say so much about how novel and strange and detached from reality the ideology really is.

A good meme uses familiar things to comment on strange things. The most successful memes provoke thinking, but require little thought to understand. Words are less important than images. Sometimes, they capture ephemeral moments in the discourse, while other memes are timeless. Indeed, some of these memes got me through the darkest years of peak genderwoo.

Send me your favorite TERF memes — for history.