I do think it’s worth distinguishing from the run-of-the-mill transphobe and the TERF. Both exist wherever you go, but the latter is notoriously much more common in TERF Island, while the orange fascist’s state has more regular bigots. And not just because there’s one prominent example from said island.
You’ll find that if the concept of trans people never comes up, most TERFs will genuinely come across as progressive on gender issues. They’ll be, for example, the kind of person who runs a YouTube channel about swords and showing how women are very capable of learning to fight with them. (Sadly not a hypothetical.) They obviously carry somegender essentialism—that’s basically a prerequisite to transphobia—but they often apply it much more narrowly than the average transphobe.
I do think it’s worth distinguishing from the run-of-the-mill transphobe and the TERF. Both exist wherever you go, but the latter is notoriously much more common in TERF Island, while the orange fascist’s state has more regular bigots. And not just because there’s one prominent example from said island.
You’ll find that if the concept of trans people never comes up, most TERFs will genuinely come across as progressive on gender issues. They’ll be, for example, the kind of person who runs a YouTube channel about swords and showing how women are very capable of learning to fight with them. (Sadly not a hypothetical.) They obviously carry somegender essentialism—that’s basically a prerequisite to transphobia—but they often apply it much more narrowly than the average transphobe.