THREAD on how dogwhistles work and why saying "I'm not using it as a dogwhistle" does absolutely nothing

Because people seriously seem not to understand this

This thread is specifically going to be talking about current discourse regarding the "Lesbians can't be attracted to men" dogwhistle, originally used to justify the exclusion of trans women, especially lesbian trans women, from the queer liberation movement and queer spaces.

Just by definition, a dogwhistle is: "the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles used in shepherding."

First addressing the "garnering support from a particular group", yes. That is what you're going to do

Even if you're trans and say "lesbians cannot be attracted to men", you will be attracting the support of TERFs whether you want it or not.

Clearly the phrase is designed to not be inflammatory, as it says something that would seem obvious to someone uninitiated into what being queer actually is.

And if they're able to define the word, then they can use it to separate the community

Which was always the goal

That ideology is at the core of the expression. "Lesbians cannot be attracted to men" comes with the caveat "trans women are men" regardless of your meaning

Dogwhistles are not used to spread what they say, they're used to spread the ideology hidden within what they say

I think this would be a good time to mention that there are different kinds of dogwhistles

For example, "1488" is pretty on the nose about it's meaning, and that's why I'm honestly unsure if "dogwhistle" is correct to describe this.

But back to the main topic

It is impossible to separate a dogwhistle from its actual original meaning, they will always be intertwined

The point is to spread ideology, not spread an opinion

The ideology at the core of "Lesbians cannot be attracted to men" is two things

Trans exclusion and Queer assimilationism

I've already gone into the trans exclusion a fair bit, I really don't know how much I need to elaborate on that

TERFs wanted to do as they do and exclude trans women from queer spaces, so they told lesbians that they were secretly just predatory men

and to further ram it home to any bi women who identified as lesbians, as well as to further convince lesbians who were stricly attracted to women, they said "lesbians can't be attracted to men"

Queer Assimilationism is a school of thought within queer spaces that is inherently antithetical to the queer liberation movement

The goal of queer liberation should not be assimilation. We are different, we have historically not been considered the norm.

Making us into "the norm" will literally never happen.

We live in an incredibly cisnormative and heteronormative society, we cannot change that no matter what.

The goal of queer assimilationism is to make queer identities more comfortable, understandable, and digestible by non-queers.

Part of doing this is excluding identities such as xenogenders, acespec and arospec ppl, intersex ppl, etc

Ofc this also includes trans exclusion

Another aspect is making easily definable terms

"Lesbian" had been an identity long before the political lesbianism movement, but that movement attempted to turn it into something definitive.

"A woman who likes women". That is what a lesbian was, according to TERFs

A majority of those terfs, btw, were not lesbians

Assimilationism is a dangerous ideology. It can never achieve actual liberation and justice, or even equality, for queer people

The entire point of the ideology is to leave the undesirables behind and try to get desirables through the door before it closes

It's already closed

Not to mention that "the desirables" almost never includes nonwhite queer folks

Queer assimilationism leaves behind the queer people who aren't considered acceptable enough and expecting them to eventually pull through

Even the "desirables" won't make it through

The only solution to queer liberation is to destroy the system. We cannot work with it

And at the center of this dogwhistle, that's whats there

A dangerous ideology that will stagger and probably even stop any chances of queer liberation

You can't take that away. That's what this dogwhistle explicitly supports. This is older and bigger than anyone

So stop