When I first heard 'TERF' I thought it was 'TIRF' for Inclusive. It caused me to inadvertantly piss off some TERFs when I kept treating them as someone who supported trans rights. Like, I thought it meant a person was trans themselves and a radical feminist.
Apparently nothing pisses off a transphobe like attributing a level of humanity they're trying to reject.
I would say transphobia absolutely is radical. Of course, by the definition in which it is extreme. Say, for instance, by these definitions:
Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme or drastic.
Relating to or advocating fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions.
The slang form of radical (being a synonym for excellent/wonderful) is merely a single definition, and when talking about politics (I hate to liken transphobia to a "political" issue, but it is heavily intertwined with politics now), its denotation is that of the quoted definitions above.
personally im a fan of FIB
Feminist
Identifying
Bigot
They call trans people "trans identified <misgender>" so why not turn it on them? They're not feminist.
One problem is that it might give some credence to their shit terminology
Is radical a bad word? Its use is generally associated with revolutionary politics. The usage of the term by TERFs stems from second wave feminist theory. They have to specify that they are Trans Exclusionary to distinguish them from radical feminists as a whole, who are not necessarily Trans exclusionary.
a common understanding of radical by self described radicals is "targeting the root of an issue" or the "wanting large systemic changes" that follows from that.
for radical feminists this means recognizing patriarchal power structures as the root of most gender related opressions and wishing to overcome them. while we can critique their exact analysis, i think the idea that many opressive acts are symptoms of deeper systemic opressions maked a lot of sense.
please don't let opressors convince you that liberation in itself goes too far. a better world is possible and the struggle for it is righteous.