Trans-exclusionary radical feminist

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A Trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF; also Trans-exclusionary reactionary feminist, or Trans Women Exclusionary Feminist or TWEF)^{[note 1]} is a member of a fringe but sadly loud and vocal hate movement within feminism, in which the vast majority of members never actually advocate for women's rights but instead, obsessively promote transphobia, especially transmisogyny, often through a range of conspiracy theories and denialism,^{[note 2]} in addition to hostility to the third wave of feminism, while falsely claiming this is all for the benefit of cisgender women.

The more biologically essentialist currents assert that the only real women™ are those born with a vagina and XX chromosomes and that anyone born with such an arrangement is always a woman.^{[note 3][note 4]} Those currents which are more oriented towards theories of social development tend to couch their opposition to trans individuals in the notion that a life lived as someone who socially codes as a woman is intrinsic to the definition of 'womanhood,' and thus that male-to-female trans individuals are 'interlopers' who cannot know nor represent the feminine experience. While the lifetime of experiences many women have accumulated in being treated as women are undoubtedly important, how and why this should translate into opposition for trans rights is unclear at best, and quite often stoked by blatant appeals to transphobia and transmisogyny.^{[note 5]} Regardless of explanative framework, TERFs/TWEFs in general often push their views in the name of destroying the gender binary, but in reality, seek strict enforcement of a gender binary that is directly predicated on gender essentialism and bio-essentialism.

TERFs act as if they are the "next wave of feminists", ironically enough, despite them being one of the most regressive currents within feminism; they tend to frequently boast about their status, often using dogwhistles, some of which are rather peculiar.

The term was likely invented by Hoyden About Town writer Viv Smythe (aka TigTog) in 2008.^[3][4] TERFs very rarely use the term to describe themselves, and many of them claim that TERF is a misogynistic slur.^[5] TERFs insist on being referred to by the euphemism "gender critical", and many may claim they aren't transphobic, but instead "trans critical".^[6] This is not new behavior; white supremacists claim that anti-racist is a code word for anti-white and often insist on being called "race realists", and tankies will often try to rebrand Stalin apologetics as "anti-revisionism."

In the United States, feminists in sub-branches of feminist thought known to house individual TERFs, including second-wave feminists and political lesbians, have spoken out against this transphobia and transmisogyny within their ranks, further demonstrating the distance between TERFs and mainstream feminism.^[7][8] This is less the case in countries like the UK, where TERFs are a part of mainstream feminism.

Their doxing,^[9] trolling,^[10] picketing,^{[note 6]} and generally abusive behavior have led some to compare them to the Westboro Baptist Church.^[11][12] They are, in short, a hate group that by no means represents mainstream feminism.^[13] In fact, the TERF movement is overtly anti-feminist.^{[note 7]} TERFs have increasingly aligned themselves with the far-right in their anti-trans bigotry and opposition to trans rights, and they have adopted far-right terminology such as the "gender ideology" conspiracy theory;^[14] conversely, the far-right is borrowing TERF terminology points to further their own transphobia.

Demographics[edit]

Young people – millennials and younger – are unlikely to support TERF ideology. For example, in 2020 Ipsos found that 56% of Generation Z in the United Kingdom supported increased trans rights, as opposed to only 20% of the baby boomer generation.^[15] This is significant considering that the U.K. is generally a hotbed of transphobia, in relative terms. Support for trans rights is even greater in some other countries.^[16] Support tends to be lower, yet still present, with older people.

TERFism versus feminism[edit]

Broadly speaking, there are two major points on which TERFs and feminists vehemently disagree — the question of gender and the nature of the third wave of feminism.

Towards binary gender[edit]

Transphobic radfems seem to almost universally reject the concept of cisgender privilege, and even the term "cisgender" itself, as somehow demeaning to "women born women" (another controversial term in LGBTQ+ circles that is usually understood as a transphobic shibboleth). In other words, TERFs go so far as to reject any terminology models (for words such as "woman" or "man") that are not based on biological organs, gametes, or chromosomes.^{[note 3]} Thus (re)defining their own movement as that "of women to liberate women from oppression, and that female biological reality is a defining aspect of women's experience of oppression."^{[note 8]}

Unlike run-of-the-mill conservative transphobes, TERFs generally accept a distinction between gender and sex, at least in theory. However, they believe that gender ought to become completely irrelevant and that sex is crucial when it comes to how we classify people. They defend the act of misgendering by claiming that they are simply referring to biological sex, and while theoretically opposed to gender roles, some TERF bloggers speak of the completely different concept of "sex roles".^{[citation needed]} When they don't have any biological evidence for a particular point, they turn to socialization based on sex instead. The fact that GC holds sex as a be-all-and-end-all system just brings them right back to the gender binary and essentialism.

Academic radical feminism is premised upon the idea that gender, as the assignment of bundles of default personality stereotypes to genital shapes, is entirely a social construct that must be destroyed. Presumably, in this sort of post-gender world, everybody would be encouraged to identify nonbinary and present fluid, leaving genitals for the bedroom.^[18] Some transgender people maintain, on the other hand, that gender is to some extent intrinsic: even though they were raised as one binary gender, they have always identified as the other,^{[note 9]} and further, trans people often, but not always, want bodies to match. As frequently happens when ideology runs up against someone else's lived experiences, ideologues respond by trying to hammer the problem flat until it fits with what they already believe. As such, there has been^[19] and continues to be^[20][21] a rich current of anti-trans bigotry underlying TERF ideology on the issue of gender and transgender people in general. The obvious conflict between the notion that "gender is entirely a social construct" and the slogan "women born women" seems to escape them, except perhaps in the context of gynecological health care.

Conspiracy theories[edit]

TERFs dismiss both what trans people themselves have said about their own identities and the medical consensus on gender dysphoria with a variety of ad hoc claims and conspiracy theories, which they claim to be part of the "trans agenda". When attempting to explain away the existence of trans people, common claims are that:

• Trans men (when remembered to exist) are just butch girls who want male privilege.
• Trans people who were previously seen as gender non-conforming cisgender people were forced to transition.
• Trans women who don't fully conform to stereotypes of femininity (such as lesbian trans women) are only transitioning to enter women's spaces and then harass or rape cis women.
• Trans women are transitioning because they have a fetish for being viewed as women.
• The existence of transgender people is a conspiracy to erase the identities of lesbians, perhaps by forcing lesbians to start identifying as trans/non-binary and then replace them with "fake" trans lesbians.
• Or, a conspiracy to silence discussions of women's issues by promoting gender-neutral language.
• Or, a conspiracy by the pharmacists and the makeup industry to make money.^{[citation needed]}

Thus, they slam transgender people in general for "reifying the gender binary". Considering the transgender population is about 1 in 300,^[22] accusing the transgender community of reifying nearly any oppressive construct is patently absurd, which is obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of math and group dynamics. To back up their beliefs, as there is no evidence for any of it, they instead rely on ad hominem attacks and memes. For example, in the case of the bathrooms argument:^{[note 10]} All of this is highly ironic since by doing all this, they are objectifying women's bodies and saying men are not to blame for their actions because of "instincts". Never mind the actual numbers, of course, which show that trans women are one of the groups most likely to be abused and raped.^[23][24]

Against the Third Wave[edit]

TERFs loathe the third wave of feminism. For several reasons, partly their own authoritarianism, partly their own demographic myopia, and partly because they represent a partial embodiment of every stereotype thrown at feminists over the last century and a half, this particular group of radfems have been roundly rejected by nearly every demographic they claim to represent, including, but not limited to, women of color, sex workers, kinksters, virtually all male allies (except a few masochists who spend their time shitting on their gender and downplaying genuine men's issues), and, at long last, almost every feminist who has come after them.^{[citation needed]} This is in part due to their inability or unwillingness to understand intersectionality.^{[citation needed]}

Radical or revolutionary feminism arose in the 70s as an extreme, no-compromise version of feminism that was driven by a discovery of the prevalence of rape and sexual abuse. But it focused on the freedom of young, middle-class, educated women (through events such as "reclaim the night" marches, and practices like "consciousness raising" which involved spending lots of time in closed groups discussing your experiences with similar women) and rejected consideration of other social forces like class or racism. In the 1980s, many of the leading radical feminists moved into the middle-class, getting well-paid jobs as tenured academics, and becoming increasingly divorced from the life struggles of the vast majority of women – Margaretta Jolly gives the example of a recipe for salad Nicoise "best accompanied by a glass of dry champagne" submitted by a British feminist academic to a feminist cookbook while the wives of striking miners were dependent on food donations.^[25]

Margaretta Jolly wrote, "The ongoing appeal of radical feminism is that it addresses primal fears of sexual violence, alongside equally primal pleasures in women's community, desire and love."^[25] The result for well-insulated middle-class radical feminists was a deep-rooted mindset closed to the experiences of those different from themselves. Radical feminists seem to deeply resent that the third-wavers have taken moral and intellectual leadership; Turner wonders if there is an element of guilt over the privileges TERF academics now enjoy.^[25] Meanwhile, while TERFs enjoy the comfortable lifestyles that feminism gave them, third wavers have taken radical feminism's best ideas — understanding and fighting patriarchal structures and rape culture, the fight for reproductive rights and women's health care — and carried them forward, while leaving the dogmatism and one-size-fits-all theorizing behind, rendering the majority of them irrelevant.

For sex workers, the reason for rejecting that form of feminism is, in large part, because although all sex workers around the world can be said to be exploited (especially in developing countries and anywhere with a strong culture of machismo) and some are indeed held in the industry forcibly against their will (as opposed to economically, in the same vein as minimum wage workers), they nevertheless find the conflation of sex work and slavery to be insulting both to themselves and historical victims of slavery, not to mention counterproductive for helping actual victims of sex slavery (who often, upon freeing themselves, resort to sex work in absence of other opportunities).^{[citation needed]} Sex educators generally agree and in addition feel that such attitudes deny the agency of people to seek their own pleasure, hiding an underlying puritanism behind concepts like false consciousness.^{[citation needed]}

TERFs and wingnuts[edit]

TERF ideology is increasingly aligned with the far-right and other conspiracist and hateful ideas, including antisemitism. While the original generation of TERFs stemmed from a radical woman-only movement, which was at least an earnest attempt to fight for women's rights on multiple issues, these people have been increasingly displaced from their own label by a new set of far-right transphobes with no more than the nominal connection to feminism.^[26] Philosopher Christa Peterson notes that anti-trans ideology has "solidified over time" into embracing other and more explicit conspiracy theories and that "today, this rhetoric provides an entry point into far-right politics."^[27]

Similarities to wingnuts[edit]

The behavior, rhetoric, and tactics of TERFs are often eerily similar to that of wingnut homophobes. When Sheila Jeffreys noticed RadFem2012 was canceled and labeled a hate group, she said:

Criticism of the practice of transgenderism is being censored as a result of a campaign of vilification by transgender activists of anyone who does not accept the new orthodoxy on this issue.^[29] (emphasis added)

The bolded part is eerily similar to what the radical right has said about homosexuality. Specifically, it resembles the following quote about such by neo-Nazi Paul Fromm in its framing of gender identity as choice instead of something a person is, as well as its massive persecution complex; additionally, the language downplays the bigotry, insinuating that people's existences can be merely "criticized":

Despite being a Catholic, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario forced even Catholic schools to promote the homosexual agenda in the schools and have Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs, even though the practice of homosexuality violates Catholic teaching. (So much for religious freedom!)^[30] (emphasis added)

TERFs have advocated reparative therapy for transgender people. For example, Janice Raymond, in her paper Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery, stated:

Nonsexist counseling is another direction for change that should be explored. The kind of counseling to “pass” successfully as masculine or feminine that now reigns in gender identity clinics only reinforces the problem of transsexualism. It does nothing to develop critical awareness, and makes transsexuals dependent upon medical-technical solutions. What I am advocating is a counseling that explores the social origins of the transsexual problem and the consequences of the medicaltechnical solution.^[31]

This is exactly the same rhetoric used by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH),^{[note 11]} an anti-LGBT group dedicated to lobbying for reparative therapy.^[32]

Racism[edit]

TERF communities have also been accused of racism. TERFs will oftentimes repeat Islamophobic comments and oftentimes engage in racist behavior, frequently stereotyping certain ethnicities of men as more sexist than others.^{[citation needed]} Many men, even male TERFs, have noted the movement's complete inability to address the very gendered aspects of racism that oftentimes disproportionately affect men and to which TERF rhetoric oftentimes implicitly contributes.^{[citation needed]} Angela Davis and bell hooks, two black third-wave feminists, famously called out Susan Brownmiller's treatment of Emmett Till's lynching in her book Against Our Will as bordering on tacit approval, as she suggested Till's wolf-whistling was tantamount to the greatest possible humiliation.^[33] This was claimed to have been due to Brownmiller's subliminal racism.^[34]

Finally, TERFs' incessant use of euphemisms to conceal their transphobia is comparable to the alt-right's heavy use of fascist dog whistles.^[35]

Most TERFs will position themselves as very concerned with protecting young AFAB people from risking or attaining permanent infertility, as they claim teenagers are too young fully understand the decision to be childless. Some are more or less explicitly racist and antifeminist about it, pushing a focus on protecting perceived young (white) girls' reproductive capacity above all else to creepy extremes. Abigail Shrier's transphobic book "Irreversible" prominently features this threat. Some, such as Alix Aharon, push the "white genocide"-adjacent conspiracy theory that only white youth are being pushed to transition.^[26]

Collaborations with the far-right[edit]

TERFs and far-right transphobes often collaborate and treat each other as allies, even though little often unites them outside of their views on trans rights. In fact, in online spaces, the two are often indistinguishable. Notable instances include Cathy Brennan's collaboration with the right-wing Pacific Justice Institute to harass a trans woman via death threats, and generally acting as their mouthpiece,^[36] Janice Raymond working with conservative leader Jesse Helms to deny health coverage to trans people,^[37] and Sheila Jeffreys stating that she aligned with the "radical right" on the issue of transgender legislation:

Now one of the things I find puzzling about it is that, when I look at the House of Lords debate on this legislation, those I agree with most are the radical right. Particularly the person I find that I agree with most, in here, and I’m not sure he will be pleased to find this, is Norman Tebbit.^[38][39]

Julia Beck, a self-proclaimed "lesbian radical-feminist" became a darling to right-wing media (even appearing on Tucker Carlson's show!) in 2018 after she was invited to speak out against trans protections in the Equality Act.^[40][41]

Many anti-feminists, including Milo Yiannopoulos, have praised TERFs, with Milo going as far as calling Julie Bindel, who has called for putting men into reeducation camps, as being his favorite feminist alongside faux-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.^[42] Prominent TERF Posie Parker did an 80-minute video with French-Canadian white nationalist Jean-François Gariépy in 2019.^[43] She was also ejected from the TERF organization 'A Woman's Place' due to her views on Muslims, which were deemed racist.^[44]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked an explicit plan by far-right groups and activists such as Meg Kilgannon^[45] to use feminist rhetoric to undermine the LGBT movement. She states "If we separate the T from the alphabet soup we’ll have more success.”^[46] Kilgannon also suggested specific tactics to "divide and conquer":

Explain that gender identity rights only come at the expense of others: women, sexual assault survivors, female athletes forced to compete against men and boys, ethnic minorities who culturally value modesty, economically challenged children who face many barriers to educational success and don’t need another level of chaos in their lives, children with anxiety disorders and the list goes on and on and on.

There is an argument that TERFism is in itself a far-right position as it attempts to enforce colonialist policies that banned different sexual orientations and genders; indeed Irish feminists rejected a planned TERF event explicitly due to their experiences with colonialism.^[47] It is telling that after receiving this criticism, supposed feminist Venice Allan / Dr Radfem (who was evicted from a Christmas party for stalking a trans teenager and suspended from the Labour party for transphobia)^[48] dismissed the pro-choice campaigners by saying that abortion was only there to "make sex easier for men".^[49]

Cartoonist Barry M Deutsch ably lampooned the similarities between the two groups.^[50]

Similarities to and links with the far-right[edit]

Although many in and outside of the TERF movement try to portray it as a benign, feminist, wholesome movement that constitutes a ‘difference of opinion’, there are many TERFs with frightening and extreme points of view.

Janice Raymond said that “the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence”.^[51] She justifies this Naziesque quote on her website by saying that she doesn’t want to eradicate transgender people - she just wants to prevent them from transitioning, something many trans people say is akin to a death sentence.

Bev Jo von Dohre has stated that she wishes all trans people were dead.^[52]

Posie Parker, AKA Kellie Jay Jean Minshull, (who popularised the dog whistle slogan Adult Human Female) was ejected from a TERF group due to her racism,^[53] has appeared on a neo-Nazi YouTube channel,^[54] flew to America to harass a human rights activist,^[55] and has posed for a selfie with an Islamophobic Holocaust denier.^[56]

TERF homophobia[edit]

The small minority of TERFs who are willing to call out other TERFs for collaborating with the far-right usually face extreme backlashes, such as Julie Bindel and (former TERF) Amy Dyess (both working-class butch lesbians) who have criticized other TERFs for collaborating with homophobic hate groups like the Heritage Foundation. TERFs have decried the rainbow flag and rainbow lanyards as ‘symbols of oppression of women’ that ‘make them nervous’.^{[citation needed]} Despite their much-vaunted support for gender non-conforming men, several TERFs in the now-defunct ‘gender critical’ subreddit were ‘uncomfortable’ with Jonathon Van Ness, who previously identified as a GNC male and now identifies as non-binary.

Founder of anti-trans group Transgender Trend (a group that targets children) Stephanie Davies-Arai has also expressed 'concerns' about Drag Queen Story Time, alongside groups like One Million Moms and Warriors for Christ. The group has also sent harmful information packs to schools (with content that has been likened to 'ex-gay' literature)^[57] and has released an anti-trans book aimed at children.^[58]

Posie Parker is against gay men engaging in surrogacy, pride parades, and children being taught LGBT tolerance.^[59]

Baroness Nicholson described same-sex marriage as a threat against women and children.^[60]

TERFs can be quick to whip up homophobic and biphobic rhetoric against queer men, especially if said men are public allies to trans people.

TERFs are also known to attempt to present themselves as allies of gay and bi people, but their tune quickly changes when actual gay and bi people object to being used as props for attacking the trans community. They way that TERFs talk over the gay/bi people they claim to be supporting is very similar to the way that anti-vaxxers talk over autistic people.

Alignment with the anti-gender movement[edit]

Since the mid-2010s TERFs are increasingly aligned with the broader anti-gender movement, which otherwise consists of far-right politicians and ultra-conservative Catholics in countries like Poland. TERFs have widely adopted "anti-gender" terminology from the far right, including the conspiracy theory of the "gender ideology".

"Super Straight" meme[edit]

In 2021, the "Super Straight" meme became popular among TERF activists on social media. It was described as a troll campaign emanating from neo-Nazi agitators on 4chan to invalidate trans people's gender identities and justify blatant transphobia.^[61] TERF activists also adopted a particular variant of the meme in which they claimed to be "Superfeminists" and implied that only TERF is real feminism. Also, variants including the word "super" like "Superlesbian" occurred. In TERF circles, the word "super" has become shorthand for this transphobic meme.

Sex worker-exclusionary radical feminism[edit]

Sex worker-exclusionary radical feminism (also known as SWERF or "sex-negative feminism") is yet another offshoot of feminism, one that opposes women's participation in pornography and prostitution. The term was coined to match that of TERF, as their memberships overlap and both assault oppressed communities.^[62] Their ideology also overlaps as both subgroups follow a prescriptive, normative approach to feminism; i.e., telling women what to do — TERFs with their gender, and SWERFs with their sexuality.

SWERFs criticize the objectification and exploitation of women within pornography and the sex industry, as well as the violence and abuse that sex workers frequently suffer.^[63] If this was all they did, that wouldn't be a problem. This is also a position held by other feminists, not exclusive to SWERFs.

In practice, however, unlike other feminists, SWERFs typically go completely overboard and dump on sex workers who chose their profession freely, even in places where it is completely legal and safe, claiming that the sex workers are nothing more than deluded victims (and co-perpetrators) of human trafficking. Much like white supremacists might insist that adoption agencies helping children from the third world find parents in the west are nothing more than deluded extinctionists. This dogmatic hostility to voluntary sex work is known as whorephobia.^[11]

SWERFism has been co-opted by religious groups to give their anti-pornography crusade a patina of respectability. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation uses a lot of pseudo-feminist language, but is in fact a rebranded Morality in Media and is still largely run by conservative religious types. Some of the problems they rail against are real, but the message is muddled because they consider literally any sex work to be exploitative, with no nuance whatsoever.^[64]

TERFs and misandry[edit]

There is an undercurrent of man-hating to TERFism as a whole. Their criticisms of men go above and beyond what is necessary (or even acceptable). They regularly engage in hasty generalizations of male behavior that oftentimes eerily resemble the crass misogyny of the manosphere, albeit in reverse.^{[citation needed]} For instance, after Tara Wolf's assault^[65] on Maria MacLachlan in Hyde Park, MacLachlan and her supporters repeatedly and intentionally misgendered Wolf to paint her as a stereotypical male thug and portray her actions as male violence.

TERF as a slur[edit]

Many TERFs spuriously claim that "TERF" is a slur — indeed, the website terfisaslur.com is aimed at claiming solely that.^[68] FeministWiki argues that the term TERF is "usually understood to be an anti-feminist, sexist and misogynist slur"^[69] an assertion rejected by many feminists and women. As Tassia Agatowski says "It’s like suggesting that ‘homophobe’ or ‘racist’ are both slurs when they’re clear, dictionary-definition words to describe someone’s discriminatory views."^[70]

In Feminist Current, Meghan Murphy wrote that "'TERF' isn’t just a slur, it’s hate speech. The term 'TERF' is not just used to smear and deride, but to incite violence."^[71] Similarly, in New Statesman, Sarah Ditum suggested that the TERF label encouraged pro-trans feminists to "think it is OK — more than OK, laudable — to hit a 60-year-old woman if she thinks the wrong thing, because thinking the wrong thing is understood to be an act of aggression in itself."^[72] The 60-year-old woman in question was Maria Maclachlan. At Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, while she was waiting and filming to hear about the venue for a meeting to discuss proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act,^[73][74] she was struck by a trans activist who tried knocking off her camera, and it eventually escalated to a fight involving three activists including Tara Wolf, where Maclachlan held Tara Wolf's girlfriend while being struck on the back and the shoulder and eventually hitting the ground.^[75] Tara Wolf was convicted later in court and was ordered to pay a £150 fine, a £30 surcharge, and £250 toward costs, though the court also refused to compensate for Maclachlan because according to the judge, Maclachlan was continuing filming despite being told to stop and that she inappropriately tweeted a close-up of Tara Wolf with the caption "Hiya, got any hair restorer while I'm in hiding? Love Tara."

TERF is a label intended to describe someone as an anti-trans feminist (rather than a full reactionary). It is particularly ironic that TERFs — who dedicate their efforts to proving that trans women aren't women — react so harshly to being mislabeled themselves. Moreover, some TERFs are seen labeling themselves as "AFAB transwomen", in an apparent attempt to create confusion.^[76]

Marina Watanabe, the biracial, bisexual senior social media editor for feminist publication Bitch Media,^[77] wrote an excellent primer on what constitutes a slur, pointing out that it necessarily involves power dynamics. As there is no dominant ideology or social system that privileges trans people, suggesting that 'TERF' is being used as a mechanism to silence cis people - the powerful majority - is nonsensical.

many movements centering bigoted ideas will take social justice ideas that are rooted in history/sociology and haphazardly apply them to fit their narrative.

Tassia Agatowski tore the idea to pieces in a Medium article, pointing out:^[78]

Punching someone and breaking your hand doesn’t make you the victim.

Moreover, no term is a slur while there is no non-offensive term to denote the same referent. In Value and Implicature,^[79] Stephen Finlay notes several slurs in comparison to their non-offensive counterparts and concludes that the reason the slurs are pejorative is that they have non-offensive counterparts.

This choice of terminology is explained by the intention to express contempt towards a group. Were these pejoratives the only efficient means we had in our language to denote their referents, they would no longer be conventionally pejorative.

This raises the question: If 'TERF' is a slur, what other term denotes the same referent without being a slur? Is it, as suggested above, "gender critical"? It is quite uncontroversial to say that, for example, Judith Butler is critical of gender, and yet is definitely not a TERF. Even more trivial is it to show that terms like 'feminist' or simply 'woman' include people who are not TERFs, and therefore do not denote the same referent (despite TERF attempts to claim to speak for those groups).

It is a requirement of any serious objection to a slur that an alternative term is proposed (at least in cases where the slur does denote the referent; using, for example, 'gay' as a slur is different because it's only a slur when directed at people who are not, in fact, gay, and therefore there is no need for an alternative term). Thus far, TERFs have failed to satisfy this requirement.

TERF lingo, symbols, and culture[edit]

TERFs have many euphemisms for transgender people. For a while, they used "MTT" and "FTT" (Male/Female to Trans) as substitutes for "MTF" and "FTM" respectively. They have referred to trans women as "SCAMs" (surgically and chemically altered males)^[81] and compared them to Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. Nowadays, TERFs use "TIM" and "TIF" (Trans-identified male/female).^[82] They claim to prefer the terms because they mock the trans identity and emphasize that being trans isn't real; some also like them because they sound like nicknames for Timothy and Tiffany.

On the surface, sentences like "Men shouldn't be in women-only spaces" and "Men shouldn't appropriate lesbianism" sound progressive and reasonable, but TERFs use "men" as a dog-whistle for trans women. When TERFs are upset at a trans woman, they may accuse her of "hating women" or "hating feminists", as if TERFs speak for all cis women or feminists. In short, TERFs tend to view trans women as invasive men and use feminist language as an excuse to be transphobic. They even call trans activists "TRAs", a subtle comparison to MRAs.

The latest TERF attack is on the rainbow flag, which they are attempting to frame as a hate symbol against women.^[83]

TERFs also like to call cis women who support trans women "handmaidens".^[84] Should you reply by pointing out that Margaret Atwood has specifically said that she is not a TERF,^{[85][note 13]} they will say they were referring to the Bible and not The Handmaid's Tale. This has nevertheless led to discussions in TERF circles about whether Atwood herself is a "handmaiden".^[86]

Of course, some TERFs might "tone down" their transphobia with "compromises", which trans YouTuber Riley Dennis has referred to as "Terfism 2.0".^[87] For example, instead of saying "trans women are men", they might say "trans women are trans women", "trans women are women, but they're male", or "trans women are men, but I'll respect your name and pronouns if I like you". The same goes for saying that someone is a "biological man" or "biological woman" as a workaround way to misgender someone.

They also like to claim they are being censored, bullied, or silenced, often in national newspapers, when in fact people have heard what they want to say and simply disagree.^[88]

Terms for themselves[edit]

The latest neologism that TERFs insist on being called is gender critical, another word for anti-trans activism,^[89] ominously similar to how white supremacists insist on being called race realists.

Sometimes, TERFs refer to the catchphrase "adult human females" as the definition of a woman, to somehow imply that trans women are not women.^[90][91] It's a curious choice of phrase since many women object to being referred to as "females",^[92] a term that is more than reminiscent of the manosphere's misogynistic jargon.

A variant is referring to men/women as "structured to produce the small/large gamete."

TERFs have also referred to themselves as 'gender free', a Mumsnet originating 'joke' based on a heterosexual cisgender woman pretending to be 'genderfree' to win an LGBT award at her workplace.^[93] Heterosexual women appropriating minority awards is apparently a tremendous wheeze to TERFs, one of whom said she was 'laughing her socks off'.^[94]

TERFs use the phrase #peaktrans to refer to experiences that 'made' them transphobic. In essence, it's their term for things that make them think trans people/rights have 'gone too far'.^[95]

Blaming a group, or individuals, for the hate you have or the violence you inflict on them is absolutely nothing new. - Hailey Heartless

TERF library controversy[edit]

TERF groups, usually including Meghan Murphy have been booking rooms at libraries, taking advantage of free speech laws after being refused rooms at other venues. There has been justified criticism for this 'reason', as, for example, Toronto Public Library allows for denying a booking to a group “promoting discrimination, contempt or hatred for any group or person on the basis of […] sex, gender identity, gender expression”.^[96] Their deliberate choice not to invoke this clause implies strongly that TPL tacitly approves of transphobia.

• Vancouver Public Library held a talk by TERF Meghan Murphy. This talk was widely protested by the local LGBT community and led to VPL being banned from future Pride events.^[97]
• Toronto Public Library, proclaiming that they were fully in support of LGBT rights and inclusiveness, supported a talk by TERF Meghan Murphy saying that it was acceptable to them under free speech laws,^[98] despite that they also stated they would prevent talks that would ‘promote discrimination’ - apparently, Toronto Public Library believes discrimination against trans people does not count. They emphasized that they’d already hosted a neo-Nazi group because apparently, two wrongs make a right.^[99] Despite TPL’s performative speeches about free speech and apparent grassroots support, FOI requests have revealed that Bowles agreed to host Murphy in less than ten minutes, and used her connections to obtain a supportive article from Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University)’s Centre for Free Expression.^[100] Because nothing says free speech like a government official using her connections to promote prejudice against a minority.
• Seattle Public Library held a talk in February 2020 by WOLF, a TERF anti-LGBT organization with links to evangelical Christians. So far, Seattle Library has also invoked the ‘free speech’ defense.^[101] Meghan Murphy has come under fire from other TERFs for collaborating with WOLF. Julie Bindel also criticized Posie Parker for taking WOLF's money. She was roundly criticized by her 'gender critical' followers for labeling Parker a bad feminist, even though Parker is associating with a group that sponsors anti-abortion groups.

United Kingdom[edit]

TERFs are a minority in American feminist discourse, concentrated primarily among older second-wave feminists who came of age amidst the women's liberation movement of the 1970s and '80s. In the US, the anti-transgender movement, like the anti-gay movement, is mostly driven by religious conservatives and often comes bundled with anti-feminism; younger third-wave feminists take a more intersectional approach that, among other things, embraces transgender rights and a looser conceptual understanding of gender.

It is a very different story, however, in the United Kingdom.^[102] TERFs hold a mainstream position within the British feminist movement and serve as the main face of British anti-trans activism as opposed to religious conservatives, to the point that there has been friction between American and British feminists over the issue. In 2018, Sam Levin, Mona Chalabi, and Sabrina Siddiqui, three American journalists writing for The Guardian, publicly disavowed an anti-trans editorial published in the paper,^[103] citing its similarity to the rhetoric of American religious conservatives and the Trump administration. In the other direction, Posie Parker and Julia Long, two anti-trans British feminists, traveled in 2019 to Washington to ambush Sarah McBride, a trans woman and the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, live-streaming footage of themselves hurling anti-trans invective at McBride. They said that they came to Washington because they saw the United States as the global heartland for transgender rights activism and "political correctness" in general, and wanted to challenge it on its "home turf".

The prominence of trans-exclusionary radical feminism in the UK results from a variety of historical reasons. To start, while the cultural feminist tendencies that bred transphobia were born in the US in the '70s, they attained a far more commanding position in the UK; lesbian separatists were heavily involved in the anti-nuclear movement in the '80s, seeing the nuclear standoff of the era as a symbol of the patriarchy's worst excesses. Furthermore, without an organized Religious Right in Britain hostile to both feminism and transgender rights, the intersectional alliances between activists in both movements and others never emerged the way they did in the US. As such, post-Thatcher Britain saw relatively few of the broad, popular left-wing social movements that characterized the American left at the time. The movements against racism, police brutality, environmental degradation, and sexual harassment and assault were largely American-led affairs within the Anglosphere, to the point where some Brits came to see such movements as fundamentally rooted in American concerns that were of less relevance beyond American shores. The blind spots of the British skeptical movement in the '90s and 2000s, and the positions many figures therefrom would later attain in British media, also played an unfortunate role. Pushback against postmodernism and alternative medicine often took the form of fetishization of the "hard" sciences to the point of biological determinism, and a dismissal of the humanities and social sciences as corrupted by nonsense pushed by people with an axe to grind and rooted mainly in ideology. This made queer theory a target of ridicule, seen as postmodern junk undermining a "biological" understanding of gender. Finally, the parenting forum Mumsnet played a major role during the '00s and '10s. Mumsnet is a major online social space for young mothers in the UK, a demographic that is often quite feminist-leaning but also receptive to "think of the children" arguments, and they proved to be an easy market for rhetoric couched in feminist language calling trans people and rights a threat to their kids.^[104]

Forstater case[edit]

JK Rowling revealed herself to be a TERF after multiple indirect "slip-ups" in the year beforehand,^{[note 14]} by defending Maya Forstater after the latter lost an employment tribunal against the European subsidiary of Washington-DC based think-tank Center for Global Development (CGD). The Forstater case has become somewhat of a rallying point for TERFs in the UK, with the claim by TERFs, and repeated verbatim by Rowling, being that the tax expert Forstater had been forced out of a job for saying that ‘sex was real’. However a reading of the legal documents that Forstater herself posted online,^[105] which were ably broken down by Dr. Pimenta,^[106] reveals that she was a contractor, and her employer simply declined to rehire her, based on her anti-trans comments made on the company/charity Slack channel, and the fact that her Twitter comments, made publicly under her own name, had made full-time staff uncomfortable.

The employment tribunal was held 13-21 November 2019; Forstater's case and the judgment by Mr. J Tayler solely concerned Forstater's expression of her beliefs, and in particular, if her dismissal involved unlawful discrimination against a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act, and did not consider whether she was employed by CGD or any other reasons for her (alleged) dismissal.^[107][108] It did not dwell on the handling of complaints by her co-workers who were concerned by the transphobic nature of her tweets (¶29). Hence it was based on analysis of Forstater's written statements, including tweets as well as remarks on the company's Slack chat network and in letters/emails, and Forstater's own submission. Evidence included:

1. A series of Tweets from September 2018 about "Pips/Philip Bunce", a senior director at Credit Suisse and listed in a Top 100 Women in Business list, who self-identifies as gender-fluid, in which Forstater objects to Bunce's right of self-identification. (¶25)
2. A conversation on Slack in which she said "I think there are also a group of misogynist people, and others who want to undermine protections for women and children that have become entryists to the Trans Rights Activists movement that are not natural allies to women: gamergaters, incels, narcissists, extreme porn advocates. ... (I am not saying all trans people - -I know this sounds like 'moral panic' and I know most people just want a quiet life, but there is a dark side to some of the people making a political career out of arguing that males should be allowed into women's spaces. ...)" (¶27)
3. A letter to the MP Anne Main on 30 Sept 2018 objecting to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) saying "Please stand up for the truth that it is not possible for someone who is male to become female. Transwomen are men, and should be respected and protected as men." (¶28)
4. From July and August 2019 messages relating to an argument with the non-binary person Gregor Murray over her refusal to use their preferred pronouns. She wrote: "In reality Murray is a man. It is Murray’s right to believe that Murray is not a man, but Murray cannot compel others to believe this. Women and children in particular should not be forced to lie or obfuscate about someone’s sex. I reserve the right to use the pronouns 'he' and 'him' to refer to male people. While I may choose to use alternative pronouns as a courtesy, no one has the right to compel others to make statements they do not believe. I think it is important that people are able to refer to the sex of other people accurately and without hesitation, shame or censure." (¶35) This contradicted earlier tweets and messages in which she said she would use others' preferred pronouns out of politeness.
5. In June 2019 on Twitter, she described preferred pronouns as "Rohypnol", designed to "numb" and "confuse" opponents of trans rights. (¶34.2)
6. In a tweet from June 2019, she appeared to suggest using company records at Companies House as a way of sidestepping bans on deadnaming. (¶34.3)

The judgment set out to consider whether Forstater's beliefs were protected and whether they should be considered separately from the expression of her beliefs. The judge noted it might be hard to differentiate beliefs from actions, but: "It is important to note that if a person is guilty unlawful harassment of others that conduct is likely to be the reason for any action taken against them, rather than the holding of a philosophical belief. Having protected characteristics, including philosophical beliefs, does not prevent people from having to take care not to harass others. That being said, full regard must also be given to the qualified convention right of freedom of expression." (¶75) The judge also considered some of the more abusive tweets and found that "I do not consider that those specific tweets represent the core of the Claimant's belief." (¶76) The judgment states that it is possible to object to the GRA and to put forth arguments about safe spaces "without insisting on calling trans women men". (¶86) This contradicts the claims of some TERFs that all objection is condemned as hate speech, and shows that Forstater was going beyond the acceptable debate on important public issues.

Nonetheless, while the judge found that certain of Forstater's more extreme statements weren't sincere expressions of her beliefs, even when reduced to their core values her beliefs were not protected. "I conclude from this, and the totality of the evidence, that the Claimant is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society." (¶83) And: "I consider that the Claimant's view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others." (¶84)

Forstater became very excited that Posie Parker was supporting her and Rowling.^[109]

Despite her claims to be an ordinary woman with ‘concerns’ about GRA, Forstater was revealed to be running the 2010Equality Twitter account, dedicated to spreading misinformation about the ECHR legislation.^[110] She also has 'media representatives' and has stated that period poverty is "not a real issue" despite being told otherwise by several women who have actually experienced poverty.^[111] She has also said that the tampon tax is 'not misogynistic', an extremely odd position for a so-called feminist to take, and that "£20 per year is not a material amount to anyone's welfare," which suggests she doesn't understand poverty or money.^[112]

Forstater appealed her original case in April 2021.^[113] The CGD's barrister told the appeal, "Maya is not being required to express a belief she does not hold. She is simply being required not to harass others."^[113] The judgment found in favor of Forstater, that her beliefs were protected under employment law. The judge conceded that beliefs "akin to Nazism or totalitarianism" would not be protected, but found that Forstater's denying the existence of trans and non-binary people somehow did not "did not seek to destroy the rights of trans persons". He interpreted Forstater's beliefs as not including the hostile or offensive elements the original judge had condemned, and justified her beliefs as commonly held, partly because the law only admits binary gender and therefore she was within her rights to believe non-binary gender wasn't real.^[114]

In his judgment on the appeal, the Hon Justice Choudhury was keen to emphasize that employers must protect trans people's rights, ensure correct gendering, and provide a safe working space and that the judgment did not affect the rights of trans people against discrimination, which suggests other grounds for upholding Forstater's non-employment; he also stated that some of Forstater's comments were "within the lower category of hate speech ... which includes 'serious, severely hurtful and prejudicial' comments that can justifiably be restricted by the State".^[114] Hence, there was little to suggest that Forstater would be an acceptable employee and that without a court considering her employment status it wasn't even clear that she was dismissed, let alone unfairly dismissed. But on the other hand, denying the reality of trans and non-binary people is apparently legitimate in law.

More sensible viewpoints[edit]

Although the majority of TERFs only care about "women's rights" when it gives them an opportunity to shit on trans people, some works by TERFs, when it doesn't have to do with transgender people, are actually quite good. Kajsa Ekis Ekman is known for her on-point criticisms of capitalism, prostitution, and surrogacy. Julie Bindel was one of the first domestic violence and sexual assault campaigners in the UK. Meghan Murphy was also a major figure on the Canadian left, opposing anything from pipeline projects to free-trade agreements.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

• You might be a TERF if... by Cristan Williams
• The TERFs — lots of resources, from a history of transphobia to a list of websites TERFs run
• Inflamed TERF Takes XX
• GenderCynical, a satire and mock-subreddit of /r/GenderCritical, /r/Gender_Critical, /r/GenderCritLesbians, and the farcical /r/GCdebatesQT. Check out their *wiki for a long archive of TERF stupidity!
• Shit TERFs say Exposing TERFs/SWERFs for the hate group they are!
• A series of Twitter accounts documenting the overlap between TERFs and other forms of bigotry, including GC
  • Ableism
  • Antisemitism
  • Biphobia
  • Homophobia
  • Misogyny
  • Racism

Notes[edit]

References[edit]