TERFs
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Not a fun topic for anyone on the right side of it.
And I’ve never really been someone that outright says if something is ‘right’ or not – but a TERF is not something you want to be. TERFs are wrong.
A TERF is a self-proclaimed ‘feminist’ who’ll argue until they can’t talk anymore that trans women are not women, in the name of protecting ‘real women’ from ‘men pretending to be women.’ Why do they care so much, anyway?
Presumably, they make the argument that trans women are dangerous predators who pretend to be women to get into women-only spaces and take advantage of them. Like toilets, which is an old debate that shouldn’t really be a debate at all – trans women are women, and they should be allowed in women’s toilets and women-only spaces.
The actions of the few should not impact the rest of the trans community – there are bad trans people. There are bad people in every single group that’s ever existed. That does not make the rest of us bad by association.
It’s also far more likely for it to be a cis man just walking into a women’s only space to assault a woman than it is for a trans person to do it. Do you really think that a cis man would put the time and effort into actually transitioning from male to female, going through everything that entails, just so that he can access a women’s only space?
No. Anyone who wants to assault other people will just do it. Some of them are even very confident about it, too, as if they don’t actually care about the person they’re choosing to hurt. But I digress.
Where Do TERFs Come From?
Katelyn Burns’ article on Vox covers a lot of information about TERFs in a more succinct way than I can manage, but I’ll give it a go anyway.
The term ‘TERF’ comes from the 1970s, where radical feminists needed a label to separate themselves between those who support trans women, and those who don’t.
Today, you might hear the term ‘gender critical’ as a replacement for TERF. It’s not a replacement, TERFs just don’t like to be called ‘slurs,’ which is how they see the term TERF. They prefer to be called gender critical, but it would be ironic to listen to them and adhere to that, considering they don’t offer us the same courtesy as trans people.
Notice how trans men are not really spoken about or acknowledged by TERFs, unless to say that trans men are confused lesbians, or ‘betraying other women,’ ‘trying to escape sexism,’ stuff like that – stuff that isn’t true at all.
Anyway, it was the 70s, and TERFs were starting to come out of the woodworks by threatening violent actions against trans women for accessing women-only and lesbian spaces. Transphobic professors were trying to double-down on taking away trans rights, writing papers on how trans people shouldn’t be allowed to exist, and trying to remove access to trans healthcare.
The history of this kind of transphobia is a stern lesson – things like this are still happening now, and we still have quite a ways to go.
TERFs Can Only Get So Far Before Society Decides It’s Time to Move On
TERFs, in a lengthy-ish nutshell, are not real feminists, because real feminists do not exclude real women. They don’t attack other women over parts that are none of their business, but even if it was their business – the parts that you have don’t have to make you who you are or define your identity.
They’re working with primary school science, while the rest of us are working with the science that says being trans is innate, your gender identity is part of you regardless of what you were assigned at birth by a doctor. It’s not a choice, and nobody is pretending to be something they’re not.
TERFs don’t like things to do with gender identity, and one of the most prominent myths I’ve seen online is that they think we’re trying to ‘change the definition of sex.’ Nobody is trying to do that, the literal definition of being trans is that your gender identity, which is different from sex, does not match said sex you were born as. That difference is where trans people come from.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists think that being trans ‘defies science,’ that it’s some sort of ‘ideology’ that pulls outsiders in, which obviously couldn’t be further from the truth.
They have hurt the trans community in so many ways, and they continue to do as much damage as they can, spreading misinformation across the internet and, ironically, pulling outsiders who don’t have enough information into their own ideologies.
But being trans is not a political issue in the way that TERFs or anybody else tries to make it out to be – it shouldn’t even be an issue at all. My existence as a trans person is not a political debate, I have the right to exist, and I’m not inherently hurting anyone just by being here.
I’ll say it again - My existence is not a debate.
If being trans has to be called anything, it’s called being human.
But there are always people on the wrong side of history, and as we keep fighting on the right side of history, eventually everybody else will either catch up - or not last very long at all, their hate drowned out by those who actually care about minorities being treated with as much respect as a lot of the rest of the world is entitled to from birth. With the respect that we deserve.
I might have said this before, but it bears repeating here:
We are not going anywhere. Trans people are not just going to sit quietly whilst TERFs and anybody with a similar ideology tries to dismantle our rights with misinformation.
You’re stuck with us, because history evidently favours those who fight back, and that’s what we will continue to do.
Anyway, TERFs have their own deeply rooted issues that cause them to attack the rest of us for just existing in the same space as them.
And I for one, well, I just feel bad for them. Some of them grow up in it and never manage to get out, hurting so many others along way and never knowing when to stop.
It’s never too late, and now is that time.
