This article by Meghan Murphy explains how the anti-feminist term 'TERF' is being used, by men especially, to incite hatred and violence towards women.
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/09/21/terf-isnt-slur-hate-speech/
I've been thinking about what an effective propaganda tool 'TERF' has been in silencing and demonising women who criticise any aspect of the trans agenda, and how crucial it is that feminists expose both its true meaning and the hateful rhetoric that accompanies it.
Make no mistake, 'TERF' represents the most extreme misogyny in both conception and function.
Firstly, the phrase behind the acronym - 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist' - derives its power from the accusation that there is something unnatural and monstrous about women who 'exclude' men. It plays into the sexist notion that women are hateful for having boundaries: according to patriarchal logic, women are not to supposed to have anything for ourselves; everything we have is to be made available to men for their benefit. ‘TERF’ is an extreme manifestation of this patriarchal logic, implying that women should not even be permitted to distinguish ourselves as a separate, real category of persons, and that our ontological existence itself should be open for colonisation by males.
Secondly, it is not only a misogynistic slur but a lesbophobic one. If women are bigots for excluding males, it follows therefore that lesbians, who exclude men from the resources they most prize from women (sexual and reproductive function), would become open to charges of bigotry simply for being lesbians, and they have been, with organised campaigns against lesbian sexuality in the form of the ‘Cotton Ceiling’ workshops and vicious targeting of otherwise ‘trans inclusionary’ lesbians such as Youtuber Arielle Scarcella, merely for saying that they don’t want to interact sexually with male-bodied people.
Thirdly, the word itself is deliberately ugly, evoking its homonym ‘turf’, implying that the women so-labelled are ground to be trodden on, stomped and kicked. This is crucial to the term’s dehumanising intent. As Murphy points out, once a man has labeled a woman a ‘TERF’, he can then direct any sexual or violent threat towards her (or, as we’ve seen with the assault on Maria MacLachlan at Speaker’s Corner, actual violence), and take cover from the fact that, according to many leftists and liberal feminists, he hasn’t abused a woman, but rather righteously disciplined a ‘TERF’.
In light of the extreme misogynist abuse that ‘TERF’ encourages and enables, it was very upsetting to see the media, in the wake of the Speaker's Corner attack, refer to the assembled feminists using that term. In some cases (e.g., Pink News) this was deliberate, but in others, e.g., the Daily Mail, it seemed more a result of confusion and perhaps the genuine belief that this is what the feminists called themselves (I think the DM even referred to MacLachlan as ‘a member of TERF’). IMO this highlights the need for feminists to undertake a campaign of educating journalists and the general public about this slur and how it functions. Perhaps, next time the issue is in the news, we should undertake an email campaign to journalists and editors at major media outlets explaining how 'TERF' is a term that has been imposed on gender-critical feminists in order to demonise us, and that it is often accompanied with misogynist abuse and threats. This would also be a good opportunity to provide examples (e.g., screenshots or links to articles like the one above) of said misogynist abuse from transactivists and men in general, which helps to expose the misogyny of the movement itself. Lord knows, they are providing us with AMPLE evidence. Probably the simplest way to do it is to direct journalists to the website terfisaslur, which should open a few eyes to the real nature of trans activism.
And I also have to beg women here not to try to 'reclaim' it. Reclaiming slurs never works for women. Think about the way liberal feminists tried to reclaim 'slut' - this ill-conceived campaign did nothing to stop men from using slut to denigrate women. I guarantee that it did not stop a single abusive man from hurling 'slut' at a woman while he was beating her. Ironically, all it did was give men licence to use slut more freely.
Rather, we need to acknowledge the seriousness of this. ‘TERF’ is a term, now in widespread use amongst the left, that dehumanises women and justifies violence against us. That's the REASON it has been gleefully embraced by so many people, especially men. I know that many gender-critical feminists here and elsewhere like to use 'TERF' jokingly or ironically, and I understand the impulse towards that, but please be aware that this ultra-misogynist slur cannot be subverted or 'reclaimed’ - it can only be exposed for the woman-hating propaganda that it is, and whenever women apply it to themselves ironically or casually throw it around in jest, it makes doing this very difficult, as well as possibly retraumatising the women and especially lesbians who have had to endure truly horrific misogynistic and lesbophobic 'TERF'-inspired abuse and threats.