Re: TERF - I was genuinely nervous about being called a terf back in 2017/2018. It was used with such spotting vitriol against any woman who had the temerity to even raise the gentlest of questions regarding transgenderism.
Besides, I’m a married heterosexual mother of an adored adult son, definitely nowhere near a lesbian separatist… (I have lots of questions re the concept of ‘patriarchy’ too!) so the RF part didn’t seem right… and I can’t exclude trans from radical feminism without first being a radical feminist, so the TE didn’t apply either.
I did a bit of leafleting for FPFW during the English consultation period and met some other GC women in person. One told me to start thinking of ‘terf’ in little letters to make iIt less powerful.
The people who use TERF as an insult are well aware that it isn’t really applicable to the vast majority of people they shout it at, they use it for some chaps, for starters (see also ‘TERG’ and other variants specifically for gay men).
Whatever a terf is in 2023, it seems to me that while all TERFs are terfs, not all terfs are TERFs (sorry Radical Feminists, you seem to have become a mere subset of a bigger group, thanks to the same weirdo language appropriation that has made adult human females a subset of women. Bunch of PoMo addled wankers!)
Once I started to accept that I am, to all intents and purposes a terf (someone who knows that mammalian reproduction requires 2 types of gametes and isn’t willing to pretend otherwise) despite not being a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) I started to find the joy in applying old fashioned grammar rules to this brand new noun, no longer tethered to it’s original acronym.
In English, nouns that end with f are pluralised by substituting the f with ve - dwarf becomes dwarves, hoof becomes hooves etc.
By applying the same to terf (singular) we get terves (plural).
From there we can get ‘tervish’ reminiscent of ‘dervish’) and ‘tervern’ (which puts me in mind of ‘cloven’) and when you add all these together and somehow it results in what sounds less like a organised group of evil-bigot feminazis and more like a species of magical forest dwelling creatures.
And who wouldn’t want to be a magical, forest dwelling creature?
So the trans activists took TERF (historical, factual, acronym) and used it as pejorative noun (capitals used online indicate shouting, so ‘DIE TERF SCUM!’ has the effect of obscuring the acronym in the middle of the phrase).
And we took their raised voices out of the pejorative noun by deliberately writing it in little letters (and using a capital T when appropriate as per normal English rules), because it’s a silly made up word, to paraphrase the late, great, Magdalen Berns, and we can’t allow them to use silly, made up words to terrorise us into being too frightened to advocating for women & girls .
I’d much rather be a terf, one of many terves, some of whom are part of The Tervern Sisterhood, some of whom are our male Tervish Brethren, than be a bully or a coward.
It’s a silly, made up word that was used against us, so we should ‘reclaim’ it to use however we fancy. I’ve come to prefer it to ‘Gender Critical’ which is a bit too serious-sounding for me, and while I AM personally critical of gender (gender meaning: sex stereotypes) there are plenty of tervish people about who aren’t that bothered about sex stereotypes just don’t really think about that concept at all, perhaps who have joined in the pushback against trans ideology because it clashes their own faith based rights, or because it’s become a frontline in the battle of free speech via enforced personal-pronouning, the concept of ‘deadnaming’ and people getting banned from social media for daring to point out that ‘Transwomen Are Men’.
And some terves are just language pedants who know that women = adult human females and thus a ‘transgender woman’, following the exact same rules as all the other ‘adjective plus noun’ combos India Willoughby uses as examples would result in transgender + women = transmen (aka a women who says they are men).
Anyone who doesn’t automatically and 100% believe that India Willoughby has changed sex is a terf.
Anyone who doesn’t believe Adam George/Isla Bryson has changed sex is a terf.
Even if you state publicly that Isla Bryson has a poor wee lady-brain that is tragically trapped in the body of a hulking great rapist so needs to be kept away from the ‘other female inmates’ you’ll be accused of sounding ‘terfy’.
When the trans activists say ‘Trans Women ARE Women’ they are demanding that society take their fantasy mantra literally, not metaphorically, not ‘in some social circumstances but not biologically’ not ‘transwomen are women except for the convicted sex offenders’.
When Stonewall said ‘No Exceptions’ they meant no exceptions. Not ‘ok, maybe you’ve got a point, Isla, Tiffany, Sophie & Barbie aren’t female but Paris has now had her penis amputated and she only killed a fella anyway, so she’s definitely female now & Katie’s clearly a paedo but despite multiple convictions hasn’t yet had a sentence of significant length so they’s sex is up for future negotiation’
They meant no exceptions, none. Not one.
Nicola Sturgeon has failed her trans rights test and has rightfully, righteously been cast out into the Transphobic Wilderness.
NGL, it IS getting quite crowded here but The Terves are a pragmatic species so we can usually find ways to make room for newbies.
I should really have posted this in one of the threads where we’ve been discussing the function of language and our preferred phrasings for clear, factual conversations on this topic but hey ho, it was borne as a reply to @Gall10’s question and has managed to grow into a fully-fledged being before I got to the ‘post’ button 🤣
I will past it over there too, trying to keep things somewhat tidy because FWR has been rather busy this week and some threads have been extremely fast paced!