How many terfs are out there?

This thread is equal parts heartening and depressing. Amazing to see so much support for sex realism (ie. reality) and that sanity has at least somewhat returned to the UK. Depressing because although I'm British I live in Canada and it feels completely different here. I don't feel I can even attempt to sus out if there are any fellow terfs. I work in a completely captured sector and giving even the merest suggestion that I may not be fully accepting of GI beliefs feels like career suicide. I find it hard to understand how Canadians are so bought into gender woo. They all seem utterly oblivious to any other perspectives and very much on the JKR is a fascist bigot train. It seems like Canada is years behind the UK and even with an upcoming election and the likely change to a conservative government by the end of 2025 Canadians will very much define themselves against the US (especially after Trump's win) and I can foresee anyone who considers themselves left/liberal absolutely doubling down on the gender stuff. It is very lonely.

I must be very lucky because I can honestly say I don’t know a single person who has ever expressed the view that TWAW. Everyone I know thinks it’s a load of nonsense and that JKR speaks for us all

Even at work my whole team roll their eyes at the DEI indoctrination training.

My very left leaning sister is very vocally TERF which did surprise at first but she’s always been an outspoken feminist so it does make sense.

I think most of the women I know are except the ones who have trans children of course.

I do have a friend who said something about JKR saying something ‘transphobic’ (not a thing) but couldn’t tell me what it was. She has a friend who is trans. I can guarantee if a trans nurse came in to do a smear she wouldn’t be happy.

Me🙋

I'm a TERF, out and proud. I run my own business so no need to tiptoe around corporate bekindness.

DH and friends are all very terfy.

Me.

🙋

Fabulous @Swashbuckled

"Everybody sees your Adam’s apple
In the crease of your silken shawl" - inspired!

@tanglewangle your final paragraph is spot on and thanks for articulating it so well.

🙋‍♀️

Loving the "everybody knows" theme. Yes, everybody does. We should do more with that.

Also love Leonard Cohen so have bastardised one of his. (And have just got in after a night out so a little squiffy.) Apologies.

Everybody knows:

Everybody knows the lies are over
Everybody sees behind your tricks
Everybody knows you’re not like women
Everybody knows you still have dicks
Everybody knows you hang in shame
And think a woman hangs the same
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows.

Everybody knows the emperor’s naked
Everybody clocks a costumed walk
Everybody knows the game is over
Everybody hears your shallow talk
Everybody knows that ‘y’ ain’t ‘x’
That lipstick can’t colour in a sex
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows your secret pleasure
Everybody knows, they really do
Everybody knows you’re quite the bottom
Yet seek to dominate down there too
Everybody sees your scars concealed
With your kittens that are ill-heeled
That’s how it goes
And everybody knows.

Everybody knows
Everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows your time is over
Everybody knows it’s us or you
Everybody knows you bang our doors down
When you’ve lost a game of sport or two
Everybody knows your “truth” is rotten
Those with wombs still being forgotten
By your ribbons and your bows
And everybody knows.

And everybody knows your end is coming
Everybody knows your pants will fall
Everybody sees your Adam’s apple
In the crease of your silken shawl
Everybody knows that fish aren’t birds
And hears the man spread in your words
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows you’re now in trouble
Everybody knows what we’ve been through
From the prisons and the hospitals
To the schools and the office loo
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at your mirrored part
Before it blows
‘Cos everybody knows

Everybody knows
Everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
That's how it goes
Oh, everybody knows
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
Everybody knows

Recently there was a discussion on MN somewhere, after several elections, about how the people have not left their Left-y stance and become conservative, but instead the left and progressive have moved so far to the extreme end.

Along with reading MN and the FWR board, I notice a lot more weird stuff going on, from people switching from liberal to libertarian, extreme capitalism still going on, just in other forms than in the 19th century, free spirited relationships where the woman has no security even with kids and being a SAHP, the Green parties tanking everywhere because environmental topics make up 1% of their program, Amnesty's previous good work record undermined by erasing what a woman is, and the condescension that drips from some people congratulating themselves about the right way to think, even if they have mothers, sisters, female friends who are affected by this; they do not care or they think it's only for others to make room, they have their private spaces.

Now that I see it all I cannot unsee it anymore, and many of these topics are connected.

Me and at least 4 of my mum friends, and my mum and partner.

So I have plenty of people to sound off to.

JKR is a very good name to bring up as a litmus test.

One (middle-class) friend scrunched up her face and made a vomiting gesture at her name. I couldn't believe it -- not just her stance but the immaturity of it. She tried to justify it, saying she was transphobic, but saw I was having none of it, and all things related to feminism is a topic neither of us broach. I desperately wish she'd see sense because she's not an idiot, but she is a #bekind Guardian reader who's had the wool pulled thoroughly over her eyes. I imagine in a few years time, when things fall apart, she'll be brought to earth with a big bump and reach the jadedness of those of us who have speed-run our media hatred over the last decade. Naturally, I don't expect her to ever bring up her TRA past due to the absolute middle-class mortification of it all. Sometimes I do fantasise about turning up wearing a Suffragette scarf, though. I wonder how that'd go down?

In contrast, one of my other (working-class) friends laughs heartily when I crack jokes about self-ID and adores JKR's books, so I think she's safely on the side of sanity, phew.

My working-class family know perfectly well what a woman is, too.

This is a middle-class disease, because the middle-classes are too comfortable in their bubbles and need something vacuous to rage about and feel oppressed over, especially when their offspring start adopting new pronouns, and they can finally feel important and hard done by about something in their charmed lives.

I'm similar to this, feel like a dormant Terf for the moment

👋

Most of my family , all pretty left / liberal are Terfs. Though some might recoil at the term itself. My sons say ' we had Emo , now it's non binary ' . Indeed. But Emo hasn't caused so much damage in this world.

Me, my DH, my DC, mum, dad, siblings and their partners, friends, hairdresser, several colleagues … Lots of us.

👋

Hi 👋

👋

I’m a terf. Proud of it. In my circles we all are which is a relief. My daughter and her friends were emphatically not terfs. Then she had an incident with a TW at work who wrote an email to female colleagues with the salutation “hey bleeders” and went on to ask intrusive questions about menstruation. So my daughter has quietly stopped being emphatic and can see my point.

Yes, very true. Nothing has changed at all.

A scarf in suffragette colours with a small dinosaur badge is all you need
and
DO join WRN - local branches cover most of the country

and attend a LWS event - the ones without KJK are more peaceful and get less video

I think this is an important point and one I probably went along with. TRA's are like 'trans women have been using your bathrooms for years'. Yes they have but probably subtly and we probably had sympathy, empathy and kindness for those with a genuine dysphoria.

If I remember right it, in the olden days when TW did need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, going into women’s spaces like toilets was seen as part of the process, a way of proving commitment

no one asked us though did they? No one asked women if we minded. It didn’t occur to anyone in the medical profession to consider womens views or needs. It was all about the men and sod the support humans (women not being real pl!)