@Kateandme @callmeadoctor
TERF doesn’t make much sense if you’ve never come across this ideology before. The first time I read it on here, I googled it and and gave up, none the wiser. (That and “cis”.) It just took me into discussions of things I really didn’t have a clue about, and made my head hurt.
Then I saw a thread in AIBU about someone who to me was very, very clearly and visibly male complaining about not being able to use the women’s changing rooms in Primark. And I discovered that unbeknownst to me, a whole new ideology had grown up and taken hold while I wasn’t looking, and this ideology proclaims that any male person - any male person whatsoever - has the right to call themselves a woman if they believe they are a woman.
They don’t need to have gender dysphoria. They don’t need to have any surgery or other medical treatment. They don’t need to wear stereotypically “women’s clothing” - they don’t even need to shave off their beard or stubble. All they need is to proclaim that their inner “gender identity” is female and Shazam! They literally are a woman.
Most (around 80% at least) males who identify as transgender keep their penis and testicles. Their penis is apparently now a “female penis” (see also ladydick, girl cock, as in “suck my lady dick” or “choke on my girl cock”).
Trans Rights Activists are campaigning for all males who identify as female to be treated under law and socially as if they actually are women. To be allowed free access to all single sex spaces such as changing rooms, toilets, refuges, rape crisis services, hospital wards, prisons; to be allowed to compete in women’s sport, to be able to receive awards and scholarships reserved for women.
And indeed there are examples of all of those things already happening, both here and abroad.
Males who identify as female can currently apply for a GRC (gender recognition certificate) which means they get a new birth certificate issued saying they were the opposite sex at birth to the one they actually were born, if you follow me.
(Females who identify as male can do the same thing but interestingly, females who would then inherit land/titles etc according the sexist laws of male primogeniture are specifically exempted from this legislation. I can’t think why.)
TRAs are pushing for self ID which would mean that any male who identities as female could get a GRC just by asking for it, instead of the two year process they currently have to go through (proof of gender dysphoria necessary; medical treatment not necessary).
TRAs have also created a climate in which anyone arguing against their ideology is demonised and framed as a bigot, a dinosaur, someone against the sweet march of progress. On the “wrong side of history”. This has been a very cunning plan to disguise the fact their own ideology is profoundly sexist, misogynist and homophobic and has only succeeded the way it has because of male privilege.
As a result of this positioning of themselves as the last frontier of the civil rights movement, TRAs have now got the ear of the government, the BBC, the NHS, every main political party, the MSM, universities, schools... the list is endless. Any and all opposition, request for debate, expression of concern is met with accusations of bigotry and vile prejudice.
TRAs love to hurl slurs, abuse and death threats at women who disagree with them (and sometimes even physical violence), demonstrating deeply male patterns of behaviour: a wish to control and dominate women, and violent tendencies that we normally associate with men. (There are also a considerable number of trans sex offenders, some of whom have been housed in women’s prisons. You can guess what happened then.)
And TERF, the acronym for “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist” is the go-to slur for basically any woman who doesn’t believe and will never believe that there is such a thing as the female penis, who doesn’t want any kind of penis in women only spaces, or any male person competing in women’s sport etc etc.
Just to clarify Mummyoflittledragon’s post, it is Trans Rights Activists who believe that some women have a penis, not “TERFs”!
Most emphatically not.
Sorry this is so long. It’s hard to condense it if you have no prior knowledge of the issue at all, as I presume you haven’t if you’re not familiar with the term “TERF”.
If you want to know more, there’s an excellent thread called “Break it down for me” on Feminism Chat.