Cambridge University has a women's liberation campaign! What a wonderful idea. Except that it is for anyone who 'self-identifies' as a woman or non-binary person, which makes me wonder exactly what they think women need liberation from. www.cusu.co.uk/about/liberation-campaigns/the-womens-campaign/
Fortunately for us newcomers to Cambridge, the campaign website offers a handy 'feminist dictionary' so that we understand what they mean. Unfortunately, in parts this dictionary is as feminist as the Ministry of Love is loving. I'll provide some highlights. (MNHQ, I know I'm using banned terms in quotation, which I think is allowed - if not, I'd really appreciate if you could just remove those parts of my OP and let the post stand).
I think my personal favourite part is where they accuse GC feminists of 'redefining' feminism to be about liberating women from oppression, when they are ostensibly supposed to be the women's liberation campaign. I despair. That or biological sex somehow being 'colonialist' as if people outside the Western world didn't know how reproduction worked.
Here's the dictionary: docs.google.com/document/d/1z-K1QffTp4L1LIynp880Gl_YLoDf2JwlbhBZEiwdSBQ/edit which is publicly available. Note that they didn't have a go at defining 'woman'. Or 'feminism' for that matter. Everything below this point is their words, not mine.
SELF-IDENTIFICATION: The process by which you inform the world of what you consider yourself to be. To say, ‘I am a woman’ is to self-identify, as is, ‘I was assigned a female gender at birth but I identify as a man’, or ‘I was assigned a female gender at birth and I identify as a woman.’ [Cis people self-identify no less than trans people.]
AFAB/DFAB or AMAB/DMAB: Assigned/Designated Female At Birth or Assigned/Designated Male At Birth. Refers to sex/gender assigned at birth - in most places (including the UK) this is either Male or Female. Some individuals, especially within the trans community, prefer to use CAMAB/CAFAB, including the word Coercively to emphasise that their gender assignment at birth was done without their consent.
SEX: The term "sex" has a complicated history. Its origins are in trying to tie together colonial ideas about binary gender and biological dimorphism observed in humans and in nature. It is still often used to attempt to categorise people as either male or female based on their gendered physical traits (like breasts, facial hair, estrogen/testosterone level, whether they have a Y chromosome, etc...). Whilst some trans advocates encourage this usage in order to distinguish between the psychological and physical aspects of gender, others are critical of it as it this distinction can be used to grant legitimacy to Sex Assigned At Birth (SAAB) over people's gender. Sex-terminology (male or female) is also sometimes used synonymously with gender-terminology (man or woman). When describing anyone apart from yourself you should consider sex-terminology to be gendered. i.e. never describe a trans woman as male or a trans man as female unless they have specified that this is okay for you to do.
SWERF: stands for Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist. This group opposes women's participation in pornography and prostitution. The term was coined to match that of TERF, as their memberships overlap. Their ideology also overlaps as both subgroups follow a prescriptive, normative approach to feminism; i.e., telling women what to do — TERFs with their gender, and SWERFs with their sexuality. SWERFs object to the objectification and exploitation of women within pornography and the sex industry, as well as the violence and abuse that sex workers frequently suffer. But they often go overboard and pour hatred over sex-workers who choose their profession freely, as opposed to because of human trafficking. This kind of bullying and oppression is known as whorephobia.
T(W)ERF: stands for Trans (Women) Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Transphobic radfems seem to almost universally reject the concept of cisgender privilege, and even the term ‘cisgender’ itself, as somehow demeaning to ‘women born women’ (another controversial term in LGBTQ+ circles). In other words, TERFs go so far as to reject any terminology models (for words such as ‘woman’ or ‘man’) that are not based on biological organs, gametes, or chromosomes. Thus (re)defining their own movement as that ‘of women to liberate women from oppression, and that female biological reality is a defining aspect of women's experience of oppression.’ There is often an inability to recognise intersectionality, which, along with the prejudice against trans women, makes them incompatible with the majority of feminist circles.