This is something I’ve been thinking about recently and I wondered what views others had.
Obviously TERF is intended as, and is used as, a slur. But if you break it down and apply some critical thinking it seems to me actually helpful to use TERF as the way into an interesting discussion with people who aren’t (yet) gender critical as follows:
The big question is what feminists want to exclude transpeople from. Take the example of a transwoman who retains male genitalia, presents as male, and just woke up this morning and decided they were a woman. Would I exclude that person from a tube train? A dinner party? My place of employment? Absolutely not.
Would I exclude them from the female changing room in Topshop? Probably, yes.
Then you need to think about what “trans” means. Is there a distinction in the Topshop changing room example between people who have lived as trans for years and have a GRC and people who present as male and self-id’d that morning? Potentially so.
So yes, I am trans exclusionary in some circumstances, but by no means in all.
I do realise that this sort of critical thinking is going to be lost on the unthinking TWAW believers, but I think it might be worth a go with those who are not yet a lost cause, and it certainly makes me feel less offended about the term TERF.