London Evening Standard: What is a TERF?

[Slothtoes]

It’s been a looong week.
This explainer relates to the latest Oxfam misogyny and racism scandal, but I think it deserves its own thread. Ugh.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/what-is-terf-transgender-feminism-pride-b1086177.html

What biased bullshit.

What a terribly written article, quite apart from its bias.

I especially liked this:

"Many believe Terfs should be referred to as an Adult Human Female, in reference to the documentary of the same name."

I think the writer meant to say "Many Terfs belief that a woman should be referred to..." - it's the only way it makes even a semblance of sense. And does the writer really think that the term "adult human female" was coined by a documentary which came out about a year ago? If you click on the link to the documentary in the article, it takes you to a rather muddled article that mainly focuses on the behaviour of transactivists at the Edinburgh Uni screening-that-never-was.

Conclusion: the writer of the Standard article knows almost nothing and couldn't be bothered to do any research.

"A Terf believes that what defines a woman is mostly biology. Someone born with female genitalia who later menstruates is considered to grow up as a woman in their ideology, and they go against the fact that those born with male genitalia can later identify as a biological woman."

"Mostly biology"? "Their ideology"? It's utterly insane such nonsense ever makes it in to print.

“they go against the fact that those born with male genitalia can later identify as a biological woman."

Sure, males with male genitalia can identify as biological women all they want but it doesn’t literally make them biologically women.

This feels like it written under sufferance, or undercover. It's great, it'll give a lot of people vertigo.

Don't tell India Willoughby that! They will threaten to whip their cervix out on TV again!

I mean, it’s so bad they should have called up someone externally to write it for sure, but I think depressingly referring to the dictionary will kind of give it an authority for many readers.

What is a Terf?

The terminology appears in the dictionary and is described as “a person whose views on gender identity are considered hostile to transgenderpeople, or who opposes social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgenderpeople.

WTF? Many of us have kids ourselves or kids in our wider families who would identify as trans, and/or many are lesbians whose culture is being systematically pulled apart by this, and/or have been disadvantaged at work, silenced, and/or being socially excluded in our personal lives or are being hounded in the media simply for sticking up for women against a sexist, misogynistic and often racist ideology often enforced by fear and by threats of violence.
We are really not ‘hostile to transgender people’ though.

That was written by someone who hasn’t got a fucking clue who is who and what is what.

It seems that they took a biased view though and just cobbled together as many click links as they could. I suspect they asked someone who calls themselves a feminist where to look to ‘evidence’ it.

Ugh yes probably re calling up a ‘feminist’.
The Tories have top level links with the Standard tho. Was edited by George Osborne the Cameron-era chancellor for many years.
I think my expectations of the Standard were a bit too high maybe because of that.
I just thought the big London commuter paper would get this right, if there had been a big change of heart in government that’s being widely talked about with their mates.

That article has been up for two days now. I'm surprised there are no comments.

I think this might backfire in unintended ways, as most sane people will be just thinking "well that's just sensible"

What was the first use of the word? I thought it was a TRA slur and didn't come initially from feminism.

Bloody hell I think they forgot to proof read or edit this article.

Aren't the Standard and the Metro in cahoots with each other? I may be confused about this, though. The Metro always seems very pro-gender ideology and intolerant/uninformed when it comes to reporting anyone with any reasonable queries/concerns.

Yes. This stood out.
I will fix it for them:
and they go against the «fact», or rather fiction, that men can identify as biological women.