How many terfs are out there?

[Runor]

I spent years in the wilderness, not talking about my terfiness irl, because friends had been politely distancing themselves from my views. Things are changing. I now know about a dozen people who have previously quietly asked me to ‘be kind to men who think they are women’ (I paraphrase), who are now strongly espousing TWANW.

What can we do? Recommend books and podcasts. Ask what people think about men in women’s sport, men in women’s changing rooms and hospital wards. Ask them if the like JKR 😉 Anything else?

We need to find each other irl. We all need to see that we are a huge majority that has been silenced for too long. Not everybody can, not everywhere is safe, but maybe now is the time to test the water?

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.

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.

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.

To add, if there are any Canadians on here who have different experiences I'd love to hear about that! Or if you think I'm wrong that a Conservative win in Canada will not have much impact on the genderist opinions of any liberals/progressives.

That sounds hard about Canada. Make sure you keep plugged into your terfy network here and internationally for support.

I remembered another micro terfy action that I like to do- dress babies and children in Harry Potter themed clothes especially when they are clearly too young to have asked for them to show support for JKR.

Good point. This is still enshrined in law is it not? Needing men to ‘live as a woman’ to get their GRC. That includes imposing them on us in female safe spaces. It’s just not right.

I'm going out with a friend today and for the first time I'll wear the Suffragette scarf I bought a while back.

Brilliant! 😀
And of course everyone knows. But I have found a lot of men seem to be in the ‘be kind’ camp, or at least the ‘close your eyes and pretend you hadn’t noticed’ camp.

I'm a TERF but I didn't realise until 2018.
As a child I'd been sexually harrassed on multiple occasions by men "having fun", dressed up as women, in the ladies loos near the park playground.
I still hang my washing with underwear on the inside of the rotary dryer like all the women in our street did to guard from men stealing women's underwear.
These are stories from the 1970s. In those days men who did this were called perverts and it was well known it was a sexual fetish.
I couldn't believe it when John Lewis and M&S come out to bat for these men and betrayed all their female customers!
In my experience it's only the millennials that have fallen for it. My kids and all their friends call it 'attention seeking'!

Lots of sympathy, Veronicas. It must be very difficult.

I don’t know many Canadians but the two I’ve raised this issue with (both male, distant relatives, not together) have been fully TWAW.

I raised the issue in conversation because I’d love to know why Canada is so captured or how each of these sane middle-aged men had come to the conclusion that humans can change sex. They were too shocked to discuss it.

But it seems to me that even here on Terf Island, some of my male friends and relatives are uncomfortable about admitting TWAM, or even defensive, much more so than women in my experience.
Edited to add: Mind, some of them live in Brighton.

I am very TERFy and I am not afraid to lose friends over it.

In fact, I will not be friends with anyone who genuinely believes the needs of mentally ill men come before women and girls.

Me. I have definitely lost friends over refusing to accept the TWAW thing which I was unable to do given my DD decided she was trans at 12. We now feel she actually had PMDD and should have been given counselling and medication for this, not referred to the Tavistock!! I’ve not reached out to old friends (school mums and NCT crowd) as I felt that if they didn’t care enough about me to try to bridge the gap between feeling differently over this issue and understanding that my personal experience and family trauma justified a different position from theirs, then they weren’t the friends I’d thought they were. It’s lonely but at least it’s real.

I joined the WRN, though, and have made a few GC friends through women’s networking groups where I was very open at the start on what my position was.

I will not be friends with anyone who genuinely believes the needs of mentally ill men come before women and girls.

This is now my stance. A couple of years ago someone I've known for over 40 years came to visit and the subject came up. When I defended women's rights he sneered at me and when I asked him why we had safeguarding in the first place, he shrugged.

The frenzy of angry cleaning once he left was extraordinary, eventually concluding with us entirely redecorating the room we'd spent most time in. We even put new flooring down.

My WTF-is-going-on moment was when I found an online women in technology discussion group which I thought I'd like to join, since that's my work background.

The group decided to discuss Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, which is really relevant eg tools and safety wear not being designed for women etc.
It was met with a tirade from a transwoman who condemned the group for being hateful bigots for even considering looking at that horrible transphobic book.

That was the first time I experienced militant trans-rights activism blatantly attacking women - I realised that even women who are still in a minority in tech jobs are not entitled to organise around their experiences. I was shocked and puzzled at how anybody could be so un-scientific and still want to belong to a technology-centred group

Shortly afterwards I discovered the degree to which TRAs had already infiltrated Irish politics, education, etc., and it was a horrible feeling, like the world had turned upside down, and nothing I knew or believed in or lived by had any validity any more. It was a very very tough time.

It was probably around that time I discovered MN/FWR and the term TERF.
I'm in👋

👋🏻

I've been openly terfy for years, never met anyone who disagreed with me.

Back in 2016/17, lots of people didn't believe me when I told them about men in women's prisons or sports or whatever, because they thought it was so ridiculous nobody would ever allow it to happen. Now everybody knows it happens, and they are getting increasingly angry about it.

I do live in the back of beyond though, not a lot of wokery round here.

Been a terf. For long time

no one I know believes that men or women can change their sex

was chucked off Mumsnet twice when we weren’t allowed to say this stuff

still terfing

anyone who says, with a straight face "trans women are women" might as well have said "I'm completely fucking mental, me"

I love this! 😁

I actually don't like the term Terf either.

For me, I don't like it because its inaccurate. I'm a MERF. A male excluding radical feminist ( actually, I am not 100% sure what a radical feminist is, so I am not sure I am that either!). But anyway. The fact that someone has a trans identity is irrelevant. People should keep out of women's single sex spaces if they are male.
TRAs try to pretend our argument is about them being trans, but its not. Its about them being male.

I know what you mean, I would not have chosen the term 'TERF' and MERF is more accurate, but TERF seems to have a life of its own, going from being a slur to a badge of honour depending on who says it and how..

So if it's TERF or TWAW, I'll accept TERF, for all it's shortcomings

I don’t think the word “terf” is needed. Surely “sane” suffices?

I agree and try to avoid both GC and terf, sticking with 'sex realist' if I call myself anything at all. More of a description of my views than a tribal badge.

2018 and also because of a trans identifying child ( some people on this board lump us all in with David Tennant, but my response was very different). I had previously met a number of transwomen, and felt empathy for them , whilst also feeling completely mystified that they could believe they knew what women felt.
I have terf friends but my adult children are firmly in the twaw camp, and 1 has no contact with us, partly because of that. We avoid the topic, and anything adjacent, like Jk Rowling, drag, the fall of the SNP. I’ve applied to join the WRN, feel quite excited. This board has been a lifesaver.

Oh no! I'm too late to edit out the apostrophe in 'it's' in my post above - and yes, it does matter, I have a reputation as a bit of a pedant to maintain over in the Bluestocking Arms

I remind myself that TERF also stands for Tired of Explaining Reality to Fuckwits and it makes things ok 😁