Terf signals/colours

[hurdigurdi]

Do you wear anything like a badge, scarf etc or carry anything (such as a key ring or visible sticker on something) that signals your terfiness?

I was thinking of making something in suffragette colours to wear or use but just looking for ideas.

I have that Ministry of Tartan scarf in suffragette tartan, a present from my sister.

I have the same scarf, a present from me.

When we were all wearing facemasks I had several in suffragette colours. I once got a very long frowning stare from a bloke on the Tube while sporting one. I don't know whether he knew how much I was grinning behind the mask as I stared right back, though I dare say my eyes were rather crinkled up.

@Peregrina please order a kilt so I can live vicariously. I’ve got a few bits and pieces from becoming a member of LWS, I need to go through it and start adorning myself more

Edwardian suffragette pendant. Amethyst, diamond and peridot. Can also be worn as a brooch.

Was a rather marvellous Christmas present. I've had (interested) questions about it from some of the teenagers I teach. Which is nice 😁

Absolutely gorgeous!

I’m gender critical. I am not a TERF and it is very much a slur.

I have an enamel pin in suffragette colours. I have to be careful in some work environments (local authorities, NHS and universities in particular)

I never knew this! Wow!

I now understand that you are French and French feminism differs from that of the Anglo-sphere in some ways. Women in the UK who are GC tend to be happy with living on 'Terf Island' - Tired of explaining reality to fools about sums it up, as several have posted.
I include transmen as women - even if they don't want to be.
I even include my Slimming World consultant, who believes that taking oestrogen means that TiMs are ok in women's sport after 12 mths of 'treatment'.

Some feminists are TWAW, so the word 'feminist' does not = exclusion of males (only some males, those that don't wear frocks). I guess, however, that in French, as it is a gendered language, 'feminism' does exclude men grammatically. In English it does not.
I think we are arguing semantics, here.

I have a lovely scarf in suffrage colours but nearly every time I wear it people ask me if it’s Wimbledon colours 🤦🏻‍♀️

It's not a hundred years till 2028, when all women over 21 got the vote. In 1918 women over thirty who occupied a house or were married to someone (a man) who did, could vote.
To some extent this was not new. Until the 1832 Great Reform Act, the only qualification to vote had been owning a 40/- freehold - so unmarried women who met this qualification in theory had a vote.
We should celebrate 1918, of course, but 1928 is when universal suffrage arrived in the UK.

I agree on this. Not sure my adult DD is not a bit TWAW.

I’m not sure I understand why it’s difficult for adult DDs? Would you mind explaining? My kids are not adults, know my views on this so I don’t have any conflict with them about this. Is that what you both mean?

It's hard to believe that wearing suffragette colours, FFS, is now problematic.

When I worked in an all-male environment, they used to make 'jokes' about those awful women's libbers etc. One of my stock answers [because it's a really good survival plan to have short, tip-of-the-tongue stock answers ready] was an exaggerated eyeroll and
'I know! They'll be looking for the vote next!'
which usually stopped them in their tracks, for a while anyway.

Now the symbols of the fight for the vote are seen again, over a century later, as a controversial political statement.

There is no guaranteed progress, just a constantly-renewing struggle.

That is a brilliant retort, will try to remember that.

Until the 1832 Great Reform Act, the only qualification to vote had been owning a 40/- freehold - so unmarried women who met this qualification in theory had a vote.

This is something I knew although precious few did. The Reform Act went and disenfranchised those few women who could vote. I imagine that numbers were vanishingly small though.

So it's not entirely true to say things like "New Zealand women were first to get the vote."

I don't think thats true. I go ballistic if my teen sons refer to me as a TERF (which they do periodically to wind me up). I am a feminist. I am gender critical.

There is a massive difference between people who believe you cannot change sex and trans women do not belong in female spaces and that you cannot and should not compel speech but that they can crack on and dress how they want (as long as it isn't sexually explicit in public) i.e "gender critical" and those who believe that the whole concept of being trans is wrong and that people who are trans should not be afforded the same basic human rights as everyone else and can therefore be discriminated against ("TERFs")

I am absolutely not a TERF. It absolutely is a slur.

You can't redefine a word that is in common usage and is used to shut women up and make reasonable gender critical views look to be the unreasonable position. It's a fanciful as saying you're changing the meaning of the word "cunt". You may well say female genitalia is wonderful and so you're taking as a compliment but the rest of the world knows it hasn't been used in that way.

I live in Brighton and have been rocking my bright pink AHF umbrella for a few years now. Quite a few youngsters have approached me to say that they love it, a number of beardy young guys too; encouraging, given the location.

When TRAs and their hangers-on use the term TERF, by the word 'exclusionary' they mean that feminists exclude transwomen from the category of 'women'.

Which I do. I do exclude them. They belong in the category of 'men', being immutably male.

If that means that I'm a TERF, meh, whatever.

Suffragette scarves are available on the Let Women Speak website https://www.letwomenspeak.org/suffragette-chiffon-scarf

How absolutely brilliant.

Women in their late 30s and early 40s, university educated seem programmed to see TiMs as victims and vulnerable. Not sure why. DD is dual-heritage and so is very clued in to anything that she feels smacks of discrimination, too.

'Terf' was not invented by GC feminists, of course. I am happy for people to dress as they like and live as they like, as long as it harms no-one else (and I mean no-one, the wives of TiMs get properly done-over by this ideology and deserve our support).
TiMs should have human rights like everyone else. They are not entitled to have my rights or to decide they are Lesbians and women who are same sex attracted should have sex with them, and they are not entitled to make their wives/partners and families miserable by displaying their fetish. If that makes me trans exclusionary, then so be it.

In the context of this thread, I wasn’t expecting to have a discussion about the semantics of the word ‘terf’ but it has made me think. I just assumed using the word terf among fellow GC people is exactly as others have described already - a lesbian can call herself a dyke but if anyone else who is not a lesbian uses that word, it can be seen as a pejorative term depending on the context and the intent. So among fellow ‘terfs’, we can use it if we like.

Even the term gender critical is criticised, so what are the alternatives? Sex realist? However really I don’t want any label at all because merely recognising that there are two human sexes is not a matter of opinion.

i just don’t want a man walking into the changing room and getting changed next to my 10yo daughter no matter who he is, what he calls himself or how he dresses.

@hurdigurdi, this thread has made me think too, which is probably no bad thing on my part.

The thing that has kind of astounded me, though, is the number of people who say they have to be cautious wearing Suffragette items.

Really, seriously, if nothing else signalled that TRAs are actively anti-women, it would be the fact that they are inflamed by the thought of women celebrating that they have rights.

They are the ones who say “rights aren’t pie” (ie, that more rights for them doesn’t mean less rights for anyone else, which of course is utter bull crap) but when we acknowledge the fight women had to have to gain our rights, somehow that means we think they shouldn’t have any rights at all. They are so threatened by women just existing with a few hard won rights that it would be beyond ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that when they feel threatened they get violent.

I think I’m going to sew myself an entire wardrobe in Green, White and Violet. Just to be a bitch.

I refuse to call my views "terf" because that gives into TRA's insistence that someone being trans or not has anything to do with whether they are "included" in feminism or not, or related issues such as legal sex, SS spaces etc.

'Trans' is so poorly defined that it's nigh on impossible to know who is and isn't.

It's irrelevant whether someone IDs as trans or not. It's (usually) their sex that is the relevant factor.

TRAs have worked hard to conflate this and I don't want to lend it any legitimacy.