TERF (acronym): Difference between revisions

This article is about the term itself. For information on feminist theories, see Feminist views on transgender topics and Radical feminism § Views on transgender topics.

TERF (also written "terf") is an acronym for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". The word is applied to those who exclude trans women from women's spaces or do not consider trans women to be women. Supporters of the word see it as descriptive and politically neutral, while opponents believe it to be a slur.

Coinage and usage

Trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist blogger Viv Smythe (also known as Tigtog) is credited with popularizing the term in 2008 as an online shorthand. It is primarily used to describe feminists who oppose the inclusion of trans women in women's spaces and organizations, or who dispute that trans women are women. These parties are a minority within feminism and are often considered to be transphobic. While they lack influence in American feminism, they are relatively powerful in Britain, and they have cooperated with conservative groups and politicians to deny human rights and protections of transgender people.

Smythe first used the word publicly in a post reacting to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's policy of denying admittance to trans women. She wrote that she rejected the alignment of all radical feminists with "trans-exclusionary radfem (TERF) activists". In a 2014 interview with The TransAdvocate, Smythe said:

"It was meant to be a deliberately technically neutral description of an activist grouping. We wanted a way to distinguish TERFs from other RadFems with whom we engaged who were trans*-positive/neutral, because we had several years of history of engaging productively/substantively with non-TERF RadFems."

While Smythe initially used "TERF" to refer to a particular type of self-styled radical feminists who are "unwilling to recognise trans women as sisters", she has noted that the term has taken on additional connotations, and that it has been "weaponised at times" by both inclusionary and exclusionary groups.

Writing for The TransAdvocate, Cristan Williams argued that the term references "a brand of 'radical feminism' that is so rooted in sex essentialism and its resulting biologism, it actively campaigns against the existence, equality, and/or inclusion of trans people." Writing in The New York Times in 2019, feminist theorist Sophie Lewis used the term "TERFism" to describe anti-transgender feminism in the United Kingdom. Lewis wrote that the term TERF has become a catchall for all anti-transgender feminists, regardless of whether they are radical. Edie Miller, writing in The Outline, said that the term was applied to "most people espousing trans-exclusionary politics that follow a particular 'TERF logic', regardless of their involvement with radical feminism".

Opposition to the word

Feminists who exclude trans women from womanhood and women's spaces generally object to the label TERF, with many referring to themselves instead as gender critical. These feminists, mainly second-wave feminists, perceive trans men and women as "traitors" and "infiltrators" to womanhood. They argue that they cannot be trans-exclusionary because they consider trans men as women—an argument refuted by trans men. They also claim that the term is a slur or even hate speech.

British columnist Sarah Ditum wrote in 2017 that "the bar to being called a 'terf' is remarkably low." British blogger Claire Heuchan criticized Linda Bellos' 2017 disinvitation from University of Cambridge after saying that "trans politics" sought to assert male power, wrote that the word was often used alongside violent rhetoric, and the word was used to "dehumanise women who are critical of gender". She also said the term obscured men as real perpetrators of violence against women and trans people.

In a July 2018 solicitation of essays regarding "transgender identities", British magazine The Economist required writers to "avoid all slurs, including TERF", stating that the word is used to try to silence opinions and sometimes incite violence. In August 2018, seven British doctors of philosophy expressed concern on the website Daily Nous for Rachel McKinnon's and Jason Stanley's normalization of the term in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. These philosophers described the term as "at worst a slur and at best derogatory". The editors of the journal responded that while the view of relevant scholars they contacted was that the term might become a slur in the future, its denigrating uses are comparable to the that of the word Jew and other terms.

Responses to opposition

Attempts to deny trans-exclusion through the categorization of trans men as women have been refuted as contradictory, divisive, fetishistically infantilizing, transphobic, and a part of transmisogynist ideology.

In response to claims that the word constitutes a slur, transfeminist and author Julia Serano has argued that because the word was originally created by radical feminists as a neutral term, it cannot be a slur, and "if the term has since accrued negative connotations, it is simply because most contemporary feminists view trans-exclusion as invalid, and TERF rhetoric as unnecessarily disparaging". Transfeminist YouTuber Natalie Wynn has asserted that the word is not a slur because "it targets bigoted behavior and beliefs, not a type of person". She added that the insistence on the view that the word is a slur is hypocritical because "most of the language used by TERFs is specifically designed to be maximally hurtful, harmful, and insulting to trans people". Philosopher of language Rachel McKinnon has also maintained the word is not a slur, nor even pejorative by itself, because it can be used in a purely descriptive way, while slurs and all derogatory terms are necessarily derogatory in all contexts.

Linguists Christopher David and Elin McCready, writing in a 2018 paper for the University of the Ryukyus and Aoyama Gakuin University, argued that three properties make a term a slur: it must be derogatory towards a particular group, it must be used to subordinate them within some structure of power relations, and the derogated group must be defined by an intrinsic property. In their discussion of the term, they wrote that it satisfies the first condition, fails the third condition, and that the second condition is contentious, in that it depends on how each group sees itself in relation to the other group.

See also

• Feminist theory
• Feminist views on transgender topics
• Framing (social sciences)
• Gaslighting
• Loaded language
• Social exclusion