Trans community, please explain TERF for me. (Updated)

[happyninja42]

Ok so, this is a new acronym for me, as I've only seen it used twice in discussions of the transgender issues in society. One was on....shit I forget his name, he's on Channel Awesome and he does that show "*Insert Name of Show* Needs More Gay", where he discusses the representation of homosexuality (mostly) in films/tv. He mentioned TERF in reference to the show Sense8, referring to a character presented in the pilot. The other time I've seen the word is on these forums.

I get the basic context of it (I think), a lesbian (or at least that's the form I've seen mentioned in both cases) who is against transgendered women, claiming they are just "men encroaching on our turf" Hence the name TERF I guessed.

Could someone who is actually familiar with this clarify/expand for me? As it bugs me to be puzzled by commonly used terms in discussions that I take part in. I would ask in the thread that I saw the word used but, well that would be derailing that thread, and it is already on it's way to be a derailed barbecue of bickering, and I'd rather not mess with it.

Thanks.

*Friendly Edit*

Just to clarify since every post so far as of the time of this edit has made a point to make this clarification, I'll make it here as well to save everyone time. I in no way, assume that the term TERF applies to all feminists, or all radical feminists, or any such blanket assumptions. I assume it does apply to the specific group of people who hold the ideology that is defined with TERF. Meaning, the people who TERF does apply to, and nobody else.

**Edit Two: The Re-Editing!!**

I've had my question answered to my satisfaction. If you wish to continue the discussion of TERFs, feel free, though I would ask to keep it civil. Of course, this is the escapist, and it's a thread about trans issues, so...not sure how long my request for civility will last, but a guy can dream! xD

 

[Terminal Blue]

TERF is an acronym for "Trans-exclusionary radical feminist"

Basically, there's a certain fringe of radical feminist thought (not all radical feminists are trans exclusionary) exemplified by people like Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys who see some or all forms of transgenderism as a tool of patriarchal control. The allegation is usually that transgender identities are based on insulting, stereotypical or conservative understandings of womanhood and femininity and thus serve as a way of using medicine to fetishize or denigrate female bodies.

Personally, I think that's kind of shit. While I agree there is some very conservative and often surprisingly homophobic rhetoric which comes out of certain sections the trans community (just as there's a lot of transphobia in the LGB communities) I certainly don't think it's true that all trans people take on conservative models of gender (heck, some of the most radical thinkers on gender I'm aware of are trans.)

I think, like many forms of prejudice, it's primarily an (extremely ignorant) emotional response dressed up as a rational criticism.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Trans Exclusionary (or Eliminationist) Radical Feminist.

Radical Feminism is a particular (not very big) branch of feminism. It's not "feminism that seems to be radical to me" or somesuch, which is a common mistake, the name is a big misleading. Often Radical Feminists are called radfems for short (saves me typing the whole thing out). Andrea Dworkin is a feminist writer very influential with radfems, but of fairly limited influence elsewhere. For a while, she was the go to feminist for quotes to discredit feminism, although much of what is attributed to her was made up by her oppenent.

TERFs are a particular type of radfem that openly (and usually very vitriolically) hate trans people. You also get SWERFs (swap "sex worker" for "trans"), though they aren't talked about as much, and there's no reason TERFs can't be SWERFs. Not all radfems are TERFs and/or SWERFs, but Radical Feminism has a reputation for attracting extremists. This is exaggerated, but not entirely undeserved.

I think TERFs is something radfems self-identify as, so you can have radical feminists that aren't TERFs, but who are transphobic. Not sure about that. And there certainly are many, many feminists who aren't part of Radical Feminism that are transphobic. Is endlessly frustrating that people wanting to attack feminism will conjure up all sorts of bizarre strawmen, but generally avoid talking about important issues like intersectionality.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I think TERFs is something radfems self-identify as, so you can have radical feminists that aren't TERFs, but who are transphobic.

I think like any label which tends to be thrown around vitriolically on the internet (SJW anyone?) it's something which a few people identify with and others consider utterly unjustified and nothing but a transparent insult directed at people with different views. I would say it is generally justified, but is also rather overused.

SWERF is a particularly weird example because, while I don't agree with it at all, radical feminist opposition to sex work is often far, far more reasonable in its claims than opposition to transgenderism or sex reassignment surgery. The idea that only sex worker advocates should be allowed to speak about sex work (particularly given the often very murky connections between advocacy groups and the industry itself in this area) and that anyone critical of sex work can be dismissed as exclusionary is.. actually kind of chilling to me, and I speak as someone who is generally pretty sex-positive.

 

[Skatologist]

I'm not exactly part of the trans community, but I'm familiar enough with at least some TERF viewpoints.

First of all, no feminist I am aware of identifies as a TERF, but by closely examining their viewpoints on trans people, you can conclude their brand of feminism is indeed trans exclusionary. Some TERFs are queer yes, but isn't exactly a requirement for being one.

They also may hold many different beliefs, such as:

[li]Defining women by their genitalia and/or chromosomes[/li]

[li]Deny there are privileges to being cisgender and find the term cisgender demeaning[/li]

[li]View gender as wholly a social construct and one that is inherently oppressive towards women[/li]

[li]Say trans women are either effeminate men who have been relegated to the status of women or men attempting to invade feminist/women's spaces usually for sexual reasons.[/li]

[li]Say trans men are either nonexistent or are actually women attempting to gain male privileges by society[/li]

[li]View trans women are inherently problematic to "actual women" because they reinforce gender roles by "defining women by what they wear/present as" ie when a trans woman wears make up or a dress.[/li]

[li]Not permit trans women at their women only events [/li]

[li]In terms of causing harm to trans people, they have also attempted to prevent better trans healthcare and many advocate for reparative therapy[/li]

Of course, not all of these views are solely applied to TERFs as you might guess, but you could say that for many philosophical/social/political perspectives.

Oh, and a good chance you'll find an actual TERF who believes all/much of this stuff is if they identify as a "gender critical" just as a heads up.

 

[happyninja42]

TERF is an acronym for "Trans-exclusionary radical feminist"

Basically, there's a certain fringe of radical feminist thought (not all radical feminists are trans exclusionary) exemplified by people like Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys who see some or all forms of transgenderism as a tool of patriarchal control. The allegation is usually that transgender identities are based on insulting, stereotypical or conservative understandings of womanhood and femininity and thus serve as a way of using medicine to fetishize or denigrate female bodies.


I think, like many forms of prejudice, it's primarily an (extremely ignorant) emotional response dressed up as a rational criticism.

Bolded for emphasis:
Interesting, as that statement would kind of imply (at least the way I am reading what you stated), that you don't have to be a woman (meaning having something approximating female anatomy, either cis or trans) to be a woman. Meaning a guy could be a woman in their logic? Which...seems contrary to their specific feminist stance. I mean if the "understandings of womanhood" that they challenge as being outdated and conservative (meaning that you have to have the anatomy of a woman at least, to be a woman), then by their own standard, you don't have to be a woman to be a woman. xD I'm kind of joking with this response, as I'm sure they would clarify further what they actually mean about what it is to be a woman, and how it would exclude my statement. But on the surface, it seems like they are opening up their own pandora's box of problems, by stating that the classic representations of womanhood aren't what make someone a woman.

So if I get this correctly, a general interpretation of their stance on the trans issue would be (roughly) as follows:

1. Transwomen are just men trying to establish further control/dominance in the feminine world, by becoming women, and then declaring rights as women that they don't deserve.

2. Transmen are women who have been brainwashed/conditioned/fooled/etc into believing that there is something wrong with them, and that the only way to be complete is to become a man, and thus are part of the problem.

Would that be a basic, and I do mean basic, I know there is a wider range to the subject obviously, representation of their stance on the trans issue?

 

[Thaluikhain]

So if I get this correctly, a general interpretation of their stance on the trans issue would be (roughly) as follows:

1. Transwomen are just men trying to establish further control/dominance in the feminine world, by becoming women, and then declaring rights as women that they don't deserve.

2. Transmen are women who have been brainwashed/conditioned/fooled/etc into believing that there is something wrong with them, and that the only way to be complete is to become a man, and thus are part of the problem.

Would that be a basic, and I do mean basic, I know there is a wider range to the subject obviously, representation of their stance on the trans issue?

That doesn't seem far off the mark. Though, for the first, it's not so much declaring rights as taking up space. Complaints about men deciding what's best for feminism are nothing new (and not just from radical feminists), however, TERFs have their own spin on it. I recall a radfem complaining that a feminist conference had a trans woman as a speaker, which was wrong because it was a "man" taking up the space a woman should have had. Possibly something similar to cultural appropriation as well.

As for the second, I've also heard it described as TERFs being angry at "lesbians" jumping ship or something. However, unlike the first, I've not seen any radfems express this PoV.

 

[happyninja42]

So if I get this correctly, a general interpretation of their stance on the trans issue would be (roughly) as follows:

1. Transwomen are just men trying to establish further control/dominance in the feminine world, by becoming women, and then declaring rights as women that they don't deserve.

2. Transmen are women who have been brainwashed/conditioned/fooled/etc into believing that there is something wrong with them, and that the only way to be complete is to become a man, and thus are part of the problem.

Would that be a basic, and I do mean basic, I know there is a wider range to the subject obviously, representation of their stance on the trans issue?

That doesn't seem far off the mark. Though, for the first, it's not so much declaring rights as taking up space. Complaints about men deciding what's best for feminism are nothing new (and not just from radical feminists), however, TERFs have their own spin on it. I recall a radfem complaining that a feminist conference had a trans woman as a speaker, which was wrong because it was a "man" taking up the space a woman should have had. Possibly something similar to cultural appropriation as well.

As for the second, I've also heard it described as TERFs being angry at "lesbians" jumping ship or something. However, unlike the first, I've not seen any radfems express this PoV.

I see, thanks for the clarification.

 

[happyninja42]

snipperoony

I see. Yeah I figured it was more complicated than I was distilling it down to, as I mentioned in my above posts. I was just trying to get a basic concept to associate with the term, since I wasn't entirely sure what it meant.

And I love that comic strip you linked. xD I find it quite funny for the mental disconnect of it.

To the point of putting transwomen into a men's wing of a prison, that's just....*shudders*, yikes.

capcha: saucy! You be quite capcha! No perverted backtalk from you on this subject!

 

[Parasondox]

Does every group in society have radicals cause this is the very very first time I have heard this with links to the transgender community.

 

[happyninja42]

Does every group in society have radicals cause this is the very very first time I have heard this with links to the transgender community.

I would say it's a safe bet yes.

 

[Something Amyss]

Seems most of what I would have said has been said, so...

Does every group in society have radicals cause this is the very very first time I have heard this with links to the transgender community.

Well, it doesn't have links with the transgender community. It has links with feminism.

 

[Lieju]

My main issue with the term 'TERF' is kinda with the 'radical' part... There are certain radical movements in feminism with shit opinions on trans issues but they're hardly the only ones.

Most transphobic feminists I have had the displeasure of dealing with personally weren't what I'd consider radical in any sense of the word.

I guess my point is that transphobia is not just present in radical groups (feminist or otherwise)

 

[EternallyBored]

My main issue with the term 'TERF' is kinda with the 'radical' part... There are certain radical movements in feminism with shit opinions on trans issues but they're hardly the only ones.

Most transphobic feminists I have had the displeasure of dealing with personally weren't what I'd consider radical in any sense of the word.

I guess my point is that transphobia is not just present in radical groups (feminist or otherwise)

TERF came about involving a subset of feminists that self-identify as radical feminists, it's not solely a pejorative, although some other feminist groups treat it as such.

Yes, there are other groups within feminism that have questionable or unpopular opinions regarding transsexual identities, but TERF refers to a specific group that seeks to exclude trans people from having a place within the movement, as in, trans women are not real women and should not have a place in feminist dialogue, and trans men are of a lesser voice for trying to act like men.

TERF is not a catch all term for any feminist that has transphobic or unpopular views, so you knowing feminists that aren't radical who express such views is meaningless, as they are just transphobic feminists, TERFs are tied to radical sections of the movement, and some even call themselves TERFs.

We can discuss transphobia within mainstream feminism, but that is different from a TERF, some people may throw the label around in inappropriate situations, but label itself still largely works as intended.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Most people have written a decent explanation above. But TERFs also occupy the essentialist dichotomy of the existence/essence philosophical divide. So it's ironic they should claim trans people as upholding stereotypes when they are to merely assume a universality of womanhood. But yeah, the appearance of TERFs thus also cause problems for people looking for intersectionality, and looking for regional solutions to regional women's problems. There's a reason why Audre Lorde pointed to essentialist feminists of yesteryear and called it; "White woman's academic feminism." To assumne all women, everywhere, have faced the same discrimination and to ignore cultural and social regional considerations is to ignore solutions that exist beyond a Western gaze of their own self-determination. When Lorde confronted this rhetoric, Mary Daly told her that she should simply do it for the sake of sisterhood. Which was less missing the forest for the trees, and more so merely spitting in the face of the Haitian woman and telling her her problems were inconsequential to this idea of sorority

It ties back into the argument of x precedes y ... I would say most feminism has been predicated on the idea of existence preceding essence. As that ties in with the usual feminist critique and sponsorship of self-determination, self-authentication and self-authorship, against simply being self because you have certain genitalia. Essentialism is kind of reductive, in that function determines form and applying that to human considerations .... in which case it should come at no suprise that many that confront essentialism then would turn and hold liberation from cultural appropriations of the body should be the forefront of what feminism should be. Viva la revolucion!

 

[1981]

I think like any label which tends to be thrown around vitriolically on the internet (SJW anyone?) it's something which a few people identify with and others consider utterly unjustified and nothing but a transparent insult directed at people with different views. I would say it is generally justified, but is also rather overused.

I was going to ask if it's an actual organization. I'm someone who thought SJWs were real until I learned that it's just a generic slur. [footnote]Why yes, I do live under a rock.[/footnote]

Spoiler: TERF vs. feminist

 

[Terminal Blue]

Interesting, as that statement would kind of imply (at least the way I am reading what you stated), that you don't have to be a woman (meaning having something approximating female anatomy, either cis or trans) to be a woman. Meaning a guy could be a woman in their logic?

Theoretically, yes, but this is where the radical comes in.

The difference between "radical" feminism and other forms of feminism generally comes down to the scope of gendered oppression. Radical feminists generally hold that almost all elements of society and culture are saturated with and contribute to the maintenance of an implicit ideology of male domination. It isn't just a case of removing the "bad bits" of our culture, it isn't just a case that men and women can shrug off the ideological mechanisms which differentiate them. We've all been taught from day one how to be men and women and what that means, every day we get up and participate in a culture which reinforces that meaning, we can't just decide one day that we're free of it and that ideology of gender isn't real any more.

This means in practice that radical feminists often have very rigid views on gender. They don't generally hold that gender is biologically essential (that men and women are determined by anatomy) but would often hold that gender is essential in its meaning, because said meaning is derived from sexual differentiation as a practice. (A lot of radical feminists, like a lot of religious or conservative thinkers of gender, are very influenced by psychoanalysis in this regard).

Mary Daly (while she's kind of exceptional in that she is primarily a theologian and her writing is primarily "religious") for example, makes it incredibly explicit (at least in her later work). Femaleness is life, maleness is death. That is what they mean. That is what they have always meant and will always mean. Men cannot be cured of their "necrophilia", it's utterly bound up in the male life experience, it's saturated into the cultural fabric which a man absorbs from the moment he is born to the moment he dies (indeed, the fact that he is born from a body fundamentally different to his own is a part of what conditions this experience).

I don't want this explanation to be taken as agreement on my part, these are all deeply, deeply flawed arguments and probably shouldn't be taken hugely seriously. At best, they are sometimes kind of interesting as a kind of general observation or metaphor (and I think in that regard we've sometimes dismissed it too quickly) but don't get me wrong, the argument is a bad argument.

1. Transwomen are just men trying to establish further control/dominance in the feminine world, by becoming women, and then declaring rights as women that they don't deserve.

Yes. But it's often a bit deeper than that.

The "rape" thing comes from Janice Raymond, for example, (it's worth noting that radical feminists often use rape as a central metaphor for the effects of gender oppression, and I don't think it's entirely fair to accuse them of trivialization in this regard - many radical feminists were very literal rape victims and incorporated their personal experiences of rape very explicitly into their understanding of gendered oppression). The argument is that transwomen turn female bodies into objects they can own, they just seek to own them in a different way to most men. It isn't just that transwomen will infiltrate the feminine world and sieze control of it (although that is an allegation which is often made), but rather that wanting to possess a female body and using surgery to make it happen is already a form of control/dominance.

As I said, I don't think this one holds up at all though.

 

[Dizchu]

"TERF"s are like creationists. Just like how creationists can be Christians, Muslims, Catholic, Protestant, etc., TERFs share a common belief but don't necessarily have anything else in common.

They're not as small and "fringe" a group as many may suggest (many prominent second-wave feminists are TERFs), but thankfully they aren't very popular with your general intersectional feminist in the 21st century. What I find very interesting is that like with Christina Hoff Sommers, many anti-feminists have taken the side of TERFs because they share common beliefs (though only really about transgender people and gender essentialism).

Some TERF warning signs:

- Extreme misandry
- Stubbornly refusing to use a person's correct pronouns
- Referring to transgender women as "transgender men" and vice versa
- Only ever talking about transgender women as if 99% of of transgender people are male-to-female
- A religious adherence to their own restricted ideals of gender
- Reducing women to their vaginas and treating the vagina as if it's the god damn Holy Grail

 

[pookie101]

came into the thread asking "what the hell is TERF" and now.. ah those bitches who write exercise books.. i call them exercise books because you have to walk over and pick them up after you peg the damn things against the wall.

my favourite quote was that transgender people rape womens bodies..

 

[an annoyed writer]

Ah, TERFs. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists. One of the most frustrating types of people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting, and one of the reasons I've always had a hard time referring to myself as a feminist, despite holding a lot of views shared with your average feminist. These are the insane people that think that if you don't have a natural, fully-developed vagina, you cannot be in any circumstances female(never mind the fact that there are so many cisgendered women born with unfortunate deformities in that area) and believe that 'real' women can't have a Y-chromosome (which is also false).