Tag: “TERF”

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Media and Arts

I feel that I should be able to ask for female providers

I care because I am a woman. If I ever am in a compromising situation, I feel that I should be able to ask for female providers and that it shouldn’t be considered transphobic to do so. I also know that it’s important to fight for rights regarding my biology, because that’s the basis for sexism

I have shared on social media. I have also talked to friends. Thankfully my close friends are in agreement with me. However, if I speak out to a wider circle, I will lose friends.

I am very afraid, because I see “no TERFs” in advertising for women’s rights marches and know they mean people like me. I know I’m not welcome in society. And as a heterosexual white woman, the view is that I’m privileged. However, I suffer through sexism all the same.

Sydney, Female musician, Canada

Categories
Students

I was pressured into transition, even though I didn’t believe it

This matters to me because I was pressured into transition, even though I didn’t believe it, and even though I got away from that, a lot of people I know are transitioning at an alarming rate. Women’s rights are being trampled on and I feel there is nowhere I can go if I feel vulnerable as a woman that a transgender male-to-female can’t also access.

I have spoken out with my family and posted on social media. I have also reduced contact with those who push their views onto me about the subject.

I have been threatened on social media, harassed by a transgender person (biologically male) I live with who also stole some of my ‘feminine possessions’ to tell me not to be a ‘terf’, cornered and threatened by another who was over a foot taller than me, and received more minor threats from a lot of friends warning me not to speak out. All of these (except from the last one) have been witnessed by people of authority, but all have been dismissed.

Beth

Categories
Lesbians Students

I am seeing the existence of my sexuality be denied

I care because as a woman I am seeing all of the hard-earned rights feminists have worked tirelessly for be diminished before our eyes. I care because as a lesbian, I am seeing the existence of my sexuality be denied and the definition of it “extended” to include males by people from within the LGBT community.

I care because I have read the statistics and seen first hand the amount of young girls go through social/medical transition due to homophobia, misogyny and peer pressure.

As a student I witnessed struggling young bisexual and lesbian girls change their name and pronouns to fit in with the “queer” crowd.

I care because I’ve been called vanilla for not wanting to partake in BDSM. I’ve been called a prude for criticizing the porn and sex industries. I care because I care about the rights of lesbians and the rights of all women!

I try to speak up about the injustices I’m seeing as much as possible, online and in real life. Unfortunately I live in an area with no radical feminist groups, and a huge queer community so I only know a small close circle of radfems.

I have been shunned from the LGBT community. People I don’t even know know me and by name and it’s worrying. When I am out and about and I see someone look at me funny I wonder if it’s because they know I am  a “TERF”. Socialising in gay venues has become anxiety-inducing, but I still go because I have every right to be there as a homosexual female. I have been excluded from university groups and people are warned about me.

Rosie, 21 year old lesbian and student

Categories
Students

We are experiencing the biggest witch hunt in history, and no one is blinking an eye at it

This matters to me because my future as a woman, and that of my female friends and family is starting to look too dark. In the past few decades of pornified culture, women have shifted from being private property to being products for men to consume. As a woman in my early 20s, I recently discovered that the world sees me as a piece of meat. But this is all hidden under the “women’s empowerment” label.

Society has fooled us into believing that we no longer serve men, and that if we do, it is by choice and is empowering. Women have been sexualised to the point of no return and are now seen as a costume to wear, again for the purpose of feeding men’s sexual fantasies.

Our rights are being quietly taken away, our privacy, our freedom of speech, our scholarships, and we are not allowed to say a word, because we become bigots, cunts and TERFs.

We are experiencing the biggest witch hunt in history, and no one is blinking an eye at it.

I have discussed and debated this with friends and anonymously posted on Twitter and reddit. However, even when hiding behind fake usernames, I still receive threats.

I have been called words. I have received threats.

TN, A woman trying to survive

Categories
Students

The trans movement are causing people like me to persistently self-censor every single day

I care because free speech is incredibly important, and the trans movement are causing people like me to persistently self-censor every single day – not to shift the narrative to myself when there is real oppression out there, but surely the impact on mental health more broadly as a result of this constant self-silencing can’t be positive.

I have a graduate scheme lined up, but I am afraid I will lose both my friends and my jobs if I dare voice an opinion which doesn’t conform to the majority. I am afraid, and I am silent.

Luckily, I have a few friends who share my opinions and my voice is limited only to one friendship circle in which I feel that we all have the mutual respect and maturity to listen to one another and debate civilly.

I have been berated by my friends and labelled a ‘TERF’ simply for refusing to condemn J.K Rowling.

Oscar, A

Categories
Others

I want to fight for my rights without being labelled as “transphobic”

It matters to me because I’m a woman and I want to fight for my rights without being labelled as “transphobic”.

I have shared my thoughts on Twitter, but I still have not the courage to speak up on other social media or in real life with people that are not my own family.

I’ve been harrased and threatened, called terf, bigot, clown, etc.

M, Chile

Categories
Academics and researchers

As a young child, I was told that I could not participate in the sports that I loved because they were ‘not for girls’

I can’t begin to do justice to the importance of feminism and womanhood in my life. As a young child, I was told that I could not participate in the sports that I loved because they were ‘not for girls’. I have been overjoyed to see the strides made by women’s sport in the past 25 years, and that – on the whole – there are far more opportunities for girls to participate in sport than when I was growing up.

It breaks my heart to see these strides undermined simply to appease a small group of biological males who seek to ‘affirm their self-appointed gender’ by taking the hard-earned place of women in sport. I am devastated that women’s sporting history is being rewritten by people like Lauren Hubbard and Rachel McKinnon.

Girls and women are subject to all manner of abuse – mostly at the hands of men – and they fully deserve (and need) single-sex spaces in which to thrive and feel safe. Every woman knows what it is to feel unsafe and vulnerable, and no-one has the right to dismiss our concerns.

The idea that biological males can simply announce themselves female and enter women’s safe spaces is obscene. I have never felt more strongly about anything in my life.

It is a topic that I discuss with my partner and trusted friends on a daily basis. While I have engaged with some of the public debates on Twitter, I don’t feel that what I do is enough. I am in the difficult position of knowing that if I speak up, I will most likely lose my job – a prospect that I cannot afford to risk at the minute.

My work colleagues have extremely strong views on the ‘transgender’ issue, and regularly use offensive terms such as ‘TERF’ to publicly bully those with genuine concerns into silence. While I have never directly received such abuse, I know that if I were to be more vocal, I would be their next target.

K

Categories
Academics and researchers

You don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty

I a woman and a mother of girls. I thought feminism was making progress, that their life would be better than mine and mine better than my mother and grandmothers.

I see that my right to define myself and my right to say why I feel kinship with other women can be shouted down as hate speech, and so I have therefore no right to define myself. So feminism is as likely to go backwards as forward.

I’ve written to my MP and complained to IPSO. I have spoken to friends. I have spoken to my girls. I have written a couple of blog posts and was going to give a paper.

I have set up a module that will deal with feminism. That has, weirdly enough, reconfirmed my commitment to feminism and made me more active.

But I am worried about my job, and the negative consequences. I know from colleagues that this is very real and you don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty. And it is targeted: some colleagues who are not considered ‘terfs’ get to joke about it; others have every word monitored (by students, by the way).

I am relatively new to this debate and am expecting a complaint to happen, as my students are now aware of my views.

M

Categories
Academics and researchers

Women fought for sex-based rights for good reasons

I care because women fought for sex-based rights for good reasons.  I feel strongly that the degree of vitriol, diminishing of voice and violence and is frightening. And I want to stand up to it.  But I am scared.  And then cross with myself for being scared.

I have spoken out on Twitter in support of key figures and ideas I believe in (e.g the protection of single-sex spaces; the ‘right’ (!) to talk about our experience as a sex class)

On Wednesday 10th June 2020 I tweeted in support of JK Rowling and was absolutely TAKEN DOWN (called a cunt; had obscene content posted on my feed; told to shut up and sit down TERF etc.). I am yet to see whether my employer wades in against me.  Watch this space!

B K Long

Categories
Academics and researchers

A post-hysterectomy woman who doesn’t feel excluded by the word ‘woman’…so stop using me in your facile arguments

I’m a woman of the adult human female kind, a survivor of male sexual abuse from a line of survivors of male sexual abuse with friends who’ve experienced male sexual abuse and colleagues who’ve experienced male sexual abuse.

Single sex spaces and sex based rights and protections make our lives outside of our homes possible. And because gender is absolute nonsense – regressive, patriarchal nonsense. They think I’m a TERF? I think they’re a narrow-minded bigot from the 1950s.

I have started a huge row with a colleague (male) who shouted at me that I was a disgusting person for suggesting trans women are not women.

We are both criminologists. Criminologists. I cannot stress that enough.

Yeah, see the above. I yelled back twice as loud but frankly it scared the shit out of me that an intelligent colleague with a professional interest in, y’know, intelligent, nuanced analysis and good science, could behave toward me in that way and seem to think it justified. It has kept me (professionally) quiet.

The Mo, A post-hysterectomy woman who doesn’t feel excluded by the word ‘woman’, or discussions of menstruation; so stop using me in your facile arguments, you TRA morons – I’m a woman, an adult human female!