Tag: “TERF”

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Academics and researchers Healthcare

I have an abhorrence of totalitarian belief systems and dogma

Because I am a feminist and have an abhorrence of totalitarian belief systems and dogma.  I felt I could not stand by in silence while other women were bullied and persecuted simply for stating facts and for refusing to sign up to an ideological system. I am also deeply troubled by the developmental harms and confusion being caused to children, especially gender non-conforming children, by the way this ideology has infiltrated schools and other educational spaces.   

I have been a signatory to several letters in the mainstream press. I have taken motions to my union at local and national level. I have organized a major feminist conference at my university. I have co-authored a blog on an educational website. I have written to my MP. I have submitted responses to government consultations. I have written letters to university vice-chancellors, editors and other senior academics to protest the treatment of feminist scholars within their institutions. 

I have spoken to the staff and headteacher at the school where I am a governor about their PSHE resources. I have attended several demonstrations and events by WPUK. I  was a founding signatory of the Labour Women’s Declaration. I have shared resources, material and opinions with women in my academic and social networks. I have written to the organizers of an event where a feminist was attacked for distributing material.  I have co-authored pieces in the press. I have used feminist materials in my teaching.  I have joined a local activists’ network …..   

I have been asked to step down from an international editorial board because of my feminist views (after publishing a piece on academic freedom on sex and gender).

SeveraI people in my academic network, some of whom were close friends, no longer speak to me.   I am no longer welcome in some of these network events.

I have had student activists post my name on lists of dangerous “TERFS”, calling on all trans students to avoid my classes because they are unsafe.  I have had defamatory posters, showing my photo and calling me a fascist, displayed on the walls of my workplace. I have been referred to on social media as a bigot and a transphobe – although I am not even on social media myself (partly because I do not have the stomach for all the bullying).   I have been named in defamatory articles by student journalists.   I have been insulted by fellow activists in my union branch.

J, University lecturer

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Academics and researchers

This is gross medical negligence and should not be celebrated as ‘progressive’

I care about this because I am both a woman and a scientist and care deeply against the spread of misinformation. I am also against the normalisation of bodily mutilation of primarily young lesbians. This is gross medical negligence and should not be celebrated as ‘progressive’.

I have a Twitter account.

I brought this issue up with a few individuals in my day to day life (mainly men) and I am immediately met with the parroted transactivist script from people I wouldn’t even consider to be in the cult. The main negative is unstabilized relationships because they are not even able to debate the topic without just resorting to calling me a bigot or a TERF.

AW, Scientist with common sense, I wish I could provide this but I fear backlash

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Academics and researchers Healthcare

I see children in my city being encouraged to take life altering decisions at too young an age

I care because firstly I can’t lie and collude with the idea that sex can be changed, either medically or by declaration. I care because gender ideology reinforces rather than challenges the concept of sex-appropriate behaviour and I’ve personally fought against this my whole life.

I care because I see children in my city being encouraged to take life altering decisions at too young an age (thanks Allsorts…) and this is cruel. I care because until 6 I thought you could choose to change sex at 10 yrs old, I was a tomboy and feel these days I’d be at risk of being transed or forced to over-think it. It’s cruel.

I also object to the obliteration of the  understanding that being female is a material reality that carries with it the baggage of a history of discrimination. Being female is an axis of oppression that’s nonsensical to ignore.

I care lastly because I have daughters, aunts, a mother, cousins and friends who have all experienced both subtle and profound discrimination on the basis of their female sex. Sex matters.

I have tentatively broached with a sympathetic friend. When I first was aware of the Hyde Park Corner incident I mentioned it in the pub assuming people would see it as nonsense. The people there were self-declared ex-Terfs who told me how they’d seen the light. It was surprising and put me on the back foot.

I have spoken up at work about using sex rather than gender in our surveys – small act, but I work in Higher Education where gender ideology is being forced into every part of the organisation.

I have engaged on social media (including with my MP Caroline Lucas), as an anonymous, attended conferences, donated to crowdfunders. I haven’t done enough. My daughter is very scared of me raising any issue with the school, or speaking out. She is gender critical but also scared of speaking out. The school still have sexist practices that reinforce sex-based stereotypes,  but does nothing about these, while pushing gender ideology.

I have had no negative consequences but that’s because I’m careful to maintain anonymity. I also haven’t spoken out enough.

Maggie, Woman in the street

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Education

FGM abuse happens to girls based on their sex

Trans people need to be safe, but they need to recognise that some people will take advantage and abuse the system to harm vulnerable women. I am a woman and I can see others being silenced for wanting to talk about being a biological woman, by men. This should not be happening.

I have argued that female genital mutilation (FGM) should not be renamed due to transphobia. Girls are abused based on their sex and we need to make sure that others know this and don’t invalidate the traumatic experiences girls and women deal with by changing the language or comparing FGM to trans surgery.

I have been called a terf, been told I need to be slapped by a cock, slapped by a lady dick, told to choke on girl dick, called a transphobe for wanting to keep vulnerable women safe,  called a stupid bitch

I have had family members inboxed, had emails sent to my work (I oversee all the emails though so was able to delete and remove all traces of employment from social media) for suggesting that men want to silence women .

Sarah

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Education Men Parent

I was a good ally

I first became engaged with trans issues when I had to teach a unit on queer theory to my A Level class. Having very little knowledge of my own,  I followed some trans accounts on twitter and read some web resources to develop an understanding. It seemed to me that trans people were an oppressed minority who needed help in overcoming societal prejudice in the same way feminist groups, the civil rights and gay rights movements had done before. I read what I could and spoke up for trans students at college when other members of staff misgendered them in front of me. I was a good ally.

I don’t remember the exact moment I realised that something was wrong. In the early days I got drawn into an argument on twitter about whether men could have periods. It seemed self evident to me that they couldn’t but apparently they could and i was hateful for suggesting otherwise. I assumed at first this was just a lone crank, how wrong I was. The penny dropped for me when I listened to Rebecca Reilly Cooper’s remarkable talk “Examining the doctrine of gender identity” on Youtube. This video had a profound impact on me, I still listen to it a couple of times a year.

I am now hugely invested in this issue and my eyes are open to the harm “the doctrine of gender identity” does to women and girls. I am appalled at the misogyny suffered by women online.

I despair of the pressure young lesbians are put under to accept trans women with penises as sexual partners.

I am terrified at the thought that my beautiful gender non-conforming daughter will be sucked in by the cult. But I am heartened at the number of women (and some men too) that are refusing to go along with the lunacy.

I like plenty of tweets and reply to quite a few, often debating with trans rights activists at length but, ultimately to no real purpose. Occasionally I summon up the courage to send an original tweet myself but not often. I comment on Facebook threads now and then.

I am too nervous to go full TERF on Facebook in front of all the people I know in real life. My partner hates me speaking out publicly even though she agrees with me. She’s worried I might get sacked and she’s right to be concerned about that.

It worries me too, although not enough to make me completely silent.

I teach at a college where traces of the transcult are creeping in. Displays in the library, genderbread people on display in classrooms. I’ve only been there a few months so I feel I need to get bedded in more before I speak out. I’m hoping that one day I’ll be asked to deliver a tutorial or take my class to a talk or get some CPD that will give me the excuse I need to speak up. I truly feel that I will have the courage when the time comes.

Have you had any consequences? So far, very little. Some ex students have told me on twitter how disappointed they are with me but I can easily take that. I’ve not lost any friends or been disciplined at work. My gender critical activities are too far under the radar at the moment. I can’t help but feel that because I’m a man I get off much lighter too.

R, Gender Critical Educator

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Education Parent

If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman I’d have thought they were crazy.

This matters to me because when I was a student in the mid-1980s, I was a feminist (of course!) but I was confident that most of the major battles had been won, and that we were on a trajectory towards genuine equality. If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman, in order to protect our hard-won rights, I’d have thought they were crazy.

I have written to my MP, written in support of gender-critical women who raise their voices publicly, written private letters of support to those women; made FOI requests on sex/gender topics; spent several Saturdays leafleting with other women involved in the Fair Play For Women campaign to draw attention to the proposed GRA reforms; completed the govt’s GRA reform consultation questionnaire; completed Edward Lord’s (shocking) consultation on making all City of London visitor attraction toilets mixed-sex; been active on social media; written a (far too occasional) blog; taken every opportunity to talk to family and friends (and selected colleagues) about these issues; attended WPUK and Let A Woman Speak and other events; spoken at Women Say in Hyde Park on IWD 2020; with others, set up a women’s group in our city which meets regularly (before lockdown); am active in a private Slack group for GC professionals in my sector.

As a consequence I have been frozen out of the friendship group I made when my son was a baby, because one of the mothers has a “trans child”. My son has been asked by other students at school (he attends a school which is obsessively proud about its Stonewall status) if his mother is “still a TERF”.

Rachel Bosenterfer, Adult human female. Mother. Loudmouth

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Healthcare Others

I can’t stand that women have been harassed for defending sex based rights

I can’t stand that women have been harassed for defending sex based rights. That children are being fast-tracked on dangerous treatments. Or that sexual orientation is even being attacked. The behavior of the activists is often abusive and manipulative, and it is downright frightening and angering at times.

I post and share things on social media all the time. I have signed and shared a few petitions and I have tried to speak up about it to people in real life, with mixed results.

Online I have been called a bigot, a terf, a Nazi, a white supremacist, I have been sent obscene images. My accounts have been reported. In real life I have fought with friends over this.

Allison, Haven’t lost my mind yet due to terminal wokeness but getting there, USA

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Others

I ran a marathon while carrying a flag that said “SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS”

As a woman, I want privacy and safety when I use public bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. I want sports to be fair; I want young female athletes to benefit from them the same way I did, and I want elite female athletes I look up to to have the wins they deserve.

I fiercely believe that everyone has the right to choose the circumstances under which people of the opposite sex see them undressed as well as the circumstances under which they see members of the opposite sex undressed. This is true for situations that affect me, such as public bathroom usage and the sex of the doctor who performs my pap smear, as well as for situations that don’t and hopefully never will, such as having to share a prison shower with a biological male or being pressured to wax male genitalia.

I will steadfastly defend this right to choose not only for myself, but for women everywhere.

I ran a marathon while carrying a flag that said “SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS” as well as the dictionary definition of the word “woman” (“ADULT HUMAN FEMALE”).

I’ve written to my government representatives. I’ve researched and written speeches, which I’ve delivered at school board meetings of a school district that opened locker rooms to opposite-sex students. I’ve attended demonstrations at athletic events of that school district, distributing flyers and holding up large signs/banners.

I boycott companies who support gender identity ideology. I’ve written to those companies to explain why I’m boycotting them, and I explain my boycotts to others. I’ve signed petitions and used social media to urge others to do the same. I’ve given an interview for a feminist radio show and written an op-ed that was recently printed in a newspaper.

I have been dogpiled on on social media. I’ve been called garbage/trash, a TERF, sh*t, a c*nt, and “the f*cking genitals police.” Someone commented on one of my posts with a picture of an anime girl pointing a gun at the viewer captioned, “SHUT THE FUCK UP TERF.” I’ve been told to STFU, and someone commented on one of my posts with a picture of super glue captioned, “Finally, a line of lipstick made exclusively for TERFs.” Someone commented on one of posts with a meme including an emoji holding a knife that read, “Why be transphobic when you can just DIE.” I was told to “die alone.” Someone told me they hoped I lost “every sponsor or scholarship [I] ever apply for.”

For objecting to male people competing in female sports, I was accused of being “mediocre,” “a terrible athlete,” and told I needed to train harder. Many people insulted the way my parents had raised me, and I was told that I shouldn’t have kids myself. I’ve been accused of having “internalized misoyogny[sic]” and of having the patriarchy “ingrained deep” in me.

Emily Kaht, Just a normal woman who’s finally had enough, USA

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Healthcare

I am horrified that young lesbians are being gaslighted into having sexual relationships with male-sexed bodies

I am deeply concerned about the erosion of the right of women and girls. The changes in language and our ability to describe ourselves accurately. 

I am horrified that young lesbians are being gaslighted into having sexual relationships with male-sexed bodies. To have university campuses have signs up proclaiming that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ (I’m looking at you, Liverpool!).

I do not agree with women’s sports being infiltrated by male athletes. I do not consider myself to be transphobic, and much like JK Rowling, think we should all be free to live and love as we choose. However…

…as someone who has been ridiculed and bullied for specifically not ‘liking dick’ forever, to now be expected to accept ‘dick’ as the norm is beyond ridiculous.

I work for an NHS service. I am having open conversations with GNC kids and exploring the issue, rather than jump to affirmations. We are talking about this as a service.

I have had arguments with gay male friends over the use of the word TERF.

RA, NHS worker

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Healthcare

This matters to me personally, as a gay man, and professionally as a social worker

This matters to me personally, as a gay man, and professionally as a social worker. I see the erosion of women’s rights and LGB people’s rights happening before our very eyes, and do not want the country to be taking such a regressive step.

I have raised my voice at work with certain colleagues, though they have largely been in agreement and supportive.

I have been called a TERF on social media and blocked by various people online. My main fear is a complaint to Social Work England, the regulator. While I find it ludicrous that someone would complain when a social worker raises legitimate concerns about women’s rights, LGB rights and child safeguarding, I have seen it happen already to a social work academic.

BF, Social Worker