We all agree terf has not been a useful term for a long time, it implies they're feminists, it implies they're for women, it reinforces their arguments that they're on the side of women and gives them space to hide their more extreme elements.
Why not something like cis-supremacist? Something that is far-right adjacent would be useful in making people properly make this connection, especially given who they're allying with lately.
The issue is that TERF became synonymous with "worst thing you can be" in queer pos spaces, and because of the hyperbole of the internet, all transmisogyny comes from "TERFs," with people like republican lawmakers getting called TERFs.
If you really need to see proof, Tumblr is a good place to find them. There are antiracist anticapitalist TERFs. A lot of them post about being sad lonely losers cuz their type kind of winds up being inherently trans pos, but theres definitely also cities/countries that are just straight up TERF enclaves (this is planned, they are a separatist/nationalist ideology, whatever framing you prefer)
Also almost all the famous feminists/suffragettes in the west were flamming racists. We dont need to depict certain ideologies as being incapable of being weilded for harm, while still maintaining the framework of the namesake
But it literally says they're "trans exclusive" feminists
This term is great imo because it implies that feminists by definition should also support trans women (obviously), and so when they don't, they are now a "TERF" instead of a real feminist
It acknowledges they are feminists in the name though, which is the problem. They're not. They came up with this term themselves too, it's something they felt accurately described them. The issue is that their ideas are regressive for women, which definitely puts them outside of feminism and nobody should linguistically entertain the idea that they are.
Just want to add on to this. Their ideas are indeed regressive for women. Obviously for trans women, but cis women as well. The problem for TERFs is the more you obsess over trans people, the more impossible it becomes to continue to be a feminist. They love to reduce women to physical attributes, their policies regularly interfere with the lives of any woman not performing traditional feminine gender roles, and notably in Britain they are literally trying to repeal feminist legislation just to own the transgenders.
so uh yeah FART is a very apt acronym. unfortunately it is not very serious
They love to reduce women to physical attributes, their policies regularly interfere with the lives of any woman not performing traditional feminine gender roles, and notably in Britain they are literally trying to repeal feminist legislation just to own the transgenders.
Exactly, this is cis-supremacy. Their goal is holding cis people in a supremacist position and keeping trans people heavily marginalised, they didn't care about trans people improving their lives whatsoever until eggshells started to break in extremely large numbers, then it was suddenly a threat to the system. The numbers of trans people rose above a level that became threatening and these supremacists seek to eliminate or suppress that.
before people who didn't know the details got hold of the term, TERFs were people like those "womyns music festival" types and were genuinely interested in abortion rights, girlbosses (before we had that term), workplace equality, maternity leave, having a seat at the table of power, and so on. all for cis women of course, because trans women don't exist or supposedly don't need any of those things.
we differentiate between white feminists and meghan mccain, we used to differentiate between TERFs and antifeminist liberal transphobes, but a bunch of people didn't and the "but i'm a feminist" transphobes don't seem like they're doing much feminism anymore, so here you are wanting a better term.
Compost? lol
Oh you mean the term itself. I agree TERF is not very useful. What about just "transphobe"? Or is that too weak of a word to describe them?
I feel like it's too weak yeah.
My thinking for cis-supremacist is really coming from the position that:
- Trans people exist and nobody can disagree with that even if they don't care about trans people.
- These people have allied with the far right, or are far right themselves.
- These supremacists are effectively trying to genocide trans people.
Calling them a type of supremacist feels right to me. Their reactionary nature to trans people isn't based in women's rights or spaces, it's based in the supremacy of the cis order and patriarchal system. What they care about is upholding cis supremacy and not allowing equal rights and treatment between cis and trans people. Trans people live in conditions akin to a gender-identity apartheid where their rights and treatment are not the same as cis people and trans people are in a battle with supremacists to change this.
It feels naturally comparable to white supremacy, translated over to gender-identity.
That's a great explanation and I agree. Trans-supremacist makes sense and rightly puts them alongside white supremacists. I guess the tricky part is getting large numbers of people to use it instead of TERF.
I think trans-supremacist would be those of us advocating for forced feminisation of men but I'm glad I'm not just sounding crazy about this. I am finding it quite difficult to put it all to words.
I think trans-supremacist would be those of us advocating for forced feminisation of men
i just call that being based
Based. I vote we just call them shitbags, but I am a simple woman
Gender essentialist sounds like a neutral descriptor and reactionary sounds like a vague accusation. We want to terrify libs
I've heard "Feminism-Appropriating Reactionary Transphobe" used, but I've also heard reasons why that term shouldn't be used (which I can't quite remember).
I think this acronym has always been too humourous to be taken seriously, and plays into the "its a slur" thing they once tried to do with varying levels of success.
and plays into the “its a slur” thing
It depends on the audience, but I think sometimes slurs are useful and deserved. This is especially true for people like that who shamelessly co-opt terms like "feminist" in bad faith. Reminds me of that Sartre quote about anti-semites:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I'm not always one of those "bullying works" people, but sometime it does work to forget about being reasonable and just go all out in rightfully demonizing people who deserve it, like fascists, transphobes, etc. I totally agree of course that "TERF" doesn't make sense, but I also don't think we should avoid smearing them for the shitbags they are. I think using those kinds of tactics to isolate them from broader society helps to make people not want to associate with them.
As an example, "chud" is unironically a huge contribution this community has made to online discourse. It's an unpleasant-sounding word that rolls off the tongue, and connotes a high level of derision and disgust towards the right in a way that sticks with people on an emotional level. For these reasons I think, it seems to be spreading and I've already seen it show up in places I wouldn't expect. Cis-supremacists/TERFs/transphobes absolutely deserve similar treatment.
I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but hopefully that makes some kind of sense.
:stfu-terf: made some brits mad enough to whine about twitter memes in parliament
I think it's decently separated from the actual acronym at this point tbh. If you're trying to explain that terfs are fash-adjacent shitbags / fash in feminist-face, then yeah it's not worth risking muddying the waters. But that's just one of many audiences, when your audience is terfs you call em terfs because they're terfs and they hate being called terfs and it gets other people calling em terfs too.
Also they arent marginalized enough for calling them this to be making them look ridiculous, they're actually representing a wave of transphobic reaction so for me it just pisses me off if someone starts going like "oooooh the icky icky poo poos are here", like shut the fuck up dont you know what the fuck they're trying to do right now?
which is funny because i think "TERF" as an acronym actually came from them
The f stands for fascist, farthead, and fishfood :transshork-happy: :blahaj: :hexshork:
but seriously, i simple use terf as a slur now that i do not really treat like an acronym, hence why i'm not using the TERF spelling. I don't believe anybody in that movement still can be called a feminist. A lot of these groups like the LGB Alliance receive funding from queerphobic, anti-abortion groups. Thinking of yourself as somebody who fights for the rights of women while you're on the payroll of evangelicals and tradcaths to incite stochastic terrorism against queer people is ridiculous, and that's all that terfs do nowadays.
Also it's worth keeping in mind that terfs themselves hate being called terfs - which is ironic, given that it started out as a term they used until they realized it's kinda mask-off to tell everybody you're trans exclusionary instead of pretending that you "actually have lots of trans friends" (read: have talked to truscum once at a nazi get-together). If they think it's a slur to call them terfs and insist that they're gEnDeR cRiTiCaL, i will keep calling them terfs until they turn blue in the face.
how about "transphobe"? "moron"? "femcel"? I think the word TERF is perfectly fine, but you have options.
??? this is like saying calling nazis a nazi implies they are a socialist, makes no sense
also terfism is rooted in a generation of 70's radfeminism, why do certain elements keep trying to rewrite this history I wonder?
Those are the theoretical roots of terfism, but the modern movement is middle class cishet women funded by the Christian right. It's a very different demographic than Janice Raymond types.
How about 'transphobic' or 'Matt Walsh allies'? I'm happy giving them the least amount of respect possible.
Idk about the word but you could turn A terf into something useful, compost
Lengthening that to Cisgender Supremacist sounds a lot more ominous.
The Cisgender Supremacist Movement...
Right-wing cisgender supremacists claimed...
Cisgender Supremacist women's groups are currently...
Cisgender Supremacist groups inside and outside of the Republican party protested transgender performers this saturday...
If these shitbags want to behave like Matt Walsh they can be freely associated with him in casual conversation. They shouldnt be able to wear their mask of social liberalism.
When talking really specifically about TERFs, I think "cisgender supremacist women's groups" sort of accurately conjures the image of TERFs while highlighting the fact that they are hateful crackpots. Like you can just imagine them gathering to fucking mald about how disgusted they are by the idea of trans people existing. Makes me think of boomers too. And a lot of them really are "women's groups" - they often seem to arrive at transphobia from a weird unironic bioessentialist angle.
I think this is the best suggestion because it also describes a lot of TERF activism. JKR's whole recent project has been opening women's shelters that exclude trans women. She frames it as being purely about helping cis women, and not transphobic. This is similar to modern white supremacy, where most of them will claim that they're not racist, they just want to help their own people or whatever, like the 14 words slogan. Of course, as soon as either white supremacists or cis supremacists get sufficiently radicalized, the genocidal rhetoric comes out, but the smarter ones keep that in check to try and appeal to moderates.
Turf or sod can be used as a building material:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_turf_house
I see it used in all lowercase enough that it doesn't even register as an initialism to me anymore tbh, it's just a new word for a specific kind of transphobe
