An Ongoing Abuse of Women: “Quit playing dumb, terf” and other stories.

I wanted to create a resource that showed a small portion of the consistent abuse against women who are deemed “terfs”.

Neither the examples of abuse, or the following short list of reasons a woman might be called a “terf” are comprehensive. Once a woman has been called “terf” she is considered fair game for abuse up to, and including, physical violence. She might get called a terf because…

- She is a lesbian. Lesbian women are repeatedly insulted, ostracised from their social groups and called bigots for their same sex attraction.

(The concept of the cotton ceiling, a term coined by a transwoman is one insidious version of the idea that homosexuality is somehow a form of bigotry. In this concept it is the knickers of lesbians that are the cotton being referenced and like the glass ceiling they are considered a barrier. The idea is that systemic transphobia and not the existence of homosexuality is why lesbians will not give Transwomen sex.

Proponents of the term imagine that if this transphobia is dismantled, lesbians will consent. Another version of this is the idea that lesbianism is akin to fetishism if women who are lesbians like vaginas and don’t want to sleep with people who have penises.)

-She is a detransitioner who wishes to talk about her medical experience of transitioning, and the flaws she sees in current medical care.

-she is raising any concerns whatsoever about Self ID, even when showing clear evidence of harm that has occurred to women as a result of such policies, as is the case in prisons.

-She is raising any concerns about the current treatment of children with dysphoria, the ethics of puberty blockers or the lack of evidence to support the current pathways children are being shepherded onto.

-She is a rape victim who wishes to be allowed the chance to heal in a female only shelter.

-She believes that the reality of biological sex is relevant to women’s resources, women’s needs or women’s rights in any way whatsoever.

-She believes in the reality of biological sex, even when respecting a person’s stated gender and pronouns.

-She is refusing to speak about herself using words such as “menstruator”, “uterus haver”, “cervix owner”,“cis” or “bleeder”

-She is an intersex woman who objects to her condition being constantly referenced in debates about gender, or reframed in dissmisive ways.

-She is a woman of faith who cannot share intimate spaces with male human beings and thus cannot participate in public life without some sex segregated places.

-She is objecting, particularly if she is a black woman, to the regular comparisons trans activists make between the separation of people by Sex in order to protect women and girls, and the racist segregation of black and white people in America.

These first two collages of misogyny came from a closed Facebook group which is why it seemed decent to anonymise the commenters who made all of these comments in under twelve hours.

These comments were generated by a post in which a woman asked why so much energy was being put towards hating women like JK Rowling who had been deemed “terfs” and not, say, the men who commit sex crimes.

These kinds of violent and degrading responses to women who don’t toe the line or who ask inconvenient questions have become so normalised in many circles that people don’t even seem to see the inherent danger of dehumanising women like this.

The Jewish woman referenced in two comments was not toeing the line, either, so she was told she wasn’t Jewish anymore.

This may look, on the surface, to be the kind of behaviour that only matters on the internet. Utterly horrible but niche. The reality is that it is not niche at all. More and more women, myself included, are threatened, denigrated and socially shamed for daring to have concerns about Self ID and about this kind of behaviour. It is utterly corrosive in a democracy for “bad” women to be treated like this. Particularly when laws are being proposed or brought in around Self-ID in several countries.

If the position now is that violence and harassment against women is only wrong when it is against women we like and we approve of, then it doesn’t take much imagination to see how quickly all women can be deemed acceptable targets for violence and harassment.

This has also spilled out into the “real world” where masked protestors picket women’s meetings, banging on the windows over and over while women try to speak inside and making them run the gauntlet on their way in or out.

A woman has already been assaulted at speaker’s corner in London and on another occasion a famous feminist woman, Julie Bindel, would have been assaulted if security hadn’t stepped into stop it happening to her, too.

Given the fermenting of rage and malice towards women at this time, these incidents feel like the tip of an approaching iceberg if the progressive left doesn’t start to consistently denounce this behaviour.

All of the following are publically available examples of this kind of abuse.

One consideration to someone new to this situation might be that some of these are anon accounts, and therefore you may wonder if they are perhaps trolling and should be dismissed. If any of them are, the reason they are able to troll in such a way that they blend in as part of the mob against women is precisely because this is recognisable behaviour towards us. You will find very mainstream left accounts being dismissive, degrading and vindictive about “Terfs” too.

Regardless of individual intent this is so much the current landscape of these discussions for the women who are trying to navigate them that the overall effect is overwhelmingly toxic.

This kind of rhetoric is so disturbingly prevalent and familiar to almost every woman who disagrees with or says no to trans activists* in the public sphere. Even when the disagreement is relatively minor.

Women who try to offer any differing opinions on these issues almost always encounter a sustained pattern of abuse and threats. It appears to be a clear effort to exert control over women and convince them to capitulate. If they do not capitulate then they are further made an example of in their community by being subjected to more of this behaviour. This functions as a way of keeping other women in line.

As a result, many who wish to speak out feel utterly unable to speak under their own name. Especially given the threats of doxxing and actual physical harm.

*trans activists is not a term that refers specifically to trans people. Many of the current trans activists are heterosexual men who frequently hurl abuse at women under the guise of “allyship”. Some trans activists are young women who are being radicalised to consider it progressive to speak to and about other women like this. Especially older women.

Many do also identify themselves as trans and are most commonly Transwomen.

It feels imperative to note that there is a vast difference between the kind of person raging at women like this and the transsexuals that have allied with women for years.

Transsexuals are often as despised as women by trans activists. They are called “truscum” and “bootlickers” and many mtf transsexuals are even called terfs themselves.

And more:

And more:

And a few more:

All over the world, women’s right to even discuss matters that affect them is being challenged by the same set of behaviours and by people who are in the service of the same ideas. The central idea being that gender identity must always be prioritised over biological sex, and that this must often be done to the point of denying the very existence of sex. To do otherwise is a heresy.

Whether it is in France where graffiti on public walls talks about such things as burning terfs at the stake or Canada where “kill terfs” was scrawled on the glass front of Vancouver Rape relief centre and a dead rat was nailed to their door because they are a female rape resource, the way of getting women on board is to bully them into it.

These attitudes and utterances against women are considered so righteous that they are done in plain sight. A recent series of posts on twitter “POV you’re a terf in my mentions” demonstrated this when it celebrated the chance to threaten dissenting women. There were multiple posts, many of which were thankfully deleted by twitter, but here is a couple that were representative of the whole.

The common refrain when all of this is pointed out is that “terfs are violent and/or abusive too” but there is no comparable body of threats from any group of women towards trans activists. The overwhelming majority of the women deemed terfs are not abusive, are not violent and are being subjected to this behaviour without any consideration of how painstakingly fairly, or not, they approach these issues.

To be branded as a terf you only need to think different thoughts about these subjects and dare to express them. Women can even be called ‘terf’ just for objecting to the threatening of other women.

Once you are considered a ‘terf, It really doesn’t matter how sincerely you value the humanity of, and wish there to be a safe world for, all trans people. You will still be an acceptable target for abuse.

Another currently unfolding example of a woman being deemed “terf” and then subjected to this kind of behaviour as a result is the demonisation of JK Rowling. The first person to fall off the billionaire list through donations to charity, a beloved author and someone who seems consistently decent in her dealings with others *on* twitter. as well as off it.

It turns out, however, that women can never be so good that they are safe from being verbally attacked or from being considered bad enough to wish harm on.

Here are just some of the things that have been said to her or about her in recent days:

Some even used her new children’s story as the inspiration for their insults, or her older children’s stories as a reminder to dust off the nearest synonym for witch.

These few examples I’ve offered above are so far from the extent of the abuse towards women that this is a drop in the ocean.

The venom to women is amplified, repeated and evidenced every single day. It is excused everyday, as well.

This is a rolling and inescapable tide of misogyny that never tires and never breaks.

The worst part is that I sincerely doubt it will stop until enough good people start saying that treating women this way is wrong.

I hope more and more people do so.

It’s time we were all finally allowed a reasonable conversation about this. When we have stopped women being subjected to this abuse we might actually be able to figure out how to be fair to everybody and how to ensure both trans people and women have the resources and protections that they need.