TERFs are Working With The Right to Influence the United Nations

For a small while, transphobes have been peddling a submission to the United Nations by the ‘Woman’s Liberation Front,’ a well known TERF group, that claims to have over 40 organizations from across the world on it to boast its credibility. However, upon closer scrutiny, there’s much that is incredibly misleading about it; namely, many of the organizations are far-right conservative activist groups, are redundant, or aren’t even organizations at all. As such, I’ll be detailing each organization’s signature and providing an overview on who they are, as well as analyzing trends at the end of the article.

For a disclaimer, I won’t be covering the claims made in this submission, as they’re not original to this piece, are well debunked, and are mostly without citation, save for specific laws or to random news articles which frequently contradict the claims made. If interested, these two articles provide a good overview of the subject matter that address most of these claims

Women’s Liberation Front — This organization is of course already detailed as a well-known TERF organization; as such, there is not much more to be discussed, beyond the fact that they have long been well-known to collaborate with the far right.

American College of Pediatricians — This is a well-known conservative organization that masquerades as a legitimate academic body, that however instead seeks to promote conversion therapy, anti-abortion legislature, and pseudoscience. More information on them can be found here.

Canadian Gender Report — This is a Canadian anti-trans group that propagates the usual rhetoric by this crowd. However, what’s notable is the fact that they appear to be conservative in leaning — they have published articles that decry ‘Critical Race Theory.’

Center for Bioethics and Culture — Before I discuss this organization, it is in fact actually included twice — the Europe chapter of this organization is included as if it is a separate body and not part of the same overarching one, which is heavily misleading.

Beyond that, this organization vaguely discusses handling ethical issues in biology. According to SourceWatch, it’s Christian in nature as it works with churches on its issues, and its published anti-abortion and anti-surrogacy articles, clearly placing it towards conservatism.

Coalition for Biological Reality — This appears to be yet another anti-trans org, however its history is interesting and quite funny. It doesn’t exist from reputable origins; rather, it claims to be a Facebook group in 2020 that had various members start a nonprofit. The interesting thing is, while this is an Australian based organization, it doesn’t appeared to be registered in Australia’s nor is it in either of New Zealand’s nonprofit databases (here and here). Unless I’m missing something, this doesn’t strike me as a particularly reputable organization.

Concerned Women for America — This is a prominent conservative, evangelical Christian organization in the USA. They are known to be extremely homophobic and anti-abortion.

Deep Green Resistance — This is a militant environmentalist group that focuses on opposing industrial civilization. It’s known for supporting TERFs, and has been criticized for racist statements and essentialist misogyny as well.

Foundation Voorzij — This is a Dutch TERF organization. Interestingly, it’s extremely obscure; it’s Facebook has less than 100 likes, with a Twitter under 1K. On Twitter, it advertises itself as the only Dutch ‘gender critical’ organization.

Gender Dysphoria Alliance Canada — This is a new transphobic group , this time spearheaded by transmedicalists. It of course supports conversion therapists like Zucker, but also appears to have the support of people like Buck Angel in regards to the harmful idea of ‘autogynephilia.’

Giggle for Girls Ltd Party — This is not an organization, but rather a company that owns an app which advertises itself as just for women. Interestingly, this app has had a history of intrusive surveillance and transphobia.

Hands Across The Aisle — Is an interesting case of transparency in this manner. It advertises itself as being a unity group of “radical feminists, lesbians, Christians, and conservatives” against trans people. This is a rare example of an organization that is both conservative and TERF.

Independent Women’s Voice — This organization claims to be an advocacy group for women who are registered Independents, however in practice, according to SourceWatch, it is heavily conservative and even has ties to the Koch brothers.

LGB Fight Back — This is an anti-trans group by lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals that has been prominent for a while now. I’d link to their website to showcase their beliefs, however as of the time I’m writing this, it isn’t loading whatsoever.

United Families International — This is a prominent American far-right, homophobic Christian organization. They are also well tied to American right-wing politics. They’re also credited ‘with advice’ in the authors section.

Big Ocean Women — This organization promotes themselves as a feminist group. However, further research puts them as against ‘non-traditional’ families and promotes the idea that women are ‘natural’ caregivers. They are also anti-abortion and anti-LGBT. They’re known for being a prominent conservative group that tries to influence the UN repeatedly.

Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights — This is yet another TERF organization spouting the same rhetoric as others. Nothing too notable, however they don’t appear to be particularly active, save for social media.

Compassion Coalition — This is a Knoxville based nonprofit that is explicitly Christian in its nature. Its work primarily centers around using church programs to help people out of poverty. However, it's unclear if this is the group being discussed, or a Facebook group of the same name. Said Facebook group does not appear to be an "organization" in any meaningful way.

The Countess Didn’t Fight For This — Irish TERF organization. Nothing too prominent or notable about them as far as I can tell.

Feminist Current — This is not an organization, but rather a TERF news site ran by one individual that on occasion features content from other people beyond her.

Gender Critical Iowa — I can’t find much information on this, but it appears to be a defunct Facebook group that posited itself as a non-profit. The individual signature representing it, Jeanne Smith, doesn’t appear to have a notable online presence either.

Gender Heretics — This is not an organization, but a newsletter and forum ran by one person.

Global Women’s Party — This is not a political party, but rather a Facebook page with 70 likes that has no other information. The website linked within it is defunct and is not available on the Web Archive. No other information exists.

Heritage Foundation — You likely already know of the Heritage Foundation, so I’ll spare the details beyond that it’s an extremely prominent right-wing advocacy organization. Check out the Wiki page for a ton of more info if you don’t already know about them.

Keep Prisons Single Sex — This is an international organization of TERFs advocating for ‘sex-segregated prisons.’ Not much more notable about them.

Madison Liberty Institute — This is an explicitly conservative organization based in Idaho that focuses on conservative advocacy. It’s all the usual right-wing stuff from them. Notable for this signature list, however, is that it’s discretely listed twice; the second time is as ‘Spark Freedom Idaho.’ This is a project that is ran by the Madison Liberty Institute intending to promote typical conservative causes.

N.B. vs Ottawa Carleton Dist. School Bd. — This is not an organization, but rather explicitly stated as “NB as represented by her litigation guardian PB, Canada.” In other words, its the guardian of a child in a prominent transphobic Canadian court case.

OBJECT — Also known as OBJECT NOW, this is a large UK-based TERF and SWERF organization. They’re known for defacing a public state of noted early feminist figure Mary Wollstonecraft.

Principled Liberty Foundation — Another organization with minimal information on it. In fact, no organization by this name appears to exist — I was able to find a defunct Facebook group named ‘Principles of Liberty Foundation,’ linking to a website that hasn’t been updated since 2010. Not much else is apparent on this.

The signature of this, Dalane England, based on other adventures appears to be a noted Christian, and participates in a Republican PAC. Her bios on these websites list her as founding a ‘Freedom’s Light Foundation,’ which is a separate group that creates festivals in Utah intended to teach children about the constitution. I was not able to find any links between these two groups.

Spinifex Press — This is not an organization, but rather an Australian-based feminist book publisher. It’s ran by two individuals.

Strengthen Utah Families — No organization exists under this name, however the signature of it, Merilee Boyack, runs a similarly named group entitled Empowered Families Coalition, so presumably there was a mixup. Boyack is, in Utah, a prominent conservative activist who is currently running for the state House. Her groups reflect her advocacy.

United Women’s Forum — This appears to be a defunct (they haven’t had online activity in two years) organization that promotes ‘families, faith, and freedoms’ in two Utah cities. They list this organization twice — the second time is as ‘United Women’s Forum — Utah.’

We Are Fair Cop — This appears to be a UK based law-enforcement centered around protecting TERFs from consequences to their actions. They’re not too notable beyond that either — another run of the mill TERF group.

Yad B’Yad (Women Hand in Hand) — I was unable to find any information on a women’s chapter of this organization, however the non-women’s chapter appears to be dedicated to finding Jewish youth in Israel (aka Occupied Palestine) some Jewish adult mentors.

No Corpo Certo — This appears to be a Brazilian TERF organization. I was not able to find much information on them beyond this.

Partners for Ethical Care — This organization claims itself as a nonpartisan anti-trans foundation, specifically oriented towards trans youth. While they claim to be non-partisan, their content appears to be oriented towards TERFs more specifically.

Principles of Freedom Forum — This is also not an organization, but rather a defunct blog from 2014 that was ran by Jennifer Earl, the signature, and another anonymous individual. It doesn’t have much information on it, but it appears to be conservative leaning and anti-Common Core.

Speak Up For Women — This is a New Zealand based TERF organization. They’ve made the national news several times over their transphobic views, and are relatively prominent in New Zealand.

Standing for Women — Beyond the humor that a TERF document sent to the United Nations has a typo (they list it as “Stranding for Women”), and the information on this is interesting to say the least. The signature, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull lists it on her LinkedIn, a Medium article (the person behind it almost exclusively posts about Keen-Minshull, and has no information online, making it a likely sock account) that provides a brief synopsis of it as a generic TERF organization, and a website. This website has minimal information on it, and its only membership appears to be access to a forum. According to a TERF news site, police do not consider it to meet the criteria of a political organization.

It was listed as an organization by news sites before, however its presence was largely limited to publicity stunts and social media, making it unclear if this is just a website and forum owned by Keen-Minshull or a unique organization.

Trans Rational Educational Voices — This is an obscure anti-childhood transitioning organization by a transmedicalist. It doesn’t appear to be an organization, but rather an advocacy website by a handful of people. It contains many dead links, and most of the social media seems to be by the founder.

Women’s Human Rights Campaign — This is a prominent international TERF organization. It’s work and style is of course the same as most other TERF organizations, nothing too notable.

Worldwide Organization for Women — The last signature, this organization is a United Nations consult that’s explicitly conservative and Christian in nature, right on its website.

With all this said, it’s now fair to go over the count of how many of these organizations are conservative, how many are just TERFs, and how many don’t fit either bill.

Before this analysis, however, we’ll have to filter out the redundancies and non-organizations. Before filtering them out, they claim that there are 44 organizational signatures. However, removing 3 redundancies, and removing 11 blogs, defunct organizations, forums, or individuals, will put us down to 30 organizations.¹

Among these 30 organizations, 11 of them are conservative and/or Christian in nature, 1 is both conservative and TERF, 1 is radical environmentalist, 1 is politically unaffiliated, and 15 are TERF or general anti-trans. Let this sink in — of the legitimate signatures, nearly half represent conservative Christian groups! When you additionally consider that many of the TERF groups listed are incredibly small, somewhat inactive, or of a dubious nature, it puts further doubt in the amount of TERF groups.

If we go just by raw signatures as well, less than half of them represent genuine TERF groups! The rest are either conservatives or nonexistent organizations that are presented as if they are legitimate in nature.

Whether these organizations are listed intentionally to mislead people is of course unknown — it may just be that they didn’t vet signatures whatsoever, but considering that there’s multiple repeats this seems unlikely. In addition, it’s unlikely for another reason I’ve yet to mention.

Compassion Coalition, Hands Across the Aisle, Partners for Ethical Care, Nashim Yad B’yad, Deep Green Resistance, and the Women’s Liberation Front all share founders to varying degrees. This is what’s known as astroturfing — essentially they’re trying to appear as if they have a wide variety of international support, when in actuality many of the organizations represent much of the same people.

Let this be known, then, that this submission is extremely fraudulent in nature. They readily featured and promoted nonexistent organizations as if they were real, repeated organizations several times, engaged in astroturfing, and neglected to showcase what each organization was about.

This showcases how these TERF organizations are ready to and more than willing to collaborate with conservative activists, the majority of which are explicitly homophobic, in order to falsely present a degree of authority in an attempt to sway the United Nations towards transphobic policy measures. This is, of course, just another example of how TERFs are reactionaries in disguise.

1. I decided to be somewhat charitable and include “Standing for Women” and “Trans Rational Educational Voices,” “Compassion Coalition,” and “Coalition for Biological Reality,” as organizations, since they’re slightly less clear-cut and could be argued to be somewhat of an organization based on history or membership numbers. All other removals can be found cited in the list above.