TERF

See also: terf

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɜːf/
• IPA^(key): /tɝf/
• Homophone: turf
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)f

Etymology 1

Acronym of trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The earliest recorded use is from 2008 by cisgender radical feminist Viv Smythe.

Noun

TERF (plural TERFs)

1. (often considered derogatory) A radical feminist who does not consider trans women to be women, and thinks they should not be included in female spaces or organisations.
   • 2013, Toni Browning-Early, letter to the editor, QNotes, Volume 28, Number 6, 19 July - 1 August 2013, page 4:

     Dear "A Lesbian Democrat"

     Your TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) agenda and what it represents is no better than the bigoted regressive agenda of the religious right.

   • 2013, Rachel Eliason, "Wired This Way", ACCESSline, Volume 27, Number 12, December 2013, page 13:

     At the further extreme TERF’s^[sic] actively promote the message that banning trans women from feminist gathering implies—that trans women are not really women at all.

   • 2014, Roz Kaveney, "Woman Enough, The Advocate, 16 July 2014:

     Perhaps the sheer nastiness of TERFs comes from the fact that they don’t just know they’ve lost; they know they were on the wrong side from the beginning.

   • 2018, Keridwen N. Luis, Herlands: Exploring the Women's Land Movement in the United States:

     Although some TERFs attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, none of my interviewees or other land-women have identified as a TERF, nor have any TERFs, to my knowledge, ever lived on women's land.

   • 2019, Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze, page 252:

     The point here isn't that some TERFs aren't XX and some Nazis aren't “purely” white (an imaginary category); it's that their bigotry rests on assumptions about biology and genetics which are scientifically lazy, as if you can "see" race and gender in a meaningful yet simplistic and binary way.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:TERF.

See also

• transfeminist
• radfem
• SWERF
• transphobe

Etymology 2

Abbreviation.

Noun

TERF (plural TERFs)

1. (sciences) Abbreviation of telomeric repeat-binding factor.

   TERF1, TERF2

   • 2004, Biochemistry (Moscow), volume 69, issues 1-4, page 118:

     [...] another protein, TERF2, binds at the 5'-terminus and fixes the telomere end at the tail. [...] The figure schematically shows domain structure of TERF1. [...] Interaction of this protein with nucleic acid requires polypeptide dimerization, which involves the TERF domain [12].

2. (US military) Abbreviation of terrain flight (“flight close to the ground, to avoid enemy detection or fire”).
   • 1980, United States Marine Corps, Aviation training and readiness manual:

     A MAWTS qualified TERF instructor is required for all TERF instructional sorties.

   • 2003 October 12-16, 'The 22nd Digital Avionics Systems Conference : Proceedings : Indianapolis, IN, volume 2:

     […] Typical TERF altitudes for Navy and Marine Corps helicopters include low level (approximately 100 ft AGL), contour (50 ft AGL), and nap of the earth (NOE) (less than 50 ft AGL). A depiction of typical TERF modes in presented in Figure 3.

Anagrams

• FRET, fret, reft, tref