Talk:TERF

Since when are insults definitions?

We can do better than that. Carolmooredc (talk) 14:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

How is the definition insulting? The word might be insulting, but surely you don't suggest we censor the dictionary of any word used offensively? Equinox ? 14:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I mean that all the sources on the page (except Tessa Stewart) and on the "citations" page only use (and insult) "TERF"s and do not really define the term. Fine for citations but not definitions. Here are some actual, usable definitions:

• Lucy Mangan, If we get bogged down in the Terf war we'll never achieve anything, The Guardian, Friday 8 August 2014

• Terf stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. They have been given this label by the trans community (or maybe just the radical trans community) because these actors in the feminist cause object to transsexual women (ie women who were born male) being either members or beneficiaries of the movement and, more concretely, to supporting the trans women's right to access female-only spaces, from lavatories to refuges to prisons.

• Tina Vasquez, Bitch magazine It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women, Bitch magazine, February 17, 2014

• ...[Cathy] Brennan, fellow attorney Elizabeth Hungerford, and other modern-day feminists continue to actively question the inclusion of trans people in women’s spaces. These feminists refer to themselves as “radical feminists” or “gender critical feminists.” In 2008, trans women and trans advocates started referring to this group as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” or TERFs, a term Brennan considers a slur.

• Michelle Goldberg, What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism, New Yorker Magazine, August 4, 2014

• (TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” ...those at whom it is directed consider it a slur.)

• Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Cathy Brennan Speaks to Bustle About Her Stance on Transgender People, Bustle.com, October 21, 2013

• what’s often called ”trans-critical” or “trans-exclusionary” radical feminism (TERF).

Existing citation, actually a reference:

• 2014, Tessa Stuart, "TERF Battle: A New Book Reignites the War Between Radical Lesbian Feminists and Trans Women", The Village Voice, 24 June 2014:

• The Internet and social media have only relocated this long-running war online, even as mainstream feminists have banished TERFs — "Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists," as trans allies call the opposition, a label the feminists consider a slur — to the outer fringes of the movement.

These quotations from the main page and citations are mentions and uses, not definitions:

• 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, Natacha Kennedy, "Cultural cisgenderism: Consequences of the imperceptible", Psychology of Women Section Review, Volume 15, Number 2, Autumn 2013, page 5:

  By way of example, within some religious groups and Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) transphobic cultures exist which represent internally highly institutionalised transphobic cultures.

• 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, Cristan Williams, quoted in "Furor Erupts Over Cathy Brennan and Gender Identity Watch", South Florida Gay News, Volume 5, Issue 8, 19 February 2014, page 15:

  The historical TERF movement was directly involved in stripping access to psychological and medical care from the trans community in the 1980s.

• 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.

• 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.

I have others I'll add when get a chance. Carolmooredc (talk) 17:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Please see WT:CFI. Citations are intended as attestation. They are there to show that a term or phrase is actually used to mean something specific, and isn't just something someone made up yesterday (such coinages belong on Urban Dictionary). Only uses are acceptable as citations. Mentions cannot attest a term because they don't show it actually being used. Citations do not need to contain an explicit definition of the term they are being used to attest (although it is preferable they be clear and unambiguous enough to allow meaning to be determined from context). Citations of pejorative terms will usually be critical or insulting because that's how pejorative terms are actually used. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 05:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

So citations define the word? Not sources? I assume the new ones I put up there also could be used to show the various ways used. Of course, the fact that several citations call it a slur, and it obviously is used as a pejorative, should mean that there is both the acronymn definition and the pejorative one. Carolmooredc (talk) 03:44, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ A whole lotta POVvin' goin' on, in the comments or quotes above. The term "trans exclusionary radical feminist" (and its abbreviation, TERF) were not created by trans women, but by radical feminists who are not exclusionary. "Feminists" in general don't view it as a slur, neither even do most radical feminists, by and large, although a subset of radical feminists do view it that way, no matter in what way it is used. The acronym, when used confrontationally, can certainly be provocative, but that comes from the emotion and intent, as in many such words which do double-duty that way; however both the term and the abbreviation were created by radical feminists as a purely descriptive term. 73.92.168.113 11:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Derogatory?

Why is this definition labelled as derogatory? My understanding is that some identify as TERF just as others TIRF. (Note: this has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with TERF, just merely recognition that it can be a neutral or positive self-identification.)

I agree that there is nothing inherently derogatory about the phrase "trans-exclusionary radical feminist"; it's a perfectly objective and neutral description of what TERFs are. They identify as radical feminists, and they exclude trans women from their definition of "woman" and their feminism, on the grounds of trans women being assigned male at birth. However, TERF is (to my knowledge) only ever used by critics, never as a self-identification; "gender-critical" is the usual self-identification.

Why "gender-critical"? TERFs believe only in "biological sex" as being relevant, though how they define it (whether they tie it to chromosomes or anatomy, since in intersex people these can diverge from the usual correlation) remains unclear to me. I've only found hand-waving on that point, that trans women supposedly exploit intersex people for their political agenda. Presumably it's about assigned gender and socialisation, but what about (for example) trans girls like Jazz Jennings who reject male gender early and never really experience male privilege because they are pretty much socialised as a girl? Also, gender-nonconforming or gender variant and especially (trans-)feminine male-assigned kids in general experience disadvantages, exclusion and oppression different but equally harsh or worse than cis girls, while (trans-)masculinity can mitigate the effects of anti-female oppression and work to the advantage of the female-assigned kid, so for those trans or gender-nonconforming people who don't live completely stealth or even overperform (trans women living as hypermasculine men or vice versa, although they also bear a heavy burden for having to twist themselves), it is simply not correct that they are socialised in the same way as cis people of their assigned gender and thus cannot relate to the experiences of cis people of their identity gender. Intersectionality just makes things considerably more complicated. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:05, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I totally oppose removing the label "chiefly pejorative" from this word. It is clearly not used as a self-designation, but only by opponents wishing to discredit people so labelled. Its function as a slur has been endlessly discussed in feminist circles (read for instance 1 or 2). I don't think it is at all accurate to call it (as @-sche does in a recent edit summary) "a plain description of people who identify themselves as trans-exclusionary" – this is disingenuous. The comment that "their POV that it's pejorative is exactly just -a- POV" also seems dangerous to me, since the same argument could be made about any number of offensive slurs. Ƿidsiþ 15:00, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

There's an effort by some trans-exclusionary feminists to argue that describing their position is hate speech, that descriptors of their position like this one are slurs, in order to shut down criticism of their position (get trans-inclusive feminists banned from speaking in various places—which they've had some success at—etc), yes... and you can get a sense of the kind of people behind that effort, and the sincerity/plausibility of it, if you realize your first link is to a site of well-known prejudice run by a person who was recently banned from Twitter (the site that notoriously often tolerates even outright Nazis, outside Germany) for hateful conduct, and the second link is to an editorial in a paper whose editorial promotion of transphobia has grown so severe that their own US branch wrote them an op-ed criticizing them.
TERFs are like many of the people referred to by other terms indicating prejudices — "white supremacist", "racist", "misogynist", etc — who object to those descriptions, even while being open that they hold the views those terms describe, which they too would simply prefer to describe more euphemistically (e.g. people who are open about disliking people of color and/or women but insist they're "alt-right" or "defenders of the white race" and not racist or sexist, or Chick-Fil-A which made headlines recently for objecting to being described as anti-gay, though they make/take anti-gay statements/actions). (One can easily find citations like the ones in the entry where the word is "white supremacist", "racist", "misogynist", "patriarchal" or other words indicating prejudices, and taking a similarly negative/oppositional view of those prejudices, and speaking of a "racist agenda", "nasty misgynists", etc.) Their aversion to their prejudice being described emphatically does not make descriptions derogatory. - -sche (discuss) 16:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are yourself making a value judgement and calling it neutrality. In fact I don't think the conflation of "trans exclusion" with sexism or racism to be a very satisfactory one, but in any case I have no interest in debating the validity or otherwise of the so-called TERF position (as a matter of fact I broadly agree with you); I do however take an interest in how the word is used, and I do not agree that it is used at all neutrally. I read a good deal of feminist literature and to me it seems patently obvious that it's a pejorative term. We need to make sure we are being sufficiently disinterested. What if we change "sometimes considered" to "often considered" in the label, that would seem already closer to reality to me. Ƿidsiþ 18:29, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps a more direct comparison, rather than to general sexism/racism, would be to e.g. men-only / women-exclusive or whites-only / POC-exclusive spaces; inclusion-minded people would often describe such exclusion as "sexist"/"racist" while opposing it; defenders of such spaces and other similar things have objected angrily that that's an 'incivil', derogatory value judgement they disagree with; is it neutral or even reasonable to take their side? I don't think so, though one can find media figures who do and use their preferred euphemisms like "racially-tinged" [policies] instead.
What about going back to what the label had been, "sometimes offensive"? That covers referents taking offense at it, without taking a (their) side on whether it's derogatory.
Otherwise, "often considered derogatory" is an OK compromise.
- -sche (discuss) 17:42, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

That works for me. Ƿidsiþ 18:15, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August–October 2019

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TERF

This may be an RFD thing, but I figured I'd try RFV first. My question is about definition 2. I'm aware not everyone who gets called a "TERF" self-identifies with the specific philosophy called radical feminism, but may e.g. consider themselves just a feminist. However, (a) I'm not sure how we'd manage to find "durable" citations, unless we find citations where it refers to specific people whose ideology we can ["original"] research and somehow determine to be "non-radical-feminist", and (b) why should we conclude that such citations support a second definition "a person with views like a trans-exclusionary radical feminist" as opposed to that the users of the word are just calling those people trans-exclusionary radical feminists, saying that, self-id aside, they are trans-exclusionary radical feminists by virtue of having, as the definition admits, the views that trans-exclusionary radical feminists have?
For comparison: if I call someone (for example, a TERF! or a libertarian, or what have you) a "right-winger", does that mean "right-winger" has a second definition "a person whose views are similar to those of a right-wing person", or am I just [rightly or wrongly] calling the person and their views right-wing? - -sche (discuss) 23:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Why are objective and verifiable characteristics an issue? We define prick, sense 9, as “someone (especially a man or boy) who is unpleasant, rude or annoying”. Should we do research to determine that specific people thusly labelled were indeed actually unpleasant, rude or annoying? I think the only thing that is important here is what the utterer of the label wishes to confer, not whether it is justified.  --Lambiam 09:10, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I would consider it a (very common) misapplication or overgeneralisation, so IMO there's only really one sense. It's also too much of a neologism to have done much forking of meaning yet (like e.g. Nazi has). Equinox ◑ 14:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I've seen a version of the "Patrick Star's wallet" meme in discussions about this, which goes like
1: so you're a radical feminist?
2: yes
1: and you're trans-exclusionary?
2: yes
1: so you're a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist? (a TERF?)
2: what?! no, that's hate speech!!
...which, without even looking at whether 2's position is either accurate or accurately represented, helps establish that people who use the word are using it to say that TERFs are trans-exclusionary radfems.
In general, a lot of politics-related words end up being used more broadly than is accurate or sensible... compare "neoliberal". - -sche (discuss) 05:29, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 21:57, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Broadening

I'm not going to edit this one as it's too contentious at this point, but I think the def should include at the end something like "; (loosely), a transphobic person", to cover the much broader usage this word has now, especially in online discussions. JK Rowling is regularly described as a TERF now, but no one actually thinks she is a radical feminist. They just mean that she holds views which are thought to denigrate trans folks. Ƿidsiþ 17:36, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd consider that a distinct sense. It just seems like the word TERF gets misused a lot, much like communist, fascist, liberal, Nazi, and countless other terms for specific ideologies. Binarystep (talk) 08:26, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@Binarystep: @Widsith: Google "terfs aren't feminists" and see how many hundreds of pages you get. It has definitely become a generic slur for "anti-trans person", without any idea of "radical feminism" involved. One-syllable slurs are addictive. Equinox ◑ 12:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

OED

The OED has just (as of June 2022) added the word. Their definition ("A feminist whose advocacy of women’s rights excludes (or is thought to exclude) the rights of transgender women. Also more generally: a person whose views on gender identity are (or are considered) hostile to transgender people, or who opposes social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people") is good, and includes the wider sense I pointed out above under "Broadening". Given our discussions here over whether or not it's pejorative, it's interesting to see that they don't add a context label as such, but they include the following note: "Originally used within the radical feminist movement. Although the author of quot. 2008 (a trans-inclusive feminist) has stated that the term was intended as a neutral description, TERF is now typically regarded as derogatory." Ƿidsiþ 12:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)