TERF

This is an acronym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, that is, a feminist who opposes the inclusion of transgender women in the ranks of the feminist movement.  In effect they do not accept transgender women as women at all.  They therefore wish to exclude transgender women from women’s spaces and they are opposed to legislation giving transgender rights.  The term TERF has been generalised to cover any woman, feminist or not, who is hostile to transgender women and who expresses views that are considered transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender women.

The term TERF was coined by a trans-inclusive radical feminist blogger, Viv Smythe, in 2008 as a shorthand for the longer version.  I can understand that.  She meant it to be simply descriptive but it has acquired rather more intense derogatory connotations since then.

Feminists who maintain that biological sex is a significant factor prefer to call themselves gender critical feminists. Both terms could have remained relatively unknown items of feminist jargon if it had not been for the ‘Let Women Speak’ rally in Melbourne, the rally that was organised by the British TERF Kellie Jay Keen-Minshull which Victorian MP Moira Deeming attended along with some Nazi activists, thus causing major divisions in the Victorian Liberal Party.