TERF
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /tɜːf/
ipa: /tɚf/
homophone: turf
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)f
Forms: form: TERFs
form: terf
Etymology: Acronym of trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The earliest recorded use is from 2008 by trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist Viv Smythe.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 2013, Toni Browning-Early, letter to the editor, QNotes, Volume 28, Number 6, 19 July - 1 August 2013, page 4
text: 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.
ref: 2013 December, Rachel Eliason, “Wired This Way”, in ACCESSline, volume 27, number 12, page 13:
text: 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.
ref: 2014, Roz Kaveney, "Woman Enough, The Advocate, 16 July 2014
text: 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.
ref: 2018, Keridwen N. Luis, Herlands: Exploring the Women's Land Movement in the United States:
text: 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.
ref: 2019, Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A–Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, →ISBN, page 252:
text: That Rowling used terms like “gender critical” (the preferred descriptor of TERFs rather than, well, TERF); that she believes laws that enable trans people to use the bathrooms and changing rooms that match their gender identity will “open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside,” which she says is the “simple truth” but is not backed up by any evidence whatsoever; and that she paints the movement for trans rights as one that is “doing demonstrable harm” to women and girls and is “offering cover to predators like few before it” is proof enough of what her views are and who she aligns herself with, for all of her protestations that she has trans friends and cares about the safety of trans women.
ref: 2020 June 10, Esther Wang, “For the Love of God, Please Make J.K. Rowling Stop”, in Jezebel, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022:
synonyms: FART
GC
GCF
gendercrit
gendercritter
terven
antonyms: TIRF
transfeminist
glosses: A trans-exclusionary radical feminist; a radical feminist who does not consider trans women to be women, or thinks they should not be included in female spaces or organisations, and who considers trans men to be women; a person whose transphobia is expressed in feminist terms.
Derived terms: cryptoTERF
TERF bangs
TERFdom
TERFery
TERF Island
TERFism
TERFspeak
TERFy
terven
tervert
Related terms: SWERF
TEHM