Meghan Murphy

Meghan Emily Murphy is a Canadian trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) who founded and operates the TERF webshite Feminist Current. Among other things, she is notorious for her opposition to third-wave feminism. She was permanently banned from Twitter for hate speech in 2018 and lost a lawsuit over her ban.TERFs Don’t Have a Right to Be Transphobic on Twitter, Court Rules
==Background==
She graduated from Simon Fraser University with a master's degree in Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies in 2012.Graduate Alumni. MA – Course Based. Simon Fraser University. She was a writer for the online magazine rabble.ca until 2016.
==Career==
===Misgendering of trans women=== 
Murphy groups trans women together with cis men by analysing sex instead of gender as a class,Burns, Katelyn. The Issue with Meghan Murphy’s Gender Class Analysis. Medium. arguing that trans women were socialized as male,Murphy, Meghan. If trans activists truly cared about feminism, they would respect women’s spaces. Feminist Current. while apparently ignoring the fact that many transgender women have spent a good part (perhaps even most) of their lives living as women and thus being perceived and "socialized" as female. She regards trans women merely as "gender non-conforming male(s)" and denies that they are treated in any manner comparable to (or in some cases, worse than) cisgender women, despite evidence that trans women do indeed suffer from such phenomena as the wage gap,Rampell, Catherine. Before That Sex Change, Think About Your Next Paycheck high levels of sexual violence,Stotzer, Rebecca L. (2009). Violence against transgender people: A review of United States data. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14, pp. 170-179.Cursed E. A response to Feminist Current. Medium. and the trans panic "defense".Foresta, Matthew. Being Freaked Out by Gay and Trans People Is Still a Legal Murder Defense in 48 States. Vice.com. 
Worse still, Murphy repeatedly and quite deliberately misgenders trans women by referring to them as "he" and "him" and has characterized the use of the pronoun "she" to refer to trans women as "gaslighting of women".Gallagher, Annie. Response to Meghan Murphy: If Gender Critical Feminists Truly Cared About Empathy, They’d Show the Same to Trans People. guardianacorn.com. In 2018, this continued behaviour resulted in the permanent suspension of her Twitter account;Twitter-ban feminist defends transgender views ahead of Holyrood meeting. BBC News. she contested this with a lawsuit which was dismissed in June 2019.Fry, Madeline. This journalist lost her lawsuit against Twitter for banning her account, but she's not giving up. Washington Examiner, July 10, 2019.
===Persecution complex===
Murphy maintains a persecution complex by conflating her trans-exclusionary strain of "feminism" with feminism in general, thus claiming that those who oppose the former are opposing feminism itself,Murphy, Meghan. GLAMOUR columnist Juno Dawson attacks feminists under the guise of ‘feminism’. Feminist Current. and similarly, framing cherry-picked instances of backlash against certain women who express transphobic talking points as an attack on women in general. Accordingly, she maintains that the term "TERF" is not merely a slur, but actual hate speech, citing an example of violence and instances of people calling for violence against TERFs.Murphy, Meghan. ‘TERF’ isn’t just a slur, it’s hate speech. Feminist Current. These claims are comparable to those from the far-right declaring "homophobe" or "misogynist" to be slurs or hate speech, which are similarly accompanied by anecdotal evidence.Williams, Cristan. Into the nexus of the ‘gay alt-right feminist’ movement. TransAdvocate. In addition, Murphy skips over examples of violence threatened, abetted, or committed by TERFs against transgender people.Williams, Cristan. TERF hate and Sandy Stone. TransAdvocate.Williams, Cristan. That time TERFs beat RadFems for protecting a trans woman from their assault. TransAdvocate.Williams, Cristan. Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival: The historic RadFem vs TERF vs Trans fight. The TERFs.Williams, Cristan. How TERF violence inspired Camp Trans. TransAdvocate.Natacha. http://uncommon-scents.blogspot.com/2017/10/reports-of-rad-fem-violently-attacking.html Reports of a rad fem violently attacking non-trans woman in vendetta against trans people. UnCommon Sense.
To be clear, we at RationalWiki do not condone violence (or calls to violence) against anyone, whether TERF, homophobe, or misogynist.
===Other positions===
Murphy also holds sex-worker-exclusionary (SWERF) positions,Murphy, Meghan. ‘Everybody’s doing it!’ and other bad arguments in defense of prostitution. Feminist Current, December 9, 2016.Murphy, Meghan. Why does the left want prostitution to be 'a job like any other'? Feminist Current, November 7, 2011. as do several of her fellow Feminist Current writers,Ditum, Sarah. Who do you listen to? On 'listening to sex workers'. Feminist Current, February 25, 2014.Berg, Samantha. Prostitution is not work: The crib sheet. Feminist Current, December 17, 2018. seeing prostitutes and other sex workers invariably as both exploited victims and enablers of the patriarchy. 
On a related note, in 2015, Murphy described transgender actress Laverne Cox's nude photo shot for the magazine Allure as a "sexualized object" and "defined by patriarchal/porn culture",Murphy, Meghan. Laverne Cox’s objectified body ’empowers’ no one. Feminist Current. prompting a Change.org petition by a sex workers' lobby group which accused her of both transphobia and racism and called for rabble.ca to cut ties with her, although the petition was ultimately rejected.Statement on review of Meghan Murphy petitions. rabble.ca. 
She's also engaged in apologia for the mass graves at Canadian residential schools.Why the Canadian Left is burning down churches, Meghan Murphy, UnHerd 21 July 2021 She has also denied the existence of mass graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, whining that "the world is beginning to see Canada as an example of 'woke' gone wild" for addressing the allegations of genocide and mass murder.The lack of Indigenous mass graves in Canada, Meghan Murphy, The Spectator 5 September 2023
===Public libraries===
Vancouver Public Library held a talk by Murphy, which led to them being banned from Vancouver Pride,Vancouver Public Library banned from Pride Parade. Vancouver Courier, July 23, 2019. with the Vancouver Pride Society's statement explaining that "...this is due to their decision to provide a platform for discriminatory, transphobic speech."VPS Statement On VPLs Entry In The 2019 Pride Parade. Vancouver Pride Society, July 23, 2019.
Toronto Public Library also garnered huge controversy for allowing Murphy to rent space from them, in view of the following excerpt from their rental policy: 
 
The librarian defended the decision to support Murphy under the justifications of free speech and Murphy's never having been convicted of hate speech in a court of law.City Librarian Statement on Upcoming Third-Party Room Rental Event. Toronto Public Library, October 15, 2019. The decision drew widespread condemnation from Canada's LGBT community. The talk was widely protested and Toronto Pride said that they may ban the library from future Pride events.Toronto Public Library facing Pride ban over Meghan Murphy event. Now Toronto, October 18, 2019.
==See also==
*Cathy Brennan
*Sheila Jeffreys
*Trans-exclusionary radical feminism
==External links==
*Feminist Current
*Meghan Murphy on YouTube
==References==
Category:Canadians
Category:Denialists
Category:Gender
Category:Internet hate sites
Category:Journalists
Category:Leftists who turned right with age
Category:Living people
Category:Racists
Category:TERFs
Category:Transphobes