So, it’s ok to punch women who have opinions?

A closer look at a ‘TERF’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)…

The naming of TERFs is a tactical matter, as TS Eliot didn’t say. Given his name is an anagram of toilets, it seems appropriate to invoke him in a discussion of trans ideology – the claim that a man who feels like a woman (whatever that means) is magically transformed into a female and should be able to stroll into the women’s loos unchallenged. Trans extremists claim historical figures all the time: every woman who had to wear men’s clothes or use a man’s name to be able to join the army or publish a book was trans apparently. Which might come as news to George Eliot.

‘TERF’ is the slur aimed at JK Rowling (who had to use her initials because publishers feared boys wouldn’t read books written by a woman). She’s a ‘well- known transphobe’ because she says biology is real. It’s easy to qualify as a TERF – derived from ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist’, a term much harder to spit in anger. All you have to do is say that it’s OK for sportswomen to want to compete against other women, not the greater strength, bigger hearts and denser bones of male bodies.

We are often told to ‘shut up TERF’ or that we deserve to be raped or beaten for thinking that the authorities should perhaps pause before moving rapists into women’s prisons. After all, who could have predicted a sex offender, who now calls himself Karen White, would go on to assault women who were literally locked up with him?

Search Twitter for ‘punch a TERF’ and you can scroll for days. The pictures of machine guns and baseball bats in pink and blue – the trans colours, ironically – are particularly heart-warming.

Disobedient women used to be called witch, bitch, whore, c*nt (a word considered so offensive I’m not allowed to write it in full). TERF is just the 21^st century version. It allows left wingers to abuse women – it’s even progressive, because we are the wrong women. We don’t have dicks. And we aren’t bowing down to the chaps who tell us we are doing feminism all wrong by failing to pander to trans extremists. It takes a special kind of arrogance to mansplain feminism.

You may be thinking I’m terribly unkind to men who suffer from a condition called gender dysphoria. You might be imagining a transwoman has gone to the trouble of taking female hormones or undergoing surgery. You’d be wrong. ‘The trans umbrella’ includes men who do no more than wear a dress occasionally. Putting on a frock, even if you ‘present as a man’ most of the time, entitles you to a place on the list of Top 100 Women in Business.  

The trans rights brigade claim hurt feelings over, say, being addressed as ‘sir’ outweigh sex discrimination. I used to think I was left wing. I never thought that would mean calling for a black lesbian to be sacked.

Photo credit: Black Eye Campaign