Breaking Down TERF Ideology: Why Trans Rights Are Women’s Rights

By Elle Ryan

The Oxford English Dictionary defines feminism as “the advocacy of women's rights on

the basis of the equality of the sexes, and the movement associated with it.” Since the first formal

Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, women have tirelessly fought and advocated for the equal

treatment of sex and gender in the United States under the title of Feminism (National Women’s

History Museum, 2021).

Today, anti-trans rhetoric continues to take center stage in the media using transphobic

talking points to enforce bans on medical care for transfolk or legislation making drag shows

illegal (National Women’s Law Center, 2023). Under the guise of Feminism, many well-

meaning and misinformed people become radicalized into the lie that transfolk are a threat to

women. This ideology comes from the technical definition of a TERF as trans-exclusionary

radical feminist, but often self-identify as “gender critical” or “adult human female.”

Barnard College (2024) identifies TERF arguments as falling under three main

categories: (1) believing that trans femininity is an invasion of women’s spaces, including access

to changing rooms, bathrooms, domestic violence and abuse shelters, prisons, and sports as a

threat to cis women’s safety and wellbeing, (2) belief that trans femininity is an appropriation of

cis womanhood by use of makeup, clothes and gender-affirming surgery, (3) belief that trans

masculinity is self-hatred, viewing trans men as lesbians by way of internalized misogyny

causing them to reject womanhood.

TERF ideology impacts the real-world in a variety of ways demonstrated by cis women

being harassed in bathrooms due to a perception of trans identity or cis Black women being

banned from the Olympics for their natural testosterone levels (National Women’s Law Center,

2023). With laws targeting transfolk through bathroom bans, athlete bans, gender-affirming care

bans and rhetoric such as “there are only two genders,” TERF mentality continues to persist.

TERF ideology contributes to real, tangible harm towards transfolk, having over four times the

likelihood of suffering to experience violent victimization and murders than their cis peers. This

number has doubled between 2017 and 2021 marking an increasingly dangerous time to be trans

in America with TERFs.

History continues to remind us that an attack on one of us is an attack on us all. You

cannot support women and be a TERF at the same time.

Source: How to spot TERF ideology, Milo Eyre-Morgan, 2022, Cambridge SU, pg 3,

Resources:

https://nwlc.org/happy-pride-dont-be-a-terf/