Are The TERFs Waking Up?

On 11/15/2021, a woman named Katherine M Acosta published an article to Substack titled “Blinded by the Right: Feminist Advocacy & Working with the Pluto-Theocracy.’” Acosta’s Substack bio says the following:

Sociologist, filmmaker, and writer. Co-chair of the WHRC USA during its early formation; currently assisting with a joint WHRC USA & KPSS project.

WHRC stands for Women’s Human Rights Council, an organization which declares itself “a group of volunteer women from across the globe dedicated to protecting women’s sex-based rights.” One of their members is a woman named Kara Dansky, who recently published the book The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls. (In case you still aren’t sure where she stands, the introduction is titled “The ‘Transgender’ Delusion (Observations of a TERF)”)

In Acosta’s article, she criticizes a number of things ranging from the Biden Administration to the Equality Act. However, after criticizing “trans activists,” she starts criticizing her own team, specifically making note of various TERF organizations and the connections they have to right-wing political organizations. The article ends with Acosta announcing her resignation from the WHRC, primarily due to fear mongering over Biden’s recent infrastructure bill. She argues that the movement she is a part of is buddying up with the worse group of right-wing traditionalists in order to fight “gender ideology.” Noting that:

Though [the right] may agree with us on gender identity policy and law, they have different goals, and assign a different meaning to “gender ideology,” than we do. For right-wing Christians, “gender ideology” encompasses not only the trans agenda, but also feminism as well as lesbian and gay rights — and they mean to roll back the gains of all of these movements.

At one point, she also highlights an 11/4/2021 article from Abigail Shrier titled “Could the GOP Become the Party of Women? Sen. Tom Cotton Says it Already Has” which is an interview with Senator Tom Cotton. In it, Cotton tells Shrier:

It’s very curious to see that so many self-styled feminists in politics and the media have taken steps that are objectively harmful to women.

And what are those steps? Accepting transgender rights:

I mean, Title IX was a long-sought and hard-fought battle to try to achieve equality between women’s sports and men’s sports. Some of the very same people that fought those battles — or their philosophical and political inheritors — are willing to sacrifice those gains, all in service of this radical abstraction of Gender Ideology. And to simply stand up and say, ‘No, we’re going to protect the rights of girls and women to play sports — to compete in sports on an equal basis — we’re going to protect the rights of women who are in shelters for those who face domestic abuse, or we’re going to recognize that there are natural and biological differences between the sexes, and that justifies a difference in how we treat new mothers and new fathers. That’s not some kind of radical ideology; that is just common sense. That is pushing back against a radical ideology, and most Americans are not ideologues.

In case you’re wondering his specific mention of “new mothers and new fathers,” earlier in the article he blasted the idea of men getting paid family leave because, since men don’t give birth (why do you think they needed a c-section to kill MacBeth, you dumb liberal) men shouldn’t have the same parental leave women do.

As Cotton put it:

And [Pelosi removing the words “mother” and “father” from the House rules] show[s] how Woke progressives have become so involved in Gender Ideology that they’re now openly and objectively anti-woman in many cases: interfering with women and girls’ rights to play sports, or the safety that abused women have in shelters for battered women, or in the latest controversy about Pete Buttigieg [regarding] parental leave — insisting that you have absolute equality between the rights for parental leave between women and men.

Of course, Cotton doesn’t consider what would be best for the child in this situation — which is letting both parents stay at home during the first couple of months after birth.

His description of “feminists” also angered Acosta, who wrote:

By “feminists,” presumably he means mainstream organizations that support gender identity policy, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW). But what does he think of the feminists in WoLF and WHRC USA, who have been working diligently all year with right-wing women to oppose gender identity law and policy? Are these feminists as invisible to him as they are to the Democrats and the mainstream media? Or does he see us as already subsumed by the Christian right-wing power structure?

Mind you, what Acosta fails to realize is that the TERF movement is always going to be right-wing and reactionary by its very nature. The TERF movement — which exists for no other reason than to fight the rights of transgender people — commonly fights with the right-wing because that’s the group they best align with.

I’ve mentioned this article before, but on 11/5/2019 The American Mind — a website run by The Clarmont Institute — published an article titled “TERF Wars: How Radical Lesbians Are Braver Than You Are.” The author, who goes by the name Peachy Keenan, writes:

One of the biggest online refuges for these women — gay and straight — is Gender Critical on Reddit, with over 45 thousand members. Spend a few minutes on it and you start to wonder if you are at a conservative Christian message board, if conservative Christians had anything to say about the culture.

Even many TERFs know the similarities in ideas. On 11/14/2021, Twitter user @shaun_vids tweeted:

“gender critical” transphobes want women to be defined by their breasts, wombs, physical appearance, fertility. any opposition they have to traditionalist conservatism on this issue is aesthetic only

On 11/16/2021, Shaun replied to that tweet and noted:

getting a lot of replies/qts/dms from gc transphobes because of this tweet, & i like how half of them are saying “that’s not what we think at all!” & the other half are saying “and what’s so wrong with that?” lol might wanna have a huddle and get on the same page

Meanwhile, another TERF by the name Lorelei (her twitter handle is @hatpinwoman) published a thread on 11/20/2021 talking about the misogyny in her movement. The thread opens by stating:

I worry that if more people turn up to this movement who think gender essentialism is ok when it creates a mythology around men, or who try to diminish the reality that women, especially lesbians & transwidows, as well as GNC youth, are particularly harmed by [the trans rights] movement

She goes on to note:

Lately there’s been a certain friction between some gay men and some women within the movement. Some friction is inevitable between any people but some of the hot takes I’ve seen have felt rather MRA to me. That gives me pause because it isn’t about political disagreement, [a]nd it’s not just about two groups with different needs clashing in a good faith manner about issues that affect us both. If misogyny sneaks into these discussions from friendly quarters, it poisons the well and it breaks the accord we need to solve all this.

One has to wonder if Lorelei will connect why so many sexist gay men are interested in her movement. I’m not going to act like I know the answer to that question myself, but I do know that if this is a serious trend in their movement, it can’t be for no reason.

Personally, I think it has to do with the isolation certain TERFs put on the fight marginalized groups had for rights. Organizations like the LGB Alliance and the New Gay Liberation Front specifically exist to tell gay people that their fights for rights are the only ones they can fight and that any attempt to fight for the rights of others is “co-opting” their movement. The LGB Alliance was specifically formed by former members of the UK group Stonewall — named after the Stonewall riot in 1969 — because they felt the group was fighting too much for the rights of transgender people. Why can’t gay people fight for the rights of transgender people? Because the LGB Alliance says their is some conflict between gay rights and trans rights — a conflict they are desperate to manufacture.

Either way, it’s notable that even the TERFs are starting to notice the issues in their movement. One hopes this will be the start of some kind of redemption for them, although I may have my doubts, I do hope some of them will end up seeing the light.

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