User:Baileyherman/TERF

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The Harm of TERFs on Feminism and Transgender Issues

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Slur debate

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People that have TERF directed at them who have been publicly deemed a TERF often characterize it as a pejorative or hate speech. In a July 2018 solicitation of essays regarding "transgender identities", British magazine The Economist required writers to "avoid all slurs, including TERF", stating that the word was used to try to silence opinions and sometimes incite violence. In August 2018, seven British philosophers wrote on the website Daily Nous that two articles by Veronica Ivy and Jason Stanley published in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research normalized the term. August 2018, philosophers from the Daily Nous criticized two articles written by Veronica Ivy and Jason Stanley about TERFs. They described the term as "at worst a slur and at best derogatory", and argued that it had been used to denigrate those "who disagree with the dominant narrative on trans issues." In response, Ernest Sosa, the journal's editor in chief, stated that scholars consulted by the journal advised that the term could become a slur at some point, but that its use as a denigrating term in some contexts did not mean that it could not be used descriptively.

Transgender rights activists generally but not always disagree that the term is a slur. Transgender author Andrea Long Chu described the claim that TERF was a slur as "a grievance that would be beneath contempt if it weren't also true, in the sense that all bywords for bigots are intended to be defamatory." Many transgender people feel marginalized and harmed by TERFs. They feel it is unfair to exclude trans women from feminism, which by definition is supporting the rights of women. By beliving in TERF ideologies, one is invalidating the identity of a trans woman by considering her womanhood lesser than a cisgender womanhood, or worse, invalid altogether.

Linguists and philosophers of language have been skeptical of the idea that the term TERF is a slur. Transgender rights activist and philosophy of language professor Veronica Ivy argues that just because the word could be used pejoratively, it did not mean it was a slur in general. In a 2020 paper published in the philosophy journal Grazer Philosophische Studien, linguists Christopher Davis and Elin McCready argued that three properties could make a term a slur: it had to be derogatory towards a particular group, used to subordinate them within some structure of power relations and that the derogated group must be defined by an intrinsic property. Davis and McCready wrote that the term TERF satisfied the first condition, but failed the third condition, and that the second condition was contentious, in that it depended upon how each group saw itself in relation to the other group. Philosophy of language professor Jennifer Saul disagreed with categorizing TERF as a slur, arguing that a term does not necessarily become a slur when coupled with violent or abusive rhetoric. However, she argued that the term is inaccurate because not all people described as TERFs could reasonably be considered feminists, preferring the term "anti-trans activists" instead.

Other feminist philosophers have differing opinions on the term. Feminist philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher argued that, regardless of whether the term was accurately classified as a slur, it "has at least become offensive to those designated by the term", which suggested it might be best to avoid "in case one wants to have a conversation across deep difference". Feminist philosopher Judith Butler disputed that the term TERF was a slur in an interview with New Statesman, saying "I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists?" Butler here argues that the term TERF is not a slur because it merely describes the ideology of this camp of feminism.