Oh boy. Um!

TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. 

Which tells us what we need to know, because in essence, that’s what they are. They are self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ which EXCLUDE transgender people from their allyship/support. 

It’s shorthand for being a transphobe. 

Basically they don’t believe that transgender people are a thing, or even if they do, they liken it to a mental illness. They believe that men and women are determined by their genitals and often strongly speak out against trans women specifically, going out of their way to call them ‘men’ and accuse them of being sexual deviants who are simply crossdressing because it’s a fetish. (If you have two brain cells you can click together, you can figure out that this is obviously not true.)

They use this rhetoric to often scare younger queer people, especially younger lesbians, into other harmful beliefs such as the idea that being with (their definition of) a man in any capacity makes them less valid, that femininity is intrinsically tied to their genitals and reproductive organs. 

TERFs are particularly harmful because they purposefully inject themselves into LGBTQ/queer communities to seem like they are on our side, and then spread this type of hatred towards trans people. :/ It’s why many queer folks have a very strong visceral reaction to TERF rhetoric and often do as much as they can to distance themselves from any TERF in order to avoid accidentally spreading MORE of this type of bullshit around. 

My RA is putting on oppression BINGO for Pride month, and I would like some input, if it isn't too much trouble. I was thinking we could have cards with all kinds of different things that queer folk on a regular basis. And that the cards would have privileges, and then instead of having numbers, there would be circumstances. For instance, one of the scenarios would be get misgendered/have people use the wrong pronouns.