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Gender-critical feminism is a term used by feminists who believe that sex is biological and immutable, while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, to be inherently oppressive. The term originated online among radical feminists in the early 2010s in response to condemnation of these beliefs as trans-exclusionary or transphobic, and in particular the use of the label "TERF" for those who held these views.

Gender-critical feminism came to wider prominence in the UK in the mid-2010s with the Conservative government's proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act to permit a Gender Recognition Certificate to be acquired via statutory declaration. This prompted the formation of several notable gender-critical feminist groups who campaigned against changes they viewed as threatening women's sex-based rights, resulting in a number of high-profile controversies. Although originally arising within feminism, gender-critical views more generally are now a protected belief under UK equality law, where they are described as the belief that sex is biological and immutable, that people cannot change their sex and that sex is distinct from gender-identity.

Critics argue that the term "gender-critical feminism" is merely a political rebranding of longstanding trans-exclusionary views in some strands of radical feminism. Some academics maintain that the shorthand "TERF" (for trans-exclusionary radical feminist), while derogatory in common use, is an accurate and necessary term for describing gender-critical feminists.

While gender-critical is a term originating within feminism, its has also been used more broadly to describe anti-gender conservatives, who oppose what they describe as "gender ideology". Divisions within and between gender-critical feminist organisations and gender-critical movements more widely, as well as relationships and crossover with conservative anti-gender movements are a subject of debate and controversy.

Sex and gender
Gender-critical feminists equate "women" with what they consider to be a "female sex class", and view historical and contemporary oppression of women as being rooted in their being female, while "gender" is a system of social norms which functions to oppress women on the basis of their sex. They believe sex is biological and cannot be changed, and that biological sex should be a protected characteristic under equality legislation. Furthermore, gender critics emphasise the view that sex is binary, as opposed to a continuous spectrum, and that the two sexes have an objective, material basis as opposed to being socially constructed.

Gender-critical feminists promote the idea that sex is important. In Material Girls, Kathleen Stock discusses four areas in which she expresses the view that sex-associated differences are important, regardless of gender: medicine, sport, sexual orientation, and the social effects of heterosexuality (such as wage disparity and sexual assault). Holly Lawford-Smith states: "Gender critical feminism is not 'about' trans. It is about sex." Lawford-Smith said of gender-critical feminism: "It is about being critical of gender, and this has implications for a wide range of feminist issues, not just gender identity." Writing of her view of a "gender-critical feminist utopia", she said: "While there will still be the same people who think of themselves as 'transmen', 'transwomen' or 'non-binary' today, they will not use those labels, because 'feminine' will be a way that males can be, 'masculine' will be a way that women can be, and 'androgynous' will be a way that anyone can be."

In gender-critical discourse, the terms man and woman are used as sex-terms, assigned no more meaning than adult human male and adult human female respectively, in contrast to feminist theorists who argue these terms embody a social category distinct from matters of biology (usually referred to as gender), with masculinity and femininity representing normative characteristics thereof. The phrase adult human female has become a slogan in gender-critical politics, and has been described as transphobic.

Sex-based rights
Gender critical feminists advocate what they call "sex-based rights", arguing that "women's human rights are based upon sex" and that "these rights are being eroded by the promotion of 'gender identity'".

United Kingdom
The term is used, primarily in the UK, to refer to a variety of legal positions and political objectives, including:


 * Existing exceptions defined in the UK Equality Act 2010. These exceptions do not grant any right for individuals to be offered single-sex services, but do allow service providers to offer such services, if they are "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim".
 * Proposed changes to the Equality Act to define sex as biological sex
 * The belief that sex is central to the definition of women and women's rights, as opposed to basing law on gender identity.

The gender-critical movement argues that recognition of transgender women as women conflicts with these rights.

Socialisation and gender nonconformity
Gender critical feminists generally see gender as a system in which women are oppressed for reasons intrinsically related to their sex, and emphasize male violence against women, particularly involving institutions such as the sex industry, as central to women's oppression. Holders of such views often contend that trans women cannot fully be women because they were assigned male at birth and have experienced some degree of male privilege. Germaine Greer has said that it "wasn't fair" that "a man who has lived for 40 years as a man and had children with a woman and enjoyed the services—the unpaid services of a wife, which most women will never know…then decides that the whole time he’s been a woman".

Gay rights
Gender critical feminists believe that transgender rights are a threat to the rights of gay people. Gender critical lesbians and feminists are a minority in the UK: polls show that cisgender lesbians and bisexual women are among the most trans-inclusive groups in Britain.

Kathleen Stock, for instance, has said that allowing trans women to call themselves women "threatens a secure understanding of the concept 'lesbian. Magdalen Berns, co-founder of the group For Women Scotland, has said that "there is no such thing as a lesbian with a penis" in regards to the idea of some trans women being lesbians.

Julie Bindel has said that transgender women cannot be lesbians, instead qualifying them as straight men trying to "join the club", and has compared transgender activism to men sexually assaulting lesbian women for rejecting their advances.

Many other gender critical groups and pundits have spoken of the transgender rights movement as a men's sexual rights movement, designed to pressure lesbians into having sex with trans women.

United Kingdom
In 2016, the House of Commons' Women and Equalities Committee issued a report recommending that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 be updated "in line with the principles of gender self-declaration". Later in 2016, in England and Wales, a proposal was developed under Theresa May's government to revise the Act to introduce self-identification, with a public consultation opening in 2018. This proposed reform became a key locus of conflict for the emerging gender-critical movement, seeking to block reform of the Act, with a number of groups such as Fair Play For Women, For Women Scotland, and Woman's Place UK being formed. 2018 found a significant majority of respondents in favour of the GRA reforms, however, in 2020, Boris Johnson's government dropped the reforms, instead reducing the cost of a gender recognition certificate and moving the application process online.

Another key locus of conflict for the emerging movement was the stance of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on trans issues. In 2015, Stonewall had begun campaigning for trans equality, with Stonewall head Ruth Hunt apologising for the organisation's previous failure to do so. In 2019, the LGB Alliance was founded in opposition to Stonewall, accusing the organization of having "undermined women's sex-based rights and protections" and attempting "to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender".

2019 saw the formation of the Women's Human Rights Campaign (now Women's Declaration International) by noted gender-critical feminist Sheila Jeffreys and co-founder Heather Brunskell-Evans. The group published a manifesto titled the Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights, which argued that recognising trans women as women "constitutes discrimination against women" and called for the "elimination of that act".

Legal cases in the UK
In 2019, the Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development tribunal case was launched by Maya Forstater, crowdfunding over £120,000. Earlier that year, Forstater's consulting contract for the Centre for Global Development was not renewed after she made a number of social media posts saying that men cannot change into women. Forstater subsequently sued the centre, alleging that she had been discriminated against because of her views. Forstater lost her initial case, with the judge ruling that her beliefs were not protected under the Equality Act due to their absolutism. However, in April 2021, the initial judgement was reversed, with the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that gender-critical beliefs were protected under the Equality Act. A full merits hearing on Forstater's claim that she lost her employment as a result of these beliefs was heard in March 2022, and the decision, delivered in July 2022, was that Forstater had been subjected to direct discrimination and victimisation because of her gender-critical beliefs.

In October 2020, Ann Sinnott, at the time a director of the LGB Alliance, initiated a legal case calling for a judicial review of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance on the Equality Act 2010, crowdfunding almost £100,000 for legal fees. In May 2021 the case was found by the court to be unarguable, Justice Henshaw stating that "the claimant has shown no arguable reason to believe the Code has misled or will mislead service providers about their responsibilities under the Act".

The Forstater case has been used as a precedent for several claims of discrimination against people holding gender-critical views. Successful claims include cases against a barrister's chambers, Arts Council England, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, Westminster Council and Social Work England. A claim by someone who had misgendered service users at the Department for Work and Pensions failed. The barrister Georgiana Calvert-Lee commented to the Guardian: "Above all, in a pluralistic society, which is what we want, you have to accept that people are going to have different views."

In January 2024, Jo Phoenix was successful in a claim against the Open University for discrimination on the grounds of gender-critical beliefs. The tribunal ruled that she had been constructively unfairly dismissed, and that she had suffered victimisation and harassment in the form of an open letter from 386 of her colleagues, as well as individual disparagement for her views, including one professor comparing her to "the racist uncle at the Christmas table".

Academic controversies
Conflict between gender-critical feminists and other feminists and transgender rights activists has resulted in controversies in which the principles of academic freedom have been invoked. Conflicts have erupted at university campuses.

Kathleen Lowrey, who had allegedly been fired from her additional position as associate chair of undergraduate programs for the department of anthropology at the University of Alberta after displaying gender-critical posters on her office door, teaching gender-critical material in class, and showing up halfway through a student-run queer anthology event to start arguments about "the existence and validity of trans people with a trans man in the room", published a paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior saying that she found it particularly distressing that "almost all of my most enthusiastic public attackers were feminist academic women" and that gender-critical feminists "root their analysis in the materiality of biological sex and take the oppression of women to be linked to the control of reproduction. In the present scholarly ecumene, this aligns them in some respects with scholars who are traditional and conservative, and explains why they, like conservatives, are so often in trouble with their institutions under present conditions".

Carolyn Sale of the Center for Free Expression at Ryerson University condemned the university's decision, saying that "the idea that in a hush behind closed doors students can bring complaints that don't have to be proven true and can do so in order to protect their "safety" should alarm us all".

In September 2022, Laura Favaro published an article in Times Higher Education discussing her research into the climate of the debate among academics. Noting that she had interviewed 50 feminist academics in gender studies with a range of views on the subject, Favaro stated "my discussions left me in no doubt that a culture of discrimination, silencing and fear has taken hold across universities in England, and many countries beyond". Favaro later began discrimination proceedings against City, University of London, stating she had been "ostracised at her workplace and denied access to her research data" after the publication of her article.

City, University of London responded with a statement that it had a "legal obligation to protect freedom of expression that we take very seriously". It also took its "obligations with respect to ethics and integrity very seriously" and made clear that "any personal data processed in the course of any research [should be] processed in compliance with data protection legislation".

Online controversies
The controversial Reddit community r/GenderCritical gathered a reputation as an anti-trans space. In June 2020, it was banned abruptly for violating new rules against "promoting hate". Members set up a similar community called Ovarit.

Scholarly criticism
Lesbian studies scholars Carly Thomsen and Laurie Essig note that "transness has been and is the object of deep hostility within some marginalized forms of feminism. Skepticism among earlier anti-trans feminists, such as Janice Raymond, about trans women being "real" women has morphed into J.K. Rowling's Twitter feed where she has insisted that trans women are not women. These ideas are, of course, deplorable, but they are also quite fringe within feminist studies and activism in the US".

Clair Thurlow notes that the more explicitly hateful language used by early trans-exclusionary radical feminists failed to gain support, forcing them to pivot towards euphemisms and dog-whistles such as using "pro-woman" to mean "anti-trans", "protecting sex-based rights" meant excluding trans people, and "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" became "gender-critical feminism". This allowed trans-exclusionary feminism to appear reasonable to the average person while maintaining their anti-trans meanings to other anti-trans activists.

Gender studies scholars Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur have noted that TERFism started out as a fringe group among English speaking cultural feminists in the 1970s that grew rapidly due to media exposure.

Cristan Williams notes that radical feminism has historically been predominantly trans-inclusive and considers trans-exclusionary views a minority or fringe view within radical feminism.

Carrera-Fernández and DePalma argued that "the increasingly belligerent popular discourses promoted by TERF groups since the 1970s [are] appropriating feminist discourses to produce arguments that contradict basic premises of feminism".

Henry F. Fradella said that most contemporary feminists are supportive of trans people, and that gender-critical feminists are a small but vocal group who believe that trans rights threaten the rights of cis women. Most gender-critical arguments for this belief, he says, are false, and "misconstrue or ignore empirical data from both the natural and social sciences". Gender-critical feminism risks legal equality and contributes to criminalization of trans people.

In July 2018, Sally Hines, a University of Leeds professor of sociology and gender studies scholar, wrote in The Economist that feminism and trans rights have been falsely portrayed as being in conflict by a minority of anti-transgender feminists, who often "reinforce the extremely offensive trope of the trans woman as a man in drag who is a danger to women". Hines criticized these feminists for fueling "rhetoric of paranoia and hyperbole" against trans people, saying that they abandon or undermine feminist principles in their anti-trans narratives, such as bodily autonomy and self-determination of gender, and employ "reductive models of biology and restrictive understandings of the distinction between sex and gender" in defense of such narratives. She concluded with a call for explicit recognition of anti-transgender feminism as a violation of equality and dignity, and "a doctrine that runs counter to the ability to fulfill a liveable life or, often, a life at all".

Briar Dickey notes that "British ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ (TERF) discourse has often been contextualised in fringe radical feminist thought", and argues that "the contextualisation of contemporary TERF discourse as an extension and evolution of fringe second-wave feminism [...] neglects its relationship to a wider international wave of anti-transgender sentiment" anchored in conservative and religious movements.

Researcher Aleardo Zanghellini argues that "gender-critical feminism advocates reserving women's spaces for cis women" as well as that "Many problems in gender-critical thought are consistent with the explanation that paranoid structuralism is too often presupposed in gender-critical work".

Mauro Cabral Grinspan, Ilana Eloit, David Paternotte and Mieke Verloo dislike the expression "gender-critical feminism", saying that it allows trans-exclusionary feminists to rebrand transphobic activism.

Abbie E. Goldberg argues that "trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) has contained similar cisnormative arguments to those of social conservatives, promoting vilification of people with a trans lived experience in the guise of so-called gender-critical feminism" and that "this TERF approach has been used to promote exclusionary and discriminatory legislation, such as prohibiting equal access to public toilets and the right to be treated in accordance with one's gender in workplaces, accommodations, and public venues".

Bassi and LaFleur write that "the trans-exclusionary feminist (TERF) movement and the so-called anti-gender movement are only rarely distinguished as movements with distinct constitutions and aims". Pearce et al. note that the concept of "gender ideology" "saw increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse" from around 2016. Claire House noted in 2023 that "key streams within trans exclusionary women’s and feminist movements increasingly engage in collaborative action with right-wing populist-centered anti-gender coalitions, which include right-wing religious, conservative, and right-wing extremist actors". Claire Thurlow writes that "despite efforts to obscure the point, gender critical feminism continues to rely on transphobic tropes, moral panics and essentialist understandings of men and women. These factors also continue to link trans-exclusionary feminism to anti-feminist reactionary politics and other 'anti-gender' movements".

Feminist Judith Butler has described the anti-gender movements as fascist trends and cautioned self-declared feminists from allying with such movements in targeting trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people. Butler said that "it is painful to see that Trump's position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge 'gender' from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism". Sophia Siddiqui, the deputy editor of Race & Class, has argued that "'gender critical' feminists play into the hands of far-right street forces and extreme-right electoral parties which would like to abolish anti-discrimination protections altogether" and that it "could have a damaging effect on global feminist and LGBT movements by reinforcing conservative ideas about gender and sexuality". The Canadian Anti-Hate Network said that despite labelling themselves as feminists, TERF groups often collaborate with conservative and far-right groups. Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur note that "gender-critical movements often reemploy the well-known right-wing populist opposition between 'the corrupt global elites' and 'the people'", noting the similarity of gender-critical beliefs to "far-right conspiracy theorizing".

Gender studies scholar C. Libby has pointed to "burgeoning connections between trans-exclusionary radical feminism, "gender critical" writing, and transphobic evangelical Christian rhetoric".

In a 2020 article in Lambda Nordica, Erika Alm of the University of Gothenburg and Elisabeth L. Engebretsen of the University of Stavanger, said that there was "growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances, between "gender-critical" feminists (sometimes known as TERFs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), religious and social conservatives, as well as right-wing politics and even neo-Nazi and fascist movements" and that the convergence was linked to "their reliance on an essentialised and binary understanding of sex and/or gender, often termed 'bio-essentialism'". Engebretsen has described the movement as a "complex threat to democracy". Another 2020 article, in The Sociological Review, said that "the language of 'gender ideology' originates in anti-feminist and anti-trans discourses among right-wing Christians, with the Catholic Church acting as a major nucleating agent", and said that the term "saw increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse" from around 2016. It further said that "a growing number of anti-trans campaigners associated with radical feminist movements have openly aligned themselves with anti-feminist organisations".

In a 2021 paper in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Hil Malatino of Pennsylvania State University said that "'gender-critical' feminism" in the US has "begun to build coalition with the evangelical Right around the legal codification of sex as a biological binary" and that "popular news media frames transphobia as part of a rational, enlightened, pragmatic response to what is variously called the 'trans lobby' and the 'cult of trans'". Another 2021 paper, in Law and Social Inquiry, said that "a coalition of Christian conservative legal organizations, conservative foundations, Trump administration officials, Republican party lawmakers, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists has assembled to redefine the right to privacy in service of anti-transgender politics" and that "social conservatives have cast the issue as one of balancing two competing rights claims rather than one of outright animus against a gender minority population".

History (belongs on TERF page)
Although trans people were active in feminist movements in the 1960s and earlier, the 1970s saw conflict among some early radical feminists over the inclusion of trans women in feminism.

In 1973, trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists from the Daughters of Bilitis voted to expel Beth Elliott, an out trans woman, from the organization. The same year, Elliott was scheduled to perform at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, which she had helped organize; a group of trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists calling themselves the Gutter Dykes leafletted the conference protesting her inclusion and keynote speaker Robin Morgan updated her speech to describe Elliott as "an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer – with the mentality of a rapist". An impromptu vote was held with the majority supporting her inclusion in the conference; when Elliott subsequently entered the stage to perform the Gutter Dykes rushed to the stage to attack her and attacked performers Robin Tyler and Patty Harrison who had stepped in to defend her.

At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally, trans-exclusionary radical feminists tried to stop Sylvia Rivera from speaking. Jean O'Leary publicly denounced Sylvia Rivera as "parodying womanhood" and Lesbian Feminist Liberation distributed flyers seeking to keep "female impersonators" off the stage.

Trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists protested Sandy Stone's position at Olivia Records, a trans-inclusive lesbian separatist music collective. In 1977 The Gorgons, a trans-exclusionary lesbian separatist paramilitary group, issued a death threat to Stone and came to the event armed though were intercepted by security. Escalating threats against the collective motivated Stone to leave the group.

Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, published in 1979, examined what she considered to be the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, in particular the ways in which the "medical-psychiatric complex" was medicalizing gender identity, and the social and political context that contributed to the image of gender-affirming treatment and surgery as therapeutic medicine. Raymond maintained that this was based in the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering", and "making of woman according to man's image", and that transgender identity aimed "to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality". The book goes on to say that "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact" and that "the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence". Several authors have since characterized this work as transphobic and constituting hate speech, as well as lacking any serious intellectual basis.

In 1991 Nancy Burkholder, a trans woman, was ejected from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF), after refusing to answer when another woman asked her whether or not she was transgender. This removal was justified by the retroactive instatement of a womyn-born womyn policy by the MWMF organisers. For both the 1992 and 1993 MWMF events, Janis Walworth, a cisgender lesbian feminist, organised an educational and outreach program at the MWMF distributing pamphlets titled "Gender Myths". During the 1993 MWMF event, Walworth was told by event security that she and any trans women in their group would be required to leave the event "for their own safety". Although an offer of bodyguard protection was provided by a group of leather lesbians attending the festival, Walworth's group decided instead to set up an outreach camp outside the festival gates. This camp, later known as Camp Trans, continued to provide education and outreach attempts while protesting the festival's trans exclusionary practices until the festival's final event in 2015.