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If you’ve been in online feminist circles, chances are you’ve come across the acronym “TERF”. But what exactly does it mean, and what makes you one? TERF stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, which is often used synonymously with gender-critical feminism, as those who identify as gender-critical usually reject the label TERF. They essentially mean the same thing: people who believe that transgender women aren’t women, and reject trans women from women’s spaces such as sport, bathrooms, gyms, and so on.
The primary rhetoric that TERFs cling on to is that trans women are “men in dresses” who only pretend to be women to prey on cisgender women. This is the condensed version. If I wanted to go into detail about every ideology and belief that TERFs had, I’d have enough to fill this entire edition. But here’s the thing; TERFism, despite having the word ‘feminism’ in its name, is hugely damaging to the cause. This is because TERFs have launched transphobic attacks on other cisgender women, the very people they claim to protect, through a thing called “transvestigating”. Transvestigating ‘is the informal discriminatory investigation into whether a person is secretly transgender, generally conducted by analysing that person’s appearance and anatomical structure,’ and is most seen in sports (Egale). Not only is transvestigating extremely transphobic, but it is also racist, misogynistic, and invasive.
It’s racist because most athletes who get transvestigated are women of colour. The most recent and well-known example is Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who was accused of being male after claiming victory over Italian boxer Angela Carini during the 2024 Summer Olympics. This was mainly fuelled by Khelif’s disqualification from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships after she allegedly failed unspecified gender eligibility tests conducted by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA). International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams addressed this during a press conference, where he said that Khelif ‘was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport’ and that ‘scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman’. Furthermore, according to Equaldex, there is no legal recognition of trans people on any official documents in Algeria, it does not allow for a person to change their legal gender, and medical transitioning isn’t possible. The IOC in a statement also stated that Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, a Taiwanese boxer who was also a victim of transvestigating, had been competing in international boxing in the women’s category for many years, including the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. Despite this, gender-criticals on social media continued to accuse Khelif of being a man and called for her to be disqualified, with the most famous TERF, J.K. Rowling, at the forefront.
Transvestigating is deeply misogynistic, but ironically, the prominent force behind the practice claim to be feminists. It imposes sexist stereotypes and standards onto women and deems any woman who doesn’t fit into that standard — whether they’re too hairy, or more masculine presenting — not a real woman. It also has a strong focus on genitalia and reproduction; only real women have a uterus, only real women can get pregnant, only real women menstruate. Not only does this alienate the cisgender women who don’t fit these criteria (some women have had a hysterectomy, some women can’t get pregnant due to fertility issues, some women don’t menstruate for a multitude of reasons), but it also further pathologizes intersex people. In sporting spaces, it creates a double standard. Men are allowed to have an unlimited range of athletic abilities and be praised for it. Still, if a woman does the same, then suddenly her womanhood is called into question. While Michael Phelps is a great swimmer when he uses his biological advantages, Imane Khelif is ‘cheating’, ‘not a real woman’, and ‘should be disqualified’ when she wins a bout and is suspected of having higher testosterone levels than her opponent.
Transvestigating is invasive due to its obsession with genitals. It focuses on “what’s in your pants” and refuses to see that there is more to a woman than her private parts and reproductive organs. Natalee Barnett, a 25-year-old U.K. fitness influencer who is starting up a women-only gym originally stated in a post made in 2021 that trans women would be welcomed in her gym. However, on the 9th of March 2025, she made a video back-tracking, stating her soon-to-open gym would be for biological women only.
‘Addressing my tweet from 2021. The Girls Spot operates as a female-only gym for biological women, tackling harassment, sexual assault & violence that women face inside the gym. The tweet circling was made 4 years ago, and I was in the very early stages of creating a concept’.
Naturally, this caused outrage for many reasons. People were mad because trans women had donated to her GoFundMe under the confirmation they’d be welcomed. People pointed out how trans women also face harassment, sexual assault and violence in gyms. However, what many people pointed out is that policing who is and isn’t a “biological woman” is incredibly invasive. One X user wrote,
‘what do the logistics ACTUALLY look like ? checking private parts at the door ??? when muscular c!s women who don’t look “woman enough” want to come what then ? when those women experience discrimination from other women trying to transinvestigate, what then ??’
Many suggested ID or passports to check, but as another X user points out, this isn’t possible.
‘For a lot of trans people the gender on their ID documents matches what they identify as. You can never accurately police a trans exclusionary space through ID so at what point does it become rouge and dehumanising transvestigations?’
This is what TERF ideology and transvestigating do. They first turn cisgender women against trans women and then those cisgender women turn on other cisgender women. It’s parasitic. It sets feminism back decades and reduces women to the very misogynistic standards that feminists fought so hard against.
Written by El Bancroft
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