Why the “TERFs™ 🤪” Hate Us
Yes, yes, I know, I can’t stand that acronym soup either, but sometimes you have to speak the local dialect.
This essay is part of a four-part series exploring the hardest questions at the centre of my life and my transition.
Each piece examines a different angle: honesty, resentment, myth, and science.1. Was Stephen Bennett a Fucking Liar?
A reckoning with silence, shame and self-deception.
https://fasttrackfemme.substack.com/p/was-stephen-bennett-a-fucking-liar2. Why the “TERFs™ 🤪” Hate Us
An examination of resentment, envy, authenticity and why trans people provoke such concentrated hostility.
(You’re reading this one.)3. What I Am Not
A clear dismantling of autogynephilia and the junk science that has distorted public understanding.
[To be released shortly]4. Why Am I Like This?
A deep dive into the psychology and science behind the origins of gender identity and transness.
[To be released shortly]
I don’t blow my own trumpet about much. There is plenty wrong with me, whole continents of flaws, blind spots, self-deception, strange coping mechanisms, and emotional knots I’m only now learning to untangle. But there is one trait I’ve always had in absolute abundance:
I have always been exceptionally good at sticking my middle finger up to social norms.
I have never ever given a shit, not for fifteen seconds, about what I’m supposed to be, how I’m supposed to behave, or what shape my life is meant to take.
Not how I should earn a living.
Not how a “proper adult” should behave
I didn’t care at twenty-five. I didn’t care at forty-five. And I certainly don’t care now. I have seen it all my life as my duty to rebel. It’s just my nature.
It’s probably why my office wall is plastered with Ferris Bueller, Frank Abagnale and Jordan Belfort. I have always admired mavericks and outsiders, not for their chaos but for their refusal to accept the script handed to them. I’ve spent most of my life doing the same. I haven’t been to an office (or people farm, as I call them) in a decade and I haven’t had a permanent job in 28 years.
And the truth is, I don’t think that streak is unique to me. A lot of us have it. In fact, it’s almost predictable. So many trans people carry that same golden triangle of gender dysphoria, ADHD and mild autism, and it produces a particular kind of mind, restless, questioning, pattern-spotting, stubbornly resistant to doing things simply because we’re told to. It makes breaking social rules feel less like rebellion and more like inevitability. Once you’ve spent a lifetime feeling out of step with the world, you stop pretending the choreography was ever meant for you.
And so, ladies and gents, my grand theory. It’s in large part jealousy, but not the way you think.
And as I’ve thought more deeply about why hostility toward trans people has escalated so dramatically, I’ve realised that one of the biggest forces behind it isn’t disgust, or ideology, or fear of biology.
It’s jealousy.
And just to be clear, I’m not pretending jealousy is the only force in play. There have been activists who have made frankly batshit demands of the public, or announced things that are so uncompromising and inflexible that genuinely sane, rational people have ended up furious. You cannot go around shouting “transphobe” at anyone who disagrees with your philosophical position without eventually looking like the boy who cried wolf. That backlash is real and I don’t deny it. But even with all of that acknowledged, I still think there is a deeper current running underneath the noise, something older and more psychological that explains why the reaction is so visceral. And that is where jealousy lives.
Not jealousy of femininity or hormones or clothing.
Not jealousy of surgeries or appearance.
Not jealousy of being trans.
Who in God’s name would be jealous of that curse in life? And it was a curse, a curse that you would not wish on your worst enemy.
It’s jealousy of the audacity.
Trans people do something most people never do: we examine our lives honestly and act on what we find. We confront truths about ourselves that are terrifying, destabilising and often life-altering. We turn towards the thing we fear rather than away from it. We break our own lives open and rebuild them in the light.
Most people don’t do that. Most people will never do that.
Most people stay.
They stay in marriages that hollow them out.
They stay in jobs they despise.
They stay in towns they’ve outgrown.
They stay in identities they inherited rather than chose.
They stay in roles scripted by other people.
They stay because staying is easier.
They stay because confronting the truth is frightening.
They stay because change feels like death.
And then someone like us shows up.
Someone who says, actually, no.
I’m not doing this anymore.
I’m not pretending.
I’m not living a life built on choreography.
I am going to be who I am, even if it requires uprooting everything.
To someone who has never changed anything fundamental about themselves, this is unbearable.
Because what are they supposed to do with the knowledge that a stranger, a trans woman, has done something they have never once found the courage to do?
What exactly is their excuse for living a life they privately resent while someone they regard as “less legitimate” has found the strength to walk into the fire?
It is easier to hate us than to face that question.
It is easier to declare us delusional than to consider that we might be brave.
It is easier to mock us than to admit we represent a freedom they never cultivated.
It is easier to invent pathology than to confront the possibility that we are not the fragile ones in this equation.
We are reminders of choice.
We are not attacking their worldview.
We are exposing their lack of one.
We are not dismantling society.
We are demonstrating that most of the cages people sit in have the doors unlocked.
And this, more than anything, drives the rage.
We are proof that you can choose yourself, even late.
We are proof that you can tell the truth, even after decades.
We are proof that you can burn down an old life and build a better one.
We are proof that the scripts can be rejected.
We represent the life they didn’t dare to have.
We represent the courage they never acted on.
So yes, they hate us.
And you cannot reason someone out of a position they arrived at to avoid looking in the mirror.
But you can recognise it for what it is.
And you can walk on, free.
I think I speak for all the TERFs when I say: your audacity does not evoke feelings of jealousy in us.
It makes us enraged.
We see where this audacity comes from — male entitlement.
You think you’re some feminist heroes standing strong against the hateful women, when in fact you’re just weak-minded, deluded and entitled men.
You have no traits that would make a woman jealous. None. Not physical, and certainly not emotional or behavioural. You give us the ick.
But rest assured — we do not wish you dead. We just want you to never again feel emboldened to live your fetish out in public, to demand access to women’s spaces and make all society actors in your sick fantasies.
It's not about envy. It's about basic respect for the lives of an oppressed people.
No one would dare try to transition from white to Black, or something of the like. Sex appropriation is just as insulting and cruel as the appropriation of race and ethnicity.
The only difference is that no one cares in this case because we're women. Even most women have no idea that they deserve this respect because we're so used to not having it.
I'm angry and upset, but I don't hate anyone. It honestly hurts my heart more than anything else.
To be clear, my stance is wear whatever you want, present however you want, but don't claim to know what it is to be a woman. That's it.
P.S. In response to the comment about "acronym soup": We didn't come up with "TERF". That was your side.
It's meant to make us look hateful when we just want basic respect for our lived realities.