Lucy Mangan: if we get bogged down in the Terf war we'll never achieve anything

'My heart fills with despair when feminists and feminism convulse in another self-induced set of agonies'

Have you heard about the Terf war? No? OK then, listen up – I'll try to make this brief. Terf stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. They have been given this label by the trans community (or maybe just the radical trans community) because these actors in the feminist cause object to transsexual women (ie women who were born male) being either members or beneficiaries of the movement and, more concretely, to supporting the trans women's right to access female-only spaces, from lavatories to refuges to prisons. The Terfs are, obviously, opposed by the transsexual community – though whether the shared experience of femalehood of female-to-male transsexuals makes them as sympathetic to the other half of their community's anti-Terf feeling, I do not know. I can only handle so many subsets at once and I'm rapidly approaching my limit – and by fellow feminists who are either less radical, less prejudiced against people not born but made female, less fanatical in the search for ideological purity and/or simply less bothered.

Thus another bout of feminist infighting is born. Who's being too sensitive? Who's overthinking and who's not thinking enough? Are all oppressors and forms of oppression created equal? Can surgery make you switch sides? How much privilege do you have to check if the thing that usually brings privilege has brought you nothing but grief? Is someone saying they've always felt like a woman a compliment, an homage, a pandering to biological essentialism or a proof of it? And will you excuse me while I go and shoot myself in the head? Because, like – whatever, you know?

Whatever the details of the argument and whichever of the swirling multitudes of possible answers to each question you favour (and I have mine, which is that anyone who identifies as female, and especially those who have suffered as a result, should be welcomed into and protected by the fold) the point is: this fuss is all – if you'll pardon the gendered terminology – bollocks. This particular battle – philosophically fascinating though these questions are, and delightfully as they may satisfy various individuals' and factions' appetite for a ruck – does not need fighting. What are you – or rather we, I should say as a feminist who is, however briefly and lightly, touching upon the issue – doing dancing on the head of this pin when there are hundreds of infinitely more pressing issues to be addressed?

My heart fills with despair when feminists and feminism convulse in another self-induced set of agonies. This is women's besetting sin and reminds me of years of frustration in the school playground trying to play games with other girls, forever arguing about the rules and never starting a bloody game at all. Meanwhile, the boys got together, got on in both senses, and returned to the classroom fitter, stronger, ready for the rest of the day.

So congratulations to everyone involved in this latest skirmish. Regardless of politics, felt or ascribed gender roles, interior or exterior gender identifiers, you're all behaving – as the dinner ladies so correctly in all but the politically prefixed sense used to shout at the knotted, tear-stained cliques fibrillating with pointless fury around the edges of their domain – like utter, utter girls.

Contributor

Lucy Mangan

The GuardianTramp

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