TERFS Inadvertently Insulting Suffragists

Oh, the things you learn on the Dumpster Fire Formerly Known as Twitter.

A counted cross-stitch design in suffragist colors with the words “Same Shit, Different Century.” Thank you, Rayna Fahey, author of Really Cross Stitch: For When You Just Want to Stab Something a Lot (Herbert Press, London, 2017). I replaced the green with yellow for American suffrage colors.

British TERFs (trans-exclusive “radical feminists”) have coopted the British suffragist flag colors (green, white, and purple — in contrast with the yellow, white, and purple of U. S. suffrage). They use it on their DFFKAT profile.

If these transphobes proudly think they’re a direct line from radical suffragists, they’re fooling themselves. They aren’t fooling anyone who isn’t a transphobe. They’re not radical feminists, a phrase that describes people who wish to dismantle patriarchy. Being a gender-essentialist — clinging to the gender binary and stereotypical gender roles — is the opposite of radical and/or feminist, obviously. They’re just transphobic assholes.

The British suffrage flag represented freedom and voting rights. It didn’t represent taking rights away from people transgender people. It represented acquiring rights and justice, not violating or taking away rights and justice. It did not represent oppressing, hating, and killing transgender people. It’s disgusting that these willfully ignorant bigots have ruined the British suffragist flag.

Places I was published recently:

My poem “Bonsai Tree” in the webzine Grim & Gilded, September 2022 issue.