Gender-critical feminism
Gender-critical feminism, known to its opponents as trans-exclusionary radical feminism, TERF ideology or TERFism, is an ideology or movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology": the concept of gender identity and transgender rights, especially gender self-determination. Gender critical feminists believe that sex is biological and immutable, while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, is inherently oppressive. They reject the concept of transgender identities. These views have been described as transphobic by feminist and scholarly critics, and are opposed by many feminist and LGBT rights organizations. Some proponents have been accused of using tactics such as harassment by some trans people and their allies. While originally a fringe movement within feminism in the United States, gender-critical views have achieved a degree of prominence in the United Kingdom, where they have been at the centre of a number of high-profile controversies. The Council of Europe has condemned gender-critical ideology, among other ideologies, and linked it to "virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people" in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and other countries. In several countries, the gender-critical movement has been linked to the promotion of conspiracy theories and to the anti-gender movement, and in some countries, gender-critical groups have formed alliances with right-wing, far-right, and anti-feminist organisations. Terminology

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 claims 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." 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. Woman was named word of the year in 2022 by dictionary.com, which stated the decision "reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation". Trans-exclusionary radical feminism 

Trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist blogger Viv Smythe has been credited with popularizing the term "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" in 2008 as an online shorthand. It was used to describe a minority of feminists who espouse sentiments that other feminists consider transphobic, including the rejection of the viewpredominant in feminist organizations that trans women are women, opposition to transgender rights, and the exclusion of trans women in women's spaces and organizations. Smythe has also been credited with having coined the acronym TERF, due to a blog post she wrote reacting to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's policy of denying admittance to trans women. Though it was created as a deliberately neutral descriptor, TERF is now typically considered derogatory. History

Early history (before 1990) 
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. Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, published in 1979, purported to examine 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." Several authors have since characterized this work as transphobic and constituting hate speech, as well as lacking any serious intellectual basis. In her own 1987 book Gyn/Ecology, Mary Daly, who had served as Raymond's thesis supervisor, argued that as sex reassignment surgery cannot reproduce female chromosomes or a female life history, it could "not produce women". Sheila Jeffreys and Germaine Greer have made similar remarks. In a response to related remarks by Elizabeth Grosz, philosopher Eva Hayward characterized this type of view as telling trans people who have had sex reassignment surgery: "Don't exist." Around the world

United Kingdom 

Writer Julie Bindel started writing pieces for The Guardian, which were characterized in 2021 by the writer V.S. Wells as transphobic, in 2003. Sheila Jeffreys wrote an op-ed in The Guardian in 2012 defending her opposition to "transgenderism". 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." 2019 also saw the preliminary hearings of Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development, in which tax expert and researcher Maya Forstater made a claim that she had been discriminated against by her employer for her gender-critical beliefs. In June 2021 Maya Forstater, who lost her job with the Centre for Global Development, won an appeal against the original employment tribunal decision. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that gender-critical beliefs, such as the view that sex is fixed and should not be conflated with gender identity, did qualify for protection under the Equality Act 2010 (Equality Act). This means that "gender critical" beliefs are protected "philosophical beliefs" for equality law purposes. In June 2023 Forstater was awarded more than £100,000 in compensation by an employment tribunal. A 2020 paper in SAGE Open said that "the case against trans inclusion in the United Kingdom has been presented primarily through social media and blog-type or journalistic online platforms lacking the traditional prepublication checks of academic peer review". Some public figures such as Graham Linehan and J.K. Rowling have often been featured in social media gender-critical rhetoric. The internet forum Mumsnet has also been a prominent hub of online gender-critical discourse. Gender-critical views are common in the British media. The British press frequently publishes articles critical of trans people and trans issues. In 2018, the US version of The Guardian published an editorial condemning an editorial in the UK version of The Guardian for transphobia, because it portrayed trans rights as opposed to the rights of cis women. Drawing on theory of radicalization, Craig McLean argues that discourse on transgender-related issues in the UK has been radicalized in response to the activities of what he terms the anti-transgender movement that pushes "a radical agenda to deny the basic rights of trans people (...) under the cover of 'free speech.'" In Resolution 2417 (2022), the Council of Europe condemned "the highly prejudicial anti-gender, gender-critical and anti-trans narratives which reduce the fight for the equality of LGBTI people to what these movements deliberately mischaracterise as 'gender ideology' or 'LGBTI ideology'. Such narratives deny the very existence of LGBTI people, dehumanise them, and often falsely portray their rights as being in conflict with women's and children's rights, or societal and family values in general. All of these are deeply damaging to LGBTI people, while also harming women's and children's rights and social cohesion." The resolution further deplored "the extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people that have been occurring for several years in, among other countries, Hungary, Poland, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom." United States 
Although gender-critical feminism originated in the United States in the 1970s, it has largely fallen out of favor among American feminists. Some trans-exclusionary radical-feminist organizations do remain, however, such as WoLF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist organization that operates mainly within the United States. Abigail Shrier, an American gender-critical feminist, wrote the book Irreversible Damage. The Trans Safety Network states that the Women's Human Rights Campaign in the United States maintains close links to the right, noting that Kara Dansky is a member of both WHRC, WoLF and DGR, and a regular guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight. South Korea 
In 2016, the radical feminist online community Womad split from the larger radical feminist online community Megalia after Megalia issued a ban on the use of certain explicit slurs against gay men and transgender people. This change in policy led to the migration of anti-LGBT members. WOMAD has caused controversy due to extreme online trolling such as postings that boast animal abuse and show extreme hatred towards transgender people; for this reason, WOMAD has been called "Korean-style TERFs". Scholarly analysis 

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." Claire Thurlow notes that "the initial failure of TERF-related tropes to garner public support quickly influenced the terms of 'debate', with the rhetoric employed noticeably changed. Leaving aside that the term 'gender critical feminism' is tautology, its adoption represented the beginnings of a pivot by trans-exclusionary feminists towards language which obscures their trans-exclusionary focus. Alongside a shift from TERF to gender critical, 'anti-trans' became 'pro-women' and 'trans-exclusion' became the protection of 'sex-based rights'. These rather innocuous-sounding terms have been transformed into the language of division; exemplifying dog-whistle politics whereby the phrases act as a coded message of anti-transness to those initiated, while appearing 'reasonable' to the wider population." Gender studies scholars Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur have noted that "TERFism is typically described as an originally fringe group of Anglophone—largely American, British, and Australian—1970s cultural feminism that has grown exponentially over the past decade partially due to heightened media exposure. In the past decade or so, the shorthand "TERF" has traveled globally through online spaces." 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." Relationship with the anti-gender movement

Bassi and LaFleur note 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 Thurlow noted 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." Views

Sex-based rights 

Gender critical feminists advocate for 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.'" 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. Human rights scholar Sandra Duffy described the concept of "sex-based rights" as "a fiction with the pretense of legality," noting that "international human rights law is not static or originalist." Catharine A. MacKinnon noted that "the recognition [that discrimination against trans people is discrimination on the basis of sex, that is gender, the social meaning of sex] does not, contrary to allegations of anti-trans self-identified feminists, endanger women or feminism, including what some in this group call 'women's sex-based rights.' To begin with, women—in the United States anyway—do not have 'sex-based rights' in the affirmative sense some in this group seem to think." The gender-critical movement has also been critical of attempts to ban non-affirming transgender therapy. Gender-segregated spaces 
In 1996, Germaine Greer (at the time a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge) unsuccessfully opposed the appointment to a fellowship of her transgender colleague Rachael Padman. Greer argued that because Padman had been assigned male at birth, she should not be admitted to Newnham, a women's college. Greer later resigned from Newnham. A 2004 opinion piece by British radical feminist Julie Bindel titled "Gender Benders, beware" printed in The Guardian caused the paper to receive two hundred letters of complaint from transgender people, doctors, therapists, academics and others. The editorial expressed her anger at Kimberly Nixon and her views on transgender people. Transgender activist group Press for Change cite this article as an example of 'discriminatory writing' about transgender people in the press. Complaints focused on the title, "Gender benders, beware", the cartoon accompanying the piece, and the disparaging tone, such as "Think about a world inhabited just by transsexuals. It would look like the set of Grease" and "I don't have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s [jeans] does not make you a man." Socialisation and gender nonconformity 

Radical 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. Intersex women
Radical feminist Germaine Greer called women with XY AIS "men" and "incomplete males" in her 1999 book The Whole Woman. Iain Morland responded that "in trying to criticize the social construction of femaleness and intersex, Greer disenfranchised precisely those people who live at the intersection of the two categories." Most intersex organizations subscribe to a mixed sociological perspective of sex and gender, and as trans legislation and subjects overlaps heavily with intersex legislation, intersex people are often involved in trans activism. Intersex women who display a mixed sexual phenotype often face attacks similar to trans people. Legal cases
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. The Alliance believes that the specifics of the Equality Act 2010 have been "misrepresented" by some organisations. 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." Controversies

Political alliances with conservatives and the far right 

Some trans-exclusionary radical feminists have allied with conservative or far-right groups and politicians who oppose legislation that would expand transgender rights in the United States. According to der Freitag, "TERF positions are now mostly heard from conservatives and right-wing extremists." 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. The gender-critical or TERF movement has been linked to the promotion of conspiracy theories. 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 coverage of the Family Research Council for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Hélène Barthélemy wrote in 2017 that American Christian right groups were trying to "separate the T from LGB", including by casting transgender rights as antagonistic to feminism or to lesbian or gay people. She noted this trend seemed to be "part of a larger strategy, meant to weaken transgender rights advocates by attempting to separate them from their allies, feminists and LGBT rights advocates". In January 2019, The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, hosted a panel of self-described radical feminists opposed to the US Equality Act. Heron Greenesmith of Political Research Associates, an American liberal think tank, has said that the latest iteration of collaboration between conservatives and anti-transgender feminists is in part a reaction to the trans community's "incredible gains" in civil rights and visibility, and that anti-trans feminists and conservatives capitalize on a "scarcity mindset rhetoric" whereby civil rights are portrayed as a limited commodity and must be prioritized to cisgender women over other groups. Greenesmith compared this rhetoric to the right-wing tactic of prioritizing the rights of citizens over non-citizens and white people over people of colour. Bev Jackson, one of the founders of the LGB Alliance, has argued in contrast that "working with The Heritage Foundation is sometimes the only possible course of action" since "the leftwing silence on gender in the US is even worse than in the UK." 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." Academic freedom 
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. In Canada, conflicts have erupted over these issues in public libraries in Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver. Similar 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.”

Conflicts with other feminist and pro-equality groups 
In February 2020, 28 feminist and LGBT groups in France co-signed a declaration titled Toutes des femmes denouncing trans-exclusionary feminism, saying that "questions disguised as 'legitimate concerns' quickly give way to more violent attacks" and that "it is a confusionist and conspiratorial ideological movement using the cover of feminism to disrupt real feminist fights. The declaration has since also been signed by over 100 additional feminist, LGBT, and progressive groups. In May 2021, over 110 women's and human rights organisations in Canada signed a statement stating that they "vehemently reject the dangerous and bigoted rhetoric and ideology espoused by Trans Exclusionary Radical 'Feminists' (TERFs)", and saying that "trans people are a driving force in our feminist movements and make incredible contributions across all facets of our society." Judith Butler said in 2020 that trans-exclusionary radical feminism is "a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen." In 2021, the Council of Europe Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination published a report titled Combating rising hate against LGBTI people in Europe, which condemned "the highly prejudicial anti-gender, gender-critical and anti-trans narratives which reduce the fight for the equality of LGBTI people to what these movements deliberately mischaracterise as 'gender ideology' or 'LGBTI ideology'" and which said there was "a direct link between heteronormativity and heterosexism, on the one hand, and the growing anti-gender and gender-critical movements." The report formed the basis of Resolution 2417, adopted in January 2022, in which the Council of Europe explicitly condemned gender-critical ideology. In late-January 2018, over 1000 Irish feminists, including several groups such as the University College Dublin Centre of Gender, Feminisms & Sexualities, signed an open letter condemning a planned meeting in Ireland on UK Gender Recognition Act reforms organised by a British group opposing the reforms. The letter stated that "Trans people and particularly trans women are an inextricable part of our feminist community" and accused the British group of colonialism. Allegations of harassment of trans people 
Gender critical feminists have been accused of harassing trans people and their allies on social media and, in one instance, in real life. On social media, these tactics allegedly include doxxing of trans individuals as well as threats. According to The Atlantic, trans-exclusionary feminists have harassed trans women over social media, calling them names such as "predators" and "pedophiles" and threatening violence to "resist" them. In 2023, a woman was filmed declaring "I am a TERF" and allegedly verbally assaulting a trans woman at a Cheesecake Factory with insults and threats of violence. Allegations of misinformation tactics 
T.J. Billard in article on "TERF strategies" has stated that "misinformation—or, more specifically, disinformation—about trans topics has become the defining feature of public discourse on transgender rights." Cilia Williams et al. noted in an article on gender critical feminist discourse in Spain that "anti-trans  narratives  online [...] use  attacks,  misinformation,  and  self-defence  as  a  communication  strategy,  rather  than  debate  or  dialogue." Alyosxa Tudor has written that "strategic disinformation as [an] accelerator" has been used to push forward "hateful and anti-democratic agendas." These accusations have been made in an environment where disinformation on social media has become a significant area of concern for many scholars in political science, according to a literature review. See also

References

Further reading
TERF Wars: Feminism and the fight for transgender futures, special issue of The Sociological Review
Trans-Exclusionary Feminisms and the Global New Right, special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly

Anti-gender movement
Discrimination against transgender people
Feminism and transgender
LGBT-related controversies
Radical feminism
Transphobia