My first blooding in the Terf Wars

When I moved to Glasgow 12 years ago, I joined two groups which were to have a profound effect on

my political outlook. And set me on a course that culminated recently in 6 solid months of stress, 

my first intimate experience of a political split and my first proper blooding in the Terf wars.  

The first was a very small, trans inclusive feminist group. It was in this group that I coined the ridiculous 

phrase "are now or have been a woman" in an attempt to find a form of words which would allow us to 

keep a very nice young woman who identified as non binary and kick out two sexist blokes who err…

also identified as non binary. 

If you know anything about contemporary trans politics you will instantly see that this tack was offensive 

to all parties but, hey, my heart was in the right place. I was trying to be inclusive. 

The two non binary blokes…..I later talked to a member of the group about them in private. She felt that

at least one of them was simply "trolling" us. But explained that there was nothing we could do about 

this. Because it would be transphobic to openly question their identity. I realised that this group had 

painted itself into an ideological corner it couldn't get out of. 

It was also in this group that I witnessed (from the inside) the wrecking tactics that trans inclusive

 feminists could marshal against other feminist groups. A previously defunct feminist group was 

reforming and my comrades effectively poisoned the well by very agressively demanding that it should 

be trans inclusive before the first meeting had even been held. The pleas of these feminists, that they 

couldn't possibly make such a decision before the first meeting had even been held, fell on deaf ears. 

I watched with grim fascination as the women I worked alongside discussed how to escalate from

 "concern trolling" to "calling out". It was practised and systematic. 

Behind the scenes I called for calm and asked everyone to hold fire until I could at least speak to these 

women in person. No-one was interested. 

 

By that point I knew that I couldn't agree with this group's politics or their methods. But I also knew that I 

couldn't say so openly without an ugly backlash. So I extracted myself ever so carefully from that circle

 and joined an amazing online discussion group where  heavyweight thinkers from radical feminism and 

trans studies were discussing their ideas together, not calling each other out or trying to ruin each 

other's lives. I felt like I'd finally found the room where the grown ups were talking. I did a lot of listening 

and asked a lot of questions and came out on the radical feminist side of things after a lot of 

consideration. 

 

The other group was Wyndford Residents Union. At the time I joined it was a Registered Residents 

Association. You can see in this post how proud I was when we affiliated it to Living Rent, 

a national tenants union and project of the far left.

Living Rent is not my first rodeo and I was, of course, aware that lefties aren’t always the 

best at mucking in with working class people. For an excellent explanation of this phenomenon I 

recommend Despised by Paul Embery

 

I was also aware, by that point, that I was harbouring views on gender that would make me persona non 

grata in many left wing circles. 

 

For example: I think that cis gendered women have the right to own spaces and our own political 

organisation. I also think that public policy affecting women should be based on the material fact of 

people’s sex and not the unquanifable soup of people’s internal sense of identity.

Nonetheless I thought Living Rent was at the sensible end of things and that a broad based union ought

to hold space for a variety of views. 

 

And so I existed in the Wyndford Residents Union, a largely working class residents association tucked

inside of a largely middle class far left project. Even as I watched many many women with my views

 ‘cancelled’ by the wider left. And even as I was aware that many of my middle class comrades 

considered me something akin to a fascist. 

 

My husband, Nick, got a job with Living Rent and they did the typical tiny-lefty-org thing of working him 

for 80 hours a week and paying him for about 20 of them. Which neither of us minded since we were 

both so bought into the project. 

Then some people in Living Rent noticed that Nick was expressing gender critical views on his personal 

Facebook and made a complaint to his bosses in Living Rent. Actually they made a lot of complaints.
several a week at one point.  There was an internal investigation which decided to take no action.

 

At this point the Trans Rights Activists within Living Rent threw something of a tantrum that they 

hadn't managed to get someone sacked on demand and escalated to attacking not just Nick, but anyone

associated with him. Largely women.

There were a number of social media threads on a Living Rent Facebook page (supposedly dedicated to 

housing advice) Living Rent internal slack channel and the personal Facebook page of a character 

named Brian Mac Uidhir. (Who none of us had even met!) The post is still up and still public so you can

see the madness for yourself. Albeit with some of the worst comments now removed by facebook.

People named as terfs on the Brian thread included me, my husband, two other female members of the 

Wyndford branch (including one who had simply been photographed standing next to Nick) a recent 

recruit to the Living Rent National Committee who had said that sex based rights were important and a 

couple of others who had done nothing more than appeal for calm.

Photos of people were gleaned from the Wyndford branch's Facebook page and were shared on this 

thread. Including one identifying someone's house. People were told they should "prove" themselves and

avoid further harassment by denouncing us and cutting ties. As you may imagine, the language used 

was extremely hostile and misogynistic. 

One of the people commenting on the Brian thread was (at that point) acting secretary of the Wyndford
branch. We held a committee meeting and removed him with a vote of no confidence for participating in 

bullying. 

Living Rent as an organisation lost their minds over this. They dissolved the Wyndford Branch and 

suspended the committee from our duties. We found out they were having secret chats with the 

Trans Rights Activists and planning to build a new branch around them.

Around this time the management of Living Rent also convinced itself that any attempt at online 

moderation was a form of "tone policing" and damaging to trans members. From that point onwards 

online harassment of women went completely unchecked. 

If anyone who has been accused of being a 'Terf' commented about anything  on any Living Rent  

platform they were mercilessly attacked. Moderators who tried to stop it were  immediately removed. 

I lost track of exactly what was being said about me because there were simply not enough hours in the 

day. 

Previous to this I had been a respected member of Living Rent. I had been on the board of directors. 

I had written some of the policies that should have prevented this shit storm from happening. 

I remember a part about ‘robust debate’ being encouraged so long as everyone behaved in a ‘comradely 

manner’. Everyone had agreed with this at the time.  

Nick had to resign because every staff check now consisted of a new charge of gross misconduct for 

something ridiculous. Branch meetings in other parts of the country featured compulsory discussions 

about "transphobia in living rent" and sought views on how to combat it. 

In all this I can't recall any of us EVER having a single negative interaction with a trans person. 

Except perhaps for a single facebook discussion about Judith Butler when one of us got called 

‘medieval’ and ‘a dinosaur’. 

Quite apart from our own hurt feelings in this, which have been considerable, such left wing McCarthyism is horrifically destructive to mass organisation. 

In the Wyndford we are attempting to recruit and organise everyone. This includes some lefties. Glasgow is a lefty place. It also includes orange lodge members, some fairly socially conservative Catholics, members of black majority churches with their own ‘biblical’ views on gender and sex. 

 

Inevitably it also includes some people who might be casually sexist or racist or transphobic. You need to challenge that sort of thing. We do challenge it. 

You can insist that everyone treat each other with respect. But you can’t insist that everyone sign up to a shared ideology. That’s not a union or a residents association. That’s a political sect. Or a cult.

If your criteria for ‘cancelling’ someone from their own residents association on their own scheme is that they respectfully disagreed with you on a facebook thread about Judith Butler then you have a lot to learn about the practicalities of class struggle. 

What Living Rent has learned, in fact, is that you can't easily cancel someone from their own community where they live and have friends. And where they have been building a residents association for over a decade.

The whole time the Living Rent drama was going on, we were putting together a word of mouth AGM to disaffiliate the Wyndford Residents Union from Living Rent.

The AGM report noted that 

‘Increasingly the organisation became focused on a very extreme form of political correctness, but refused to do anything when women in our branch were targeted for online harassment.’ 

A sentence that is magnificent in its brevity. A little later Living Rent quietly dropped any further attempts to organise on the Wyndford and decided to focus on other things. Good riddance.

This must all seem very parochial. The Wyndford is not a large place and we are not a big organisation. 

Nonetheless we are one of the few examples I know, where a left wing organisation standing up to TRA

bullies and surviving intact. And I’m very proud of that.