TERFs have had their anti-trans ‘victory’ – now they’re after migrants

‘We’ve won the battle against trans ideology. Now, it’s essential that the gender critical community speaks up about the dangers of mass immigration for women’.

Reading a tweet by the founder of a new campaign group the Women’s Safety Initiative on X, I sighed at the blatant bigotry as they railed against those from ‘third world’ countries.

For years, trans activists have been warning us that taking away their rights is just the start – and that transphobes would quickly move on to attack immigrants, the rights of other LGBT+ people, and women’s bodily autonomy.

And now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of women is based on biological sex, those who want to hide their apparent bigotry behind the guise of ‘women’s rights’ can now move on to another discriminated identity.

Jess Gill from the Women’s Safety Initiative tweeted: ‘Women and girls are being raped and harassed across the country’. Her tweet continued, ‘if you truly care about women’s safety, you need to speak out against this’.

But what Gill, as her X feed proves, wants people to ‘speak out’ against, is her own obsession with ‘mass immigration’, which she appears to blame for all of society’s ills.

This proves to me that this fight was never about protecting women – it seems that ‘gender critical’ movements and trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), in pivoting to anti-immigrant sentiment immediately after the Supreme Court decision, are really here to promote inequality, a racial hierarchy and sustain patriarchal systems by curtailing the rights of others.

Across the world, we are seeing the rise of a far-right movement to abolish diversity – and whether they admit it or not, gender critical feminists appear to be part of that.

Just this week, J.K. Rowling – a proud figurehead for the gender critical movement – praised Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch for speaking up on the Supreme Court ruling and agreeing with its result.

When you start agreeing with a very right wing Tory – one who has once said that wanting menopause leave is left-wing – there needs to be a moment you stop and realise something very wrong has happened. You are no longer siding with women’s rights, surely that’s obvious.

On top of that, the pipeline from transphobic to racist is very real as proven by Jess Gill’s initial X post.

The launch for Women’s Safety UK was accompanied by messaging of ‘secure borders = safer women’, ‘mass immigration = mass risk for women’ and ‘1 in 4 sex crimes are committed by foreign nationals’.

The latter has many asking, ‘doesn’t that mean 3 in 4 sex crimes are committed by British nationals?’. Because the logical answer when looking at those stats is to see the sex crimes against women as the issue, not the nationality of the person behind the crime.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think they should be a trans ally because they may be discriminated against next – you should be a trans ally because you care about other people and their human rights – I simply want to reveal what I have deemed as the true nature of these people.

And this isn’t some new theory I’ve plucked out of the air.

Transphobia has always come hand in hand with racism – it’s part of the white supremacist playbook.

When we look at the history of transphobia, its foundations lay in white supremacy and colonialism.

Before colonisation, many Indigenous communities lived outside of strict gender binaries, but after colonisation, they had to adhere to new laws – and if not, they were criminalised.

They were told to look, act and love within European gender and sexual binaries – of male and female – otherwise they would be imprisoned, beaten or killed.

Now, in the UK we’re at a stage where the Supreme Court decides who a woman is, without speaking to a single trans person.

It feels totalitarian. It lacks democracy. It smacks of facism.

And while women have been saying for years that the biggest threat to their safety is men, it doesn’t get the energy this Supreme Court has given to less than 1% of the population.

And now, other minorities are the target.

They say women’s safety is the concern, but it doesn’t feel like it.

We need to stop fooling ourselves into thinking this is about women’s rights. Because I don’t feel safe with a woman who wants to deport immigrants or someone who welcomes last week’s Supreme Court decision.

I feel safe with my trans sisters, who accept me for who I am. I have never been made to feel othered or unwelcome by trans people, but I always will with bigots.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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