Word.ws English Dictionary

TERFism

TERFism noun: the beliefs on trans people held by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).

Noun

TERFism (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, usually) The beliefs on trans people held by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
    • Contemporary TERFism, or trans exclusive radical feminism, extends such arguments to deny the validity of transgender identities.2018, Aniruddha Dutta, “Allegories of Gender: Transgender Autology versus Transracialism”, in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, volume 39, number 2, page 90
    • The validation always comes after the lifelong internalization of transphobic messages we see constantly promulgated in the mainstream media, the numbing regularity of TERFism being splashed across op-ed pages and uttered by prominent feminists, […]2019, Rachel Anne Williams, Transgressive: A Trans Woman on Gender, Feminism, and Politics, page 239

Origin of TERFism

From TERF + -ism.

Questions about TERFism

What does TERFism mean?
TERFism means the beliefs on trans people held by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
What part of speech is TERFism?
TERFism is a noun.

Words near TERFism in the dictionary

  1. terfez
  2. terfeziaceous
  3. terfier
  4. terfiest
  5. terfinadine
  6. TERFism
  7. terflavin
  8. terflavoxate
  9. terfluorene
  10. terfluorenes
  11. terfs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: TERFism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “TERFism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/terfism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.