How TERF Island took on America’s woke empire

Those of us who stood up to the imposition of woke on Britain were routinely smeared as being on the ‘wrong side of history’. But now the tide that laps this sceptered isle is turning. The Rude Awokening is afoot. All kinds of modish intersectionals are now claiming they never really believed in it. Up the Workers. Down the Wokers!

Still, there are some quislings who remain eager to sell out for a fistful of Yankee dollars. Not least Stonewall, the former gay-rights campaigners turned trans-activist ideologues. I was amazed to read in Pink News (so it must be true) that half of Stonewall’s staff will soon be cut, thanks to US president Donald Trump’s closure of USAID. Apparently, the poor US taxpayer coughed up half a million pounds to the UK charity over the past three years, via something called the Global Equality Fund.

Firstly, why did Stonewall even need so much US taxpayers’ cash? Stonewall had been coining it for years, touting consultancy services on workplace ‘inclusion’ to institutions both private and public that have more money than sense. But its annual report for 2023-24 shows a deficit of more than £800,000, which it puts down to ‘challenging operating conditions’. According to a BBC report: ‘The charity also said that its work in eastern Europe is “a good example of the type of project that may cease if funding isn’t replaced”. Stonewall’s projects in eastern Europe help communities and law-enforcement agencies to respond to anti-LGBTQ+ violence and provide “vital services to victims”.’

As many of Stonewall’s critics have been saying for years, ‘Shouldn’t you be working in those countries where people still get arrested / killed for being gay, instead of wasting money on all this trans stuff at home?’. The fact that Stonewall has brought up those eastern European projects in response to its funding being threatened feels almost like a tacit admission that there was some truth in that argument. (I’d be interested to see how big a percentage of their money actually goes to those overseas projects, by the way.)

It’s galling to finally have confirmation that the UK has officially arrived at third-world status by having been the recipient of Uncle Sam’s aid largesse. But it’s also thrilling to see how the whole identity-politics grift is ending. The wokers now claim that they were only joking the whole time – a claim that might hold more water if every last one of them wasn’t literally humourless.

Free-thinking friends and comrades, we all did our bit in this great battle, in which the pen turned out to be mightier than the penis attached to a man called Amanda. But specifically, in the war against Stonewall, it was the women of TERF Island who faced down mighty America’s woke imperialism, even before Trump pulled the trans activists’ funding.

The TERF acronym — which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist — was apparently coined by ‘trans-inclusive’ blogger Viv Smythe in 2008. But we plucky Brit fillies soon put a seditious spin on it. As Wikipedia sniffs: ‘Some commentators refer to the United Kingdom, often in a jocular or droll fashion, as “TERF Island”. The name references the perception that gender-critical activism and anti-trans rhetoric are particularly culturally prominent in the United Kingdom compared with the United States or other locations.’

This isn’t, I’d venture, because British women are meaner than females of other nations. It’s because the British have more of a sense of humour than the people of many other nations – a cliché, but true. In a country that grows up with the pantomime-dame / drag-queen tradition, we are going to point and laugh when we see a man dressed as a woman – it’s inherently comical, like a pantomime horse, only marginally less convincing. Americans don’t have these traditions. Panto is rare, and you’d never have had a drag entertainer like Danny La Rue on 1960s mainstream television in the US. When Ru Paul got all over drag, it was already politicised and ‘queered’.

You have to feel for young American liberal women – the demographic most pressurised to accept the ‘transwomen are women’ lie. This must have a disastrous result on one’s self-respect when repeated day after day, year in year out. In contrast, the adoption of the cheery TERF Island motif gives Britain’s rebellious young women something to aspire to. As the Famous Artist Birdy Rose pointed out on one of her t-shirts: ‘TERF is the new punk’.

In light of this, the question we should be asking isn’t ‘Why do women become TERFs?’ (with the trans lobby attempting to reframe being a rebellious woman as a pathology), but ‘Why do women become Transmaids?’. A Transmaid is a woman who acts in a servile manner towards men, like a handmaid, but only if that man wears a frock. Some are veteran leftist feminists who cling to Labour like a long-term abusive relationship. Some were unpopular with boys at school and can’t get out of the habit of seeking male approval. Some are pick-me princesses. It takes all sorts to make a bag of liquorice, but it was them, not us TERFs, who were the wrong ’uns – the flinching cowards and sneering traitors – all along. ‘Wrong side of history’ – my imperial-measures foot!

The wiliest young women on the left will reject woke now that they have grasped that it has lost (or had never really won over) the people – precisely because of issues like gender woo-woo. But we will remember how they fell for it, and we have the receipts, just as we will remember the glorious contribution the brave women of Blighty made to the war on woke.

The squealing of the trans lobby about the rolling back of the almighty dollar has added greatly to the gaiety of nations. But the specific part played by ceaseless TERF guerrilla action against the formerly crushing-all-before-it Stonewall is a particular reason to be cheerful. In a world where Britain is a shadow of its former self, a country the younger generations are increasingly reluctant to fight for, at last we have a victory we can be proud of against the might of the American woke empire – and it was TERF Island wot won it.

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published by Academica Press.