After last week’s U.K. Supreme Court ruling that reduced the legal definition of “woman” to “biological sex,” footage of a group of women celebrating the decision with champagne spread virally across the media. These women are known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs. 

In response, thousands of transgender people and their allies — including parents, siblings, and pro-trans celebrities — flooded the streets of London, Sheffield, Manchester, Cardiff, and other cities across the U.K. on April 19, to protest the erosion of trans rights. The fight between TERFs and trans* people have become more visible to those outside of the British LGBTQ+ community.

But this isn’t just about the U.K. The problem has gone global. For me, as an openly trans person who has lived in four different countries, it feels deeply personal.

For years, British TERFs have been spreading misinformation about gender around the globe, collaborating with far-right politicians and inspiring anti-trans violence.

At a pro-trans protest I attended in Sheffield, one of the speakers, Sofia Alatorre, a trans woman from Mexico now living in the U.K., dedicated her speech to the ways British TERFs, with their powerful movement supported by celebrities, such as “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling, are influencing people in South America.

“When I go to Mexico now, I don’t just hear people talking about transsexuals as degenerates anymore. Instead I hear about what bathroom we should use, or whether we belong in sports,” Sofia told the Washington Blade. “These are not lines that come from Mexico. They are finely crafted narratives designed to drive a wedge by weaponizing ‘common sense’ gut reactions to complicated subjects. Because without these, they’d have to face the uncomplicated reality: We are just people trying to live our lives happily. In the U.K., the entire media infrastructure is sympathetic with ‘gender critical’ TERF ideology to the point that sympathy blurs into outright support. With these lines finding footing in the Global South, it seems clear that the U.K. has become an exporter of transphobia.”

Unfortunately, TERFs even showed up at a trans event, attempting to argue with the speakers. 

One of the trans* organizers of the Sheffield demonstration, who preferred to remain anonymous, expressed their love for the trans* community and trans* people. They emphasized that they are not expressing hatred toward TERFs — they simply want them to reconsider their position.

“If you’re a TERF and reading this, we don’t hate you,” they said. “We don’t hate you. There is nothing I hold in my heart but deep pity for you. You do not know the community of love that we have as transsexuals, and you only know your community of hatred. If you are tired of feeling nothing but hate, come and talk to us, we’re nice, I promise. This protest is a rallying cry that we can’t lose, that we are all here for each other, and that we can do whatever the f*ck we want when we work together. We may be out here today in rage, but what keeps us alive is love.”

But it doesn’t seem like TERFs are ready to show love toward trans people — or to see trans women as their sisters. At our local protest in Sheffield, they were so agitated, jumping toward speakers and trying to engage with them, that the police had to intervene and remove them to prevent a fight. It reminded me of TERFs’ behavior I encountered in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Russian-language online spaces.

Unfortunately, it’s not just South America that has been influenced by UK TERFs. The country I currently live in is known within European and U.S. queer communities as “TERF Island.”

Some trans Americans even avoid traveling to the U.K., afraid of the influence that Rowling holds over millions due to her wealth and cultural impact.

In Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries, so-called “radical feminism” is the most prominent feminist movement. Radical feminism, which emerged in the 1960s, is based on the belief that patriarchy is the root of all other forms of oppression.

In modern Eastern Europe, this has led to a situation where many feminists fail to acknowledge racism, ableism, and transphobia — excluding everyone except cisgender people, Slavic, atheist, and able-bodied people from their movement. Historically, radical feminists have not focused much on the trans* community, but with the rise of trans* activism in the 2000s, many became fixated on targeting trans people.

Many of my Russian-speaking trans friends have been badly bullied by local TERFs. Some even experienced suicidal thoughts and severe anxiety due to online harassment from them. And these TERFs weren’t developing their ideology locally — they were importing it. The anti-man rhetoric was inherited from American prominent radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Ti-Grace Atkinson, while the transphobic elements were “exported” to Eastern Europe, primarily from the U.K. and specifically Scotland.

Even before Rowling, there was Magdalen Berns, a Scottish TERF YouTuber who was extremely popular among Russian girls and women. It was Berns who helped bring Rowling into anti-trans activism.

I spoke with Sophie Molly, a Scottish trans activist and politician who ran as an Independent MP candidate in the 2024 U.K. general election for the Aberdeen South constituency. 

TERFs ruthlessly harassed her during her campaign.

“Transphobia is institutionalized in the UK. It is systemic and it’s getting worse with each passing day” she told me. “Local TERF have a slew of legal professionals on their team too. Like Sarah Phillimore and Joanne Cherry. TERFs have been continually lobbying the government to oppress trans and gender non-conforming people. Dragging their rights and freedoms through the courts. All under the pretense of protecting the rights of women. In reality these conservative groups are backed and funded by billionaires. Billionaires that want to remove trans people from public life, due a personal prejudice they hold. The majority of TERFs are wealthy and privileged white women. Most of them are not LGBTQIA+. They have obscene amounts of money to spend on persecuting a tiny minority. Trans women are women — no matter what the U.K. Supreme Court dictates.”

But another problem of TERFs is that they are policing women as well. Even the Supreme Court decision targeted women.

“The [Supreme Court] decision is an attack on the rights of both trans people and women,” Sophie said. “It reduces women to their anatomy, which is extremely regressive and misogynistic in my opinion”

Women for decades have fought to ensure their lives wouldn’t be defined by the sexual organs they were born with. TERFs are now doing exactly that — attempting to reduce womanhood to biology, while also dictating how women should behave, all in the name of “sisterhood.”

Modern British TERFs have received support from figures like musician, far-right influencer, and convicted murderer Varg Vikernes, as well as ultra-conservative organizations such as the Russian Orthodox Church, an institution notorious not only for justifying the war in Ukraine with homophobic rhetoric but also for its long history of opposing women’s rights. This kind of “feminism” is a global threat, not only to trans* people but also to girls and women everywhere.

Editor’s note: The author uses trans* in order to be inclusive of nonbinary and gender queer people.

With his recent announcement his PAC will challenge incumbent Democrats with primaries, David Hogg came off as a self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, young man. That is sad. This is difficult for me to write as I admire him, and what he has done with his life. However, his recent actions have me, and others, looking at him through a different lens. 

I am a strong supporter of gun control. I proudly participated in the massive rally for gun control in D.C. after the horrendous shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a rally David helped organize and spoke at so eloquently. I had the opportunity to chat with him recently when he spoke at the Women’s Democratic Club in D.C. I wrote how impressive he was that evening. Not only do I share his views on gun control, but agree with him we need more young people actively involved in the political system, and holding office; from school boards, to congress. I wrote a Washington Blade column in 2018 calling for term limits, and mandatory retirement at 80 for both the Supreme Court and Congress. 

So I was as surprised as others when I heard David announce he is going to use his PAC, ‘Leaders We Deserve,’ which he began in 2023, to run primaries against incumbent Democrats in 2026 who he thinks aren’t doing what he wants. What was shocking about this was he was doing it as an officer, a vice president, of the Democratic National Committee. This was the office he just won. There are two reasons this is so wrong. First is the DNC should not be involved in primaries. Second is the officers of the DNC should be raising money for the DNC, not for themselves, and their own interests. 

I can only assume David had this all planned before he ran for that office, which makes this so self-indulgent, and arrogant. The question needs to be asked: Exactly what will this PAC do and what are the criteria for the candidates it will support and those they decide to challenge? David says he wants young people to run, but then says he decided his PAC wouldn’t support anyone challenging Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), both over 80. So, that leads me to ask who will make the decisions as to which incumbents to challenge and which young candidates to support? What are the criteria? I think he needs to be very transparent about his PAC if he wants people to take him, and his goals, seriously. 

I read his PAC’s website, and it leaves much to be desired. It appears there are two people making decisions, David and his co-founder, Kevin Lata, campaign manager for Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress. The mission states, “Leaders We Deserve is a grassroots organization dedicated to electing young progressives to Congress and State Legislatures across the country to help defeat the far-right agenda and advance a progressive vision for the future. Our mission is to identify and elect more trailblazers – youthful, audacious, and charismatic leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo.”  

The website goes on to say the PAC wants to be the EMILYS List for young people. “To provide day-to-day support to help campaigns build from the ground up, and work with them directly on fundraising, messaging, coalition building, voter contact, and volunteer recruitment. To run paid media campaigns, and run a well-funded independent expenditure program.” 

All of this is great, but again, David needs to be more transparent about all of this, particularly since he is clearly using his post as vice chair of the DNC to promote his PAC. I guess he counts on the old saying “any publicity is good publicity” will come into play. But based on his using his election as a DNC vice chair as the platform to announce this, it is fair to ask what he and his co-founder are being paid by the PAC? How much do they stand to make? How much raised will go to consultants? What percentage of funds raised in 2024 went to the 12 listed as their candidates last year? One, Sarah McBride (D-Del.), won her race for Congress, the 11 others ran for statehouses around the country. Some won, some lost. 

David tried to get ahead of the reaction to what he is doing in an interview with the New York Times, saying, “This is going to anger a lot of people, and predicted a ‘smear campaign’ against him.” 

He might think I am participating in a smear campaign. But David, it’s not a smear campaign. You are just getting a strong, appropriate response to how poorly you handled this.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

There can be no other word than “insanity” for how the felon in the White House, along with his Nazi sympathizing co-president, are handling things. They are living in an alternative universe where they think they are a king and an emperor. They are happily screwing the American people, while creating havoc in the world. If the courts don’t stop them, and I am beginning to lose confidence in the Supreme Court, only Congress, if its members grow some cajónes, or the American people with their votes, will be able to eventually do it. 

As I have written, Democrats will have to appeal to people at the local level district-by-district, to win. There have been discussions online about who the Democrats will put up in 2028. My view of those discussions are they are a waste of time. Debating whether it will be Booker or Buttigieg, and I am getting fundraising appeals from both, or someone else, is totally useless unless Democrats can win this year in New Jersey and Virginia, and then take back at least the House of Representatives in 2026. If Democrats can’t do that, it may not matter who our candidate is in 2028. 

I recently went to a meeting to hear David Hogg, one of the new vice chairs of the DNC. He is a great young speaker. One suggestion I had for the DNC was they call out Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, when he suggests people can vote for a third party. There are very few districts in the nation where a third party has a chance in hell of winning. What they do, as we have seen over and over again, is to help Republicans. 

Since Trump won, the list of those he is screwing keeps growing. Today it includes veterans, farmers, teachers, and students. He and his Cabinet have ended programs that helped protect African Americans, the LGBTQ community, women, Latinos, and poor people. He has stopped progress on cancer research, HIV/AIDS research, and fired people who help predict our weather. He fired, and then had to rehire, thousands of people fired by accident, and those the courts forced the administration to rehire. 

Today in the United States we have a measles outbreak, with the first children in decades, dying from it. This because the man Trump has as his secretary of Health and Human Services speaks against vaccines. Now that a-hole is trying to have fluoride removed from our water, based on one study that says twice the amount we actually use, could cause problems. He recently did admit the MMR vaccine can actually prevent measles, and now suggests potentially using it. 

Veterans are being fired from civilian jobs in the Pentagon, Veterans Administration, and other agencies. When asked about the firings, Alina Habba, a counselor to the president, had a dismissive response. “Without providing any evidence, Habba claimed that some who served in the U.S. military and went on to take government service jobs were not doing the work.” She wasn’t contradicted by anyone in the administration, or Congress. So, I would question why any veteran would ever again support Trump, or any of his acolytes. 

As Trump moves forward with tariffs, we will see who gets screwed the worst. He paused them for 90 days because business leaders, who supported him, began to question his ideas. “Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, a rare critic among U.S. President Donald Trump’s top supporters, has voiced concerns over the president’s tariff strategy, and voiced, ‘this is not what we voted for.’” 

Then came the first, if tepid, sign of some Republican senators taking their lips off Trump’s ass long enough to do their job. It was reported, “signs of GOP wariness emerged Thursday. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on a bill that would require the president to give 48 hours’ notice to Congress ahead of his imposition of tariffs, and those tariffs would expire after 60 days unless Congress approves them. The bill, called the Trade Review Act of 2025, was an amendment to a section of the Trade Act of 1974.” Then the bond market began collapsing and even Trump’s Treasury Secretary took notice. 

Every day we wake up to another egregious thing the president has done, or wants to do. He sees himself as a dictator and is only interested in what he can do to wreak vengeance on anyone not willing to genuflect before him. My hope is people stop genuflecting, and instead, tell him to go f—k himself. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.