Love Letter to Terfs

Dear terfs,

Where would we be without each other? Probably still in the kitchen, the way some people would like.

I keep coming back to how we link up and make connections, and how vital social media has been in all of it. At the Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht book launch on Zoom, Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn talked about exactly that, while half of us nodded along with our cameras off and a glass in hand. JK is the obvious one, but X is where For Women Scotland, Sex Matters, the Women’s Rights Network and The Countess do so much of their work. It is also where most of us found them, and each other, in the first place. Elon has a lot to answer for, but not that.

Plenty of faults have been found in sisterhood over the years, and some fairly so. But terfery has made bonds between women that nobody can deny. We even made our own language. Nobody outside would know what you meant if you said you’d been peaked, and it sounds like something you’d see a GP about. Say it to one of us and you’re away. What peaked you is the first thing we ask each other, the way other people ask what you do for a living, and everybody has a story. Half of them are hilarious, and the other half would make you weep. Quite a few manage both.

You’d think twice about every like and every repost, and you’d hover over the follow button like it was a detonator

I came into this through rape-crisis work. Women’s Aid brought me in to help re-establish a rape-crisis service in Northern Ireland after a thirteen-year gap, working alongside Jan Melia. At a Rape Crisis England and Wales conference, we had to sit with Mridul Wadhwa, who was running Edinburgh Rape Crisis at the time, and Karen Ingala Smith handed me nia’s policies and procedures so that we’d have something to work from for a women-only service. It was the most useful thing anyone has ever passed me across a table, and I’ve been to a fair few conferences.

When I first started trying to openly terf, I’d preface everything by telling people how great Julie Bindel was. It was my opening line, my credentials and my small talk all in one. I harped on about her all day at a funding event in London, to anybody who’d stand still, only for Harriet Wistrich to tell me Julie was her partner. She let me go on for a good while first. I’d like to think that was out of politeness. I’m cringing so hard even writing that. Ha.

You say what you want, in your own name, and you sleep like a baby

For a long time, it was all amygdala firing. You’d think twice about every like and every repost, and you’d hover over the follow button like it was a detonator. Because we’d been silenced, we found each other through quiet networks, in DMs and group chats and the odd coffee with someone you’d only known as a cartoon cat. We built up trust slowly and eventually found our way to being public. We owe Maya a lot for that.

And here’s the thing nobody tells you about going public. Once you’ve been called a hate figure, once you’ve had the pile-ons and the lost work and the people you thought were friends crossing the road, there isn’t much left they can do to you. You stop caring what anyone thinks of you. You say what you want, in your own name, and you sleep like a baby. We’ve already carried the worst that being labelled a TERF brings, and what’s left on the other side of it is a kind of freedom I didn’t know I was missing. They’ve cancelled us already.

Not one of us cares about religion, race or creed, and in Northern Ireland that matters more than people elsewhere might realise

Look at the women who’ve walked that road. So many of them have been publicly shamed or dragged through the tribunal system, some of them both, and so many reached out to me when my own case was going on. Nobody asked them to. They knew exactly what it felt like, and they got in touch to share. 

When Bethany Hutchison and I broke a table at the last Battle of Ideas it was the funniest thing ever. Two hallions. We’ve both been painted as dangerous women, and, to date, the only casualty either of us has actually caused is a piece of hotel furniture. If they want evidence of terf violence, that table is all they’ve got.

My own case came out of going to a Let Women Speak event in April 2023, and it’s been going on for over three and a half years now, which is longer than some marriages and most of my diets. When the tribunal came, about twenty women travelled from across the UK and Ireland to sit in the public gallery with me. Some of them I’d only ever known online, and it’s a strange thing to meet a woman for the first time in a courtroom and feel like you’ve known her for years. Nick Wallis posted live updates on X so the women who couldn’t be there could follow it day by day, probably while pretending to work. I lost, and they’re still backing the appeal.

Some of the group chats could never be read out in court, and thank God no one’s asked

And then there’s my local wine friends, who’ve been there through every bit of the last three and a half years. They’ve sat with me through the bad days, the long waits and the judgment, topped up my glass, and never once made me feel like I was going on about it too much, even when I definitely was. Between us, we’ve probably kept a few off-licences afloat.

Women from every walk of life and every social class. Not one of us cares about religion, race or creed, and in Northern Ireland that matters more than people elsewhere might realise. Getting a room full of women here to agree on anything is a minor miracle. Some of us would never agree on anything else, and you don’t bring up the constitutional question at a terf meetup unless you want to see a different kind of table broken. We agree on our privacy, safety and dignity, and not just for ourselves but for all women.

In the media, we’re painted as bitches who betray each other. That isn’t what I see in terfery. I see women passing on work, sending each other a lawyer’s number late at night, putting money into crowdfunders for women they’ve never met, and turning up when it counts. I see women who support each other and lift each other up, and who mostly have the driest and dirtiest sense of humour you’ll come across. Some of the group chats could never be read out in court, and thank God no one’s asked.

I have never known sisterhood like it.

Love,

Sara

Please support Sara Morrison’s case here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/belfast-film-festival-discrimination/

And follow her on X @SeeRedWoman1 at and Substack.