Terfs, Jews and Cultural Hijacking

Terfs know a thing or two about cultural hijacking. We have seen men – assisted by their transactivist handmaidens - stealing women’s language, heading up women’s organisations and explicitly excluding us from arenas advertised as for women or lesbians. As recent experience shows, a self-evident slogan such as ‘Lesbians don’t do dick’ held up at a supposedly lesbian event is enough to get you surrounded, harassed and driven out. 

I hadn’t seen this kind of hijacking done to another group in quite such a blatant and chilling fashion until last Sunday, when a group of us Terfy types joined several hundred Jewish people and allies to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, that legendary day in 1936 when Jews, socialists, trade unions, Irish dockers and local residents rallied together to prevent the British Union of Fascists from marching through a largely Jewish neighbourhood of London’s East End. 

I hope it’s not too self-indulgent to say that this area and its history hold a particular interest for me as my father’s Irish immigrant family lived around the corner from Cable Street in Wellclose Square, with several of the older generation becoming Labour councillors and Mayors in the Borough of Stepney. I wondered what personal connections there might have been between my forebears and those of others on the march, as we carried placards bearing images of fifty-five Jewish participants from the original Cable Street resistance. From the assembly point of Aldgate East – its place cemented in Jewish history in Bernard Kops’ evocative poem about Whitechapel Library – the event was freighted with meaning and resonance as we processed in the Autumn sunshine chanting ‘They shall not pass’, culminating in a rally featuring nonagenarian Michael Bennett who had attended the original counter-demonstration as a four-year-old on his father’s shoulders. It was a moving and fitting event in which I felt privileged to participate.  

All of which makes the context of the march particularly sobering.  For, as organiser Eve Kay explained on Free Speech Nation that evening, she had been moved to set it up following the explicit erasure of Jewish people from the main commemorative march organised by Unite (yes, the heavy irony of the name was not lost on attendees.) A group of us witnessed this all-too-stark erasure when we encountered the Unite march on our way to the pub after our event. It was truly shocking if by now unsurprising to see banners of a labour movement - trade unions, socialist organisations – that had once stood in solidarity with Jewish communities now joined with latter-day agitators variously sporting luridly-dyed hair, masks, keffiyehs, transactivist placards and Palestine flags in excluding them. We stood in silence on the corner of Prescot Street taking in the reality of what we were witnessing as we watched the march go by, with no recognition or acknowledgement of the original Cable Street Jews among the banners and flags.  And as we were to see later, identifiably Zionist Jews who had the temerity to attend and observe the second march were subjected to harassment and intimidation. Not only had their history been stolen from them but it was being turned against them. 

This was just the beginning of a week where antisemitic insult was heaped upon injury for British Jews. With a callousness that beggars belief, but no doubt emboldened by the passing of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion at the Green Party conference, a number of groups used the third anniversary of the horrific October 7th Hamas massacre to hold pro-Palestine demonstrations in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow including outside the office of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, resulting in several arrests on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred. That same afternoon, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council held a dignified and profoundly moving vigil opposite Downing Street but the sorrow and mourning of that occasion alongside the antisemitic hostility and viciousness displayed earlier that day at times felt hard to bear. 

So this week has seen two events of huge significance to Jewish people stolen and used against them as vehicles for antisemitism. As veterans of such cultural hijacking ourselves, do we Terfs have anything useful to offer British Jews? I think there are a few things. First and foremost, we can offer our solidarity. Secondly, I think our direct experience and understanding makes us well-placed to help expose this topsy-turvy world of malign inversions to the light. And thirdly, it may be helpful to remember the success of our own battles. We no longer have men heading up Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre or Endometriosis South Coast. The meaning of ‘woman’ was upheld in the Supreme Court. While the war is far from over, history is showing that attempts to hijack reality will not prevail.

You can read more about Feminists Against Antisemitism on their Substack, follow them on X and support them here.

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