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Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are not a particularly strong political force in the US, and I never say TERF when I mean the religious right. When I want to talk about all anti-trans political actors regardless of ideology I say transphobe or anti-trans activist.
I also don't use Gender Critical (GC). I don't actually find GC is synonymous with TERF: I've observed many people who call themselves GC take a little from both conservative essentialist and TERFist views. I just say transphobe or anti-trans activist for the tweeners.
A classic TERF did not believe in biological determinism at all. They believed socialization made a person male or female/man or woman, but saw it as irreversible, so anyone who grew up as a girl was a woman and anyone who grew up as a boy was a man.
Since gender "came from" childhood socialization, and only childhood socialization, it was nonsensical to say your gender was different from your socialization. In that framework, trans people are either lying or suffering from some sort of delusion or false consciousness.
There are certainly still people who stuck to this older understanding of gender, but TERF beliefs have migrated a bit over time, in response to changes in how trans people exist and present in the world, and in response to the potential for political alliance with conservatives.
For ex, an old school TERF critique of trans people was that we confuse the stereotypical gender roles and gender itself. But trans people have grown more confident in refusing to enact strict gender roles and organizing against gatekeeping that forced us into those roles.
As that avenue of attack has faded, TERF beliefs have migrated more towards something that resembles essentialism.
A TERF will still give lip service to socialization as the determinant of gender, but over time it's become more like socialization in earliest childhood is a stain on the psyche that can never be erased. In practice that starts to look very similar to biological determinism.
They've likewise responded to critique that there's no one "socialization" that holds for all woman (bc cultures are vastly different), and their ideas are white-centric by fusing with anti-cancel culture white supremacy and dismissing such critiques out of hand.
TERFs always valued women's only spaces as places where women could heal together from patriarchy and reclaim their power, but they've migrated into accepting stricter gender segregation, based on women's vulnerability and victimhood, as the only way to keep women safe.
Taken together, this doesn't make TERFs indistinguishable from the patriarchy-loving religious right, but it does bring them ideologically closer, and allows for these middle ground people with one foot in both camps.
And, at least in my opinion, this benefits the religious right a lot more than it benefits TERFs. Bc TERFs have had to give up some of the core tenets of their feminism, while the religious right isn't making any ideological concessions at all.
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