Wiseacre Brewing Company’s former social media manager Liz Dean recently confronted a transgender woman on social media regarding her gender.
Dean’s message, which came to light on March 4, said trans women have obtained more rights than cisgender women, or women whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.
“They get to be a woman with more rights than women get,†Dean said in the message. “Quite frankly, as a woman, this pisses me off.â€
Trans-exclusionary radical feminism has come to light and been called out throughout social media. Iasia Peoples, the president of Campus United Student Action Council and member of Stonewall Tigers, said a trans-exclusionary radical feminist is a feminist who does not accept trans women.
“A TERF is a cisgender woman who identifies as a feminist and does not accept the existence of trans women,†People said. “She definitely doesn’t accept them into the feminist community.â€
Peoples said trans women are usually harassed by trans-exclusionary feminists on social media.
“Usually online there is a lot of harassment of trans women by TERFs, so they’ll go out of their way to harass trans women,†Peoples said. “They’ll say trans women are not women and they do not belong in the community and they don’t belong in the feminist social sphere.â€
Peoples said trans-exclusionary feminists have a hurtful and misconstrued ideology.
“Their philosophy is that trans women are just men trying to infiltrate the feminist’s fear,†Peoples said. “They believe they are men dressing up as women so they can get into feminist spaces and harass women,†Peoples said. “They do harm by invalidating trans women’s identities and that can have a very large mental impact on trans people in general.â€
Peoples said she does not agree with trans-exclusionary feminist because of they do not support all women.
“I think they are really harmful to the community,†Peoples said. “I don’t think they belong in LGBT friendly spaces, and I feel like if you are a feminist you should be for all women, not just the ones you are comfortable with.â€
Peoples said she does not believe trans-exclusionary feminists are real feminists.
“If you’re a feminist and you support women, that means all women, so I don’t think they’re even real feminists,†Peoples said. “I think they just identify as feminists, but that’s not what they are.â€
Rachel Crow, a former president of Stonewall Tigers, said feminism is about equality and creating an inclusive environment.
“Feminism is inherently for women and for equality and equalizing the sexes and creating that inclusive environment for everybody to flourish,†Crow said. “When you go out of your way to say trans women are not included in this narrative when you started this for women, how can you say my social activity doesn’t include you?â€
Wiseacre Brewing Company announced on their Instagram on March 5 that they had fired Dean, who is responsible for the hateful comments.
“We were shocked and saddened to hear that last night one of our employees made some insensitive and inappropriate comments on their personal social media,†Wiseacre said. “Their comments do not reflect Wiseacre, and they are no longer with our company. Still, we are very sorry for the pain and hurt theses comments caused.â€
