Susan Dalgety: Why the UK has become known as 'Terf Island' in the US amid transgender debate

“Do you know Julie Bindel?” asked June, mentioning the British feminist campaigner and journalist. “Have you met Helen Joyce? I love her, her writing is just so precise.” Joyce is the author of Trans, the bestselling book that argues gender self-ID undermines women’s rights, and is now a leading figure in the charity Sex Matters. I nodded, my mouth full of cornbread.

“And you were so lucky to have JK Rowling,” added June. “What a wonderful woman. I wish we had a woman of stature who would stand alongside us. It would make such a difference.” June, a retired librarian, and Irene, a community development officer, are what contemporary culture has come to know as Terfs – trans exclusionary radical feminists – or in simple language: women who believe that biological sex matters.

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‘Dubbed far-right Trump supporters’

The United States may have been the academic laboratory where gender identity theory – that our sex is just a state of mind – was first argued by academics such as Judith Butler. But opposition to its impact – from men in women’s sport to children being given puberty blockers – has been more fragmented than here in Scotland and the rest of the UK. Not because women’s rights campaigners are any less effective or energetic than their sisters on ‘Terf Island’, as the UK is now known, but simply because of its vast size and the independence of the 50 states.

And the leadership of Democratic party has been evangelical in its support for transgender rights, even when they conflict with those of women and girls. Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts was heavily criticised by the party when he told the New York Times in November 2024 that the Democrats had spent “too much time trying not to offend anyone”. He went on: “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

“We are dubbed far-right Trump supporters because of our views,” explains June, with a weariness I recognise from my own experience several years ago, when people I had known for decades queried my commitment to equality because I argued that humans cannot change their sex.

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SNP perpetuating a myth

Sex realism has returned, more or less, to the Labour party, and the Conservatives have proved to be staunch allies of women’s rights. But even after the Supreme Court ruled last April that the 2010 Equality Act is based on biological sex, not gender identity, the SNP government continues to perpetuate the myth that humans can change sex.

It is currently engaged in yet another legal dispute with campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) over the Scottish Prison Service policy to allow trans-identified males to be housed in women’s prisons. The Scottish Government argues that banning such men would violate their human rights.

Only last month, while the court considers FWS’s judicial review, a transgender prisoner serving a sentence for murder was charged with the alleged sexual assault of a female inmate. Alexandra Stewart, previously known as Alan Baker, has been held in a women's unit in the prison since 2016.

READ MORE: John Swinney is risking his political career to put trans women in female prisons

Over a glass of sweet tea, Irene told me about the project in which she is currently involved. As a member of the campaign group WDI USA, she has helped compile a database showing details of the men who have committed crimes while “claiming womanhood” and are now incarcerated in women’s prisons.

The statistics revealed by the Not Our Crimes project are horrifying. The overwhelming majority of women in US prisons (87 per cent) are survivors of sexual violence, while nearly half (44 per cent) of trans-identified men with criminal records are sex offenders, and two-thirds (67 per cent) have committed crimes of violence.

Yet 27 states allow these men into women’s prisons if they claim to have a “womanly” gender identity, explains Irene. “We want to expose the horror of women in prison having to share their space with men. The plight of women prisoners is often ignored but they are some of the most marginalised women in society. It is a violation of their human rights.”

The very basis of feminism

As we finish up our barbecue, we agree that common sense is starting to prevail. The US Supreme Court is currently considering arguments in the Little v Hecox case on whether states can restrict female sports on the basis of biological sex.

And last year the court upheld Tennessee’s restrictions on puberty blockers, which will likely have a country-wide effect on the use of Medicaid – the US’s national health insurance programme – for gender-related treatment for children. “We will get back to normal,” we reassure ourselves, “but it’s a long, tough fight.”

Tucked in my luggage is a copy of The Second Stage by Betty Friedan, which I bought in a second-hand book shop in Macon, Georgia. Friedan’s first book, The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, is credited with helping to set in motion one of the most powerful forces for social change in the last 100 years – second wave feminism.

She wrote The Second Stage in 1981, when she argued that while the first phase of the women’s movement was over, the liberation of women was still to be fully realised. Quite what Friedan, who died in 2006, would think of women having to fight to protect the very basis of feminism – a woman’s sex – we can only guess, but every woman and girl in the USA should be grateful for the quiet determination of women like Irene and June.