A TERF Watches “Adult Human Female”

​I’ve always considered myself a feminist. My views are basically in line with JK Rowling’s views when it comes to trans issues so people say I’m a TERF. And considering how many brave, well-spoken and intelligent women have been branded with that term these days I consider it an honor to be called a “TERF.”

I do believe there are huge differences between being a TERF and being a transphobe. I go into it in more depth in my review of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman?

Right now, however, I just watched the documentary Adult Human Female.

Adult Human Female is really, really, really badly made. Like, if I got my friend’s elderly auntie who still has a flip phone to edit a Youtube video, she’d still probably do a better job than the people who made Adult Human Female.

Adult Human Female is just a bunch of interviews of British feminists talking about how badly women’s rights in general have been affected by gender ideology. A lot of what they say are just TERF talking points with little expansion beyond what you can probably find on JK Rowling’s timeline.

Adult Human Female is made by women so it lacks a lot of the misogynistic mansplaining that composes much of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? There are also the occasional crumbs of interest. I liked hearing what Lucy Masoud had to say. Masoud describes her experience as a fire fighter and how she was almost sacked after objecting to the Gender ID law during a radio interview in 2018. Masoud, who is gay and a member of Stonewall and the London Fire Brigade’s union, was torn apart by Pink News after her radio interview. Masoud alleges that Stonewall tried to get her fired after her interview. She implies that Stonewall probably would have succeeded if she hadn’t quit on her own volition to become a lawyer.

Another interesting tidbit come from writer Joan Smith who describes writing a book review for the Financial Times. The book was about violence against women. In her review Smith mentioned offhandedly that murders of trans women were very rare in the UK, unlike the murders of cis women which happen at about 2 per week. The copy was initially signed off, but then oddly Smith got a call saying that her statement that murders of trans women are rare was “pejorative.” The higher-ups asked that Smith add that while trans women being murdered was rare, the murders were disproportionately high compared to the total number of trans women in the UK.

Which is untrue.

According to the statistics that are available, 9 trans people were murdered in the UK between 2008 and 2017. There are estimated to be about 300K to 500K trans people living in the UK. The data is limited of course but from the numbers that are currently being offered trans people in the UK are actually less likely to be murdered than the average person.

Smith expresses puzzlement about why a dishonestly grim picture was being put in the media about the number of trans homicide victims in the UK. There have been literally no trans people recorded as having been murdered in the UK in the past three years. “That’s a good thing,” Smith says. So why isn’t she allowed to say the simple facts?

Smith touches upon a very sensitive subject here. The totemization of victimhood among trans activists has gotten to the point where it’s become taboo to say that there are areas in society where trans people are less vulnerable. I personally saw this after the Nashville shooting. People who were putting “Black Lives Matter” in their social media profiles just three years ago were suddenly unwilling to talk about Mike Hill, a black man, who was shot by a white trans person at the Covenant School. People who were supporting the Women’s March six years ago were suddenly unwilling to talk about the two women and three children who were shot at the Covenant School.

Instead everyone raced to preserve the sudden crumbling public image of trans people as victims. Since a trans person had been the shooter at Nashville, the idea of the trans person as the always-victim was at risk. Articles about trans communities trembling at the possible backlash flooded the internet. Trans activists groups put forth statements that, astoundingly, expressed sympathy towards the shooter and implied that the mass murderer had been driven to commit the atrocity due to a trans-hostile world. A “Trans Day of Vengeance” march was slated to continue as scheduled despite outcry against such an inflammatory title after the shooting.
Trans activists’ reaction to the Nashville shooting was of panicky reaffirmation of trans victimhood instead of simple empathy towards the Nashville community. It was bizarre.

Anyway, Joan Smith’s interview aside, Adult Human Female largely remains an embarrassingly bad and crudely stitched-together documentary of basic TERF talking points. It’s terrible, but I don’t think the documentary creators really cared about the quality of their cheap, sub- “Youtube” film. The film makers didn’t want people to watch their film.

They wanted people to protest their film.

The film makers of Adult Human Female basically slapped together about an hour’s worth of banal interviews so they could show the film on college campuses, get footage of aggressive trans activists protesting the film, and then have the media talk about how the angry aggressive trans activists were preventing women from seeing a documentary.

And this tactic has been working brilliantly. TERF Twitter accounts have been gleefully posting footage of students storming lecture theaters, forcing the cancellation of Adult Human Female being shown at universities like the University of Edinburgh.

I can’t even begin to say how badly trans activists were baited into this trap. If any of the activists had watched Adult Human Female and said “Whatever, let people see it. No one’s going to be convinced by this piece of crap film,” things would have gone better. Hell, instead of behaving like a bunch of violent misogynistic morons, trans activists should have just scheduled an all-night viewing of the first season of Pose while Adult Human Female was showing at the lecture hall. I would far rather watch the first season of Pose again than Adult Human Female even once. And I’m a damn TERF!

No seriously, I love Pose.
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In summation, don’t watch Adult Human Female. And definitely do NOT protest Adult Human Female. It’s not worth it. It’s a crummy film that’s just activist bait. Enjoy the last week of Pride Month and be kind adult humans out there.