Kate Nash has released a scathing track condemning TERFs (and specifically J.K. Rowling), titled “GERM.”
The singer dropped the song and its accompanying lyric video on Wednesday. It opens with a refrain that explains the meaning behind the acronym: “Girl listen up / You’re not radical / Exclusionary, regressive, misogynist / Germ! Germ / Nah you’re not rad at all.”
The rest of the song consists of Nash speaking over an instrumental, percussion-heavy track. With each verse, she dispels TERF talking points with some cold, hard, surprisingly well-researched facts.
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For example, part of the second verse is, “Women are facing serious dangers / Not during boxing matches or from trans people needing a piss / But from actual violence that is carried out against them every week / According to End Violence Against Women, every 3 days a woman is killed / By a man / More than 100,000 girls are at risk and living with the consequences of FGM, forced marriage and honour-based abuse.”
But as with all good protest songs, Nash includes not just data, but feelings, including the memorable couplet, “It’s just a social construct / It’s all a load of bollocks.”
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That research-heavy tone is likely due to the fact that the song originally took the form of an essay, as Nash explained in an interview with Attitude. But when the UK Supreme Court issued its recent ruling, stating that trans men and women cannot legally be considered men and women, the musician “just reacted.”
“I just wanted it to be on record, in music history and in feminist history, for there to be somebody else in culture that is saying that I just don’t believe that’s feminism,” Nash told the magazine.
It was especially meaningful for her as a British public figure “Because at the moment, the loudest cultural voice in the room, who created one of the most successful things ever to come out of the UK, Harry Potter, is transphobic, and is very cruel online and very crass, and it’s just become so nasty.” Nash was referring to J.K. Rowling, who recently founded an organisation that will provide funding for cis women pursuing court cases against trans people.
The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) website reads, “JKRWF offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces. It provides women with the means and confidence to bring to justice cases that make legal precedents, force policy change, and make positive contributions to women’s lives in the future.”
Nash even went so far as to post a picture of Rowling on her Instagram story (and specifically, the photo that the author posted to X after the ruling was announced). Over the photo, Nash wrote, “A trans exclusionary feminist will always be a GERM. Even if it decided to identify as a feminist for the purposes of this celebration. It would remain objectively provably & demonstratively… a GERM.”
A version of this feature was originally published on Them.
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