What "fourth wave" means

Fourth-wave feminism is the loose name given to the feminist activism that grew up on blogs and social media from roughly 2010 onward. Feminist history is usually told in "waves": a first wave focused on the vote and legal personhood (see first-wave feminism), a second wave on liberation and the analysis of sex roles (see second-wave feminism), and a third wave of the 1990s–2000s shaped by queer theory, intersectionality and sex positivity (see third-wave feminism). The wave metaphor is contested, but it captures something real: each generation reorganised feminism around new tools and new questions.

The researcher Ealasaid Munro was one of the first academics to ask whether the internet had created a distinct new wave. Writing in 2013, she argued that online platforms had become a central space for feminist activism and that this shift was changing how feminists organised and argued (Munro 2013). The journalist Kira Cochrane's All the Rebel Women (2013) made a similar case from inside the movement (Cochrane 2013).

Two features set the fourth wave apart. First, its medium: hashtags, viral testimony and "call-out" culture replaced the pamphlet, the consciousness-raising group and the campus journal. Second, its central internal conflict: a disagreement about whether the word "woman" refers to a sex or to a gender identity. That split — between a "trans-inclusive" mainstream and a gender-critical counter-movement — now defines the period more than any single campaign. It is also the part of the fourth wave that matters most to detransitioned women, many of whom describe passing through both sides of it.

Feminism moves online

The Everyday Sexism Project

In April 2012 the British writer Laura Bates set up Everyday Sexism, a simple website where women could post short accounts of harassment and discrimination. Bates later recalled expecting perhaps 50 or 60 stories; within 20 months the site had 50,000 entries and had expanded to 18 countries (Bates 2014). The project captured the fourth wave's core method: aggregate individual testimony until the pattern becomes undeniable. It also anticipated the focus on girls — Bates wrote at length about the pressures teenage girls faced from pornography, body-image culture and street harassment.

SlutWalk

In early 2011 a Toronto police constable told law students that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised" (BBC News 2011). The response was SlutWalk: around 3,000 people marched in Toronto, and copycat marches spread across North America and beyond. The organisers said they aimed to "re-appropriate" the word slut. SlutWalk crystallised the idea of rape culture — the claim that victim-blaming attitudes, jokes and institutional indifference make sexual violence more common and less punished. It also showed a tension that ran through the decade: some feminists, particularly radical feminists, argued that reclaiming sexualised language played into the very culture being protested.

Consent campaigns

Campus activism turned "rape culture" into policy. In September 2014 California enacted SB 967, the first state "Yes Means Yes" law, requiring colleges that receive state student aid to use an affirmative consent standard — consent as "an affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement" rather than the absence of a "no" (Ogletree 2014). Consent workshops, freshers'-week campaigns and university disciplinary codes followed across the English-speaking world.

#MeToo

The phrase "me too" was first used as an organising idea by the American activist Tarana Burke, who began using it in 2006 in her work with young survivors of sexual violence, with a particular focus on girls and women of colour. It went viral after the New York Times published its investigation into film producer Harvey Weinstein on 5 October 2017 (Kantor & Twohey 2017). On 15 October the actress Alyssa Milano invited women to reply "me too" if they had been harassed or assaulted; Milano credited Burke the next day, and Burke described her approach as "empowerment through empathy" (Boston Globe 2017).

#MeToo was the high point of the fourth wave's testimonial method. It also exposed something psychologically important for this site's readers: for a generation of girls, the first sustained public conversation about womanhood was a conversation about being harassed, assaulted and objectified. Feminism had always documented harm, but social media delivered that documentation in an unbroken, algorithmically amplified stream. Some detransitioned women describe the result as a picture of womanhood made almost entirely of danger.

Young women and girls do not want to be female because in our society now, being female is seen as lesser. You're either a weak-minded, over-sexualized object, or you're (maybe even worse) a Karen. —Top-Spinach-5577, desisted female

Sexual trauma itself recurs in many detransition accounts (see trauma). One detransitioned woman wrote simply:

I realized that what made me transition was the fear of men because of being sexually assaulted when I was 8 and 11 —smallandfrail, detrans female

Body positivity

The body positivity movement, rooted in Black and fat activism, is generally dated on Instagram to around 2012, where it set out to challenge unrealistic portrayals of women in media and advertising (Griffin et al. 2022). Its message — that women's bodies need not be altered to be acceptable — sits awkwardly beside the same decade's normalisation of breast binding, testosterone and mastectomy for distressed teenage girls. Critics of both movements have noted that #BodyPositive was rapidly commercialised, and that its focus on loving one's appearance kept attention on appearance. Some detransitioned women describe moving instead to body neutrality — less attention to the body altogether — alongside a feminist analysis of why they hated it (see body dysmorphia and eating disorders).

The "trans-inclusive" mainstream

Inclusive language

During the 2010s, much of mainstream feminism, the LGBT charity sector and parts of medicine adopted the view that "woman" names a gender identity rather than a sex, and that feminist language should change accordingly. Phrases such as "people who menstruate", "pregnant people", "birthing parent" and "people with a cervix" spread through charity materials, health services and journalism. The stated aim was to include trans men and non-binary people who have female bodies, and to avoid implying that trans women are not women.

Two flashpoints show how contested this became:

• "People who menstruate" (June 2020). The author J.K. Rowling mocked a headline about "people who menstruate", then wrote that she respected trans people but that "my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so" (Telegraph 2020). The exchange became one of the most widely reported moments of the split.
• "Bodies with vaginas" (September 2021). The cover of The Lancet referred to "bodies with vaginas" in promoting an article on menstruation. After criticism from feminists and doctors — who pointed out that men were not described as "bodies with penises" — editor Richard Horton apologised for giving "the impression that we have dehumanized and marginalized women" (Washington Times 2021).

Supporters of inclusive language argue it is accurate and kind: not everyone who menstruates is a woman under a gender-identity definition. Critics argue that it dissolves the only word available for naming sex-based oppression, and that it is women — not men — whose sex-specific language is being replaced. Detransitioned women often raise a third point: as teenagers, they took this language as confirmation that being female was optional.

I mean official organisations and even the government and politicians using terms like "pregnant people" and "people with uteruses" and "birthing parent" instead of women or females. —SmileRevolutionary82, desisted female

The word cis (short for cisgender, meaning someone whose gender identity matches their sex) became similarly loaded. Several detransitioned and desisted women describe rejecting it because it implies that ordinary women "identify with" the stereotypes attached to their sex.

I hate that shit because in their mind me stating "I'm cis" means I agree with the regressive ideas they have about women/men alike and that I identify with these ideas and validate the system they created. —ZealousidealEmploy69, desisted

Organisations and protests

In the UK, the LGB charity Stonewall formally became trans-inclusive in February 2015, publishing a report called Trans People and Stonewall and committing to campaign for trans equality (Stonewall n.d., advocacy source). Through its Diversity Champions workplace scheme, Stonewall's policies spread to employers, universities and public bodies. That influence later reversed: by 2021 a number of public bodies, including the BBC, had left the scheme, the BBC citing concerns about its impartiality (BBC News 2021).

In the US, the January 2017 Women's March drew more than a million people in Washington and around the world (Washington Post 2017). Its emblem, the pink knitted "pussyhat", was soon criticised for equating womanhood with female anatomy and excluding trans women (NBC News 2017); some marchers left the hats behind in later years. The episode illustrates the fourth wave's dilemma: a symbol of female solidarity was judged exclusionary precisely because it referred to the female body.

The UK's Women's Equality Party, founded in 2015, spent years divided over the issue: one spokesperson was removed and later resigned, and after a members' assembly the party endorsed gender self-identification in 2022, after which some members left (New Statesman 2022). Its members voted to dissolve the party in November 2024 (Guardian 2024).

The gender-critical counter-movement

Older roots

Feminist objections to the idea that men can become women are not new. Radical feminists of the second wave argued that womanhood is a material, sexed condition shaped by female socialisation and oppression; Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire (1979) was the best-known — and most criticised — book-length statement of that view (Raymond 1979). What changed in the fourth wave was scale. Proposals to let people change legal sex by self-declaration, and the spread of gender-identity policies into schools, prisons, sport and refuges, turned a niche argument into a mass movement. See radical feminism and gender-critical feminism for the theory in depth.

The "TERF" label

TERF stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". The blogger Viv Smythe, who is credited with the earliest known online use in 2008, has said it began as shorthand for "one cohort of feminists who self-identify as radical and are unwilling to recognise trans women as sisters" — and that it has since "been weaponised at times" by both sides (Smythe 2018). Most women it is applied to reject it as a slur, and many are not radical feminists at all; they prefer "gender-critical" (critical of gender as a system of sex stereotypes).

Trans commenters frequently see things differently, arguing that the label describes a real and specific form of hostility:

TERF is a very specific variety of transphobia. How the hell they managed to merge biological essentialism and feminism I'll never quite know since the wave they emerged in was very much about fighting biological essentialism. —dertechie, MTF

Detransitioners describe meeting the word from the other side, often while still trans-identified:

It was being called a "trans misogynist" and "TERF" when I was still a trans man 😂. Being told I never experienced misogyny as a trans man and that I had male privilege. —feed_me_see_more, detrans female

i ended up reading a lot more about radical feminism than i would have if i didn't get called terfy for detransitioning lmao —mofu_mofu, detrans female

The label works, in practice, as a boundary marker: it signals that a person is outside the community and need not be heard. For detransitioners — whose experience is itself often treated as an argument against transition — the result is that simply describing their lives can be read as a political attack (see backlash against detransitioners).

Key British flashpoints

The UK became the centre of the conflict, largely because of a 2018 government consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (the law that lets adults change legal sex) to allow self-declaration. Groups such as Woman's Place UK held meetings to discuss the proposals, often with protesters outside (Guardian 2018). Several cases became landmarks:

• Maya Forstater. A tax researcher whose contract was not renewed after she tweeted that people cannot change their sex. In 2021 the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that gender-critical beliefs are protected philosophical beliefs that must be "tolerated in a pluralist society", while adding that this did not mean trans people could be misgendered "with impunity" (ITV News 2021).
• Kathleen Stock. A philosophy professor at the University of Sussex who resigned in October 2021 after a campaign by an anonymous student group to have her sacked; the universities minister called it "a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation" (BBC News 2021).
• For Women Scotland. A campaign group whose challenge to Scottish public-board legislation led the UK Supreme Court to rule, in April 2025, that "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex (see below).

Universities were a particular battleground: no-platforming of gender-critical speakers, open letters for and against individual academics, and disputes over what could be taught or researched.

Why the split defines the fourth wave

The conflict is not a side-issue that happened to occur in the 2010s. It follows from the fourth wave's own inheritance.

Two definitions of "woman". The third wave's queer-theory strand taught that gender is performed and that sex categories are themselves social constructions (see queer theory). Taken to its conclusion, "woman" becomes an identity anyone can hold. The radical-feminist strand held the opposite: gender is a hierarchy imposed on the female sex, and the goal is to abolish the stereotypes, not to let people move between them. One detransitioned woman described the moment this distinction landed:

Specifically- they were talking about the "gender binary" and stated, "It's not a binary. It's a hierarchy." —L82Desist, detrans female

These positions cannot both be right, and a movement organised around the word "woman" cannot avoid choosing between them.

Intersectionality as a privilege ladder. The legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality — that oppressions overlap — was a valuable analytical tool. In online fourth-wave culture it often hardened into a ranking of who may speak, with "cis women" placed above trans women in privilege. Several detransitioners describe that ranking as morally exhausting and as a direct motive for transition:

It feels like there is a "god" always watching, in some sense--you're always wondering "is this privileged of me?" ("is this sinful?"), and this kind of constant moralizing about every little choice or utterance in my life, and how it fits into the "intersectional privilege" hierarchy--it takes a toll. —throwaway7576349h, questioning own gender transition

due to what I was seeing on social media I felt so ashamed and guilty about being a cishet white girl. And of c good allies shut up and listen so when I transitioned it felt kind of liberating to feel like I could express my opinions without being dismissed immediately for being part of the oppressors. —SuperAceSteph, questioning own gender transition

The psychological logic is striking. In a framework where an ordinary girl is "privileged" and a trans-identified one is "marginalised", leaving womanhood can feel like moral promotion. That framework also explains a recurring complaint from trans-identified women: once they identified as men, they were told they now held male privilege, while trans women were placed above them.

The medium. Social media rewards certainty, punishes dissent publicly and sorts users into opposing camps. Debates that might once have played out in journals were fought in quote-tweets and pile-ons, which made compromise costly on both sides (see echo chambers and online communities).

Girls online: Tumblr, TikTok and identity exploration

The fourth wave was the first feminist movement that teenage girls encountered mainly through their phones. On Tumblr in the early-to-mid 2010s, feminist posts, fandom culture and an expanding vocabulary of gender identities circulated together. Academic researchers describe Tumblr as a key site of identity formation for LGBTQ+ young people, where users "encountered a dizzying number of genders and sexualities" (Jacobsen et al. 2022). TikTok later played a similar role (see platform influence: TikTok, Tumblr and YouTube).

The evidence on how this relates to transition is limited but suggestive:

• In a survey of 100 detransitioners, 69% were female, and Tumblr (45%), YouTube (48%) and blogs (46%) were frequently reported as sources that encouraged their belief that transition would help (Littman 2021). The sample was self-selected and recruited online.
• A parent-reported survey described clusters of mostly female adolescents identifying as trans after increased social media use or within friendship groups where several peers did the same (Littman 2018). Because it relies on parents' reports, it cannot establish cause; see rapid-onset gender dysphoria.
• In English primary-care records, recorded gender dysphoria in under-18s rose from 0.14 to 4.4 per 10,000 person-years between 2011 and 2021, increasing faster in girls than boys from 2014 (Jarvis et al. 2025).
• The Cass Review — the independent review of NHS gender services for young people — found no single explanation for the shift towards adolescent girls, but highlighted social media as a factor that needed serious consideration (Cass 2024; Guardian 2024).

Detransitioned and desisted women describe this world in their own words:

I saw a large proportion of my online friends transitioning and my logic was basically "if they're all trans because they experience discomfort with their bodies and gender stereotypes... and I also deal with those same things... I must be trans too". —tenth_avenue, desisted female

I was fully immersed in tumblr trans culture from ages 14-17. Looking back, I basically brainwashed myself into thinking I was trans, when in reality, me hating myself wasn't anything to do with my gender. —northernclover, desisted female

i was told you "feel like your gender" and since i didn't i thought i was nonbinary, but never acted on it, just lived life and never thought about it— just didn't like being feminine or being related to women (due to misogyny i later realized, but as a child it's hard to see that) —portaux, desisted

The irony is that the same platforms carried feminist critiques of the beauty industry, pornography and sex stereotypes. A girl could absorb the message that femininity is a trap and, in the same feed, the message that the solution was to stop being a girl. One desisted woman mentions a months-long "tumblr radfem phase right before transitioning" (nepLegion, desisted female) — the critique of womanhood can arrive without the conclusion that womanhood itself is fine. See internalised misogyny and non-binary identities.

Feminism and detransition

For many detransitioned women, feminism appears twice in their story: first as part of the culture that made womanhood seem unbearable or optional, then as the framework that helped them come back. In an online survey of 237 detransitioners, coping with internalised homophobia or sexism was among the psychological needs reported (Vandenbussche 2022), and in interviews with six detransitioned British women, some described realising that narrow stereotypes of womanhood had shaped their decision to transition (Lomax & Butler 2025). On r/detrans, the feminism credited with that return is usually radical or gender-critical, not the liberal, "intersectional" feminism of the fourth-wave mainstream.

Transgender ideology tells you that your body is wrong, radical feminism tells you that society is wrong. —AbolishGender

When I learned to appreciate myself as a woman and a female, I became content with who I am. Before this could happen I needed to re-frame what is a woman, other than the misogynistic fantasy created by patriarchy. When that was gone for me I felt no need to hate my body. —anonymous1111199992, detrans

Learning about gender roles through feminism, NOT intersectional or neoliberal feminism was most value to me learning to love being a non gender conforming woman. —AshleyBackAlley

Some women also note who was there for them. One detransitioned woman recalled that the people who helped her first, after she felt discarded by the trans community, were "a group of older women quite critical of gender" (HeavenlyMelody91, detrans female). This history explains why detransitioners are so often labelled "TERFs" — and why many reject the label even while acknowledging the debt. Not all agree: one desisted woman wrote that the "terf" label "doesn't mean anything except to this little part of the population who mostly use it online to shame people they disagree with" (Star_Aries, desisted female), and others keep their distance from organised feminism altogether.

The psychological shift these accounts describe is from self-blame to social analysis. Distress that had been read as a mismatch between body and identity is reread as a reasonable reaction to sexism, objectification or homophobia. This is not a cure, and it does not suit everyone, but it gives some women a way to hold anger at their circumstances without turning it against their own bodies (see healing and recovery and gender non-conformity without labels).

Detransitioned men and the fourth wave

Fourth-wave discourse about "toxic masculinity" and male privilege was aimed at real harms. Some detransitioned men, however, describe absorbing it as a verdict on themselves. For a sensitive, gender non-conforming or gay boy, a culture that defined masculinity mainly by its worst examples could make maleness feel like something to escape.

discomfort with maleness as a construction; hatred of the patriarchy and guilt over the benefits i reap from it on account of being male —Majestic-Date-4825, desisted male

They can't stop being white so they seek to stop being men. I don't think that's always the case but it has happened. —SmileRevolutionary82, desisted female

Some men describe feminist ideas helping them out, too — particularly the recognition that womanhood is not a costume. One detransitioned man described realising "that respecting women required me accepting my maleness" (Irinescence, detrans male). Male detransitioners also point out that the fourth wave offered women a support network that has no male equivalent. See internalised misandry and men and masculinity.

Trans perspectives

Trans commenters do not speak with one voice on feminism. Many trans women see trans inclusion as a straightforward application of feminist principles:

The fight for trans rights is literally feminism. You can not have one without the other. —Emily__Lyn, MTF

Others regard gender-critical feminism as a setback for the movement as a whole:

it sucks that all of that has been drowned out by the renewed fervor of exclusionary radfems and their virulent transphobia —_delgrey, ftm

Trans-identified women and men sometimes describe the same tension that detransitioned women report — that the "inclusive" coalition did not sit easily together. Some trans women say queer women's spaces in practice welcome trans men and non-binary females but not them; some trans men say they are treated as women when it suits others and as oppressors otherwise. One trans man listed experiences — menstruation, being "heavily socialized to be subordinate, small, and apologetic" — to argue that being told he was equivalent to a man ignored the realities of his body (Rosalind_Whirlwind, ftm). That observation — that a female body carries its history into any identity — is one many detransitioned women reached too, by a different route.

The 2020s: after Cass and For Women Scotland

By the mid-2020s the balance of the fourth wave's internal argument had shifted, at least in the UK.

• The Cass Review (April 2024) found the evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in young people to be weak, recommended individualised holistic assessment, and drew attention to the change in the patient population towards adolescent girls (Cass 2024). See Tavistock GIDS and evidence reviews.
• For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers (16 April 2025). The UK Supreme Court ruled that "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex, so that a Gender Recognition Certificate does not change a person's sex for the Act's purposes (EHRC 2025). Women's groups called it "incredibly important for the half of humanity who need single-sex spaces", while many trans people described distress and fear of increased harassment (BBC News 2025). See the UK.

These developments did not end the split; they moved it. Institutions that had adopted gender-identity definitions now have to reconcile them with the law, and the online argument continues on every platform. Gender-critical feminism has also found itself alongside conservative movements that share its conclusions on some issues but not its feminism — a coalition that both its critics and some of its own supporters find uncomfortable. Detransitioners, for their part, remain caught between camps: welcomed as evidence by one side, distrusted as "TERFs" by the other, and often wanting simply to be heard as people.

Assessment

The fourth wave's real achievements — making sexual harassment visible, establishing affirmative consent, and connecting women across borders — should not be dismissed. Nor should its central conflict be reduced to bigotry on one side or delusion on the other. Many trans-inclusive feminists act from a sincere wish to protect a vulnerable minority; many gender-critical feminists act from a sincere conviction that women's oppression is grounded in sex and cannot be described without the word for it.

From the perspective of detransition, three lessons stand out. First, a feminism that documents harm to women without also affirming the female body can leave girls wanting out. Second, a framework that ranks moral worth by identity can make leaving womanhood (or manhood) feel like a virtue. Third, the feminist idea that freed many detransitioned women was the oldest one: that sex stereotypes are the problem, and that a girl who does not fit them does not need to change her body, her name or her sex. She is already a woman, and she can be any kind of woman she likes.

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