In her new single GERM, British singer-songwriter Kate Nash doesn’t just join the cultural conversation around trans rights in the UK, she detonates a bomb under the table where the so-called “debate” is being held. With lyrics that are as direct as they are furious, Nash dismantles the intellectual pretensions of “gender-critical” feminism and calls it what it is: exclusionary, regressive, and misogynist.
The timing of GERM is no accident. The track arrives in the immediate aftermath of the UK Supreme Court’s deeply controversial ruling that legally redefines “woman” as a category determined solely by biological sex. For many, especially in the LGBTQIA+ and feminist communities, the ruling represents a staggering regression – a legally sanctioned erasure of trans lives under the guise of protecting “real” women. Nash took this ruling personally: “I have a lot of trans people in my life that I care about,” she explains. “This feminist-trans ‘debate’ – it’s not a debate to me.”
Anti-TERF manifesto
From a socialist feminist perspective, GERM is more than a protest song. It’s a manifesto that interrogates power, challenges capitalist co-optation of feminism, and calls out the scapegoating of a vulnerable minority to distract from the material conditions oppressing all women and gender minorities. The title GERM is a pointed wordplay that replaces the acronym TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) with Nash’s own acronym: “girl, exclusionary, regressive, misogynist.” It is a deliberate and unflinching confrontation with those who have taken up the TERF label and used it as a moral high ground, despite, as Nash correctly points out, espousing views that are neither radical nor feminist.
The verses lean heavily into empirical data, weaponising statistics to cut through the bad-faith arguments that trans people pose a threat to cis women. Nash references real figures: “91% of people prosecuted for sexual offenses are cis men,” she says, and, “Every three days a woman is killed by a man.” By grounding her message in hard data, Nash exposes the bait-and-switch tactic at the heart of gender-critical fear mongering. It’s not trans people threatening women’s safety – it’s patriarchy. And yet, under a neoliberal government keen on dividing the working class along identity lines, the public is encouraged to punch sideways, not up.
Class conscious protest anthem
GERM is a clear product of feminist intersectionality, but also of class consciousness. It calls out how reactionary discourse aligns with elite interests – namechecking Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump as figureheads of this anti-trans, anti-woman logic. When Nash spits, “By aligning yourself with the likes of Peterson, Elon, and Trump, you empower the mentality that women serve a purpose and that’s to be controlled and fucked,” it’s more than a rhetorical flourish – it’s an indictment of the way right-wing ideologies co-opt feminist language to entrench hierarchies and uphold the status quo.
Nash contrasts the imagined threat of trans people in public toilets with the real, ongoing violence faced by women. “Women are facing serious dangers not during boxing matches or from trans people needing a piss,” she states bluntly, “but from actual violence that is carried out against them every week.” By citing data from End Violence Against Women – highlighting that a woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK, and over 100,000 girls are at risk of FGM, forced marriage, or so-called honour-based abuse – Nash grounds her lyrics in lived, measurable reality. It’s a powerful reminder that gender-based violence is not speculative or hypothetical; it is daily, systemic, and overwhelmingly perpetrated by cis men. In naming these truths directly, Nash exposes the cruelty and absurdity of focusing feminist energy on trans exclusion rather than on the structural conditions that continue to endanger women and girls across the world.
The track’s punk-infused delivery and spoken-word cadence recall protest anthems of past feminist waves, yet GERM pushes that tradition forward. Its message is urgent: that any feminism which seeks to police the boundaries of womanhood is not feminism at all. Nash critiques how the language of feminism has been weaponised against the very people it should be protecting. In a line that stings with clarity, she says: “Using feminism to erase the rights of others and endanger them is inherently un-feminist.”
Patriarchal Capitalism
This echoes core principles of socialist feminism: that liberation must be collective, and any politics that exclude marginalised people – especially those at the intersection of gender, race and class – is no politics at all. Nash’s lyrics highlight how cis women have a political and ethical duty to stand in solidarity with trans people – not just because trans liberation is part of the feminist struggle, but because the same structures that harm trans people harm cis women, too. The same toxic masculinity that leads to violence against women also fuels the suicidality of men under 50. The enemy, as Nash makes abundantly clear, is not trans people – it’s patriarchal capitalism, with its rigid binaries, commodified identities, and violent enforcement of gender roles.
Musically, GERM bristles with tension. Its production is raw, spare, and percussive, echoing the claustrophobia of a society collapsing under its own contradictions. There are no metaphors to hide behind, no layers of irony. Nash delivers her verses like a friend shouting over the pub noise, not asking for your opinion but daring you to listen. It’s a mode of address that feels necessary in a media landscape overrun with “both sides” equivocation and moral panic.
And what of the backlash? Nash is ready for it. “I was preparing myself for this really amazing argument that stitches me up,” she says. “But all the insults are calling me old, a bint, a slag, a has-been.” She points out the irony of being attacked with misogyny by people claiming to protect women. This, again, is the absurdity GERM lays bare: the doublethink of trans-exclusionary feminism, where protection of cis women somehow involves allying with bigots and amplifying hate.
GERM doesn’t ask for your approval. It doesn’t attempt to appeal to centrism or cushion its critique in palatable tones. Instead, it offers a battle cry: for radical inclusion, for true feminist solidarity, and for an uncompromising rejection of bigotry disguised as concern. In a moment where the UK’s political climate grows colder by the day for trans people, Nash’s song is a burning flare on the horizon – impossible to ignore and vital to follow.