The Fall of an Empire: Unveiling the harmful and regressive rhetoric of TERFS and an argument about the importance of transfeminism

The Fall of an Empire: Unveiling the Harmful and Regressive Rhetoric of TERFS and an Argument about the Importance of Transfeminism.

Feminism, in its long and sorted history, has always had its political enemies, agents of the patriarchy who had sought to crush the movement and continue to subjugate women by stripping them of their safety and rights. In response to this, like most socio-political movements, the oppressed class has had to take a stand against the oppressors, even if it were to be considered "radical." May it be the suffragettes in the UK who had radical and often violent ways of advocating for women having a right to vote (Wynn, 2023), or perhaps even the lavender menace, a group of radical feminist lesbians who fought for lesbian women's inclusion within the feminist movement (Wynn, 2023). And now we have the gender critical movement, a group of radical feminists working against the invasive group of trans activists who are intent on not only co-opting and perverting womanhood but also invading and stealing women's spaces, or are they? This paper seeks to discuss what is known as the Gender Critical Movement, commonly known by the moniker TERF, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. While also presenting the argument that their place within feminism is less of a radical resistance and more of a hate group. By highlighting the movement's roots within white nationalism (LeMaster, 2023). Instead, by presenting the argument that the guise of protecting women is truthfully repackaged conservative messaging of nothing more than thinly veiled transphobia and general bigotry (Wynn, 2023; Wynn, 2021). This paper will also be presenting an alternative and oppositional point to the gender-critical movement known as transfeminism. by incorporating the achievements and contributions of transfeminism, which is closely tied into the progressive intersectional feminist movement and how both studies would benefit each other and the future of feminism as a whole. (Galpin et al., 2023) Thus creating a discussion on how to better the future of feminism as a whole.

Gender Critical

Gender Critical, also known as TERF, as coined by Viv Smythe (Smythe, 2018), is a self-proclaimed subsection of radical feminism that is focused on protecting women and feminism as a whole from the trans liberation movement. TERF, which the movement themselves typically coin as a slur against them, stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. The origins of TERFs can be tied back to the 1970s within feminist activists' spaces; some struggled in grappling with the newly conceptualized idea of gender and the often hyper-feminization that many trans women adopted (Thurlow, 2022; Wynn, 2019). This time frame is what is often considered the founding text for the TERF movement, written by Janice Raymond, an American author, and professor who took a stance against gender-affirming care in her 1979 book "The Transsexual Empire: The Makings of the She-Male". Raymond's book highlighted her overall goal, which was to "morally mandate transsexualism out of existence" and, through this, protect women and their spaces by pushing people that they had deemed bad faith actors from entering them in a crude caricature of womanhood (Thurlow, 2022). The movement grew from there, with voices such as Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel speaking out about the "trans issue" (Thurlow, 2022). More discussions occurring within academia and other feminist spaces around the binary social categorization of terms such as men, women, straight, and gay, amongst others (Thurlow, 2022) and thus elevated TERFs to take a foothold into these discussions. The new contemporary movement has not changed too much since Raymond's book, albeit it has grown infamously within the public eye, with the introduction of social media and anti-trans legislation in America and the United Kingdom being extremely prevalent realms of discussion (Thurlow, 2022). The voices of gender critical demand to be heard, but this begs the question of what exactly these voices are saying. It is important to recognize that this is not just a movement that focuses on transgender women, although Raymond spends a notable amount of time focusing on them in her book. TERF ideology views both groups as a threat to their identity as women, just in different ways. Transgender women are typically seen as sexual predators who are attempting to invade women's spaces under a violent caricature of patriarchal stereotypes on what "being a woman" is (Kerr, 2021; Wynn, 2019). Instead, transgender men are commonly seen as confused women who are being manipulated to mutilate themselves and given into the patriarchy to escape womanhood by the transgender agenda (Wynn, 2021; Rowling, 2020a). It is very important to note, however, that this idea of women being confused, helpless, and overall victims of manipulation is an extremely anti-feminist argument to make, as it absolutely robs women of any autonomy. Gender-critical ideology itself actually aligns itself much more closely with conservatism instead of radical feminism. This is exemplified by the inherent bigotry that the movement argues for in the eradication of transgender people and punishing them for suggested sexual deviancy by co-opting women's identities. This argument itself is essentially repackaged religious talking points that were once used against the gay and lesbian community (Wynn, 2023). With this in mind, the key point of the gender-critical movement seems to be the eradication of transgender people and ushering in transphobia rather than truly protecting women. This isn't to say that all gender-critical people are secret fascists in disguise, nor is this an attempt to turn the victims of manipulation argument around on the TERFs. If anything, this highlights the way that a movement that is built upon the building blocks of white nationalism, colonialism, oppression of marginalized communities, and overall bigotry can turn a movement into the very thing it fights against.

White Nationalism and its Roots in Gender Critical ideology

As well as being a part of the anti-trans liberation and conservative beliefs, TERFs also have closer ties to white nationalism and racism as a whole (Billard, 2023). As previously discussed in this paper about the founding text of Janice Raymonds, "The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male'' It provides a foundation built on white nationalist teachings and overall is notably built on what Smith coins as the three pillars of white supremacy (Hobson & Smith, 2017) and how this subsection of trans-exclusionary radical feminism pioneers tend to resemble typically white, affluent cisgender women. Smith notes that three pillars of white supremacy are the following: slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism, and, finally, orientalism/war (Hobson & Smith, 2017). This section will highlight the way the gender critical movement ties into these pillars of white supremacy.

Slavery/Capitalism

A common argument presented towards transgender women is that they are inherently dangerous. They are masculine beings that are only using the identity of women to get closer to women in order to assault and harm them. Transgender women want to use their physical and biological advantages as men to soar above women in sports, and through this, they will be able to continue the holds of patriarchy on women. These sets of arguments are extremely similar to the arguments that have been pushed on black women when they were fighting for recognition within the mainstream feminist movement. The feminist movement itself has had a long history of centering itself around the interests of middle to upper-class cisgender white women. We see this once again by examining the former figureheads mentioned: Janice Raymond, Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, and J.K. Rowling. Black feminists and trans women of color critics have pointed out the deep-rooted racism within these mainstream feminist ideologies when it comes to the inclusion of transgender people in feminism (Billard, 2023). Instead, we see a trend amongst both of these groups of being othered, being villainized, and, in some cases, being criminalized. Smith notes that the forms in which we see slavery take place have changed over time, and she highlights that instead of the formal system of slavery, we see the prison industrial complex (Hobson & Smith, 2017). The use of the prison industrial complex and the incarceration rates among transgender people are extraordinarily high when compared to their population size. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), an estimated 16% of the transgender population has experienced incarceration at one point in their life; within this is the incarceration rate of black trans women, which is estimated to be a little under half at 47% (NCTE, 2012). This is not to make the argument that TERFs solely are sending trans people to prison. What is important to recognize in this conversation is that gender-critical debates create distraction around often hypothetical problems such as the bathroom debates and biological advantages in women's sports over the actual issues harming transgender people (Newberry et al., 2020). There is an argument to be made, however, that TERFs, through fighting for more difficult access to gender-affirming care safely and legally and this targeted focus on creating barriers, could put many transgender people in danger of incarceration or harm through needing to engage in back alley gender-affirming care. Thus, utilizing these systems of both modern-day slavery and capitalism to focus on transgender people, specifically transgender people of color.

Genocide/Colonialism

Most notably and perhaps the most famous takeaway of Raymond's novel is the call for the eradication of transgender people, demanding that governmental powers essentially mandate through law the inability for trans people to receive access to medical transition or, at the bare minimum, place many barriers to achieve medical transition (Raymond, 1994; Wynn, 2019). This, for many transgender people who suffer from gender dysphoria, is tantamount to killing them as it denies them the ability to access services to ease gender dysphoria. This also is one of the strongest tenants to date, as shown by young adult fiction author J.K Rowling's infamous opinion piece where she had protested against Scotland's Gender Recognition Act reform, which would allow trans people easier access to hormones and treatments as well as changing their gender signifiers on government identification cards (Rowling, 2022b). Raymond's belief is that by barring access to medical transition, the feminist movement will deal with the "trans problem." Raymond says, "The problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence" (Raymond, 1994, p. 178), which ties deeply into both the second pillar of white supremacy being that of genocide/colonialism. There has been a multitude of ways that gender has been expressed throughout the history of the world pre-colonialism and Western medicine (LeMaster, 2023), and through colonialism, we have seen these expressions of gender either erased or overall suppressed and demonized by a patriarchal standard of the gender binary.

War/Orientalism

The gender critical movement, in essence, is a call for war against transgender and genderqueer identity. Examining the implications of cleansing transgender people from all spaces cisgender women may inhabit is harrowing. We see these calls for war through the violent language often utilized by TERFs and the transforming of transgender people as an inferior yet foreign threat to womanhood (Hobson & Smith, 2017; Wynn, 2021; LeMaster, 2023). Raymond even sets up this framing in her book by dubbing the transgender liberation movement as the "Transsexual Empire," which is a remnant of Western nation's treatment of various Eastern cultures, most notably Asian cultures (Hobson & Smith, 2017). The inferiority of transgender women is a huge discussion point amongst TERFs as they are almost always portrayed to be portraying a caricature of womanhood, that they lack the key points of biology and lived experience to be able to be a "real" woman. Although inferior, they are still painted as violent, insidious sexual perverts waiting to pounce on helpless cisgender women, using tactics to make them let their guard down (Kerr, 2021). This is commonly portrayed through the infamous bathroom debate, despite this fear being rooted in very little evidence and is based on a male cisgender dichotomy of violence towards women (Wynn, 2021; Pearce et al., 2020). On the contrary, according to recent studies from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), there is evidence of transgender people being the victims of sexual assault in bathrooms, with 36% of transgender and nonbinary teens experiencing some form of sexual assault within restrooms (HSPH, 2019). Other research from the University of California Los Angeles's William Institute School of Law (UCLA) shows that transgender people are also four times more likely to experience violent crime than their cisgender peers (UCLA, 2022). The use of this disinformation is not only a typical pattern amongst the gender-critical movement as a whole (Billard, 2023) but also shows patterns within the way conservative and religious foundations utilize bigotry in an appealing manner (Wynn, 2021).

Transfeminism and Intersectional Feminism

Highlighting these aspects of the way gender-critical ideology has been wrapped up into white supremacy begs the question of what could reasonably work as an alternative within feminist spaces. Previously, in this paper, black feminist critiques of mainstream feminism were spoken about, and transgender women's exclusion within feminism was deeply rooted in the same racism that black feminists had experienced within feminist spaces. The conclusion of this discussion shows that attempting to integrate or fix a political movement with ties into white supremacy, cissexism, and other exclusionist sentiments will inevitably fail and continue to spread harmful rhetoric and breed violence amongst the most vulnerable of their population. That is where Transfeminism and Intersectional Feminism comes into play. The main argument of this section is to express how these two subsections of the overarching sociopolitical movement of feminism overall focus on liberation and empowerment for all women. All the while also considering the way that lived experience and identity play important roles in the way all people navigate a white hetero-patriarchal society. Transfeminism and intersectional feminism, while separate disciplines, are closely related in their overall belief systems as they both have a heavy focus on inclusion but also the way that different aspects of identity change and shape the way one moves through life and their placement within social movements. Transfeminism's main claim is the inclusion of transgender women in the foundation of feminism (Arfini, 2020). Transfeminism itself also advocates against the narratives that have existed within Anglo-American feminism, such as transgender women being invasive or transgender men being traitors to the overall movement (Arfini, 2020). There are also arguments presented by feminist scholars that transfeminism is once again an attempt by trans activists to usurp women's spaces and identities (Trevino-Tarango, 2022), although this criticism is largely misplaced as many of the issues that cis-women experience through just having the identity of women tend to also be shared by transgender women (Trevino-Tarango, 2022; Wynn, 2019). This isn't to say that biological sex isn't important when we speak about issues relating to things such as reproductive care and medical statistics relating to biological differences and the oppression that comes with that (Galpin et al., 2023); however, the individuals who are targeting these realms of healthcare for cisgender women are of the same political alignment as those who target transgender people (Wynn, 2021). The argument of who is usurping who is also reductive as a whole when we consider the overall purpose of feminism as a movement to dismantle the heteropatriarchal institutions that utilize sexism to oppress all people. Black and Indigenous feminist scholars are able to highlight these intricately intertwined aspects of identity through intersectional feminism (Chaudhry, 2020; Galpin et al., 2023). These nuanced perspectives are not only important for feminism as a whole but also as we evolve our understanding of queer studies and transfeminism (Chaudhry, 2020). Trans identity is only one part of this puzzle as the experiences of transgender people of color, transgender people who experience disability, and transgender people who are in poverty. These are all important aspects of fighting for liberation for not just a small subset of women. Thus, we need to begin our overall reform and critique of these spaces from the perspective of those who are historically marginalized (Galpin et al., 2023). Black feminism offers critical insight into this aspect of identity that transfeminism could deeply benefit from, especially as they push to integrate and gain legitimacy within feminism as these same struggles echo that of black women who also were pushed out of anglo-american white feminist spaces (Chaudhry, 2020; Draper et al., 2023) To fight for justice is also an inherently queer experience. There is an argument to be made by many queer scholars that the essence of fighting for justice against a force of oppression (Abu-Assab & Nasser-Eddin, 2021), and through this, the argument that the queering of feminism has always been present since its inception. When we consider the contributions of lesbian women, who are commonly scapegoated as the ones needing protection from transgender activists and are instead targeted by the very laws and mandates that TERFs would like to implement (Wynn, 2021), that being said, we see the inclusion of queer identity throughout all of feminism as well as the contributions of women of color and to truly push forward towards a strengthened movement there is a need for solidarity amongst each group of disciplines (Draper et al., 2023).

Conclusion Ending the “Terf Wars”

Utilizing intersectional feminism and other inclusive feminist disciplines, we could see the shift of a more united feminist liberation front. Not all of the concerns of the gender critical movement are absolutely unfounded, at least in relation to the fear of sexual violence against all women is a valid concern. However, the gender critical movement is an extremely poor vehicle to present and fight for these changes without playing into the hands of oppressive factions and, in the end, harming women much more than it would help them. Another point I feel is important to bring up is the question of if TERFs are the enemy. In the research conducted for this paper, there were absolutely bad-faith actors who used these women's fears as a way to push other harmful and reductive agendas alongside transphobia, such as Posey Parker (Wynn, 2023). Amongst those actors, however, were the overall viewpoints of many TERFs that read at times as more of a manifestation of pain, trauma, and tragedy suffered by these women at the hands of a patriarchal society. That being said it doesn't erase the fact that these actions being presented by these women are bigoted, just because your bigotry has a tragic history attached to it doesn't mean that it's not bigotry, and it doesn't mean that it is not damaging to the communities it's 14 aimed at (Wynn, 2021). In fact, a lot of bigotry and prejudice is born from a place of fear and pain (Wynn, 2021), although this still does not change the fact that it is, at the end of the day, bigotry. If anything, the existence of TERFs should serve as a cautionary tale for radical feminists in the way that we approach our fight for liberation. A quote that delightfully sums up this point from Natalie Wynn is as follows ““Understanding bigots is the best defense against becoming one yourself. Because when you dehumanize the villains, you become unable to recognize the villain within.” (Wynn, 2021) Smith's reflections on what is commonly understood as the "Oppression Olympics" sums up not only the way queer scholars can learn from scholars of color but also the way that the overall idea of "queering justice" is, in essence, the idea that there is empowerment in unification (Hobson & Smith, 2017; Abu-Assab & Nasser-Eddin, 2021). By utilizing the framework of the three pillars, we highlight the way oppressive entities utilize disinformation and white supremacist tactics in all corners of marginalized identity. This idea of fear and pain is a common experience, yet punching down at people that we instead could be working towards a liberated future for all women and all people of every gender identity who are not forced to be confined under the patriarchy. To end the TERF wars is to stop turning our ire towards each other and instead expose and celebrate our overall differences along with our shared experiences to build a brighter future for not only feminists but everyone under this system.

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