I can’t imagine the added nerves women, cis and trans, with deep voices must feel when they are about to call a women’s only service like ours. As a volunteer, when you pick up the phone, every interaction counts – if you jump to incorrect conclusions about someone, you risk alienating them from the only support service in their area.
A support service that could have instead been a life raft out of an abusive situation, to help someone access food stamps, housing, get immigration advocacy, access a young person’s worker for their children, get trauma specialist therapy to support them in healing from abuse. It could be the difference between whether somebody lives or dies.
Contrary to some of the heightened narrative at the moment, cis and trans women survivors, and trans survivors of all genders, have much more in common than that which separates us. We are both groups who experience high levels of abuse, often because of our gender. This has been proven over and over statistically – as a frontline worker, I see it anecdotally also.
Carter underlines that the endless debate about trans women’s access to such services is in itself invalidating and damaging. When cis women fight to exclude trans women from our services, she adds, they are essentially saying that trans women’s lives aren’t as important as their own.
Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.
If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.
When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her).
She has shown how social structures, language, the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthen the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.
I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statesman interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.
Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.
She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.
I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia.
So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream.
I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.
She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.
The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise.
This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them.
She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF) is a slur.
I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists?
My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples.
My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.
She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.
We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings.
It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity.
She also says:
It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism.
It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.
So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.
It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women.
Natasha Alijeva, a representative in the national board of Kvinnefronten, the main radical feminist organization in Norway, makes some very important observations about feminism and transgender women in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen.
Feminists cannot use the same type of arguments against trans women as misogynists have used against women, she argues.
“The transgender debate this summer has played out some kind of Ultimate Fighting Championship. The polarization is great and the women’s movement has shown itself from a side I do not recognize, understand or want to be a part of…. For me the trans struggle is a women’s struggle…”
Although the majority of feminists in Norway, radical feminists included, support trans women, a small group called Ottar has opened its doors to TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
Can we have feminists that do not tolerate the opinions of women?
Alijeva refers to a question raised in the debate: “Can we have a feminism that does not tolerate the opinions of women?”
Alijeva replies that yes, we may perfectly well have a feminism that does not accept certain opinions. We cannot accept a kind of feminism that does not tolerate the existence of other women.
As long as there are societal and cultural structures that favorize men, the women’s struggle is extremely important, she argues:
“The same applies to the struggle against all types of discrimination, whoever the victims are. It is not as if one sort of structural oppression is better or worse than others.
“That is why it is paradoxical to see that some parts of the women’s movement – a movement I have been a member of since I was 14, a movement which explicit goal is to fight the discrimination of women – now is targeting a small and vulnerable group of women, attacking them in full force.”
J.K. Rowling reminds her of the arrogance of white, straight, cis men
Alijeva refers to one activist who systematically talks about cis women and trans women as two completely different categories, arguing that women have to be protected against trans women.
“I really want to go straight down into the locker room, but first we have to talk about Rowling. Far too much has been said about J.K. Rowling’s twitter account the last few months.
[The editor of Klassekampen Mari ] Skurdal asks why Rowling’s “honest expression of her own opinions are considered so dangerous.”
“I do not see Rowling’s opinions as dangerous. I see them as irrelevant and partly devoid of self reflection – presented with a kind of self confidence I believed was only found among white, heterosexual, middle-aged, cis men.
“The focus on Rowling is a diversion tactic. It is the same tactic anti-feminists use when they point out that there are women who beat men every time the women’s movement argues that the violence against women is a structural societal problem. J.K. Rowling is a ‘All lives matter’ response to the ‘Black lives matter’ of trans people.”
Anti-trans feminists are using the tactics of anti-feminist men
Alijeva points out that the anti-trans feminists seem to put their own policies aside when talking about trans women, as in arguing that it might not be wise to let people decide who they want to be, i.e. their own identity.
Self-determination has been the main goal for feminists for the last 50 years, Alijeva argues: To fight for women’s right to be who they are, even if this goes against the expectations, demands and “morals” of society.
The wardrobe panic
She then moves over to the locker room debate, explaining that she find it hard to understand why these feminists are so concerned about what is found in the panties of trans women:
“I am old enough to remember that being gay was not always OK. A made up wardrobe panic based on false premises is definitely not a new phenomenon. What is sad is that this time it is the women’s movement that..spreads unfounded fear.
“The last time we saw such a panic caused by the fear of what could happen when you let women into the women’s locker rooms, the aggression was targeting lesbians. The accusations about sexual violence were the same. Women with penises are no more a threat to the safety of women today, than lesbians were in the 1990’s.”
As Alijeva points out the abusers of women are not women with penises or heterosexual cis men who want to dress up. They are husbands, partners, lovers, Tinder dates, buddies and “that nice guy you have been talking to the whole evening.” In 86 percent of such cases the victim and the perpetrator know each other.
“The women’s struggle cannot be a fight against women,” Alijeva concludes. “We may perfectly well have a feminism that does not accept the opinions of all women, but we cannot have a feminism that does not tolerate all women. The consequences will be too brutal.”
Illustration photo by Ranta Images. One of the two women is trans. I am not going to tell you which one.
Hey folx! I have a pattern update for y’all. Around a year ago, I was contracted to do a pattern collaboration loosely inspired by Harry Potter. The contract is fulfilled, and I am now able to make a long overdue adjustment. I’ve never read the books, or seen the movies, but from what I understand the previous name of the pattern is directly influenced by it.
Being that J.K. Rowling has shown herself to be a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and an all around shitty person many times over, I have decided to change the name of my cowl to something that aligns with the ideals of myself and my brand more.
Welcome back to the stage the “Fuck TERFs Cowl”! All the same beautiful tapestry crochet you love, with none of the dangerous and insolent ideology. Right now, and forever, you can use code “FuckTERFs” for a free copy.
I highly recommend donating to a Trans Nonprofit Organization if taking that route! Ravelry link in bio. If you can’t access Ravelry and would like the pattern, shoot me an email.
This colorworked cowl is the perfect accessory for the modern witch or wizard who understand that trans rights are human rights. Simplistic, elegant, and classical patterning meet the battle of good and evil in a motif previously inspired by the Harry Potter series, now inspired by the fact that if your feminism isn’t intersectional, it isn’t true feminism. Which side will you choose?
Ravelry is a free website for knitters, crocheters, and fiber artists.
What many of them say is that many people started to treat them more seriously after they started presenting as men. People would listen more carefully to what they had to say. Men would stop interrupting them.
Transgender men normally pass more easily than transgender women, so cis people are more likely to see them as cis men.
However, as Trystan Cotten, Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus, says, life doesn’t necessarily get easier as an African American male:
The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.
Trystan Cotten relaxes after skateboarding in Mission Dolores Park in San Francisco.
Zander Keig is a Coast Guard veteran and works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. He explains that in some ways he gets less respect now than when he presented as a woman:
Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence. I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.
He argues that his ability to empathize has grown exponentially post transitioning, because he now factors men into his thinking and feeling about situations.
He sees a significant reduction in friendliness and kindness extended to him in public spaces:
It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.
Alex Coon (top photo), on the other hand, points out that he is now ranked above the women at work when it comes to input and influence:
People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name.
What their stories tell us is that sexism can strike both ways, and that gender stereotypes harm both men and women.
Male to female transgender people will also confirm this. When presenting as men, any “feminine” trait, ability, interest or expression was seen as as shameful and worth of scorn, including expressing feelings and emotions in a rich and meaningful way. Homophobia and transphobia hit those assigned male, cis or trans, hard. Transgender women give up a lot of male privilege when transitioning, but they also gain some female privilege.
It is important to keep in mind that most lesbians do not support the “gender critical” trans-exclusionary “radical feminists”, the TERFs.
In an interview over at the Advocate two lesbian women and LGBTQA activists, Cindy Rizzo and Roey Thrope, explain in a compassionate and insightful way why they support trans women.
Cindy, 64, lives in New York City and works in LGBTQ philanthropy. Roey , 57, lives in Portland, Oregon, and is a consultant to social justice organizations.
They talk about the history of exclusionary feminism and explain why they no longer can accept this way of thinking.
Cindy explains:
My journey to becoming a trans ally was gradual. I was beginning to put the pieces together. I started to examine my own gender expression and identity as a butch lesbian who was attracted to femmes.
During Pride Week in New York City some years ago, an African-American lesbian was assaulted by security and forced to leave a restaurant because she had walked into the women’s restroom and was thought to be a man.
That was a galvanizing event in my mind that showed me how connected the struggle of butch lesbians was to that of trans women and men. That event was like a fork in the road for me.
I could have chosen the path of those who say that the patriarchy is like a siren that is forcing butches to transition. But I felt that I’d be twisting myself and my politics into a pretzel to believe that because the lives of transgender people prove it to be so wrong.
Roey adds:
I also started having some pretty big moments of change. One of them was coming to understand that gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and that many of the butches I was so attracted to didn’t see themselves as women at all.
And then I met Frances Billker, a trans woman who became a dear friend, and once I loved her all I could see was the things we had in common, including a love of sparkle. My friendship with Frances caused me to start reading personal stories that made me challenge my assumptions about trans people and about gender more broadly.
And then, as the leader of an LGBTQ organization, I got to know many more trans people, all with their own journeys, who challenged me further. I witnessed a trans movement growing, and over time I became a dependable ally; the power of watching people come out and begin to live openly was both very familiar and undeniable. And hearing how much damage that people with my lesbian feminist beliefs had done to trans people both in the past and currently became something I had to both admit to and apologize for.
Luca Dalen Espseth is one of Norway’s best know transgender activist. He is blogging over at “Best med bart” (”Best with a Mustache”.) In a recent blog post he made some very good observations about J.K. Rowling and her fake sympathy for transgender women.
Under the headline “Keep Rowling Rowling Rowling” (Google translation here) he asks why Rowling hasn’t come out in support of black trans people. She had, as Luca points out, a golden opportunity to say that the feminist struggle must be anti-racist and trans-inclusive. But she didn’t.
The anti-racist movement in the US’s response to this is that tens of thousands of people this weekend have taken to the streets under the slogan “Black Trans Lives Matter”.
Because anti-racists see that melanin-rich transgender women are subjected to a complex form of discrimination that deals with racism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny and their interaction.
Rowling wrote “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.”
Luca wants to see pictures of Rowling in a parade.
Educated as a high school teacher/master in biology, Luca finds it painful to read Rowling’s statements about biology.
No trans people have said that genitalia, chromosomes and hormones do not exist.
We have said that it is society that requires people with Y chromosomes to call themselves men. The so-called biology does not.
We have said that every body is different and what kind of body you have should not determine what kind of life you can live.
We have said that your experience of who you are and what gender you are is an important and fundamental part of your identity, and something you decide on yourself. You have some basic feminism 101, right there.
Transgender people also fully acknowledge that women who were assigned female at birth can experience parts of the world in a different way than women who were assigned male at birth. That’s why we’re talking about trans women and cis women
Luca points out that trans women are not a threat to cis women. However, cis women can be a threat to trans women when they discredit, discriminate and marginalize them.
They may also represent a threat to cis women with a masculine gender presentation, Luca says, because these cis women actively ask people to police the gender and gender expression of other people.
Men must be held accountable for what they do, Luca argues. Do not blame women for what men do. This is also basic feminism.
To say that women’s spaces are unsafe because of some types of women is discrimination. Few would have accepted it if I said that lesbian women are a threat to heterosexual women.
(If you read the Google translation, keep in mind that the word “tog” means both “train” and “parade” in Norwegian. Google is getting a bit confused, I see. Maybe the AI thinks Luca is referring to the Hogwarts Express. )
Washington Blade reports on São Paulo Congresswoman Érica Malunguinho, the first transgender woman elected to a state congress in Brazil.
Blade asked her about her use of the term “constant negotiation of belonging”. She answered:
//There is a central point that structures our society and conducts it and determines what is normative. White, heterosexual, cisgender men are a part of that center. Everyone who is outside of that norm are in a constant negotiation of a sense of belonging.
Obviously, that happens differently for the people outside the center. If you are a white cisgender woman you have to negotiate being a woman within the patriarchy; if you are a black man or woman your negotiation is different and so on and so on until you get to a black transgender woman. That is what that constant negotiation of belonging means.
We live in a society organized by that center and it conducts itself to the exclusion of the “other”. People outside that organizational norm need to constantly negotiate their lives, their right to work, their beauty, their love. Our existence is not given naturally just by the fact that you are breathing. I am the first transgender woman elected. I negotiate my belonging constantly by being that.//
What's the difference between radical feminism and liberal or intersectional feminism? I'm confused ^.^"
crossdreamers answered
What is the difference between liberal, radical and intersectional feminism, and what does this mean for transgender people?
Any attempt at reducing feminism to distinct, neat, types or categories will ultimately fail, as there is much diversity and feminism is in constant development. That being said, here is a very simplified presentation of various types of feminism, as they are often understood in an American and North European context.
Note that these categories are overlapping, both in space and time.
FIRST WAVE -> Liberal Feminism
There has been a female liberation movement going as far back as the 18th century, but in the Anglo-Saxon context the first wave is considered the one that started in the 19th century with the suffragettes and the women’s right to vote movement.
Suffragettes, London.
Many of the ideas of first wave feminism is found in what these days is referred to as liberal feminism. The idea is that you may gradually change the system from within, making people see that women are in no way inferior to men, and that they deserve the same rights as men, both as regards property, work, education, political influence and pay.
Liberal feminism does not challenge liberal, capitalist, democracy as such. These feminists want to improve it. They share the individualism of liberal democracy, and fight for women’s right to personal autonomy and freedom.
In many ways this approach has been a success, as is seen in the increasing participation of women in working life, culture and politics.
The limitation of this kind of feminism is, as I see it, that these feminists tend to think of the social system as a rational system. The point is to make people understand that the current system is unfair and oppressive. When people do understand, they will change their behavior.
As we have seen with the recent traditionalist backlash, many people – both men and women – do not care so much about facts or rational discussions. They see traditional gender roles as a part of their identity, reality be damned, and feel threatened by anything that may weaken their fragile view of the world.
These days most liberal feminists support the rights of transgender women. However, it should be pointed out that there was a time when liberal feminists argued that even lesbians should be excluded, as their presence might undermine the legitimacy of the feminist movement. Betty Friedan did not want to allow what she called “the lavender menace” into the US National Organization for Women back in 1969.
I have no idea what she thought about trans women at the time, but you will sometimes see the same kind of embarrassment among some liberal feminists today as regards the presence of trans women.
SECOND WAVE -> Radical Feminism
The second wave appeared in the 1960s. Radical feminists believe that the system that oppresses women, by them referred to as “The Patriarchy”, is a system created by men to control and exploit women. You cannot achieve victory within this system, they argue, as it permeates everything around us: laws, language, mythologies, art, entertainment.
The Ladies’ Home Journal sit-in 1970
The system makes it hard to think differently, as the oppression is integrated within social institutions like marriage, the traditional nuclear family, and the health care system, as well as in the words we used (”woman” understood, for instance, as someone who is assigned female on the basis of genitalia).
In the Patriarchy, being a man is the default. Women are “the Other”. The goal of radical feminism is a society where your genitals no longer define your role and influence in society.
Radical feminists see pornography and prostitution both as signs of, and tools for, the oppression of women. Some lesbian radical feminists even see heterosexual sex as a tool of oppression. Lesbians have freed themselves from male domination by not having sex with men, they say.
Radical feminists have criticized the liberal feminists for wanting to become like men. The point is not to gain the right to do what men do, they argue, because that leads women to devalue what women do.
Influential radical feminists like Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, John Stoltenberg and Monique Wittig, recognize trans women as women, which makes sense in a movement who is based in the idea that genitals should not define your worth, your role or your status.
Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin viewed surgery as a right for transgender people.
There is another strand of radical feminism, however, known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERF), people who argue that trans women are men in disguise, and that they perpetuate the ideals of the Patriarchy. The trans women want to take over “womyn’s spaces”, they say.
In order to prove that trans women are men, the TERFs point to the fact that some trans women are sexually attractive (thus living up to the sexism of the Patriarchy). At the same time they use stories and photos of those that are not living up to the aesthetic standards of the fashion industry to prove that all trans women are men.
The fact that many cis women try equally hard to please the male gaze is ignored. The diversity of transgender women is ignored. Nor do the TERFs consider that trans women who have been raised as men have been harrassed and bullied for their female identities and feminine expressions throughout their lives. In other words: That they are also victims of the Patriarchy.
Recently much of the transphobic radical feminism has degenerated into biological determinism, as in “genitals or chromosomes determine whether you are a man or a woman”. Many of these “radical feminists” also deny the existence of gender, as in the cultural definition and expression of gender roles and gender identities. This is the exact opposite of what radical feminism was meant to be. These “gender critical” activists are, as I see it, not true radical feminists.
Among the transphobic radical feminists we find people like Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, and Robert Jensen. They have very little support in the US, but have managed to gain some influence in the UK. The Norwegian organization for radical feminists, Kvinnefronten, welcomes transgender women.
THIRD WAVE -> Intersectional Feminism
The third wave of feminism began in the early 1990s (although you will find its roots back in the 1970s). It embraces individualism and diversity.
Both the first and the second waves of feminism have been dominated by white, cis, middle and upper class women from “Western” countries. Many of them are academics. They are not representative of women in general.
Because of this they have been criticised for generalizing about the female life experience on the basis of their own lives, ignoring the unique experiences of – for instance – women of color, women in developing countries and trans, nonbinary and queer women.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw.
The term intersectionality was introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, and it was soon adopted by third wave feminists. Intersectionality reflects postmodern insights into the way the current social and cultural systems creates hierarchies of oppression.
This oppression is not only about men oppressing women (or the upper class exploiting the working class). In a world dominated by privileged white, straight, and “masculine” men, everyone who does not live up to their ideals are oppressed, whether their “otherness” is caused by sex, skin color, sexual orientation, homeland, religion or gender identity.
The third wave has also been strongly be influenced by queer theory and gender theory, which look at the social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity, sexualities and gender.
The third wave is often seen as sex positive. There are “girly”, “lipstick”, feminists who embrace feminine gender expressions and female sexuality and who argue that noone, not even feminists, have the right to to define or control how they should dress, act, or express themselves.
Needless to say you won’t find many transphobes among third wave feminists.
Some have also coined a fourth wave of feminism. It seems to me to be a continuation of third wave, intersectional, feminism, with a strong focus on the use of modern media. Some TERFs have tried to appropriate the term, joining right wing extremists in their attacks against queer gender theory, but do not be fooled by this. They are, at best, to be considered an offshoot of the second wave. They do not represent women. They do not represent feminists. They do not represent radical feminism.
UN Hosts its First Transgender Government Representative, Aisha Mughal from Pakistan
In some respects Pakistan is far ahead of countries like the US as regards transgender rights.
The Pakistani Ministry of Human Rights reports that The Government of Pakistan now includes a legally recognized Transgender woman, Ms Aisha Mughal, in its National Delegation at the UN Session Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Switzerland.
“Many transgender women have attended these conventions before but they were representing civil societies,” Mughal said on SAMAA TV’s programme Naya Din. “This was the first time a transgender was a member of a government delegation,” she said.
Mughal regards this as an achievement for the country as it has broken stereotypes and changed perceptions of transgender people. “Pakistan has become an example for the entire world,” she said.
ProPakistani reports that Aisha has an M.Phil degree in Human Resource Management from COMSATS Islamabad and is also the first transgender lecturer in the visiting faculty at Quaid-e-Azam University.
