Jay Michaelson has a good discussion of the collaboration between right wing extremists and religious fanatics on the one hand and the transphobic fringe of radical feminism (TERFs) over at The Daily Beast.
He points out that this is nothing new. They have been allies before in attempts at social control, as in the fights against pornpgraphy and sex workers.
These days TERFs quote Christian fundamentalists, while Christian fundamentalists make use of material produced by TERFs.
Both sides are invested in upholding a strict gender binary, as it defines their identity and their fundamental view of the world.
Michaelson writes:
But the alliance with anti-transgender forces on the right has further reaching implications. The rhetoric itself is vitriolic, and surely has contributed to the increase in reported violence against transgender people, including a record number of murders in 2015. But it also has led to numerous anti-transgender laws, most notoriously North Carolina’s absurd, evidence-free, and dangerous crackdown against transgender people using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identities.
The rhetoric surrounding North Carolina’s law is couched in the language of TERFs: transgender women, in particular, are described as being men in disguise, either because of a psychological disorder or a pathological desire to assault women. Conservative religious writings likewise deny the existence of transgender people as a category; last year, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention said that trans people do not exist.
This despite the lived experience of millions of transgender people, and the scientific consensus among the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Society that gender dysphoria is a real condition that can be addressed and remedied. (Many trans activists, it should be noted, resist this medical diagnosis, since it can stigmatize transgender people as disordered.)
You can read the rest of his article here.
Note that most radical feminists support transgender people, as do many Conservatives outside the US.
Let there be no doubt about it: The transphobic radical feminists (TERFs) are neither radical nor real feminists. They are now actively collaborating with right wing extremists in their attacks on transgender people, and I can assure you that the conservative fundamentalists would not have done so if they didn’t think this could be used to protect traditional gender roles and power of the Patriarchy.
Those invited by Heritage to share their “concerns from the left” included three women from the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, a self-described radical feminist organization best known for its opposition to transgender rights, and Hacsi Horvath, an adjunct lecturer at the University of California, San Francisco, who formerly identified as transgender.
Throughout their hourlong discussion, the four panelists — at least two of them LGBTQ — shared similar views on transgender people and the rights many in the trans community are currently seeking.
Horvath likened the trans rights movement to “the new eating disorder,” and Jennifer Chavez, a WoLF member, read from a letter that described increased transgender visibility and acceptance as “a social contagion all over the internet.”
Just to be clear: Not all Conservatives are homophobic or transphobic. Indeed, in my country (Norway) they actively support LGBTQA rights. And only a minority of those who call themselves radical feminists are anti-trans.
World leading gender philosopher and radical feminist Judith Butler attacks homophpbes and transphobes in an new article in the New Statesman.
She points to Conservative – and in particular Catholic – attacks on the so-called “gender theory” where they argue that the gender binary is God given (or defined by chromosomes, if we are to believe TERFs):
Butler says:
But if one considers gender theory carefully, it is neither destructive nor indoctrinating. In fact, it simply seeks a form of political freedom to live in a more equitable and livable world.
In The Second Sex (1949), the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote: “One is not born a woman but becomes one.” This claim created space for the idea that sex is not the same as gender. And in the simplest formulation of this notion, sex is seen as a biological given, gender the cultural interpretation of sex. One may be born as female in the biological sense, but then one has to navigate a series of social norms and figure out how to live as a woman – or another gender – in one’s cultural situation.
Crucially for Beauvoir, “sex” is from the very start part of one’s historical situation. “Sex” is not denied, but its meaning is disputed: nothing about being assigned female at birth determines what kind of life a woman will lead and what the meaning of being a woman might be. Indeed, many trans people are assigned one sex at birth, only to claim another one in the course of their lives. And if we build on the logic of Beauvoir’s “existentialist” account of social construction, then one may be born a female, but become a man.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminist are not really radical feminists. Again and again they align themselves with the extreme right. Here is a twitter thread by Katelyn Boo-rns that documents this phenomenon.
Let me repeat this, because it is clearly needed: Real radical feminists are not transphobic. Real radical feminists do not try to uphold a gender binary developed by the Patriarchy in order to oppress women. Real radical feminists do not cooperate with the extreme right in order to harass transgender children. Real feminists support the oppressed and help those marginalized.
To understand feminism is to understand the ways prejudices and social hierarchies are used to oppress weaker and/or marginalized groups.
You cannot be a feminist if you are using the same bullying tactics towards other women as have been used against yourself.
This applies to invalidation, marginalization and calling those that do not fit your own restrictive views of gender mentally ill.
That is exactly what Germaine Greer and the other trans-exclusionary radical feminists are doing. They are adopting the weapons of the Patriarchy in order to suppress one of the most vulnerable group of women, trans women.
2017 has already seen at least 23 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other violent means in the US, a majority of them African-American women. Germaine Greer and her allies are contributing to a transphobic culture that makes this happen.
There is no excuse for such crimes against humanity.
You cannot be transphobic and a feminist at the same time. The good news is that the great majority of feminists understand that.
Artist and celebrity Cher brings down transphobic “radical feminists” (who are neither radical nor real feminists) and extremist religious activists in crystal clear tweets.
Much of transphobia found on the male to female side is rooted in our culture’s disdain for femininity and feminine expressions. This femme phobia applies to all femmes: straight cis-women, lesbian women, gay men and trans people of all genders.
Femme shaming is yet another way our society keeps women and gender variant people in check.
People who should know better, like radical feminists, play the “feminine is a sexist stereotype” card with great enthusiasm, while at the same time embracing masculine gender stereotypes with gusto.
Muscles and leather are apparently not sexist, high heels and cleavage are.
To me this reflects a deep rooted misogyny that permeates our whole culture.
Femininity is a sign of weakness (or something worse)
This becomes especially difficult for those male to female transgender people who feel feminine and who want to express that femininity.
They are immediately dismissed as sexist, not in the same way as feminine non-transgender women, mind you (as ”sluts”, “airheads” or “bimbos”, depending on to what extent they express their sexuality) but dismissed all the same (as ”effeminate gay men” and “heterosexual perverts”).
It does not matter that “we all know” that a feminine gender expression in a woman does not equal fragility, weakness or promiscuity. Even in the most gender conscious among us the social dismissal of the feminine often takes over: We make the same mistake over and over again: Femininity equals female equals weak equals powerless and pathetic.
Sexism and radical feminism
This tendency has been strengthened by the curse of post-structuralist philosophy; the idea that gender is nothing but a performance, a social construct with no deep roots in personality. Or, at least, this is how such a philosophy is presented by extremist militants.
Presenting as feminine is therefore a moral choice and a bad one. Butch is good, femme is bad.
Safira Anouk, a a two spirit native American artist and radical femme. makes the following observation over at Harlot Media:
“Femme-shaming oppresses not only women, but any gender-variant person who doesn’t equate their personal empowerment to masculine presentation. This brutal way of thinking stratifies people into a kyriarchal caste system according to their biological sex, forcing them into corresponding boxes of gender norms; arbitrarily socializing people in ways that betray their authentic selves.”
Yes, this radical feminist actually believes there is such a thing as an “authentic self”, and that this personality core is not just a mirage of gender symbols and semiotics.
I am certain she is right. Much of the suffering trans and queer people experience is because they are not allowed to be themselves, express themselves and be affirmed as themselves. Saying that there is no “self” does not help at all.
Anouk strongly defends her right to be femme:
“My choice to wear long nails may be partly influenced by the way that I was socialized, and it may also coincide with misogynist expectations of women, however it is my choice which I made through thoughtful analysis of pros and cons. In this case I chose in favour of my own aesthetic preference, knowing full well that they can be impractical and invite unwanted attention from disapproving feminists and chauvinist trolls alike.”
Gay femme-phobia
The gay male culture has also become increasingly femme-phobic. Looking “straight” or even more straight than “straight” is the ideal. The six-pack is the new norm.
Over at iD Scottee Scottee, a femme queen, draws attention to femme-shaming and the need to fight back against gay-on-gay prejudice:
“Lets entertain Russell and Daniel’s rhetoric that effeminacy is somehow performed – then surely this means their beloved masculinity is also a performed action?
My limp wrist, higher intonation and penchant for an ASOS blouse is not, contrary to popular belief a received action, I’m just being the person I feel I am.
Granted when I’m wearing eight inches of foundation and covering myself in confetti perhaps this is a heightened version of my femme identity, but there’s an argument here that this is only deemed outré because of the rules of gender our aforementioned attention seekers adhere to and enforce; perhaps we often try to be louder because we want to be heard. To paraphrase a Stonewall campaign slogan – some people are camp, get over it.”
Femme shaming reinforces the fear of femininity in people assigned male
For me femme shaming is yet another attempt by both religious, feminist and LGBT extremist to force the rest of the world to live to up to their ideals of restricted and puritan lives. It reflects centuries of sexual repression of women, the denial of female sexuality and a dismissal of the pride women may take in their bodies and souls.
It also turns the natural and healthy desire to celebrate yourself through clothing and appearance into something pathological. Above all: It reinforces the cultural fear of femininity in people assigned male at birth.
Give room for diverse gender expressions
I may disagree with Caitlyn Jenner when it comes to parts of her politics, but I will never reduce her desire to appear feminine to a result of social conditioning. It reflects a genuine part of herself that is now, finally, given room to breathe.
The fact that femme shaming has become a concept gives me hope. This means that we can finally see and do something about this kind of oppression.
Great article by Natasha Barrett on transphobic TERFs over at Huff Post Young Voices.
She writes:
“The fact is, if you’re going to follow the proper aims of feminism and by that I mean intersectionality (as much as many people love to claim this is not the right word), you need to be inclusive. A movement that aims to reduce exclusion, can’t narrow down its permitted participants without becoming entirely contradictory.
Women of colour have different experiences of being a woman to white women, disabled women have different experiences to able-bodied women and gay or bisexual women have different experiences to straight women.
If you deny trans women space within the feminist community based on the fact that their experience of womanhood is ‘different’ to yours, then by the same logic you should also exclude the list of women above. Once you reach this point you are left with a very small group of women who are not only the least marginalised women in our society but also all face the same issues.”
For many trans people radical feminism has become synonymous with transphobia and sexist bigotry..
Trans activist Cristan Williams argues that it does not have to be this way, and that – in fact – TERFs like Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, Germaine Greer, and Bev Jo Von Dohre represent a minority of radical feminism.
“The diversity of participants, I believe, is one of the greatest strengths of the project,” says Margo Schulter, a trans activist, feminist, scholar, and composer. “Cristan Williams has taken a great interest in inclusive second-wave radical feminism, and courageous women like Robin Tyler who sometimes faced the threat or even reality of physical violence in order to support the inclusion of transsexual lesbian feminists like Beth Elliott. John Stoltenberg … plays a vital role in this process as a sustainer of [Dworkin’s] legacy of challenging the sex and gender binaries alike. And we have a wonderful, intergenerational mix of people to share different perspectives, insights, and viewpoints.”
