What are your thoughts on "trans-exclusionary" radical feminism? [View all]

[gobears10]

Last edited Sat Sep 5, 2015, 07:46 AM - Edit history (7)

First and foremost, I identity as a feminist and a champion of women's rights. I do subscribe to the idea that in many, many areas there are both subtle and blatant undercurrents of sexism and misogyny in America. We should be talking about discrimination on the basis of gender by government, by society, culturally, by companies, etc. Feminism, as I define it (a movement to make women equal to men), and as it's historically been done, is something I absolutely support a progressive. There is not equality, and there should be. I applaud feminists who are fighting for equality.

The U.S. Republican Party continues to implement and promote misogynistic policies, denying women the right to decide when and whether to have a child. In various states, Republicans have dismantled the reproductive rights of women through over-regulating abortion clinics, invasive transvaginal ultrasound procedures, and banning abortions after 20 weeks, even in cases of rape or incest. Social conservatives have a powerful political lobby that seeks to restrict birth control coverage and access, and shames women for using contraception. Through promoting "abstinence only" sex-ed, and through implementing a "Scarlet Letter" law in Florida, social conservatives support returning women's sexual freedom to strict patriarchal control in the name of religion. Moreover, on both the state federal levels, Republicans support defunding Planned Parenthood, jeopardizing the ability of women (especially poor women of color) to access affordable birth control, cancer screenings, pregnancy testing and counseling, testing and treatment for STDs, comprehensive sex education, and safely administered abortions.

We need to end body shaming and unrealistic images of women in our media and society. We need to combat eating disorders that affect women due to unrealistic standards in society. We need to end the religious-based oppression of women. We need to dismantle traditional gender roles for all genders (women, men, transgender individuals, other people outside the gender binary). We need equal pay for equal work, and we need to address the aggregate pay gap by encouraging more women to go into STEM if they want to. Too many women are underrepresented in higher-paying professions. We need to encourage men to become caregivers too. We need paid maternity and paternity leave. We need to end slut shaming. We need to crack down on sexual assault and domestic violence, and stop victim blaming. We need to end modern day slavery in the form of human sex trafficking. We need to stop the socially conservative shaming of single and working mothers.

We also need to adopt an inter-sectional perspective and interrogate how race, class, sexual orientation, gender-identity, religion, immigration status, ethnicity, disability status, and other aspects of one's identity collectively determine life outcomes. We have to ensure that feminism and social justice overall isn't centered around the interests and needs of straight, heterosexual, white middle class women in America.

However, while I am a proud liberal and progressive feminist, I am wary about some radical feminists. I'm going to be skeptical of the goals of radical feminists, questioning both their intentions and whether their methods are actually the best to achieve their goals. Extreme, fundamentalist feminists are doing more harm than good in my view. Reasonable feminists who are on the side of logic and reason have to defend themselves from militant, fanatic feminists who are saying illogical, inflammatory, hateful, and ridiculous things. We can't ignore them or give them a free pass, because people are paying attention to them too, and they hurt women's rights far more than help it. Extremist feminists enable horrible misogynists, MRAs, and other right-wing douchebags to denounce or dismiss feminism as a whole, even in cases where there's serious structural misogyny.

For example, I found this interview with a radical feminist to be quite ridiculous. Here's the full link: http://www.radfemcollective.org/news/2015/8/29/an-interview-with-julie-bindel

Here are an excerpt:

It won’t, not unless men get their act together, have their power taken from them and behave themselves. I mean, I would actually put them all in some kind of camp where they can all drive around in quad bikes, or bicycles, or white vans. I would give them a choice of vehicles to drive around with, give them no porn, they wouldn’t be able to fight – we would have wardens, of course! Women who want to see their sons or male loved ones would be able to go and visit, or take them out like a library book, and then bring them back.

I hope heterosexuality doesn’t survive, actually. I would like to see a truce on heterosexuality. I would like an amnesty on heterosexuality until we have sorted ourselves out. Because under patriarchy it’s shit.

And I am sick of hearing from individual women that their men are all right. Those men have been shored up by the advantages of patriarchy and they are complacent, they are not stopping other men from being shit.

I would love to see a women’s liberation that results in women turning away from men and saying: “when you come back as human beings, then we might look again...

On the one hand you have got utter idiots like Laurie Penny who are simply coming out with the stuff that she does because she knows that the groups she is supporting, that are pro-trans, pro-sex work, and pro- other anti-women nonsense, are run by very high profile, powerful libertarian men.”

She's also extremely transphobic, being part of a branch of radical feminism called "trans-exclusionary" radical feminism. This strand of radical feminism is characterized by transphobia, especially transmisogyny, and hostility to the third wave of feminism. They believe that the only "real women" are those born with a vagina and XX chromosomes. They wish to completely enforce the classic gender binary, supporting gender essentialism. Sex worker exclusionary radical feminism (also known as SWERF) is yet another offshoot of radical feminism, one that opposes women's participation in pornography and prostitution.

It's a disgusting, horrible worldview, and pro-equality intersectional feminists who want to uplift trans folk and sex workers shouldn't stand for this nonsense. TERFs (and SWERFs) are a tiny subset of feminism, but an unduly influential one: legislators seeking feminist input will often get an academic TERF, who will then get transphobia into law. They are, in short, a hate group that by no means represents mainstream feminism, and I don't view them as progressive or liberal. Anyone who throws trans people under the bus and doesn't adopt an intersectional perspective isn't my ally. I'm with the pro-equality feminists.