From TERF to gender critical: A telling genealogy?

Abstract

Over the last 5 years the UK has seen a significant rise in the prominence of trans-exclusionary feminism. What was once termed TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminism/feminist) is now more often referred to as gender critical feminism/feminist. In this article I argue that this new moniker represents more than a renaming. Instead, it can be interpreted as a rebranding for a present-day where the explicit transphobia of earlier trans-exclusionary feminism is no longer tolerated. I will map two telling changes that I argue currently separates gender critical from TERF, this involves (i) the linguistic pivot from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-woman’ and, (ii) the nascent questioning of the traditional theoretical underpinning of trans-exclusionary feminism. Through this mapping I will explain the rebranding as an attempted claim to legitimacy with an aim of accruing mainstream support. However, exploration of the two changes will show that, despite efforts to obscure the point, gender critical feminism continues to rely on transphobic tropes, moral panics and essentialist understandings of men and women. These factors also continue to link trans-exclusionary feminism to anti-feminist reactionary politics and other ‘anti-gender’ movements.

Keywords

Feminism feminist theory gender critical trans-inclusion queer LGBTQ anti-gender

Introduction

Since 2016 the climate for trans people in the UK is as hostile as it has ever been, certainly more so than in the past 30 years. It is unsurprising that a combination of increased trans visibility in the 2010s and a right-moving populist politics reliant on culture wars, would lead to a pinch point whereby trans rights come under greater scrutiny and trans people’s daily lives become more difficult. However, what is surprising is that in the UK it is a women-led feminist movement that has driven the anti-trans agenda, quietly accompanied by the usual suspects from the conservative right. What I will refer to as trans-exclusionary feminism has a long history. In its current resurgence, it was in the UK where this position first entered the mainstream. Others have written on why the UK became the hub of trans-exclusionary feminism (Burns, 2019a; Hines, 2020; Lewis, 2019). In this article, I analyse how this popularisation has been achieved through changes designed to accrue legitimacy. Trans-exclusionary feminism does not represent a single articulation of trans-exclusion and in this paper I articulate the iterations and interrogate what they reveal. Following a brief history of trans-exclusionary feminism, I look at how and why ‘TERF’ became ‘gender critical’. I will examine (1) the pivot in language from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-women’ and (2) the questioning of the theoretical foundations of trans-exclusion. I conclude that while both adaptations can be explained as a claim to legitimacy, neither changes the substance of trans-exclusionary feminism, which continues to represent a regressive politics which is integrally linked to wider reactionary political environments.

First a word on terminology. I use ‘TERF’ as a representation of what might be called the original trans-exclusionary feminist view, which I outline in the following section, and ‘gender critical’ to represent more contemporary presentations of feminist trans-exclusion. I use ‘trans-exclusionary feminism’ as an umbrella term encompassing both. As will be discussed, the application of these terms is complex and political. They represent positions that are interconnected and often interchangeable, indistinguishable and/or contradictory. Acknowledging these enmeshments as I advance, there is enough of a separable figurative TERF position from that of a figurative gender critical one, at least in how they are presented, to be usefully employed.

A brief history of anti-trans feminism

The current incarnation of trans-exclusionary feminism in the UK is a resurgence of a US-based movement dating back to the 1970s. It was with the activism of the women’s liberation movement in the west and feminist grappling’s with the newly conceptualized idea of gender, that some feminists identified the trans subject as worthy of concern. Then, as now, the most prominent and influential text of trans-exclusionary feminism was Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire: The Making of a She-Male. Published in the USA in 1979, it was one of the first texts dedicated to the relationship between trans (specifically, transsexual, though I use ‘trans’ for consistency), womanhood and feminism. The book sets out the arguments as to why trans identities pose a threat to (cis) women. Raymond’s conclusions can be distilled as (a) trans is a manifestation of patriarchy and is caused, at least in part, by sex-role rigidity, (b) trans people are either delusional or deceiving and to think otherwise is to ‘collude with the falsification of reality’ (1994: xxiii) (c) trans women are violators and penetrators, of space, of bodies, of true womanhood. Raymond focuses on trans women, a focus that continues today, albeit with greater yet still minimal consideration of other trans identities. In 2012, Raewyn Connell (2012) noted that the arguments presented in The Transsexual Empire have been ‘followed to some degree’ (p.860) by most trans-exclusionary feminists. I will go on to illustrate how this remains the case despite efforts to obscure these foundations.

Raymond’s book reflected political tensions that had been brewing for some time over women-only spaces and the presence of trans women. This tension was fuelled by the rise of radical feminism in the US and how, for some, this led to a trans-exclusionary viewpoint linked to the goal of gender abolition and a particular understanding of what it is to be trans – as an inauthentic portrayal of a gender through hackneyed stereotypes. As with contemporary iterations debates about trans inclusion were polarising, illustrated in 1973 with the case of Beth Elliott. Elliot, a trans and lesbian singer, would ‘become the basis for one of the most pernicious and persistent characterizations of transgender people to be found in all of feminism’ (Stryker, 2008: 103) – the characterisation of trans individuals as rapists. Elliot was due to perform at the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. A lesbian separatist collective, the Gutter Dykes, leafletted the conference to protest the presence of a ‘man’ and lamented, ‘a new trend of men that are invading and draining our lesbian communities … men with XY chromosomes and “normal” male hormones who decide they are actually women’ (as reported in The Lesbian Tide, 1973). A subsequent vote amongst conference attendees supported Elliott’s inclusion at the conference, although she chose to leave as she found it upsetting. However, keynote speaker Robin Morgan continued to take issue with Elliott, at the last moment changing her speech Lesbian and Feminism: Synonyms or Contradictions to voice her disapproval. She stated, ‘I charge him as an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer – with the mentality of a rapist’. (quoted in Stryker, 2008: 105).

It was against this divisive backdrop that Raymond wrote her book. The Transsexual Empire initially had more impact in the US than in other countries. However, Raymond’s work was the blueprint from which other trans-exclusionary feminists took their cue. In the 1980s UK, it was writers such as Germaine Greer, Sheila Jeffreys and Julie Bindel who would bring this particular concern to mainstream attention, and all continue to feature in the UK resurgence of trans-exclusionary feminism of the late 2010s. In 1989, writing for The Independent Magazine with a piece entitled ‘Why Sex Change is a Lie’ Greer (1989) offered;

On the day that The Female Eunuch was issued in America, a person in flapping draperies rushed up to me and grabbed my hand. ‘Thank you so much for all you've done for us girls!' I smirked and nodded and stepped backwards, trying to extricate my hand from the enormous, knuckly, hairy, be-ringed paw that clutched it... Against the bony ribs that could be counted through its flimsy scarf dress swung a polished steel women's liberation emblem. I should have said, 'You're a man. The Female Eunuch has done less than nothing for you. Piss off.' The transvestite [sic] held me in a rapist's grip.

Sheila Jeffreys shares the same views as Raymond and Greer but, perhaps more overtly than some other trans-exclusionary feminists, centres sexual perversion as laying at the heart of male to female transition. To Jeffreys ‘transgenderism’, as she terms it, is a men’s sexual rights movement. In this context, desiring access to women’s spaces is about the sexual excitement felt at violating such spaces; ‘They need to express their sexual rights in women’s toilets by getting erections’ (Jeffreys in Allan, 2017, 00.01.20).

It was individuals with the type of trans-exclusionary opinions outlined in this section that would retrospectively be termed TERFs (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and it is these types of sentiments I intend to capture in my use of ‘TERF’. In the section that follows I outline how TERF fell out of favour and the rise of ‘gender critical’.

From TERF to gender critical

The term TERF was itself only coined in 2008 and is credited to writer Viv Smythe (2018) who wanted a shorthand way to differentiate between trans-inclusive radical feminists and radical feminists who did not accept trans women as women. This coining came at a time when trans-exclusionary views within feminism, while always only held by a small faction in the UK, had very much depreciated. While a few feminists continued to write about and protest trans inclusion into the 1990s and 2000s (e.g. Greer, 1999; Hausman, 1995; Jeffreys, 2003), the political, social and legal landscape continued to change for LGBTQ people and the trans-exclusionary view became increasingly marginalized within feminist discourse. Mainly due to the work of black feminists, post-colonial and critical race scholars, the late 1980s onwards saw increased focus on differences within womanhood, including the work of power dynamics in privileging and marginalising voices and experiences. There was an increasing focus on a critique of categories such as woman, man, straight, gay and the policing they accrue. This came not least from poststructural scholarship and, particularly in this context, queer theory. This combination of events led to growing understanding and inclusion of trans people within feminism, or at least less acceptance of antagonism. Then, in the mid-2010s, just as (and because) trans acceptance was being lauded (e.g. Steinmetz, 2014) TERF viewpoints again began to find more space. While trans-exclusionary discussion increasingly percolated online and occasionally made its way into mainstream media (e.g. Bindel, 2013; Sweney, 2013), it was the UK government’s 2017 announcement on plans to simplify the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate under the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) of 2004 which brought trans-exclusionary feminism back into the mainstream and to such an extent it has become arguably the ‘de facto face of feminism in the UK’ (Burns, 2019b).

While it remained accurate to a subsect of trans-exclusionary feminists (some radical feminists), TERF came to signify trans-exclusionary views more generally. As Smyth correctly recognized, being a radical feminist was never synonymous with being trans-exclusionary (see Andrea Dworkin (1976), Catherine MacKinnon (2015) and, for an overview of trans-inclusive radical feminism, Williams (2016)). Further, in its current iteration trans-exclusion is not only confined to those feminists who would be considered, or consider themselves, radical feminists – examples perhaps being JK Rowling or the feminist message boards of Mumsnet (Livingston, 2018). Moreover, once the term was popularized, being trans-exclusionary and therefore liable to being labelled a TERF did not necessitate being a feminist at all, with the term also being used to describe trans-exclusionary positions from right-wing or religious perspectives.

This diffusion of the application of ‘TERF’ coupled with the overt transphobia of earlier feminist writings on trans-exclusion, promoted the terms pejorative use by some. It has been argued that TERF now meets the definition of a slur (Cameron, 2016). A number of academics prominent in contemporary trans-exclusion wrote in opposition to academic journals publishing articles that uncritically employed ‘TERF’ (Allen et al., 2018). They reasoned both that it implies beliefs they do not hold (discussed later) and that, whatever its original application, it is now used to ‘harass, shame, dismiss and denigrate women’s ideas’ (Allen et al., 2018, para.7). Others resist this characterisation and view TERF as a useful and accurate term to describe trans-exclusionary feminists, Alyosxa Tudor noting ‘it’s simply a term describing a political position’ (Tudor, 2020). Others are vocal in their opposition to both TERF being classified a slur and to TERFs being viewed as feminists. Sara Ahmed, for example states that ‘an anti-trans stance is an anti-feminist stance; it is against the feminist project of creating worlds to support those for whom gender fatalism (boys will be boys, girls will be girls), is fatal’ (Ahmed, 2017: 234). Amidst the melee of controversy and connotations attached to ‘TERF’, the term ‘gender critical feminism/feminist’ began to be used by proponents of trans-exclusionary feminism. While this constitutes a late 2010s renaming of TERF, it would be more accurately described as a rebranding. The following section will detail how this rebranding has been achieved.

From TERF to gender critical change 1: Language

When Theresa May proposed changes to the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate under the GRA 2004, it seemed a relatively uncontroversial move because a) it was bringing the UK in-line with suggested international best practice (Westerlund and Kohler, 2016) and b) the obtaining of a gender recognition certificate has very restricted impact – it allows marriage in affirmed gender, pension age changes and greater data privacy regarding trans status. It does not, for example impact access to sex-segregated spaces, this being covered by the Equality Act 2010. However, these crucial details were largely overlooked by trans-exclusionary feminists and initial opposition against changes to the GRA revolved around the argument that trans women are men and a danger in women’s spaces – reviving the Raymond/Jeffreys/Greer ‘trans as rapist’ trope. This argument failed to gain much public support so was adapted to suggest that the gender recognition process could be abused by cis men to gain access to women’s spaces for nefarious purposes (Whittle and Simkiss, 2020: 212). This framing did garner attention and prior to the government launching its public consultation, it had received a petition with almost 13,000 signatures outlining the ‘concerns of women’ (Petitions: Consult with women on proposals to enshrine ‘gender identity’ in law, 2018). Despite the government’s response pointing out that proposed changes to the GRA would not impact upon the existing legal position on access to women-only spaces (Government Equalities Office, 2018), the ball was rolling on a new and, at the time, UK specific iteration of trans-exclusionary feminism, bringing together long-time trans-exclusionary figures and newly concerned individuals.

This single-issue movement quickly gave rise to campaign groups in the UK (e.g. Women’s Place UK, Fair Play for Women, Filia, Resisters, Sex Matters, LGB Alliance, to name a few), and found some support from columnists, media and press figures, mainstream publications, politicians, peers and social media users. A few academics from across disciplines, especially sociology and philosophy, began to add their voices to the trans-exclusionary refrain. Simultaneously, living in the UK as a trans person was becoming increasingly difficult, a point noted by prominent youtuber Abigail Thorne when she came out as trans in 2021 and referred to the UK as ‘TERF island’ (Philosophy Tube, 2021).

The initial failure of TERF-related tropes to garner public support quickly influenced the terms of ‘debate’, with the rhetoric employed noticeably changed. Leaving aside that the term ‘gender critical feminism’ is tautology, its adoption represented the beginnings of a pivot by trans-exclusionary feminists towards language which obscures their trans-exclusionary focus. Alongside a shift from TERF to gender critical, ‘anti-trans’ became ‘pro-women’ and ‘trans-exclusion’ became the protection of ‘sex-based rights’ (‘We defend sex-based rights’ (Fair Play for Women, 2021: para.6)). These rather innocuous-sounding terms have been transformed into the language of division; exemplifying dog-whistle politics whereby the phrases act as a coded message of anti-transness to those initiated, while appearing ‘reasonable’ (more on which later) to the wider population. The move to rebrand ‘anti-trans’ as ‘pro-women’ is accompanied by those supporting trans rights being labelled ‘trans rights activists’ (known in gender critical circles as ‘TRAs’) or the ‘trans lobby’. This works to conjure the figure of an ‘extreme’ trans person, in contrast to an ‘ordinary’ trans person, who trans-exclusionary feminists can claim not to have issue with. A variation on this theme is the rare acceptance of ‘real’ trans people, conceptualized as fully surgically and medically transitioned, contrasted with the more numerous ‘unreal’ trans person who could be dangerous or the victim of contagion. This victim of contagion is often imagined as a vulnerable child or young adult, as witnessed through the debates over so-called ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ (Ashley, 2020).

In a landscape that now sees trans people protected in law and greater social acceptance, this approach allows for nominal acceptance of trans people while simultaneously campaigning for trans-exclusion. For contemporary gender critical feminists, a stated rejection of transphobia and support of trans people has become an essential part of their rhetoric – for example ‘We support trans rights’ (Fair Play for Women, 2021), ‘Trans people deserve lives free from fear. They deserve laws and policies that properly protect them from discrimination and violence’ (Stock, 2020: 10). This development is perhaps at its starkest when observed in feminists who span the decades of these discussions, such as Julie Bindel – ‘None of us are transphobic except for some of those women who aren’t in the women’s movement, that aren’t feminists, that aren’t on the left’ (Cambridge Radical Feminist Network, 2021a: 00.58.24) contrast with earlier comments on trans people, ‘fuck-me shoes and birds-nest hair for the boys; beards, muscles and tattoos for the girls. Think about a world inhabited just by transsexuals. It would look like the set of grease’ (Bindel, 2004).

These moves to be perceived as pro-women rather than anti-trans have created fault lines within trans-exclusionary feminism between those preferring the more uncompromising position of the past (the TERF) and those embracing an allegedly more moderate rhetoric (the gender critical). This often crystalizes around the subject of language and pronoun usage is a common debate. Trans-exclusionary feminist Julia Long writes,

… it is strange that the British gender critical movement has shown very little willingness to reject wholesale the pernicious language of transgenderism. High-profile groups such as A Woman’s Place UK (WPUK) and Fair Play for Women insist that they are in favour of the rights of ‘trans people’, habitually use the terms ‘trans woman’ or ‘transwoman’, and use ‘she’ pronouns for men who demand it. Paradoxically then, much of what is written and spoken in the name of British gender critical feminism in fact does the ideological work of transgenderists for them, promulgating their fictions as legitimate and valid through speaking their language … It is striking that while gender critical feminists correctly insist that it is not possible to change sex, many breezily continue to use the term ‘transsexual’ or ‘transwoman’ as if such a change were possible and as if such individuals exist. This oddly contradictory position is thoroughly normalized – mandated, even – at events held by groups like WPUK and Filia, and in the writings and speeches of media feminists like Julie Bindel and Sarah Ditum and academics such as Kathleen Stock and Selina Todd. (Long, 2020: paras 4 & 5)

‘Oddly contradictory’ is a good descriptor. It is often the case that alongside or behind softer gender critical language sits many of the arguments of original trans-exclusionary feminism. For example the aforementioned Fair Play for Women published on their website a piece titled ‘Pronouns are Rohypnol’ about the dangers of acquiescing to pronoun preference. Even the most extreme discourse around ‘elimination’ continues, the organisation Women’s Human Rights Campaign UK stating that a UN pledge to eliminate prejudices and customs based on stereotyped roles for men and women should apply to ‘the practice of transgenderism’ (Women’s Human Rights Campaign UK, 2020: para.3). It is noteworthy that this organisation is headed by, amongst others, Heather Brunskill-Evans; someone who is a trustee of Filia and has spoken at Women’s Place UK events, organisations reprimanded by Long for their pandering. The same Julie Bindel who disavows transphobia in March 2021 refers to a ‘trans-Taliban’ in June of that year (Bindel, 2021). This is illustrative of how contemporary trans-exclusionary feminism is bound up and intertwines with its past, despite efforts to distance ‘TERF’ from gender critical.

From TERF to gender critical change 2: Engagements with more recent literature

A rebranding to gender critical also represents tentative modifications or expansion to the theoretical rationale of previous trans-exclusionary feminism. At the heart of controversies over trans acceptance and inclusion from a feminist position is the question of who counts as ‘woman’. This is an area of debate and scholarship that has been much enriched during trans-exclusionary feminisms two periods of greatest prominence in the UK – the 1980s and now. Black feminism, intersectionality, trans feminism, postmodernism and queer theory have all contributed to a critique of who is constituted as ‘woman’. Also, during this time, a more complex and nuanced understanding of biological sex began to emerge, challenging the hitherto monolithic dimorphic model (Blackless et al., 2000; Fausto-Sterling, 1993). Further, research on the interplay between sex and gender, the biological and social, the suggested discursive nature of both, poses questions about the tenability of maintaining a stark separation between the concepts of gender and sex.

As pointed out by Talia Mae Bettcher (2018), gender critical feminists often operate as if this literature does not exist and/or that they are bringing questions of womanhood and trans identities to the fore for the first time. However, unlike earlier iterations a few gender critical feminists do attempt to engage with, dispute, incorporate or address at least some of the points raised by critical literature. While not a change as pervasive and strategic as that of the linguistic and rhetorical modifications already noted, it is a move that does pose some interesting questions and suggests some telling answers. The basic tenets of Raymond’s, 1979 position on sex (immutable, binary, obvious) and gender (something that amounts to stereotypes and should be abolished), allied with a particular understanding of trans as a portrayal of those stereotypes, remain the basis of the argument for many contemporary trans-exclusionary feminists. While many are uncritical in their applications of these points, there are some gender critical feminists, who are uncomfortable with some of these underpinnings. In a talk titled ‘Gender abolition as a radical feminist goal’ (Cambridge Radical Feminist Network, 2021b) Kathleen Stock outlines why the abolition of gender should not be a feminist goal, suggesting that it is impossible to abolish because gender often arises from sexed bodily differences or due to an innate human tendency to generate norms. Further she argues that some gender norms are beneficial to women and therefore should not be abolished even if it were possible – examples given include single-sex spaces or the norm that it is dishonourable for a man to hit a woman. Thus, for Stock the goal of feminism should be the abolition of ‘sex-associated norms that undermine sexed well-being’ (Cambridge Radical Feminist Network, 2021b: 00.38.21) – examples of such norms given as women being treated as sexual objects and girls not being educated.

Putting aside the viability of cherry-picking norms, and questions of who decides which norms and practices are good, Stocks’ position on gender does acknowledge, tacitly at least, the difficulties inherent in theorising gender as distinct from sex. Jane Clare Jones, a trans-exclusionary feminist, also addresses this point and questions the sharp separation of sex and gender that many trans-exclusionary views depend on. In a tweet presenting a ‘possible way of thinking about the sex/gender distinction/relation’ (Jones, 2020) she suggests ‘very loose bimodal distribution of personality traits’ (Jones, 2020, underscore in original) which she terms as sex/gender. Acknowledging this meld contradicts much trans-exclusionary feminist argumentation Jones explains;

I know the bimodal personality distribution is controversial. But I have been thinking ... if we are happy to accept phrases like ‘feminine men,’ … then it seems we are accepting that there is something meaningfully understood as ‘femininity’ at a personality level ... which is somewhat distinct from, but interacts with, its patriarchal construction.

The above is in reference to gender critical claims that there is no issue with gender non-conforming men and women (they further claim that trans people are often ‘really’ gender non-conforming gay men and women who were confused/pressured into transitioning). Jones’ point is that this seems to present a contradiction by suggesting femininity in feminine men (by implication, gay men) is authentic (‘meaningfully understood…at a personality level’), yet femininity in a trans women is inauthentic. Not only does this stance have questionable assumptions – that femininity and masculinity are innate, that they can act as proxy for sexuality and that being trans is somehow related to an individual’s level of femininity or masculinity – but neither Jones nor Stock square the circle of questioning the sex/gender distinction and relying on gender as a separable and superficial practice in transgender. One way to resolve this is to state that ‘real’ femininity is innate to cis (heterosexual?) women and ‘real’ masculinity innate to cis (heterosexual?) men – which dovetails with a biological essentialist position. Yet most trans-exclusionary feminists are keen to disavow biological or sex essentialism because innate sexed traits are viewed as the antithesis of feminism. Stock, however, does nod to this essentialism, stating in her discussion of why gender abolition should not be a goal of feminism;

One way I could obviously go is to say we can’t get rid of gender because psychology is sexed … that there are distinctive hardwired brain innate psychological characteristics typical for members of the female sex and the male sex ... I’m not going to assume either way that there is a sex psychology or there isn’t. I’m not particularly frightened of the idea that there is but … we shouldn’t decide a priori.

(Cambridge Radical Feminist Network, 2021b)

While there are some differences within gender critical theorising of gender, I also want to highlight where engagement with more recent literature has not led to a shift in the trans-exclusionary feminist position. It remains the case that any suggestions that ‘sex/female/male’ are as constructed through interpretation as anything else (as in poststructuralist thought) are met with a unified, and sometimes contemptuous, dismissal. The focal point for this criticism is often Judith Butler for their views on gender and sex (e.g. Murphy, 2020). Gender critical feminist Alice Sullivan (Cambridge Radical Feminist Network, 2019) describes ‘trans ideology’ as ‘anti-intellectual, postmodernist’ (2019, 00.01.49) and argues ‘postmodernism is the post-truth of the left’ (2019, 00.03.13). Jeffreys admonishes queer theory for ‘weakening feminist theory’ and leading to claims that there was no such thing as a 'woman' (Jeffreys, 2014: 35). Similarly, views of sex as more complex and nuanced than the traditional binary model would suggest are also quickly dismissed. This dismissal often states that such research overplays the level and importance of variations and therefore should not be employed as a challenge to the validity of sex as binary (e.g. Stock, 2020: chap.2).

While rejection of the poststructuralist/queer and spectrum approach to biological sex is emphatic in trans-exclusionary feminism, there is also a less vocalized suspicion of intersectionality. As noted already, for many trans-exclusionary feminists biological sex is at the root of women’s oppression and a focus on other axes of oppression can detract from this. Intersectionality also falls under suspicion because taking an intersectional approach can lead to trans inclusion as being trans becomes as axis of identity meaning ‘trans women cannot be segregated off from feminism any more than any other subset of women can be’ (Morrison, 2020: 5). For writer and trans-exclusionary feminist Raquel Rosario Sanchez this is ‘intersectionality hijacked’ and amounts to ‘intersectionality without females’ (Rosario Sanchez, 2021). Warding off criticism that a sole focus on women as a sex class elides other axes of oppression and inevitably leads to understandings of ‘woman’ based on selective (e.g. white, cis, middle-class, able-bodied, heterosexual, western) experiences, Kathleen Stock argues that man/woman are neutral and non-evaluative concepts. She dismisses theories to the contrary as ‘adolescent metaphysics’ (Stock, 2021a) and simply ‘the fever dreams of humanity seminars’ (Stock, 2021a). For Stock, therefore, it is an illogical extrapolation to suggest that a biological definition of woman brings with it the ‘inclusion problem’ (Jenkins, 2016: 394). This claim is implausible given the histories of categorisation and the work of feminists and anti-racists to illuminate the hierarchy inherent in categorisation, particularly binaries. Yet, for Stock, the rich and varied work which shows ‘woman’ to be something more than/other than biology, has been ‘potentially catastrophic’ (Stock, 2021a). A refusal to think intersectionally highlights how an interrogation of trans-exclusionary thinking exposes problematic foundations more widely on issues of identity, not least for issues of race (discussed in Koyama, 2020; Tudor, 2020). Nonetheless, this engagement with, but dismissal of, critiques of traditional conceptualisations of sex allows for gender critical feminists to retain the primacy of a knowable and binary biology as the basis of their trans-exclusionary politics.

From TERF to gender critical: what do these changes achieve?

In assessing what changes to language and theorising achieve, the first point to emphasize is that the areas of trans lives now urgently under discussion concern rights and ways of living trans people have enjoyed for years without commotion. The second point to emphasize is that trans-exclusionary feminists do not have recourse to statistics to support the majority of their claims (this point and issues of misrepresentation in the gender critical arguments have been discussed elsewhere, including: Hasenbush et al., 2019; Sharpe, 2020; Zanghellini, 2020; Serano, 2021). A simple yet crucial illustrative statistic being that in the 7 years since Ireland introduced self-declaration or ‘self-id’, the issue that sprang trans-exclusionary feminism to life in the UK, annual reviews of the system report no misuse (Department of Social Protection, n d). In lieu of supporting population level statistics, gender critical feminists highlight individual cases to supposedly evidence widespread issues. Acknowledging a lack of evidence-base to the claims of trans-exclusionary feminists, two points become apparent. Firstly, trans-exclusion can be clearly seen as a moral and normative position. This position leads to a single-issue politics which bears the hallmarks of a moral panic (Cohen, 2002); a sparking event (e.g. GRA reform), hostility toward a particular group, disproportionality and threat exaggeration and sudden emergence (and sometimes disappearance) of interest in the issue (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). It is also of note what the literature on moral panic highlights as precipitating causation – namely perceived threat to existing hierarchies, to structures of control and to the social economic or moral order (Garland, 2008). These are issues threaded through critical analysis of trans-exclusionary feminism.

Secondly, accepting that basing a movement on trans people as the unacceptable deviant would fail at respectability politics, the movement requires an alternative narrative to garner support and legitimacy. In part this alternative narrative has been achieved via the changes in language associated with the gender critical movement. By co-opting the language of women’s rights and allying this with the tropes of ‘legitimate concerns’ and ‘common sense’, often with oblique references to ‘science’ or ‘reality’, trans-exclusionary feminism invokes reason and reasonability. All of this is familiar to other reactionary politics that target minority groups (e.g. Goodfellow, 2019: chap.4,5). It is also familiar from the extensive feminist scholarship which has shown how men being positioned as uniquely having the ability to reason, with all its implied connection to the ‘truth’, has functioned as a means to control, dismiss and subjugate women (see Bordo, 1987; Lloyd, 1993; Rooney, 1994). Gender critical women who utilize these very terms to scaffold their discussion reproduce the language of supremacy and oppression. Another clue to the power dynamics at play is how counters to trans-exclusionary arguments are used by trans-exclusionary feminists to evidence harm. This allows for the language of victimisation which in turn allows for the very loud narrative of being silenced (for further discussion see Ahmed, 2015). Again this has parallels, most strikingly from anti-racist work that makes clear the workings of ‘white fragility’ (DiAngelo 2011) and how it turns the accusations of violence (i.e. being called racist) into something more damaging than the violence of racism itself. Yet, the narrative of being silenced is particularly successful in context of ‘culture wars’ stoked by UK politicians and in context of anti-gender moves seen internationally (for links to which see Butler, 2021, Phipps, 2020, Tudor, 2021).

We can turn to Julia Serano’s distinctions between anti-trans attitudes and positions to see what work all this does (Serano, 2016, 2018). Serano suggests three separate categories; trans-unaware (an uninformed or under-informed position), trans-antagonistic (a position that actively promotes anti-trans agendas) and trans-suspicious (a position that acknowledges that trans people exists and should be tolerated but questions/undermines trans perspectives and politics). In the context of my discussion, the trans-antagonist might be viewed as the TERF position and the trans-suspicious might, in good faith, be viewed as the gender critical position. In a society where, despite recent increased visibility, ignorance of trans lives remains the norm, trans-unaware represents the largest grouping. It is also the population whose ignorance on the subject makes them susceptible to influence. This group might therefore be viewed as the motivation for the linguistic pivot from anti-trans to pro-woman and all that brings in terms of its ‘reasonableness’. It has allowed for the slogans and arguments of the women’s movement to be used against a minority group in ways that can be said to abuse or obscure their original meaning. Yet their use can capture the attention of the trans-unaware, all the while making it more difficult for corporations, institutions and organisations to pick through the carefully worded ‘concerns’ of gender critical activism. When Kathleen Stock was chided by Julia Long as quoted previously, her response on twitter was telling; ‘I’m not going to be entering the radfem wars anytime soon. Me? I’ve got a book to sell to the mainstream about multiple harms of gender identity ideology. I am absolutely clear what my mission is’ (Stock, 2021b). This response is indicative of a strategy to recast a marginal position as a ‘mainstream’ moderate concern.

As Serano states, the nominal trans acceptance of the trans-suspicious (and gender critical) position is meaningless. While it functions to be understood as ‘reasonable’ to the trans-unaware, its substance differs little from the trans-antagonistic approach. This is because it is based on metaphysical scepticism that perpetually asks trans people to prove they exist. The gender critical assumption that ‘most’ trans people are really cis, functions to achieve what the most antagonistic TERF positions make clear – to dismiss trans identities and to restrict access to health care. Further if trans people do not really exist, then nor does transphobia or the need for legal protections. The gender critical position also simultaneously leaves open the question as to why fake trans people exist and provides the answer through the ever-present underlying rapist/danger/threat narrative.

While seemingly removed from the change in language, the changes to trans-exclusionary theorising of gender and sex in many ways dovetail. Firstly, and although it remains controversial, the ‘reasonableness’ of the gender critical approach allows it more space within academic institutions and publications. Outputs by gender critical academics, even when much is in the form of blogs, shore up gender critical arguments. Secondly modifications in theory, like the linguistic pivot, can be viewed as a claim to legitimacy. Some of these modifications are, of course, simply what would be expected. An academic would be expected to engage with the up-to-date literature on the subject on which they write. These factors are stark in this case because trans-exclusion in its academic form was largely put on ice at some point in the 1990s before stepping blinkingly back into the sun some 25 years later. If the academics belatedly involving themselves in the trans-exclusionary argument did not engage with the wealth of literature, their credibility could be questioned. However, the more thorough that engagement, the more ‘gender critical’ thought is in danger of exposing its underbelly of essentialism; something of which it is often accused yet is at pains to refute. It is perhaps not surprising then that the most rigorous gender critical work begins to point to what its detractors have long pointed out – that trans-exclusionary feminism accepts a particular type of brain (with all that would mean in terms of psychology, behaviour, temperament) comes with a particular type of gamete. The suggestion that this might actually be OK (‘I’m not particularly frightened by the idea’) seems to take feminism to a very problematic place. Essentialist views of men and women explains why trans-exclusionary feminists have strange bedfellows in their single-issue politics – the right, the religious, and the authoritarian. A validation of essentialism opens the door to all manner of harmful assertions about categories of people and their supposed traits and is why trans-exclusion is viewed as embedded in a wider effort to shore up white male supremacy.

Conclusion

This article has set out to articulate the changes to trans-exclusionary feminism as witnessed through its 2010s revival in the UK. This articulation provides a platform for exploration of the motivations and effects of these changes. The most prominent change is trans-exclusionary feminism’s linguistic pivot away from its ‘anti-trans’ TERF past to a ‘pro-women’ gender critical present. This has allowed for ‘reasonableness’, with all its powerful and problematic effects, to infuse the position. It functions to obscure the continuing promotion of tropes about trans people popularized by TERFs, as well as obscure who experiences harms. The recent revival in trans-exclusionary feminism has also produced some tentative modifications to its traditional theoretical basis. While this change is less noticed than those to the rhetoric, it begins to unmask, on their own terms, what has always appeared apparent to some, the essentialism inherent within a trans-exclusionary viewpoint. This uncovers the anti-feminist consequences of trans-exclusion when the work of interrogating its underpinnings is undertaken. These changes are telling of the insidious nature of essentialist understandings of sex/gender and how even those who would deny it, can work in its thrall, at the expense of minority and marginalized groups. They further expose why the gender critical movement relies largely on superficial slogans, sound bites and glib references to reason, in efforts to accrue legitimacy. In sum, we should beware the claims of ‘pro-women’ and ‘reasonableness’.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Claire Thurlow

Note

Claire Thurlow is a PhD student at Cardiff University, UK. Her PhD research explores the rise of trans-exclusionary feminism in the UK and how it links to the wider ‘anti-gender’ movements worldwide. Her wider research interests are feminist and LGBTQ+ politics.

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