Transphobia Within Feminism Fuels Misogyny
Justine Brooks / Dec 15 / Identity
Trigger warning: mentions rape
Transphobia is incompatible with feminism. It is a form of gender discrimination, the very thing that feminism has vowed to combat. Gender roles cannot be dismantled while they are still enforced on certain groups.
Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) assert that transgender women cannot be women, nor be supported by feminism because they do not share the experiences of cisgender women. In reality, trans women share a multitude of barriers with cisgender women. Ignoring these commonalities and campaigning against the protection of trans women only empowers prejudice and those who employ it. Ultimately, this scores an own-goal against feminism’s own objectives.
This article offers three areas in which transphobic ideologies facilitate gender discrimination.
First, what are TERFs?
TERFs, or gender-critical feminists, are a minority of feminists who seek to exclude trans women from women-only spaces. Empowered by the gender-critical tweets of J.K. Rowling, they have become particularly vocal this year. They question the identities of all trans and non-binary people but particularly antagonise trans women.
These feminists argue that trans women are merely appropriating the struggles of cisgender women. Trans women are presented as imposters, and their physical bodies have been used to stir mistrust. TERFs often maintain that trans women pose a threat to the equality and safety of cisgender women.
Their hostility against trans women dates back to the 1970s. Women who were once second-wave feminists, even activists, make up a significant proportion of TERFs. They often argue that this age of feminism fought hard for women to be disassociated with ‘feminine’ attributes such as daintiness, nurturing, or a love of clothes and makeup. Trans women have then been criticised for validating and overemphasising these gendered tropes.
TERF organisations assert that they protect cisgender women; even this is usually a fallacy. For instance, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) declares that they “abolish regressive gender roles”. In reality, they exclusively campaign against trans rights while ignoring genuinely threatening manifestations of the patriarchy, such as abortion being recently criminalised in Poland.
Bodily autonomy
Trans women’s bodies are used by gender-critical feminists to accuse them of holding patriarchal privilege. However, gaining authority over your own body and accessing necessary treatments is a battle for both cisgender and transgender women.
Their medical needs are sometimes mistrusted and incorrectly attributed to mental health issues. Women are often misdiagnosed due to their gender, such as autoimmune disorders being mistaken for depression, or heart disease being attributed to anxiety. Both transgender and cisgender women are vulnerable to this snap judgement. Trans women also face the further issue of transphobia. It was only in 2019 that the World Health Organisation stopped defining transgenderism as a ‘disorder’, and many still hold the belief that it is a mental illness.
Going through health services as a trans person can be traumatic. Katelyn Burns recalls a pharmacist refusing to dispense an oestrogen prescription prescribed by her doctor. Even after Burns explained her needs, the pharmacist insisted that the hormones were “for women” and cancelled the prescription. In Arizona, Hilde Hall was publicly harassed and refused her hormone replacement therapy (HRT) medication by a pharmacist. Hall writes that “transgender people are questioned constantly about how well they know themselves”.
Gender bias has depicted certain groups as incapable of rationally managing their bodies. A significant part of feminism is the fight for bodily autonomy, the right for women to make their own decisions for their own body. This is precarious when the medical rights of trans folk are denied due to their gender. In order to remove gender as a factor in the question of bodily autonomy, it would be ineffective to focus exclusively on the struggle of cisgender women.
Gender presentation
TERFs have been critical of the appearance of trans women if not ‘feminine’ enough. Co-founder of the gender-critical group For Women Scotland Magdalen Berns exclaimed that she does not understand trans women “when they still look like a bloke”. Through assertions like these, TERFs are supporting the misogynistic notion that a ‘true’ woman must have an acceptably ‘feminine’ appearance.
Paradoxically, trans women are also accused of strengthening the gender binary when appearing ‘overly-feminised’. Trans women did not invent the tropes of femininity yet are often particularly pressured to adhere to them. In a world that is unforgiving of masculine trans women, some have decided that adhering is easier and safer. Other trans women simply enjoy ‘feminine’ attributes because this is their expression of self, much like many cisgender women. By blaming the gender binary on trans women, TERFs underemphasise factors such as mass media’s role in commercialising the appearance of women.
Both feminists and trans rights activists (TRAs) share the plight of disassociating self-presentation from personal value. In 2013, Aimee Stephens was fired from her job at Harris Funeral Homes. The work dress code required men to wear a suit with trousers, while women were expected to wear a dress or skirt. Their definition of gender was sex assigned at birth; Stephens, a trans woman, was consequently dismissed for not wearing male clothing.
American journalist Katelyn Burns has highlighted the similarity of this case to that of Ann Hopkins’, a cisgender woman whose supposedly unfeminine clothing led her to be denied promotions and a partnership at her work. Hopkins won her case in 1989, a victory for feminism.
As Burns wrote, each woman was maltreated as she “failed to perform the sex role her employer expected of her”. By promoting an association between a woman’s appearance and her legitimacy, strength is given to restrictive gender/sex roles and the punishments for not honouring them. While these roles exist, the gender binary will never be truly erased.
Antagonising narratives
Exceptional stories can be weaponised by conservatives to present subjugated groups as manipulative and threatening. A 2010 U.S. study found that false accusations make up about 0.5% of all (reported and unreported) rapes. This minority of cases can, and have, been used to malign the valid majority. In 2018, Morning Consult discovered that 57% of U.S. adults were equally as worried about men being falsely accused as they were for victims of harassment or assault.
Using a similar tactic, TERFs have weaponised the topic of transgender children. TERF organisations such as We The Females contend that children are being impulsively mutilated by a cult-like force. However, for someone under the age of 18, accessing gender confirmation surgery (GCS) is rare, difficult and complicated. In the UK, the Government Equalities Office states that GCS is not available to people under 18. The Bell v Tavistock case of December 2020 has rendered even puberty blockers as greatly inaccessible to trans people under 16. Neither rare accounts involving young children nor overemphasised young people’s de-transitioning stories accurately represent the vast majority of trans lives. By gender-critical feminists promoting this tactic of exceptionalism, they lend legitimacy to right-wing narratives of what happens when minorities have ‘too much power’.
More directly, TERFs have collaborated with conservative groups to enforce discriminative narratives. In 2019, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel of ‘radical feminists’ to join them in disparaging trans people. These TERFs offered validity from the ‘left’ to an organisation known for embracing fiercely misogynist members such as Stephen Moore. These feminists are empowering oppressive power structures that push not only the LGBTQ+ community but all women into the ground.
Concluding
These three examples of commonalities between transphobia and misogyny prove two things: that trans women are not ‘appropriating’ the struggle of cisgender women, and that excluding trans women only empowers universal gender discrimination. In other words, trans women need feminism and feminism needs trans women.
Transphobia and misogyny are not identical; it would be reductive to argue that cisgender and transgender women have the exact same list of challenges. Despite differences in the details, trans women are a part of feminism because they are women.
TERFs cannot be exclusively blamed for transphobia. In all sects of society, there is work to be done. However, TERFs risk feminism becoming a factional, intergenerational battle which only disservices women and distracts from real threats to gender equality.
Feminism is also incredibly broad; half of the world’s population could not all possibly have the same needs, expressions of self and origin stories. This does not mean that some women should be expelled from the protection of feminism.