The ontological woman: A history of deauthentication, dehumanization, and violence

Abstract

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to support specific rhetoric and behavior. Taken together, these form a self-referential ideology that functions to protect an essentialist ontology, which reliably harms cisgender, transgender, and feminist communities. Through an examination of the historical record of US radical feminist and TERF discourses, including first-hand accounts, this article considers how the ontological framework that inspires TERF rhetoric and behavior has functioned as a cycle of moral fulfillment, even as it necessitates the eradication of trans bodies. The article analyzes how TERF morality, rhetoric, and action construct social forms through a sexed binary by relying on an appeal to the natural, which serves to objectify ontological embodiment. It also foregrounds the different historical and contemporary positionalities of trans-exclusionary and trans-inclusive radical feminisms, and concludes with a reminder of the complementary attributes of trans feminism and radical feminism that are evidenced by decades of cooperation.

Remembering Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘ethics of ambiguity’ to challenge contemporary divides: feminism beyond both sex and gender

“…A key critique of some of the politics of GIF approaches is that they have depoliticised the concept of intersectionality, reducing it to a series of atomised subject positions that can be claimed rather than a structural analysis of power (Bilge, 2013;Downing, 2018;see Stavro, 2007, on historical materialist critiques). On the other hand, GCFs are the latest sub-category of feminism to be critiqued for the homogenising and exclusion that their fundamentally single-axis politics leads to, and their seeming ignorance of the many critiques of the homogenous use of the category woman by feminists, queer and trans people and people of colour for decades (Truth, [1851(Truth, [ ] 2020Butler, 2008;Williams, 2020).…”

“…She says, 'The cause which he [sic] serves must not lock itself up and thus create a new element of separation: through his own freedom he must seek to serve the universal cause of freedom' (Beauvoir, 1976: 89-90). This position has since been reflected by many dedicated to coalitional politics: those second-wave radical feminists who always emphasised their shared struggle with trans women (Williams, 2020); queer thinker Cohen (1997) who proposes coalitions based on relationships to power rather than identity; nonbinary thinker Dembroff (2020) who emphasises the shared political position and thus struggles of women, trans people and non-binary people; queer native thinkers like Murib (2018) who proposes coalitional politics based on sovereignty not identity; and feminists like Dollar (2017) who proposes that feminists dedicated to the subject position of women and the 'use of binary indicators' work with those dedicated to degendering to overcome gender inequality and gender binarism.…”

“…Lucy Nicholas https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7432-1526 Notes 1. It is important to note that most trans affirmative feminists or trans feminists reject strongly essentialist positions (Williams, 2020). Save for Halberstam (1998) proposing the idea of 'coming-out' as one's gender, and some early trans studies visions of different gender typologies (Bornstein, 1994;Feinberg, 1998), such a gender essentialist position is more often operationalised by organisations and in popular usage, demonstrating some of the tensions between nuanced theory and institutional and political action.…”

“…Gender critical feminism (GCF), often called Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF) by critics, is a continuation of the sex-essentialist wing of radical feminism. Contemporary self-proclaimed 'gender critical' feminists (GCFs) consider trans to undermine feminism (Jeffreys, 2014; see Williams, 2020), and charge that contemporary trans and gender diversity (TGD) affirmative feminism represents a reification of gender by affirming gender identity as more important than sex assigned at birth. For them, opening the boundaries of 'woman', as well as broader gender expansion and proliferation, contributes to social ideas about the realness of gender rather than challenging it.…”

Overempowered? Diversity-Focused Research with Gender/Sex and Sexual Majorities

“…For example, cisgender women are minoritized on the basis of being women but carry and can wield power on the basis of being cisgender. And, cisgender women can weaponize this particular intersection to add the gravitas of their oppression to their attempts to restrict the rights of others, for example, transgender women (Bettcher, 2017; McKinnon, 2018; Vincent et al, 2020; Williams, 2020). SCT’s sexual diversity lens facilitates intersectional analysis by allowing researchers to dynamically attend to minoritized and/or privileged aspects of groups and individuals and analyze gender/sex/ualities as their saliencies shift across backdrops.…”