Over the last few years, articles have appeared in mainstream media emphasizing a division between feminist and transgender movements. They come with sensational titles like the 2014 New Yorker piece “What Is a Woman? The Dispute Between Radical Feminism and Transgenderism” and paint a picture of screaming matches, cyberbullying, and even physical violence. The recent spotlight on conflicts between these groups suggests that the clashes are both new and widespread, when, in reality, they have been ongoing for years and are limited to a small subset of feminists.
From the beginning, trans people have been involved in feminist movements, many making significant contributions. Sylvia Rivera, a Latina trans woman considered one of the founders of today’s trans movement, famously became friends with cisgender radical feminists while involved in a 1970 sit-in at New York University for the early gay liberation movement. Accounts indicate that the women participated in consciousness-raising groups together. When Sylvia and her best friend, Marsha P. Johnson, created the platform for their organization, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), they demanded “a revolutionary peoples’ government, where transvestites, street people, women, homosexuals, puerto ricans, indians, and all oppressed people are free.”
Masculine-spectrum trans people have also been heavily involved in feminist causes. Leslie Feinberg, the trans author of Stone Butch Blues, who used the gender-neutral pronouns “ze” and “hir,” proudly identified as socialist, unionist, anti-racist, and feminist. Among many other actions, ze was involved in reproductive-rights work, helping to organize community self-defense around an abortion clinic in Buffalo, New York, where a doctor had been killed.
Despite a number of close relationships, as early as the 1970s, there were also collisions between some feminists and trans people. Beth Elliott, a trans folk singer and activist, was involved in lesbian-feminist movements, serving as vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. Elliott was on the organizing committee for the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, and was scheduled to perform. However, a lesbian separatist group calling itself the Gutter Dykes protested her presence, calling her a man. Keynote speaker Robin Morgan followed suit, saying, “I will not call a male ‘she,’” accusing Elliott of “leeching off women who have spent [sic] entire lives as women” and referring to Elliott as “an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer—with the mentality of a rapist.” “We know what’s at work when whites wear blackface,” said Morgan. “The same thing is at work when men wear drag.”
Anti-trans sentiment within some feminist groups intensified in the late 1970s when Olivia Records, a feminist-collective music label, was attacked for including trans woman Sandy Stone as a sound engineer. The verbal assaults continued until Stone resigned. A year later, Janice Raymond published The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, targeting Stone individually and arguing, “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.” Raymond’s work made many trans people, especially trans women, wary of collaborating with feminist groups and added fuel to a growing fire.
The 1990s were a time of continued clashes but also one of a burgeoning transgender political movement. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, founded in 1975, had always been billed as catering to “women-born-women” as an overt way of excluding trans women, at least on paper (though some did attend). In 1991, trans attendee Nancy Burkholder was pressured to disclose whether she was trans, and when she refused, she was ejected. This led to demonstrations over the next few years, as well as the use of nearby land to establish “Camp Trans,” a welcoming environment for all people, in protest.
The majority of those who identify as feminists and oppose transgender rights are part of what is called radical feminism, though many people who use that label do not hold these views. Anti-trans radical feminists are sometimes referred to as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or TERFs, members of a sub-movement that evolved out of second-wave feminism.
Feminism in the United States is generally considered to have undergone three waves (so far), although this is a gross oversimplification of a very complicated movement. The first wave took place in the 1800s and early 1900s, and led to women’s suffrage. Second-wave feminism, which sprouted in the 1960s and 1970s, was a push for social equality for women and included challenging gender roles at home and at work, as well as fighting for abortion rights. Third-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s, is often thought of as a reaction to second-wave feminism, which has been criticized, fairly and unfairly, for centering white heterosexual women and failing to take into account the multiple systems of oppression that contribute to women’s experiences. The third wave attempts to introduce the concept of intersectionality, which is the idea that patriarchy is not the only system of oppression that women face, and that all people have their own intersecting identities, including race, sexuality, immigration status, socioeconomics, and ability, that influence their lives.
As an example of intersectionality, trans author Julia Serano coined the term “transmisogyny” to refer to the unique discrimination experienced by transgender women, something similar to misogyny directed toward cisgender women. Serano argues that both are rooted in the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity. However, trans women are targeted in specific ways (for example, as sexually adventurous and deceiving heterosexual men) that are different from the ways cisgender women are portrayed. Serano also points out that the discrimination trans women face is not simply transphobia, as evidenced by the fact that trans men are discriminated against but are not generally sexualized in the same ways as trans women.
Though many feminists today take an intersectional approach and support trans people’s involvement in feminism, there remain small groups of trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Some of the most outspoken individuals have included Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, and Germaine Greer. Their opposition to working with trans people is based on misunderstandings about what it means to be trans. One common argument made by anti-trans feminists is that trans people “reinforce the gender binary,” therefore strengthening sexism. This is based on the false belief that all trans people are interested in transitioning to present as either ultra-masculine or ultra-feminine. Though such trans people exist, trans people, like cis people, fall all across the spectrum, and include butch dyke and tomboy trans women, as well as genderqueer people and trans men who are self-described “faggots.” (See Myth 2, “All Trans People Want to Be Either Barbie or Ken.”)
Because of their beliefs about trans people, anti-trans feminists sometimes attempt to limit trans participation in events using arguments that are based in gender essentialism and which contend that some issues and experiences are uniquely “male” or “female.” Disregarding the notion that women “are made, not born,” they claim that trans people cannot ever share in these and must forever remain excluded from being “true” men or women. Most commonly, anti-trans feminists exclude trans women from feminist gatherings, arguing that certain events should be “women only” and that trans women’s inclusion is inappropriate and an expansion of male dominance into these spaces. Because trans women have not been socialized as women, they argue, they cannot understand cisgender women’s oppression.
But in many ways the forms of discrimination faced by trans women are similar to those experienced by cis women. Murders of transgender women are commonplace, and harassment can be a daily occurrence.
Though most anti-trans feminist activism is directed toward trans women, trans men are also targeted. Specifically, some anti-trans feminists view trans men as “traitors” who, instead of transitioning, should have stayed living as women but as butch women. They argue that anyone can be masculine, whether male or female, and that transitioning to male is making a statement that in order to be masculine you have to be male. This often seems rooted in the idea that trans men are a betrayal of the butch identity, and again contradicts the notion of feminism as being a movement to expand sexual and gender autonomy.
Despite having very strong beliefs about trans identities, most anti-trans feminists likely have had little close social contact with trans people. Racist and homophobic views tend to diminish when people of different races and sexualities spend time together, and the same is probably true of transphobia. When people are seen as real, and no longer theoretical, it becomes harder to exclude them.
Today, though anti-trans feminists are vocal, they remain a small group. For the most part, feminists support trans people and see supporting transgender people as part of the feminist goal of breaking down gender barriers, and this is increasingly true with younger generations. Perhaps the most obvious incongruity in the myth that trans people and feminists don’t get along is that, in fact, many feminists are transgender and many transgender people are feminists. Some trans feminists have even developed a unique brand of feminism called transfeminism, the initial creation of which is most often attributed to Emi Koyama. Transfeminism expands traditional feminist views about ownership over our bodies to include not only reproductive rights but also medical transition rights. Transfeminism also argues that every individual should be free to express their identity and have that identity respected.