Cristan Williams | Saybrook University (original) (raw)
Papers by Cristan Williams
Transgender studies quarterly, May 1, 2016
This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclus... more This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclusive. Trans inclusive radical feminist opinion leaders, groups, and events are reviewed and contrasted against a popular media narrative that asserts that radical feminism takes issue with trans people. Reviewed are historical instances in which radical feminists braved violence to ensure their feminism was trans inclusive.
The Sociological Review, Jul 1, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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.
Transgender studies quarterly, May 1, 2014
Cross. With Eileen E. Schell, he coedited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Me... more Cross. With Eileen E. Schell, he coedited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies (2010); his scholarship has also appeared in Archivaria, Enculturation, and several edited collections.
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TS... more This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender...
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TS... more This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender...
The Sociological Review, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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 reminde...
The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans... more The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans women, and their place in the movement. The question is not whether the movement should include trans women, as trans women were a part of the early feminist groups and helped create feminist and lesbian feminist cultures, but how the movement has responded to their presence. The ways in which feminists and feminism in general have addressed trans people rests on a sexed ontology—whether one asserts that sex is constructed or natural. It is this analytical divide that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how and why many radical feminist opinion leaders and organizations braved violence in order to be inclusive of trans women, as well as how and why sex ...
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2016
The sage encyclopedia of trans studies, 2021
The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans... more The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans women, and their place in the movement. The question is not whether the movement should include trans women, as trans women were a part of the early feminist groups and helped create feminist and lesbian feminist cultures, but how the movement has responded to their presence. The ways in which feminists and feminism in general have addressed trans people rests on a sexed ontology—whether one asserts that sex is constructed or natural. It is this analytical divide that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how and why many radical feminist opinion leaders and organizations braved violence in order to be inclusive of trans women, as well as how and why sex ...
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, 2021
Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community, TERF is an acronym for trans-exclu... more Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community, TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The community used the term to refer to the sex essentialist feminists who were flooding into their discussion space. TERFs asserted that “sex” was reducible to specific body attributes or to early socialization and therefore saw trans women as men and sought to remove them from “women’s spaces” and the lesbian feminist movement. The term has been rhetorically helpful in distinguishing TERF activism from the long-term radical feminist community members who are inclusive of trans women and in recognizing that early radical feminist opinion leaders like Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and Dana Densmore and pioneering radical feminist groups like the Lesbian Tide, the Olivia Collective, and Sisters were ...
The Sociological Review, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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.
This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclus... more This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclusive. Trans inclusive radical feminist opinion leaders, groups, and events are reviewed and contrasted against a popular media narrative that asserts that radical feminism takes issue with trans people. Reviewed are historical instances in which radical feminists braved violence to ensure their feminism was trans inclusive.
The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It ci... more The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent that one could argue that it is currently the most common term describing people who do not neatly align with their birth-assigned gender. Yet when we scratch just below the surface, the emergences and deployments of the term are rife with complexity and even controversy. We have written this article, a collaboration between an academic and a non-academic, to intervene in the transgender coinage narrative and to more closely attend to the ways that knowledge is built among and between academic and non-academic communities.
The word "transgender" entered widespread use as an umbrella term for describing a range of gende... more The word "transgender" entered widespread use as an umbrella term for describing a range of gender-variant identities and communities within the United States in the early 1990s. Virginia Prince is commonly cited as having coined the term transgender in 1978. However, such is not the case; the trans + gender compound had been in use as an inclusive term for trassexual and non-transsexual trans people for more than a decade by the time Price used "transgenderist" in 1978.
Articles & Posts by Cristan Williams
In a continuation of the book-length conversation trans feminist Cristan Williams and radical fem... more In a continuation of the book-length conversation trans feminist Cristan Williams and radical feminist John Stoltenberg, Williams reviews the cycle of hate that informs the rhetoric and resulting behavior of sex essentialist activists at a community, university, & governmental level.
Trans feminist Cristan Williams invites radical feminist John Stoltenberg to the second part of t... more Trans feminist Cristan Williams invites radical feminist John Stoltenberg to the second part of their book-length discussion focusing on the discourse of sex essentialist activists who push sex essentialism as radical feminism itself.
Gender theorist Judith Butler is interviewed and her concept of gender performativity is compared... more Gender theorist Judith Butler is interviewed and her concept of gender performativity is compared and contrasted to sex essentialist ideologies. Specifically, Butler addresses the work of Sheila Jeffreys and Janice Raymond. Additionally, Butler comments on the work of Gloria Steinem and Dr. Milton Diamond.
Frances “Poppy” Northcutt discusses the tradition of transgender inclusion in Southern Feminism a... more Frances “Poppy” Northcutt discusses the tradition of transgender inclusion in Southern Feminism and comments on the issues facing both the trans and feminist communities. Northcutt comments on her involvement with feminism in the South, particularly in Houston, Texas and the ways in which trans people can support abortion clinic defense.
Transgender studies quarterly, May 1, 2016
This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclus... more This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclusive. Trans inclusive radical feminist opinion leaders, groups, and events are reviewed and contrasted against a popular media narrative that asserts that radical feminism takes issue with trans people. Reviewed are historical instances in which radical feminists braved violence to ensure their feminism was trans inclusive.
The Sociological Review, Jul 1, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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.
Transgender studies quarterly, May 1, 2014
Cross. With Eileen E. Schell, he coedited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Me... more Cross. With Eileen E. Schell, he coedited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies (2010); his scholarship has also appeared in Archivaria, Enculturation, and several edited collections.
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TS... more This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender...
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TS... more This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender...
The Sociological Review, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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 reminde...
The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans... more The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans women, and their place in the movement. The question is not whether the movement should include trans women, as trans women were a part of the early feminist groups and helped create feminist and lesbian feminist cultures, but how the movement has responded to their presence. The ways in which feminists and feminism in general have addressed trans people rests on a sexed ontology—whether one asserts that sex is constructed or natural. It is this analytical divide that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how and why many radical feminist opinion leaders and organizations braved violence in order to be inclusive of trans women, as well as how and why sex ...
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2016
The sage encyclopedia of trans studies, 2021
The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans... more The women’s movement has had complex and often contrary views of trans people, particularly trans women, and their place in the movement. The question is not whether the movement should include trans women, as trans women were a part of the early feminist groups and helped create feminist and lesbian feminist cultures, but how the movement has responded to their presence. The ways in which feminists and feminism in general have addressed trans people rests on a sexed ontology—whether one asserts that sex is constructed or natural. It is this analytical divide that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how and why many radical feminist opinion leaders and organizations braved violence in order to be inclusive of trans women, as well as how and why sex ...
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, 2021
Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community, TERF is an acronym for trans-exclu... more Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community, TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The community used the term to refer to the sex essentialist feminists who were flooding into their discussion space. TERFs asserted that “sex” was reducible to specific body attributes or to early socialization and therefore saw trans women as men and sought to remove them from “women’s spaces” and the lesbian feminist movement. The term has been rhetorically helpful in distinguishing TERF activism from the long-term radical feminist community members who are inclusive of trans women and in recognizing that early radical feminist opinion leaders like Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and Dana Densmore and pioneering radical feminist groups like the Lesbian Tide, the Olivia Collective, and Sisters were ...
The Sociological Review, 2020
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to supp... more 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.
This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclus... more This article reviews the ways in which radical feminism has been and continues to be trans inclusive. Trans inclusive radical feminist opinion leaders, groups, and events are reviewed and contrasted against a popular media narrative that asserts that radical feminism takes issue with trans people. Reviewed are historical instances in which radical feminists braved violence to ensure their feminism was trans inclusive.
The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It ci... more The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent that one could argue that it is currently the most common term describing people who do not neatly align with their birth-assigned gender. Yet when we scratch just below the surface, the emergences and deployments of the term are rife with complexity and even controversy. We have written this article, a collaboration between an academic and a non-academic, to intervene in the transgender coinage narrative and to more closely attend to the ways that knowledge is built among and between academic and non-academic communities.
The word "transgender" entered widespread use as an umbrella term for describing a range of gende... more The word "transgender" entered widespread use as an umbrella term for describing a range of gender-variant identities and communities within the United States in the early 1990s. Virginia Prince is commonly cited as having coined the term transgender in 1978. However, such is not the case; the trans + gender compound had been in use as an inclusive term for trassexual and non-transsexual trans people for more than a decade by the time Price used "transgenderist" in 1978.
In a continuation of the book-length conversation trans feminist Cristan Williams and radical fem... more In a continuation of the book-length conversation trans feminist Cristan Williams and radical feminist John Stoltenberg, Williams reviews the cycle of hate that informs the rhetoric and resulting behavior of sex essentialist activists at a community, university, & governmental level.
Trans feminist Cristan Williams invites radical feminist John Stoltenberg to the second part of t... more Trans feminist Cristan Williams invites radical feminist John Stoltenberg to the second part of their book-length discussion focusing on the discourse of sex essentialist activists who push sex essentialism as radical feminism itself.
Gender theorist Judith Butler is interviewed and her concept of gender performativity is compared... more Gender theorist Judith Butler is interviewed and her concept of gender performativity is compared and contrasted to sex essentialist ideologies. Specifically, Butler addresses the work of Sheila Jeffreys and Janice Raymond. Additionally, Butler comments on the work of Gloria Steinem and Dr. Milton Diamond.
Frances “Poppy” Northcutt discusses the tradition of transgender inclusion in Southern Feminism a... more Frances “Poppy” Northcutt discusses the tradition of transgender inclusion in Southern Feminism and comments on the issues facing both the trans and feminist communities. Northcutt comments on her involvement with feminism in the South, particularly in Houston, Texas and the ways in which trans people can support abortion clinic defense.
Sandy Stone, author of the Queer Studies classic, The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Mani... more Sandy Stone, author of the Queer Studies classic, The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto, recounts her experiace with a trans-inclusive radical feminist Lesbian separatist tradition, as well as her experience with militant activists who promoted sex essentialism as a brand of feminism. Included is commentary about sex essentialist animus by the co-founder of The Furies and Olivia Records Collectives, Ginny Berson.
Catharine A. MacKinnon questions the presumed unconstructed nature of sex, gender and sexuality w... more Catharine A. MacKinnon questions the presumed unconstructed nature of sex, gender and sexuality while considering the language and concepts within trans feminist and sex essentialist discourse. MacKinnon comments on the work of Kate Millett, Simone de Beauvoir and the political morality promoted by Janice Raymond, Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys. Moreover, MacKinnon discusses the nature of the sex class “woman” and comments on the political construction of trans women as predators.
From the KKK to anti-feminism, this article examines the Southern roots of the anti-transgender “... more From the KKK to anti-feminism, this article examines the Southern roots of the anti-transgender “bathroom bill” movement. Included is an interview with Gillian Frank, Phd.
Why and when did transsexual people begin calling themselves transgender? According to some inter... more Why and when did transsexual people begin calling themselves transgender? According to some internet memes pushed by so-called transsexual separatists, transsexuals began self-identifying as transgender due to a vast global plot by crossdressers1,2 . According to this conspiracy, transsexuals by the millions were forced by the media3, through a cunning application of crossdresser colonization 4 to start using the term "transgender" sometime in the mid-1990s by a communist.5 The apparent solution to this imagined dilemma is to invent a new term - or string of terms - which means transgender.6 This meme has survived because, until recently, few seemed to realize that transgender was decades older than many believed. Furthermore, it seems that not many are aware that transgender predates the term transgenderist - a word whose authorship is almost always erroneously attributed to Virginia Prince.
NOTE: This research was published in the Transgender Studies Quarterly and Present Tense journals. This represents the original incarnation of this research, first published on my blog on March 12, 2012.
Present Tense
The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It ci... more The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent that one could argue that it is currently the most common term describing people who do not neatly align with their birth-assigned gender. Yet when we scratch just below the surface, the emergences and deployments of the term are rife with complexity and even controversy. We have written this article, a collaboration between an academic and a non-academic, to intervene in the transgender coinage narrative and to more closely attend to the ways that knowledge is built among and between academic and non-academic communities.