Radical Inclusion: Recounting the Trans Inclusive History of Radical Feminism (original) (raw)

Debating Trans Inclusion In the Feminist Movement

Journal of lesbian studies, 2006

The debate over whether or not to allow, accept, and embrace transpeople as a segment of the feminist movement has been a tumultuous one that remains unresolved. Prominent authors have argued both sides of the dispute. This article analyzes the anti-inclusion feminist viewpoint and offers a trans-positive perspective for moving toward a potential resolution of the debate.

Women’s movement, trans inclusion in/exclusion from

The sage encyclopedia of trans studies, 2021

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 anti-feminism of anti-trans feminism

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2023

Trans-exclusionary feminists are using the trope of ‘protecting women’ as their main weapon while accusing trans-inclusive feminisms of misogyny. It is a rhetorical figure that we can call ‘the weaponization of accusations of violence’. And we witness it as a strategy cutting across many contexts, for example, blanket accusations of anti-Semitism against anti-Zionists, accusations of Hinduphobia to shut down resistance against Hindutva, and accusations of misogyny and sexual violence against transfeminism or trans-inclusive feminism. In this article, I discuss such accusations of violence together with examples that demonstrate that they often come with an absolute incapacity to conceive of the most basic intersectional analysis. I argue that trans-exclusionary feminism is getting the very paradigms of what misogyny is and what kind of intersectional, transnational feminisms are needed to fight it, completely wrong. With this, anti-trans feminism reveals itself to be inherently anti-feminist. We are currently witnessing a supernational unification of far right, centrist and leftist agents using anti-gender, anti-feminist and transphobic mobilisations, populist affects and strategic disinformation as accelerators for hateful and anti-democratic agendas. Ultimately, this leads to a consolidation of the global shift to the right.

The Failure of Cis Feminism Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism in Academia

Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2023

Faced with the proliferation of TERF rhetoric outside academia, this article proposes a case study of an anti-trans, anti-gender, anti-sex work graduate student at a progressive American institution to challenge feminism to address the ways in which it is providing a space of unchallenging silence for TERF views to remain a nonissue and receive academic support and accreditation. An examination of this specific student highlights a narrative of radicalization occurring during her studies at the university. A challenge for cis feminists to self-reflect and step up, this article argues that cis feminism has for now failed to address the transphobia in its midst, thus forcing trans students and scholars to lose faith in feminism and to find care and support elsewhere.

Building coalitions: The interconnections between feminism and trans* activism

What made current Spanish feminism shift toward transfeminism? Based on in-depth interviews and literature reviews, we explore what factors facilitated the participation of trans women in Spanish feminism. Tracing the history through relevant events such as the National Feminist Conferences, it becomes clear that trans women participated in the 1993, 2000, and 2009 conferences, posing relevant issues regarding prostitution, transgenderism, and the political subject of feminism. Our research allows a break with global oppositional narratives, in which these movements are in conflict, and highlights the importance of understanding the vernacular nuances that take place in a particular geopolitical context.

Women-Identified Women Trans Women in 1970s Lesbian Feminist Organizing

This essay argues that retrieval of the archive of trans women's engagement with women's liberation corrects a historical focus on the virulent trans misogyny that targeted trans women for exclusion from feminist milieus and projects beginning in 1973. This essay follows the arguments for trans exclusion into their contemporary iterations and proposes the archive of trans women's feminist work as a theoretical and political resource for countering trans misogyny.