The centrality of the 'trans' issue for feminism

Abstract

The introduction of the paper offers an overview of the contemporary clash between gender-critical feminism and transfeminism. Then the paper recalls the arguments put forward by Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire, and focuses on the contemporary debate, highlighting the elements of continuity and discontinuity with the past. It is stressed, in particular, how contemporary gender critical feminism returns to anchoring the truth about sex in biology and to defending a rigidly binary position, in an attempt to distance itself from transfeminist positions. A move that not only places gender critical feminism at the antithesis of contemporary queer- and trans-feminism, but also marks its departure from the very beginnings of radical feminism.

Keywords: trans-feminism, gender-critical feminism, radical feminism, trans exclusion.