Exclusionary feminism harms all women
When is a woman not a woman? When she is told by someone else that her womanhood is not enough for them to consider her a woman. If woman is in the eye of the beholder then all women therefore need to ensure that they are woman enough to be perceived and treated as that type of woman. This is the tortuous logic that exclusionary feminism leads to, that all women must yield to societal expectations, dress accordingly, and never challenge the assumptions of the beholder. Of course this is reductive, but this what all women face due to the fight against trans women.
By stating trans women are not women essentially you are saying that only those women who we read as different from our social understanding of women will be barred from women’s services. Butch women have faced this for neigh on a century, and TikTok and Instagram is full of women facing the same issues over gender policing. Trans women often have to hyper femme because this is the only gender expression that keeps them safe, yet in doing so they get accused of aping women and being stereotypes. Those stereotypes exist because society expects women to act and dress a certain way, even if those clothing, hair, and make-up is expensive, time consuming, and restrictive.
Pockets, oh my goodness, give me pockets! Women love pockets because they are easy and freeing, yet most women’s clothes are devoid of pockets. We expect women to carry purses and handbags, understanding they can never use both hands on a night out unless they risk putting their bag down. This is the vision of woman, in need of constant vigilance, never able to let her guard down that is projected through clothing and accessories. There is nothing wrong with women’s clothes and accessories if that is what you wish to wear, but if that is the only clothing you get to wear then it becomes a trap.
This is the world right wing media platforms project onto women, erasing the vibrant colours and joys of womanhood that come from the freedom to express yourself as you wish. Exclusionary feminists demean trans women because trans women assimilate towards the standard feminine aesthetic, which those feminists fail to see as the only way those trans women can safely navigate the world. Trans women are not a pastiche of womanhood, they exemplify the core issue of being a woman in a world of restrictions and bindings on all women. To be woman is still something lesser because that lesser thing is projected at every opportunity onto women.
To be a woman in public is to not be allowed to relax, and unless you chose not to have skin in the “I give a fuck about what society thinks” game, you will always be judged based on some arbitrary version of womanhood someone else has. Cut your hair, Dyke! Grow your hair out, slut! Wear false nails, put on make-up, don’t wear make-up, wear a tight dress, wear cargo shorts, wear heels, wear walking shoes. It is never enough because you will always be judged. Men judge, women judge, every body is scrutinised by everybody, it is ingrained in our culture, we cannot escape it. Susan Sontag famously deconstructed this critique in On Women, and belle hooks’ masterful takedown tore apart the social construction of womanhood.
If trans women are not women then we exclude all the women who also fall short of our false equivalencies. No woman will ever fully satisfy the scrutiny of those demanding perfection, as Barbie even realised. Bodies are weird, wonderful, and precious, no two ever the same. No two women are ever the same no matter how hard we try to impose rigid standards on them. Exclusionary feminists impose an impossible standard on trans women because they are scared to smash apart the very assumptions underpinning what womanhood even means. If the only thing separating cis and trans women is trauma and periods that is a pale shade of womanhood indeed.
Violence against women is something all feminists fight against, and trans women are at the forefront of that fight. Not having a period does not define who a woman is because plenty of cis women do not have periods either through choice or medical conditions. Reducing women down to whether they can have babies or not implies that all women are baby making machines to restock the population, which is what every feminist movement has actively fought against. Denying trans women their inherent womanhood due to biology is an attack on all women’s right to choose their personal destiny.
Feminism is a broad church with many different flavours of opinions and outlooks. Intersectional feminism is my personal approach to life, as I seek to include all women, not just those who I interact with in my day-to-day life. This is why I fight for inclusionary feminism, the broadest possible church to include as many women as there are women alive. Our fight is against oppression, and cis or trans we are in this fight together.
