There is nothing radical about exclusionary feminism
We talk about trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS) as if there is something radical in their conception of the world, as if the exclusion of trans folk from womanhood was a radical action protecting women from predation. There is nothing radical in exclusion. Trans women are women because woman is a broad church of both societal and physical constructions of womanhood; to be a woman is more than a trite adult human female diatribe, it is to inhabit a space of being that is not male. To be a woman is to inhabit a space of your own making, your own definition, for in the exclusion of certain types of womanhood you exclude far more than you realise. Exclusionary ideologies are reactionary, conservative, and only protect those who are deemed worthy by the excluders.
To be a woman is a complex, wonderful, frustrating, joyful, pre-conceived life. Everyone has an opinion on womanhood, everyone knows that they believe a woman to be, even if they fall back on a biological assumption that womanhood should be assigned at birth. In the lived experience of womanhood women are a multiplicity of lived lives. We are the hormones coursing through our veins, oestrogen, testosterone, progesterone, insulin, dopamine to name but five. We are more than the E, we are a walking chemistry set that over produces some, underproduces others, and yet we are the women we are for the chemistry we produce. If we fail to produce certain hormones we supplement them with pills, gels, infusions, and injections; no woman is anything less if she takes an insulin injection or anti-depressant, and taking HRT is for all women if the time and desire are right.
Excluding women because they do not bleed, do not have children, do not want children, crop their hair short, wear too much make-up, butch up, femme-up, are too tall, too broad, too muscular, have facial hair, are overweight, have weight in the wrong places, use pills instead of ovaries, have no ovaries, did not have your definition of childhood. I could go on. Exclude women for all or some of those criteria and you exclude more than you realise. To be a woman is to be a manifestation of woman within, not just the assumptions others make about you. To exclude other women from the definition of womanhood only reflects your own understanding of self.
Exclusionary feminists paint a simple world based on their own understanding of biology and manifestations of gender. They see women, woman, as a term that binds and restricts 50% of the population, in need of emancipation from male domination. In their eyes if you did not suffer through a girlhood, did not bleed once a month, and were not afflicted by the male world then you simply cannot call yourself a woman. An adult human female is born to suffer, takes up her cross daily, and is a total sum of her daily pain. This is why trans women can never be women, for to cross over the boundary from male to female is, in their eyes, to take the beauty of womanhood without the band of thorns forever pricking your skin. What is a woman? In exclusionary eyes she is suffering made manifest in a man’s world.
This grounding of suffering is rooted in a religious notion of original sin, that there is virtue in the suffering, a nobility in bleeding every month. For those who subvert that suffering through pills, potions, clothing, and styling there is a lesser womanhood. For those who opt out of childbirth, abort their foetuses, use science and technology to remake their lives there is a lesser place in the pantheon of woman. In excluding trans women exclusionary feminists de facto exclude women who also do not fit their mould.
If lived experience through girlhood make you a woman then all the girls who do not overlock the narrow confines do not become women. Of course this is wrong, and exclusionary feminists will make an exception for those assigned women at birth, yet in the exceptions they chip away at the narrow definitions. Exclusionary practices inflict pain on women assigned at birth as they do trans women, yet exclusionary feminists say this is part of the plan to keep womanhood pure. Pure for whom? Pure for the us that fits within the narrow confines.
There is nothing radical about exclusionary feminism because it bounds womanhood in their assumptions, their worldview, and their understanding of self. They are reductive, seeking easy answers in a world of complexity, seeing trans women as invaders and rapists from the male world. They see all assigned males at birth as the occupying force, and as with any invaders you must resist, refuse, and fight back. It is only radical in the same way the neighbourhood watch is, it keeps them there children off the lawn and calls the police on any minorities walking home from work. In the twitching of digital curtains they watch and chatter, seeking a purity of womanhood that is unobtainable except for their small clique. Keep off my lawn is never a good look, and separate but equal never worked because true equality never excludes.
Womanhood is a vast, beautiful, amazing mode of existence, and somethings we suffer, but it is not the suffering that defines us, it is the lived experiences of being a woman in the world. To exclude someone just because they did not suffer is to say that all women are martyrs to their biology, that bleeding and pain are the crux of what womanhood is. This is the arch conservative notion of womanhood, for it is the thing that makes all women lesser in the eyes of conservatives. In the reject of pure pain, pure suffering radical feminism embraces a holistic view of womanhood were all women are welcome no matter the pain or euphoria they have experiences. Embracing diversity and plurality of womanhood is radical, not some shell game of othering and exclusion. That is why exclusionary feminism is not radical, because it is not hospitable, not open, and not of the women, but rather of a particular type of woman. Trans Inclusive Radical Feminism has a much better ring to it.
