What do TERFs actually want from trans people?
Imagine a world where trans folk do not exist, or at the very least are pushed so far back into the margins that they are unicorns rarely seen in public. Welcome to the 1950s. A place where abortion is illegal, men are men, and women are second class citizens. This is the world where to be trans was to be splashed all over the front page, treated as an exotic zoo creature, and where bravery was measured in the ability to overcome tabloid sensationalism. The law did not recognise trans identities, indeed made it next to impossible to walk while trans unless you wanted to be arrested for solicitation.
I exaggerate, but only just. Exclusionary feminist is neither radical nor aimed solely at trans folk; it seeks to exclude anyone who they deem outside their notions of womanhood, to the point that their speech becomes a mirror image of the 1950s society. Theirs is not a world of equality or equity, it is about knowing ones place, about erecting walls around womanhood as if being a woman means living in a self imposed harem. It is deeply reactionary.
What woman truly wants to be woman alone in the world without the panoply of choice and freedom of thought? No woman will readily submit to life in a harem, much less excluding any woman others deem unworthy of womanhood. Those women who decry trans women as sexual predators, paedophiles, groomers, and child abusers essential take away the consent of all the women who reject those notions. Exclusionary feminists shape the narrative that trans women cannot be women because of biology, yet every time they define womanhood through genetics, womb created femaleness, and the ability to bear children they shape woman in this 1950s incarnation of broodmare and bloody ends. If to be woman is to be potential mother, then that is indeed a pale shape of woman.
If, conversely, it is about protecting girls from themselves, by saying that teenage girls cannot possibly be boys and that consent can only be given at 18, then they essentially create a caste of handmaidens only fit for brood creation. If girlhood is motherhood in waiting, if all teenage girls bodies are good enough for is bearing the next generation, then once again they are reading from the 1950s conservation reactionary playbook. All the arguments about sterility focus on the societal desire for more children, forgetting that not every woman or man wants to bring children into the world. Exclusionary feminists read Margaret Atwood and saw a template, not a warning. They saw the future of woman kind, not the many red flags that biological essentialism waves.
In desiring the erasure of trans women from the public sphere, which the likes of Helen Joyce advocate for, exclusionary feminism beds in with right wing ideologies that seek to perpetuate the cycle of anti-feminism began during first wave feminism. Joyce, Maya Forstater, and others like them seek to co-opt the Pankhursts’ movement for emancipation, yet fail to see that they are on the side of the reactionaries, not the angels. True emancipation comes in the form of rejecting notions of broodmares, kitchen sinks, and adult only consent. If womankind is to be truly equitable with men it must be more than simply the freedom to bleed and birth at will.
This is why exclusionary feminist is neither radical nor can it ever be left wing. It is a poison that seeps through all feminist discourse, binding those women who advocate for it to the notion that only the body is every good enough. If a person’s body falls short of their notions of womanhood, either by genetics or modification, then they are jettisoned from the feminist tent, defective and unwanted. And this is abhorrent. Womanhood is more than the bodies we are born into, it is the destinies we set for ourselves. No two women are the same, have the same lived experiences, or see the world through the same eyes. By erasing trans women exclusionary feminists erase a conception of womanhood that is wanted and cherished, that willingly takes on the struggles and burdens that society places on our shoulders.
So do imagine a 1950s world where trans folk are the circus freaks and gawked at. Where to be different and non-conventional is a moral sin, where to be woman is the be burdened to be a child of some lesser god. That is the world that is fast coming if we do not put the breaks on reactionary legislation, case law, and exclusionary practices. The Handmaid’s Tale warns of what could happen if we give into reactionary practices, as already becoming reality in a post-Roe world, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries that still women as brood mares. Trans women are not the enemy, are not an invading force, and are not men seeking sexual thrills from women’s identities. In erasing trans women exclusionary feminists are reinforcing patriarchy and setting womanhood back to the 1950s. TERFs want trans women erased because trans women represent womanhood beyond the womb, beyond biological potential, and in framing trans women thus, they force all women to buy into the notion that the only valid womanhood is potential fertility and motherhood. And this is a very pale version of womanhood indeed.
