Thread by @zeinmurib

Since we're talking about TERFs, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring with some thoughts. My research on the roots of "radical feminist" thinking shows that they were not only trans exclusive, but also quite racist.

Why are they called radical, you might be wondering.


"Radical" comes from the 1970s, when lesbian feminists worked to distinguish their political identities and demands from gay assimilation and liberal feminism by saying they were working for revolution.

The revolution they wanted to see was one in which patriarchy and male domination would be abolished. They crafted a political identity around these objectives by prioritizing "woman" (or wommin, womyn, etc)

The central idea was that being designated female at birth set one up for a set of experiences shaped by sexism. As a result, the group cohered around a presumably universal experience of woman that was defined by white, middle-class, women.

They policed these boundaries by denying the ways that race, class, gender identity, religion, and citizenship status (among many others) shape experiences of marginalization. Often, this rhetoric was explicitly racist.

As if this wasn't enough, they decided to make trans women into some sort of specter that haunted the borders of the bioessentialist lesbian feminist identity they constructed.

In a 1973 speech, Robin Morgan, of "sisterhood is global" fame, stated that the presence of trans women in lesbian feminist spaces was the "equivalent of Blackface." Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, Monique Wittig gave statements such as this academic stamps of approval.

In conclusion, the vehement anti-trans discourse we see from contemporary TERFs - like the Harry Potter author who shall not be named, among many others - is directly linked to the racist *and* bioessentialist strand of white feminism of the 1970s.