Anti-TERF: Trans Feminisms against White Nationalist Projects—Introductory Remarks

Abstract

When I obtained my bachelor’s in women’s studies in the early aughts, trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) was not yet named as such, though its ideological origins certainly animated my requisite training in what has come to be variously termed women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Despite its early 1990s emergence, works in transgender studies were not yet included in my requisite training as a major in women’s studies at the time. The proper object of study was, well, “women”; and the ways “male feminists” supported “women.” In this ontoepistemic context, “transgender” emerged as the butt of a joke, a pedagogical foil, or poised as an existential threat to the category of “woman” itself—the question of “transition” conceptualized as mutilation or confusion at best, a postmodern perversion of scientific achievement at worst. As a genderqueer person with trans yearnings, laboring in feminist struggle necessarily required concurrent unlearning.