TERF Logics Are Carceral Logics: Toward the Abolition of Gender-Critical Movements or Black Trans Life as Pedagogical Praxis

When people think of abolition, there is usually an immediate association with police and prisons. Sociopolitical associations with abolition have changed over time, from the historical struggle to abolish slavery to contemporary political movements for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex. While today the word abolition triggers many different reactions within the current political imagination, what is often overlooked is abolition’s connection to gender-critical movements. One might assume this connection is about the “abolition of gender,” something gender-critical feminists both fear and use as rationalization for discrimination (Bassi & LaFleur, 2022). While it could be argued that the abolition of gender is part of a larger political project that resists and refuses the violence of the gender binary, the purpose of this article is to draw attention to the ways in which the logics of trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) (Hines, 2020; Pearce, Erikainen, & Vincent, 2020) and the logics of the prison-industrial complex overlap. Simply put: TERF logics are carceral logics. In this article, I argue that abolitionist praxis can be used as a framework to identify and deconstruct the entanglement of TERF and carceral logics. This article explores the ways in which TERF logics and carceral logics overlap; how both carcerality and TERF logics rely on white supremacist constructions of personhood; and how Black trans life embodies the pedagogical potential to both resist and refuse the larger project of carcerality on which gender-critical movements rely (Graff, Kapur, & Walters, 2019). Carceral logics are the ideas, beliefs, and practices teaching us that punishment is the only way to deal with societal harm. The United States has built entire institutions around this particular ideology of punishment, which are meant to (and which are presented as the only resource to) protect society from violence. Without attempting to address the root causes of violence, police and prisons as systems of punishment have become acceptable institutional mechanisms used to maintain social control. TERF logics operate in similar ways, creating systems of gender that are based on punitive ways of being. Gender as a social category is one that has historically been policed (Spade, 2015; Stanley & Smith, 2015; Sudbury, 2009). Carcerality as a cultural norm is used to manage gender variance, or rather the discursive construction of gender difference in criminalized terms. As police and prisons are presented as the only appropriate tool to address