September 9, 2015 • 51 mins
"Trans-exclusionary radical feminists," or TERFs, is considered a slur. Yet, some radical feminists who define womanhood through biology rather than gender identity exist. Cristen and Caroline explore how this transphobia has impacted feminism, women's colleges and public perceptions of what radical feminism means.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You From how Supports
dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and
I'm Kristin this week, Kris and I are taking a
hard look at basically straight feminisms LGBT problem. Today, specifically,
(00:26):
we are talking about trance exclusionary radical feminists. Now turf
as is the acronym for that is considered a slur
by some and it's considered just a neutral descriptor by others,
particularly the person who coined the term back in two
thousand eight. But we will get into all of that
in just a moment. But last time on the show,
(00:49):
we introduced the idea of radical feminism and the lavender menace,
and so today's episode is building off of that. But so, Kristen,
could you give us a little refresher on what the
lavender menace is? Yeah, So, the lavender menace was a
term coined by feminine mystique author and president of National
(01:11):
Organization of Women Betty fred Dan to describe her discomfort
with feminists aligning themselves with radical feminist lesbians at the
time because she was very concerned about the credibility of
second wave feminism and considered lesbians a potential threat to
(01:36):
that because the rampant homophobia of the time, um and
the you know, still persistent stereotyping of feminists maintained that
women who advocate for gender equality are really just man
hating lesbians, and so she thought that the so called
(01:57):
lavender menace might inhibit mainstream feminism from moving forward, to
which those radical lesbian feminists that she was so scared
of essentially took it on as their mantle, saying, Okay,
we will reclaim this term, we will become the lavender menace,
(02:17):
and we will fight against this, fighting against essentially the
people who they should be building a coalition with. And
that did end up happening. I mean, Betty for Dan
came back and and later said that she was wrong.
The National Organization of Women and other feminist organizations at
the time, and also people like Gloria Steinem publicly stood
(02:40):
up for the needs and recognition of lesbians. But it
really gets to, like you said, this lingering still shortcoming
when it comes to whiteis gender straight feminists being more inclusive.
(03:02):
But if we zero specifically in on those radical feminists,
particularly radical lesbian feminists of the nineteen seventies of second
wave feminism. There was really a push to embrace lesbian ism,
and I know that sounds really weird, but we we
did touch on in our last episode not just being
a lesbian having relationships with women, but literally embracing the lesbian,
(03:27):
nonman involved lifestyle. Um even going so far as for
straight women to embrace political lesbianism as a way to
fight the patriarchy. And so part of this more radical
radical feminist outlook was that even bisexual or pan sexual
women are the enemy because they're literally sleeping with the enemy.
(03:50):
How can you be a true feminist fighting for tree
equality and liberation if you're having sex with men. They
were also turning their backs on butch lesbians, considering them
an unhealth the mirroring of male privilege or patriarchal sex roles,
and they maintain that women are basically perfect and that
true love can only exist between women. And it's this
(04:10):
focus on true womanhood in quotes that often ignored class
and race issues, but it totally barred trans women. Yeah,
and like we said, we did an entire episode on
this chapter of women's liberation in the seventies and eighties
last time. So if you want a more in depth
(04:33):
look at that then definitely listened to the Lavender Menace
podcast episode that came out earlier this week. But today
we're going to focus in on the contemporary transphobia within
some radical feminist circles and how this also reflects more
broadly on how people think about feminism today and what
(04:58):
radical feminism means. And so people might be wondering, people
who aren't familiar with the she might be wondering, why
would you bar trans women from feminism? And it has
it's directly descended from those ideas that anything that could
potentially be aligned with manhood, masculinity men in general is
(05:20):
considered a negative because, like I just said, that whole
idea of true womanhood was so critical to some of
these radical feminists groups. And so the reasoning behind excluding
trans women from the feminist movement was that trans women,
they argued, or biologically male and are just masquerading as
women or their parodying women, and the idea that they'll
(05:41):
never truly understand what it means to be a woman.
They were not socialized as women, they didn't face the
same types of oppression that biological women face, and so
they end up saying, hey, you were born a man,
I consider that you are always a man. And these circles,
these old schools turf circles were certainly alive and well
(06:03):
in the nineteen seventies. But we're really going to talk
about what's going on today, especially because when you look
at criticisms of feminists, it usually is the you know,
the the turf label that gets tossed around a lot
of like, oh, well, feminism today is wrong because you're
(06:27):
not really advocating for gender equality because you have some
of these radical feminists out here who are mis and droous,
who want nothing to do with men who are and
that is not equality at all. So this is it's
I think an important clarifying conversation to have to narrow
down who turfs really are in terms of being a
(06:50):
small segment of the feminist spectrum, and how they are
even distinct from radical feminists, and how radical feminists or
even distinct from would we say, what lower case F feminists? Yeah,
and I mean, I think it's important. Sometimes it goes
without saying, but it is important to revisit the idea
(07:11):
that yes, feminism does have many many branches. It is
a tree with many many branches, not all of which
overlap and get along with each other. Yeah, by the
same token too. I think it's important to frame this
conversation away from the cat fighting angle that tends to
be very attractive to the media of like, oh, look,
(07:35):
feminists or fighting with each other again. And I really
don't want to present this conversation about these we don't
like these women over here they're saying all these nasty things,
But rather, I don't know, take more of a bird's
eye view of the lay of the land, of what
what's going on, how this term turf even came about,
and how the transactivism that's really you know, in full
(08:01):
bloom today is dealing with this transphobia that has existed
historically and still today within small corners of feminism. Yeah.
So I mentioned earlier that the term turf is actually
pretty new, despite the fact that there have been anti
trans feminists in the movement from the get go. So, Kristen,
(08:26):
where did turf come from? So? The term is credited
to Australian blogger TikTok, who was also assist Gender Woman
um and TikTok coined it as a neutral description of
a particular group of activists that she felt, in her words,
were colonizing radical feminist discourse. Yeah, she says, it wasn't
(08:50):
meant to be a slur, but she is sure it
can be perceived as one in the same way that
some people might consider the words feminist or radical feminist
to be slurs, depending on the tone and context and
who's saying it, And so in that same vein, many
of these women who were called turf's definitely opposed the term,
saying that it is a slur and that they prefer
(09:10):
the term man exclusionary radical feminist. But preferring the term
man exclusionary radical feminists also highlights their transphobia absolutely, because
they are still in calling themselves man exclusionary radical feminist
or merf's. They're still calling trans women men because that
(09:32):
it falls under the same umbrella to them. And this
whole turf merv transphobia within feminism issue seems to have
come to a head inteen when there was a piece
in The New Yorker by Michelle Goldberg writing about transphobic
feminists and trans feminists and sort of how they have
(09:58):
obviously like butt heads, how are they existing these same spaces,
especially in the context of growing transactivism UM. And in
response to that New Yorker piece, which we'll talk about
in more detail later on in the podcast, Julius Serrano,
who's author of The Whipping Girl, wrote in The Advocate
quote from their point of view, they should be referred
(10:20):
to as murph's because they reject trans women who they
see as men, but not trans men, who they view
as misguided women who have been brainwashed by patriarchal and
transgender agendas. Needless to say, an overwhelming majority of transgender
people rejected this framing of the issue, and Serrano, writing
that piece in The Advocate, was clarifying all of that
(10:43):
because she felt that the New Yorker piece didn't really
outline clearly enough the the depth of the transphobia that
a lot of these you know urfs, these trans exclusionary
radical feminists, UM, really embrace. Yeah. Well, and she was
(11:04):
also arguing that Goldberg painted so called turfs in a
much more sympathetic light than she did actual trans activists,
which is something that we see across a lot of
think pieces for lack of a better word, that are
around today talking about these very same issues and by
the same token too. There is a concern among radical
(11:27):
feminists who are not transphobic, that lumping all of this
together in this way, in the way that the New
Yorker piece and other pieces have have kind of done,
of of really muddying those waters. Um. They've worried that
it's casting a shadow on them, lumping all radical feminists
into the turf group hashtag not all rad fems exactly. Yeah,
(11:50):
and so it is worth uh clarifying, yes, that not
all radical feminists are transphobic, and that there are plenty
of trans ends women activists who are feminists. These you know,
there's lots of inn diagrams going on, surprise surprise in
the feminist movement. But we looked over at the turfs
(12:11):
dot com to get some clarification on what a trans
exclusionary radical feminist is or does, um. And they point
out that turfs as they see it, assert that trans
women or men and vice versa. Uh, and that trans
women can't actually be lesbians. Uh. They out trans people,
(12:33):
whether they're coworkers, colleagues, whoever. And they make the assertion
that the world would be a better place without trans people.
See the example of Bev von Door, who's a big
name turf activist and writer von Door said they expect
will be shocked to see statistics about them being killed
(12:54):
and don't realize some of us wish they would all
be dead. And Vonder's name is actually one that comes
up when we look at sort of the history of
that tension between feminism, radical feminism, and transactivists. Yeah, so
now is the time when we highlight a couple of
(13:15):
not so savory moments in radical feminist history. So in
nineteen seventy three, at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, trans
folk singer Beth Elliott was threatened and eventually excluded from
the gathering of more than twelve hundred lesbian women, and
a group called the Gutter Dikes had leaflotted the conference
(13:38):
to protest Elliott's inclusion, and the charge was led Caroline
by none other than who by Bev von Door, who
alleged or still alleges that Elliott had stalked her and
threatened to rape her after Von Door turned Elliott down
when they were teens. And so this is really a
(13:59):
lightning rod moment went in the feminism. If we're going
to have the dichotomy, if we're going to say the
feminism versus trans movement, um, because it really highlighted, hey
we don't like trans people, or hey we need to
support and include trans people well, and and kind of
(14:20):
pulling out our focus a little bit too. This is
something that Serrano writes about in Whipping Girl in terms
of uh, just transphobia in the nineteen seventies and of
trans people having a really hard time finding a welcoming
space because you have within radical feminism this transphobia happening.
(14:41):
And then when it comes to the gay rights movement,
in the same way that Betty for Dan was pulling
the lavender menace, the gay rights movement wasn't so open
to trans people either, because they were trying to position
their platform in more of away from gender identity and
focusing on on sexual orientation and relationship up. So they
were like, we don't have a place anywhere. Yeah. So,
(15:03):
at the same time that the group the gutter Dykes
are leafletting the conference to protest Elliot's inclusion, keynote speaker
Robin Morgan was blasting Elliott and trans women in general.
In her speech. She called Elliott an opportunist, infiltrator, and
a destroyer. Morgan said, I will not call a male
she thirty two years of suffering in this androcentric society
(15:27):
and of surviving have earned me the title woman. One
walk down the street by a male transvestite five minutes
of his being hassled, which he may enjoy, and then
he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain.
And this is a refrain that, I mean, this is
still going on, that the mis gendering, the purposeful attempt
(15:48):
to cause pain by misgender ing trans people, is something
that still goes on. I mean, we saw it come
out in full force when Caitlyn Jenner was on the
cover of Vanity Fair exactly. But so in the wake
of a speech and the wake and in the wake
of the leafleting, Elliott gets on stage to perform, but
the turf's got violent. They were threatening her, and they
(16:10):
jumped on stage to assault her. But again, not all feminists,
not all lesbians, not all women of this movement felt
the same way. Writing in the publication The Tide, which
is a lesbian newsletter, one woman did speak up for Elliott.
She wrote, this woman is insisting that Beth Elliott not
(16:32):
be permitted to perform because Beth is a transsexual. Beth
was on the San Francisco steering committee for the conference,
a pan of the original group that gave birth to
the idea. She's written some far out feminist songs, That's
why she's here. No, we do not cannot relate to
her as a man. We have not known her as
a man. She is a woman because she chooses to
be a woman. What right do you have to define
(16:54):
her sexuality? And I just thought that this was a perfect,
as I said, lightning Rod moment to highlight the division
between turfs and non turfs, basically everyone and everyone else.
And and it pedals so much in those same myths
(17:14):
about trans people that we have talked about on past podcasts,
that they're really just trying to deceive us and infiltrate
and where gender as a costume. Um. So it's just
it's so again and again and again reading about this,
especially the history and obviously how it's still going on today.
(17:38):
It's unfortunate to see people in the name of feminism
really just recycling the same kinds of lies that feminism
ultimately is trying to dismantle. Well. So, unfortunately, though that
conference and Beth Eliott's exclusion, we're not the only sour
notes in the seventies. UM. We also have Olivia Records UH,
(18:03):
which was a woman's music collective in Los Angeles receiving
hate mail and death threats for hiring a trans woman,
Sandy Stone, as a recording engineer and UH Stone has
written about how you know, we were all having a
great time. We were making music, we were working together
for the feminist cause for women, supporting women and other
(18:24):
lesbians and other feminists. It was great. And then a
boycott and smear campaign organized by Janice Raymond eventually drove
Stone out of the collective, which did attempt to defend her.
They pinned an essay for a lesbian publication saying that hey,
Sandy has decided to give up her male identity and
(18:48):
now she's faced with the same kinds of oppression that
other women and lesbian's face. She must also cope with
the ostracism that all of society imposes on a trans
sexual being like, hey, everybody has a past, but this
is the present. We need to focus on the present,
and we are all about supporting fellow women and fellow lesbians.
(19:09):
That is not how people like Janice Raymond saw it. No,
Janice Raymond saw it as again essentially a guy deceiving
and infiltrading a sacred female space. And I mean it's
so unfortunate too, because you know, in the bigger context,
Olivia Records was a pretty incredible thing happening if you
(19:30):
consider how today, but especially back then, how male dominated
the music industry was, um but silver lining. Sandy Stone
would go on to write an essay The Empire Strikes Back,
a post trans sexual manifesto that became essentially the foundation
(19:52):
of transgender studies around the world. Yeah, and it also
got people thinking. Robin Tyler, who was part of the
feminist comedy duo Harrison and Tyler, have been scheduled to
perform at that same conference as Beth Elliott in nineteen
seventy three, and later in an interview, she reflected on
that reaction to Stone, and she says, you know what's interesting,
(20:14):
rather than fighting who's oppressing us, turfs go after the
most oppressed people instead of building a coalition. And that's
just shocking to me. And Kristin that's what you said
earlier about, um, the need to sort of come together
and fight for the same thing rather than tearing each
other down exactly. UM. And then finally, we wanted to
(20:36):
talk about the Michigan Women's Women with a Y Music
Festival or mish Fest mitch Fest that was started in
nineteen seventy nine as a women Born, Women Again, Women
with Wise event and it is still intermittently held today
and basically thousands of women would come, set up camp cooke,
(20:58):
take classes, and enjoy a safe space. There was one
woman reflecting on how incredible it would be to go
to this festival where you would be out in the
woods and it would be dark, but you didn't have
to be scared of the dark because you were just
surrounded by all these other women who were wanting to
have a good time. But no trans women have been
(21:19):
allowed because of the notion that it would endanger that
safe space and the sense of personal liberation that it offered.
And that was something too that was brought up in
that New Yorker piece by Michelle Goldberg and Julius Serrano
also commented on Missfest because it has happened in recent years,
(21:42):
right and there have been transactivists protests outside of the festival,
basically saying this is not okay that we're not allowed
to come share this safe space as well. Well, yeah,
I mean, I think there were activists, but I think
what was heavily reported on was when some transactivists responded
(22:02):
to the trans exclusionary policy of the festival by defacing
some property, spray painting some things, um, which was another
way for Turfs and others to point and say, see,
this is essentially this is why we can't have nice
things because they're dangerous. Trans people are dangerous. Trans people
are dangerous. Um, you're deceptive, you're mentally ill, and there's
(22:27):
no reason that you should be included in an event
for women with a why they say, Now, when we
get a little deeper into this trans exclusionary radical feminist
fight against against trans inclusion, a lot of it comes
down to this idea that trans women, especially are over
(22:52):
reliant on gender, are using gender as some kind of
a crutch to again to and filter, rate and deceive. Yeah,
it's sort of an it's sort of an interesting circular
argument about gender. Is it a social construction? Is it biological?
What is it? Writing in that New Yorker piece, Michelle
(23:14):
Goldberg says trans women say that they are women because
they feel female, that, as some put it, they have
women's brains and men's bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion
of a quote female brain. They believe that if women
think an act differently from men, it's because society forces
them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential.
In the words of Lear Keith, a speaker at rad
(23:36):
Fem's respond, femininity is quote ritualized submission. And so this
is kind of the check no boxes issue, the you
shouldn't you shouldn't feel compelled or compel others to say
that you are female or male. Trans people are hurting
themselves with surgery or hormones when they should just learn
(23:57):
to accept themselves as they are. You're playing into the binary.
Gender doesn't exist. Female is a social construct. And that's
an idea that Amanda Marcott over at Slate picks up
on when discussing writer Eleanor Burkett's argument that Caitlyn Jenner
and other trans women constitute a threat to feminism. Now,
it's worth noting that Amanda Marcott and on the other side,
(24:20):
Eleanor Burkett. There these are just two people who are
making these arguments. Plenty of other people have been part
of this conversation, but this I thought the article of
its slate was a good highlight of the conversation, and
Marcott asks, why be suspicious of trans women's socially constructed gender?
Then if female quote unquote female is always a construct anyway,
(24:42):
she says, And do you really believe it's just socially
constructed if you're arguing for biologically women born women only spaces?
So it's an argument that kind of just goes in
a circle of like, well, wait, so if you're saying
that it really is just a construct and that feminine
(25:03):
women are just putting on a costume of femininity to
appease the patriarchy, then how is the trans quote unquote
performance of gender and femininity any different than a sist
woman's performance of gender and femininity? And why should trans
women not be included in women only spaces? Well, I
(25:26):
would think that in this pocket of radical feminism, most
of us are doing it wrong in their eyes, wouldn't
you think, because you would need to divorce, divorce yourself
of any outer trappings of femininity in order to truly
(25:50):
achieve this this idea of feminism that they have, right, Yeah,
I don't know, And and I mean, Kristen, you mentioned
muddying the waters earlier. And I mean, the things that
we're touching on at the moment are they're not all
from the same people. And I think that's what makes
(26:10):
it complicated. Because some radical feminists are saying, divorce yourself
from everything that is male and masculine and be androgynous.
Some people are saying, embrace everything that is feminine and
womanly in you. Some people are just saying, like, just
turn away from men and just sleep with women or
(26:30):
live with women and don't you know, have any connection
to men at all. So, but not all of these
different groups are saying the same thing. I mean, it's
honestly mind boggling and seems to lead to dead ends
whichever way you turn. Yeah, and it's also it's also
I don't know how productive it is to tell people
(26:53):
how to live and what's like, I mean, I think
conversations about the patriarchy or odd viously important and enlightening.
And I'm not sure that to me, it's akin to
saying the roof is leaking, so I just burned down
the whole house. Yeah, um, but you know I love
(27:17):
an h G TV metaphor, let's renovate this feminist house.
That's right. Well, you know women are good at interior
decor so. In the first half of the show, we
focus a lot on transphobia. But now let's talk about transactivism,
because transactivists are loud and proud, and transgender people are
(27:40):
more visible than ever before and actively fighting and simply
by living and being vocal, are are fighting these turf
stereotypes circling around hate, fear, and exclusion. I mean, you
have people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mak, Caitlin Jenner,
(28:01):
and Jazz Jennings to only name four who are putting
human faces on the issue that really didn't exist with
this level of visibility at all in say the seventies
or eighties. Yeah. I mean, certainly transactivists are just as
vocal as they always have been, but it's just now
I feel like that they're being heard, that people are
(28:24):
willing to say, Okay, no, wait, what are you saying,
Let's actually listen to this and actually give you a
chance to speak. Um. These activists are fighting for inclusion, yes,
but they're also fighting for safety, for recognition of their
right to exist and to be taken seriously. They're advocating
for things like admission to women's only colleges and acceptance
in spaces supposedly only for women. Like we mentioned at
(28:46):
the top of the podcast, they're also raising awareness about
the number of trans people killed every year, which in
the US as of mid August was at fifteen according
to an article in Time magazine. And they're still fighting
this stigma that being trans is a mental illness, that
their sexual deviance, that their deceptive, or just that it's
(29:07):
a passing phase. They'll change their minds because one common
refrain among trans exclusionary radical feminists is that trans women
suffer from something called autogyn ophelia or sexual arousal at
the thought of being female or having female genitalia. And
his term was coined by a guy named Ray Blanchard
who's a retired psychiatry professor, who used it to describe
(29:31):
a neurotic compulsion to become a woman rather than it
conceived female identity. So again, I mean, it's just like
framing them as deviance, as this is just being a
fetish essentially. And some of the heroes of the turf
movement or platform or position are those individuals who have
(29:54):
transitioned and who then have come out and said that
they regretted their decision and went back to living as
a man or a woman. Um. These people are often
cited by turfs as saying, see, you just get a
little therapy and it all gets straightened out in your head. Oh,
but that sounds so similar to conversion therapy. Gay conversion therapy,
(30:16):
where in those on the way opposite end of the spectrum,
where you have hyper conservative people who do elevate people
who have come out and then gone back in the
closet quote unquote thanks to conversion therapy. Their elevated say
oh look see see it's just a phase. Yeah, when
in reality, no one individual of any type of group
(30:38):
can stand for an entire population. And I should also
clarify to the distinction between we're talking about gender identity
in terms of the trans issue and sexual orientation with
the gay conversion therapy. So a little apple's oranges, but
nonetheless startling similarities between these two groups which are ideologically
(30:59):
on opposite ends of the political spectrum. And a big
aspect of transactivism too is fighting against actions that are
specifically intended to oppress them, not just insensitivity or maybe
a little ignorance on the part of sis people, but
(31:19):
things like miss gendering or refusing to use the correct
or preferred pronouns. Uh. This is big with writer Sheila Jeffreys.
Tour writer Sheila Jeffreys, who does refuse to use preferred pronouns.
She writes that used by men of feminine pronouns conceals
the masculine privilege bestowed upon them by virtue of having
been placed in and brought up in the male sex cast.
(31:43):
So there's no acknowledgement there that trans women are women.
There's still that assertion that no trans women are just
men who are putting on a costume. And part of
transactivism against CIS, sexism and society does involve too speaking
(32:03):
out on things that they perceive as oppressive, regardless of intention,
So things like celebrations of sists, women's bodies, and biology.
So we did an entire podcast, for instance, all about
this period pride movement in quotes at a celebration of
(32:24):
menistruation culturally like we've kind of never seen before really,
things like that. Um, things like the vagina monologues there
have been on on some college campuses. Vagina monologue performances
canceled because they're seen as trans exclusionary, and also things
like the quote unquote real women or real beauty ads
(32:47):
that we've seen. We've seen a huge uptick in this
from companies like Dove or Pantine who focus on this
real womanhood, which is sort of an indirect throwback to
the early rad fem claim of embracing true womanhood is
the way to um achieve true liberation. They draw links
between you know, how can you say that these women
(33:09):
in this ad are true women? What is a true woman? Right?
And and this too, you know, gets to the body
positivity things like real women have curves and things like
that of stepping back and saying, wait, what do we
really mean by real And also within the healthcare scope,
ignoring that trans men can get pregnant and also have
(33:32):
periods and abortion reproductive rights as a trans issue too,
or holding women only events that expressly exclude trans women,
or not admitting trans women to women's colleges. That's been
a huge issue in the past few years. Yeah, and
so it's it's these it's this area, this area of well,
(33:54):
we don't mean to offend you or we don't mean
to exclude you, and trans people saying well, but you're
excluding me and a fending me and oppressing me anyway,
regardless of your intention. It's this sort of area that's
getting a lot of coverage in the think pieces nowadays,
people writing about feminism and trans inclusion or exclusion, because
(34:15):
a lot of writers, particularly SIS women, have been very
vocal about saying not everything can be for everybody. Uh,
you're just being too politically correct, You're being too sensitive,
and they're essentially telling these transactivists to calm down, which
we all know telling someone to calm down never works
out well. I mean, there are plenty of people who
(34:37):
wouldn't necessarily be called radical feminists otherwise, but who have
still by activists earned that turf name because they say
that these transactivists are taking things too far. One of
those people is Brent Margrad Monica Potts, who talked about
the whole women's college issue in The New Republic in February.
(34:59):
She points that for women's only colleges except trans women
and to except trans men, and she in her essay,
which I thought was pretty reminiscent of the complaints that
we've talked about over political correctness, Potts argues that women
still like super duper need the confidence incubator that is
(35:21):
the woman only college setting, and she says that erasing
references to women sisterhood and their bodies or like you said,
kristin canceling performances of the Vagina Monologues is indistinguishable from
old school misogyny. So her the crux of her argument
is that it should be okay that not everything, all
the time is for everybody. Um. But then she does
(35:46):
go on to say that women's spaces and language are targeted,
which is a pretty loaded term, are targeted by transactivists
because women readily give up power. She writes, quote women,
especially young ones, hold power so delicately and uncomfortably they're
ready to give it up as soon as someone accuses
(36:07):
them of being selfish. Which this was the off ramp
for me in this piece where I don't agree with
that at all. I think that saying that it's being targeted,
um strategically like that is uh, well, I'll just say
I don't agree that it's being strategically targeted like that
because I think that also again paints trans people as
(36:30):
devious rather than seeking safe spaces as they've been seeking
for so long. Yeah, So she she basically goes on
to say that, hey, there's plenty of other liberal arts
schools that are safe spaces for gender questioning students or
or sexuality questioning students, many of them being former women's
only colleges. Um, So basically, why don't you just go
(36:54):
there and leave our women's only colleges alone, you trans people.
An unrelated note, there are some people concerned about, you know,
these these women who are not turfs being labeled turfs
for like Monica Potts is doing raising, you know, a
need for which he says, these sacred spaces, the sisterhoods
(37:16):
and things like that. For someone like that to then
be by some activists called a turf, that that is
simply a weapon also to silence women. So it's like,
are we are we really progressing the conversation or is
everyone just trying to tell everyone else to shut up?
What's going on? It kind of feels like everybody's telling
(37:39):
each other to shut up. McDonald, which is a pseudonym
by the way, was writing in The New Statesman also
in February and says that, uh, the transactivists who are
like pots was talking about, wanting to be included in
women's only spaces are a small subset of ex dreamists
(38:00):
who are trying to impose their definition of reality and
their political agenda on everyone. And McDonald too points out
the whole vagina monologues cancelation issue in addition to complaints
about discussions of pregnancy and abortion rights and menstruation. So
I think Pots and McDonald, the anonymous McDonald are basically
(38:22):
saying we should be able to accept trans people for
who they are and also celebrate women's bodies and spaces
and not be called turfs because of it, basically saying
that those two things can coexist. And you know that
one issue that people like Pots and McDonald and a
(38:46):
lot of just media outlets in general, when reporting on
this kind of issue bring up our uh, people labeled
turfs having their appearances at college campuses or in public
spaces hand sold due to outcries from transactivists or just
feminist activists who are like, no, get your hate speech
(39:07):
away from me. Um and Julius Serrano, whom we mentioned
earlier in the podcast. Um wrote about this as well
in her response piece and the Advocate to that New
Yorker piece that really got a lot of people talking
and thinking about this in and she said, you know, sure,
turfs should be free to speak and assemble whenever, wherever,
(39:29):
but an l g pt Q organization would be hypocritical
to host performers who advocate for trans woman exclusion. And
isn't a college that claims to protect students and faculty
from gender based discrimination facing a conflict of interest if
it invites the speaker who says trans people are just
sexually deviant. Yeah good point, Yeah, good point. But in
(39:55):
that Advocate piece, one thing that Toronto really hammered home
was that her far bigger concern with all of this
is the media. And I think that we're part of this, Caroline,
because we were talking about this exact thing, the media
focusing so much and debating so much over this kind
(40:18):
of transactivism rather than talking about the very real day
to day experiences and discrimination and violence that trans people face.
You know, one of the things that she was most
distraught about with that New Yorker piece was that it
simply posed this whole thing as a cat fight of
(40:42):
this group versus this group, where she was like, no,
this is not this is a distracting No, this is
distracting focus away from where the real attention needs to
be placed in terms of actually improving trans people's lives,
because when we focus so much on this, it paints
(41:05):
trans people as just out to take away everything again,
as being interlopers. So, on the one hand, I think
it was really important that we have this conversation about
turfs because of the way, you know, as we talked
about at the top of the podcast, how the term
the acronym has taken on a life of its own,
(41:27):
and how a lot of people wield it without really
understanding it. I think it's important to talk about that.
But is there a danger of talking about all of
this too much? Well, do you mean that perhaps we
should focus more on the individual people or the groups
of people in the conversation rather than labeling people. I
(41:50):
guess what I'm thinking is, I'll answer your question with
another question. What I'm wondering is, how do we reframe
this conversation that is very exclusionary focused of you have
one group wanting to exclude these people, and you have
(42:11):
another group who you know is fighting against exclusion. What
happens if we reframe this conversation to really focus in
on inclusion, Because on the one hand, I think it's
important for us to be able to talk about women's
(42:32):
bodies and to talk about menstruation, periods, vaginas and demetriosis,
these kinds of things, um, that we talked about on
the podcast all the time. At the same time, too,
you and I want to be as inclusive as possible,
and trans lives matter, and we you know, never want
to disinvite trans people to the party because you know,
(42:57):
we want to build coalitions. So how do we how
do we make all of this inclusive? Can we do?
Or am I wanting too many things at once? I
think we can be inclusive, and I know that you
and I have worked very hard to be inclusive, and
we have gotten many letters from trans listeners who say, hey,
(43:19):
thanks for the acknowledgement that there are different types of
bodies and that, um, different types of people have periods
or don't have periods. UM. I do think that including
trans people in the conversation does not do away with
the importance of talking about, like you said, women's biology, because,
(43:45):
especially when you've taken into the account the history of
women being divorced from their bodies and women's biology being
considered gross and dirty and too sexual and we shouldn't
talk about it. Um, so you and I are in
sort of an interest position of we talk a lot
about health and biology and sexual health and stuff like that,
(44:06):
but we also talk about a lot of social issues
like turfs, like transactivism. Um and so, so that's sort
of a long winded way of saying that I think
both of these conversations need to happen and exist side
by side, and that perhaps some of our conversations and
others could be reframed to make sure that we do
(44:29):
include all of those different types of bodies. Well. Absolutely,
because by the same token, we have also received letters
and Facebook comments and tweets from people saying, hey, you
know what, when you're talking about especially things like menstruation
and periods, don't be so sissextist about it. Recognize that
(44:49):
you know, transmit experience these things too, um, which we
absolutely want to do. Well. I think one thing we
can all agree on is that the term rhetoric is
very harmful. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to why why
(45:11):
I try to harm? Why try to harm others emotionally, physically, mentally? Um,
why would you out a trans person or or a
gay person or anyone? Why would you why would you
target people in order to cause pain. And I understand
(45:33):
that some radical feminists have the perspective that anything tied
to men at all, ever, is the enemy, but that's
ignoring the very real, the very real fact that trans
women are women. Well. I also think that it really
(45:56):
says a lot that since this really started bubbling up
in the nineteen seventies, especially to now, it's not like
we've seen the kind of massive cultural sea change really
embracing and advocating for turf platforms in the way that
we have seen, especially in just the last handful of years,
(46:20):
a legitimate cultural see change in terms of recognizing and
accepting um trans people as people, and in terms of
mainstream feminism of doing a more concerted job of including
(46:42):
trans people as well and inviting them to the table
and working as allies for you know, the issues that
affect them. Yeah, it's all a work in progress, Caroline,
it's a work in progress. I'm I'm really interested to
hear from. But I know that there's aspects of this
(47:03):
conversation that we didn't touch on. I mean, I'm incredibly
interested to hearing people from. I don't I don't want
to say both sides of this argument because I don't
want to paint it as a catfight like like Goldberg did,
but I'm interested to hear from listeners. I know a
lot of you have opinions on this well, and I
(47:23):
think it's just so important to remember that, like so
many of the isms that exist, feminism also exists on
a spectrum. You know, there is no one feminism, and
people often mistakenly paint feminism as wrong or misguided because
(47:45):
they see this one pocket over here on the spectrum
and assume that the whole thing is tainted because of it.
So with that, Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
Com is where you can send your letters. You can
also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
We do hope to hear from you, and we've got
(48:07):
a couple of letters to share with you right now. Well,
I have a letter here from Devon in response to
our Feminist Anthropology episode. Devon says, I cannot thank you
enough for doing a podcast on feminist anthropology. I studied
Anthwer in college, and I'm not an anthropologist now, but
(48:27):
I do work for a feminist organization. Despite only spending
one week in all of my years in school studying
feminist anthropology and spending the rest of the time on
the same judgmental englishman. Anthropology had a massive impact on
my views as a feminist. Even if you don't end
up using your Anthwer degree in a practical sense, you'll
use it every day when you meet new people. Anthropology
(48:48):
taught me the incredible skill of how to find meaning
and the little things that build culture. Oftentimes the meetings
we find show longstanding evidence of the patriarchy, which is
amazing because then we know what to fight and work against.
We can't change the culture of sexism unless we know
what we need to change. Then there's the rare moment
when we look at a ritual or a moment and
(49:08):
find that all along it's been feminist and it's been beautiful.
There's a definite subset of anthropology that is specifically feminist,
but I also believe that anthropology is inherently feminist. Anything
that makes you question the culture you live in in
order to find a history and purpose of previously unquestioned
actions is a feminist practice. I wasn't at all surprised
(49:29):
to hear that most anthropology PhD students are women, but
it still makes me feel good to hear that the
subject I love and an incredibly grateful for is populated
by these smart women. Thanks again for a great listen. Well,
I've gotta let her here. From Kirsten on young women's
voices and glottal fry, she writes, I'm slowly working my
(49:49):
way through your extensive series and recently listen to your
episode our young Women Ruining American Speech. I'm a nineteen
year old female broadcast journalist for the US Air Force.
A to cool Kirsten. Part of our training is heavily
concentrated on our speech patterns and tone of voice. A
lot of young women have a much more difficult time
with the course because of glottal fry that is just
(50:11):
so ingrained in our vocal register. They can actually fail
out or be reclassified if they can't unlearn it. You
have to audition to book the job, and many young
women are turned away if older women are judging the
audition because their voices are simply to quote young, thin
and high. We're taught to fake deeper, more authoritative voices
(50:32):
by slowing down and breathing deeper. The males have a
much easier time of the course, really only having to
master articulation and speed, while the women have a lot
more to correct to be considered terrible. Love your podcast both,
Thanks so much, Kirsten. That is fascinating and you know
what phrase I love glottal fry delicious salty. Well, we
(50:59):
can't wait to hear are from you as well, dear listener. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
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(51:21):
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You From how Supports
dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and
I'm Kristin this week, Kris and I are taking a
hard look at basically straight feminisms LGBT problem. Today, specifically,
(00:26):
we are talking about trance exclusionary radical feminists. Now turf
as is the acronym for that is considered a slur
by some and it's considered just a neutral descriptor by others,
particularly the person who coined the term back in two
thousand eight. But we will get into all of that
in just a moment. But last time on the show,
(00:49):
we introduced the idea of radical feminism and the lavender menace,
and so today's episode is building off of that. But so, Kristen,
could you give us a little refresher on what the
lavender menace is? Yeah, So, the lavender menace was a
term coined by feminine mystique author and president of National
(01:11):
Organization of Women Betty fred Dan to describe her discomfort
with feminists aligning themselves with radical feminist lesbians at the
time because she was very concerned about the credibility of
second wave feminism and considered lesbians a potential threat to
(01:36):
that because the rampant homophobia of the time, um and
the you know, still persistent stereotyping of feminists maintained that
women who advocate for gender equality are really just man
hating lesbians, and so she thought that the so called
(01:57):
lavender menace might inhibit mainstream feminism from moving forward, to
which those radical lesbian feminists that she was so scared
of essentially took it on as their mantle, saying, Okay,
we will reclaim this term, we will become the lavender menace,
(02:17):
and we will fight against this, fighting against essentially the
people who they should be building a coalition with. And
that did end up happening. I mean, Betty for Dan
came back and and later said that she was wrong.
The National Organization of Women and other feminist organizations at
the time, and also people like Gloria Steinem publicly stood
(02:40):
up for the needs and recognition of lesbians. But it
really gets to, like you said, this lingering still shortcoming
when it comes to whiteis gender straight feminists being more inclusive.
(03:02):
But if we zero specifically in on those radical feminists,
particularly radical lesbian feminists of the nineteen seventies of second
wave feminism. There was really a push to embrace lesbian ism,
and I know that sounds really weird, but we we
did touch on in our last episode not just being
a lesbian having relationships with women, but literally embracing the lesbian,
(03:27):
nonman involved lifestyle. Um even going so far as for
straight women to embrace political lesbianism as a way to
fight the patriarchy. And so part of this more radical
radical feminist outlook was that even bisexual or pan sexual
women are the enemy because they're literally sleeping with the enemy.
(03:50):
How can you be a true feminist fighting for tree
equality and liberation if you're having sex with men. They
were also turning their backs on butch lesbians, considering them
an unhealth the mirroring of male privilege or patriarchal sex roles,
and they maintain that women are basically perfect and that
true love can only exist between women. And it's this
(04:10):
focus on true womanhood in quotes that often ignored class
and race issues, but it totally barred trans women. Yeah,
and like we said, we did an entire episode on
this chapter of women's liberation in the seventies and eighties
last time. So if you want a more in depth
(04:33):
look at that then definitely listened to the Lavender Menace
podcast episode that came out earlier this week. But today
we're going to focus in on the contemporary transphobia within
some radical feminist circles and how this also reflects more
broadly on how people think about feminism today and what
(04:58):
radical feminism means. And so people might be wondering, people
who aren't familiar with the she might be wondering, why
would you bar trans women from feminism? And it has
it's directly descended from those ideas that anything that could
potentially be aligned with manhood, masculinity men in general is
(05:20):
considered a negative because, like I just said, that whole
idea of true womanhood was so critical to some of
these radical feminists groups. And so the reasoning behind excluding
trans women from the feminist movement was that trans women,
they argued, or biologically male and are just masquerading as
women or their parodying women, and the idea that they'll
(05:41):
never truly understand what it means to be a woman.
They were not socialized as women, they didn't face the
same types of oppression that biological women face, and so
they end up saying, hey, you were born a man,
I consider that you are always a man. And these circles,
these old schools turf circles were certainly alive and well
(06:03):
in the nineteen seventies. But we're really going to talk
about what's going on today, especially because when you look
at criticisms of feminists, it usually is the you know,
the the turf label that gets tossed around a lot
of like, oh, well, feminism today is wrong because you're
(06:27):
not really advocating for gender equality because you have some
of these radical feminists out here who are mis and droous,
who want nothing to do with men who are and
that is not equality at all. So this is it's
I think an important clarifying conversation to have to narrow
down who turfs really are in terms of being a
(06:50):
small segment of the feminist spectrum, and how they are
even distinct from radical feminists, and how radical feminists or
even distinct from would we say, what lower case F feminists? Yeah,
and I mean, I think it's important. Sometimes it goes
without saying, but it is important to revisit the idea
(07:11):
that yes, feminism does have many many branches. It is
a tree with many many branches, not all of which
overlap and get along with each other. Yeah, by the
same token too. I think it's important to frame this
conversation away from the cat fighting angle that tends to
be very attractive to the media of like, oh, look,
(07:35):
feminists or fighting with each other again. And I really
don't want to present this conversation about these we don't
like these women over here they're saying all these nasty things,
But rather, I don't know, take more of a bird's
eye view of the lay of the land, of what
what's going on, how this term turf even came about,
and how the transactivism that's really you know, in full
(08:01):
bloom today is dealing with this transphobia that has existed
historically and still today within small corners of feminism. Yeah.
So I mentioned earlier that the term turf is actually
pretty new, despite the fact that there have been anti
trans feminists in the movement from the get go. So, Kristen,
(08:26):
where did turf come from? So? The term is credited
to Australian blogger TikTok, who was also assist Gender Woman
um and TikTok coined it as a neutral description of
a particular group of activists that she felt, in her words,
were colonizing radical feminist discourse. Yeah, she says, it wasn't
(08:50):
meant to be a slur, but she is sure it
can be perceived as one in the same way that
some people might consider the words feminist or radical feminist
to be slurs, depending on the tone and context and
who's saying it, And so in that same vein, many
of these women who were called turf's definitely opposed the term,
saying that it is a slur and that they prefer
(09:10):
the term man exclusionary radical feminist. But preferring the term
man exclusionary radical feminists also highlights their transphobia absolutely, because
they are still in calling themselves man exclusionary radical feminist
or merf's. They're still calling trans women men because that
(09:32):
it falls under the same umbrella to them. And this
whole turf merv transphobia within feminism issue seems to have
come to a head inteen when there was a piece
in The New Yorker by Michelle Goldberg writing about transphobic
feminists and trans feminists and sort of how they have
(09:58):
obviously like butt heads, how are they existing these same spaces,
especially in the context of growing transactivism UM. And in
response to that New Yorker piece, which we'll talk about
in more detail later on in the podcast, Julius Serrano,
who's author of The Whipping Girl, wrote in The Advocate
quote from their point of view, they should be referred
(10:20):
to as murph's because they reject trans women who they
see as men, but not trans men, who they view
as misguided women who have been brainwashed by patriarchal and
transgender agendas. Needless to say, an overwhelming majority of transgender
people rejected this framing of the issue, and Serrano, writing
that piece in The Advocate, was clarifying all of that
(10:43):
because she felt that the New Yorker piece didn't really
outline clearly enough the the depth of the transphobia that
a lot of these you know urfs, these trans exclusionary
radical feminists, UM, really embrace. Yeah. Well, and she was
(11:04):
also arguing that Goldberg painted so called turfs in a
much more sympathetic light than she did actual trans activists,
which is something that we see across a lot of
think pieces for lack of a better word, that are
around today talking about these very same issues and by
the same token too. There is a concern among radical
(11:27):
feminists who are not transphobic, that lumping all of this
together in this way, in the way that the New
Yorker piece and other pieces have have kind of done,
of of really muddying those waters. Um. They've worried that
it's casting a shadow on them, lumping all radical feminists
into the turf group hashtag not all rad fems exactly. Yeah,
(11:50):
and so it is worth uh clarifying, yes, that not
all radical feminists are transphobic, and that there are plenty
of trans ends women activists who are feminists. These you know,
there's lots of inn diagrams going on, surprise surprise in
the feminist movement. But we looked over at the turfs
(12:11):
dot com to get some clarification on what a trans
exclusionary radical feminist is or does, um. And they point
out that turfs as they see it, assert that trans
women or men and vice versa. Uh, and that trans
women can't actually be lesbians. Uh. They out trans people,
(12:33):
whether they're coworkers, colleagues, whoever. And they make the assertion
that the world would be a better place without trans people.
See the example of Bev von Door, who's a big
name turf activist and writer von Door said they expect
will be shocked to see statistics about them being killed
(12:54):
and don't realize some of us wish they would all
be dead. And Vonder's name is actually one that comes
up when we look at sort of the history of
that tension between feminism, radical feminism, and transactivists. Yeah, so
now is the time when we highlight a couple of
(13:15):
not so savory moments in radical feminist history. So in
nineteen seventy three, at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, trans
folk singer Beth Elliott was threatened and eventually excluded from
the gathering of more than twelve hundred lesbian women, and
a group called the Gutter Dikes had leaflotted the conference
(13:38):
to protest Elliott's inclusion, and the charge was led Caroline
by none other than who by Bev von Door, who
alleged or still alleges that Elliott had stalked her and
threatened to rape her after Von Door turned Elliott down
when they were teens. And so this is really a
(13:59):
lightning rod moment went in the feminism. If we're going
to have the dichotomy, if we're going to say the
feminism versus trans movement, um, because it really highlighted, hey
we don't like trans people, or hey we need to
support and include trans people well, and and kind of
(14:20):
pulling out our focus a little bit too. This is
something that Serrano writes about in Whipping Girl in terms
of uh, just transphobia in the nineteen seventies and of
trans people having a really hard time finding a welcoming
space because you have within radical feminism this transphobia happening.
(14:41):
And then when it comes to the gay rights movement,
in the same way that Betty for Dan was pulling
the lavender menace, the gay rights movement wasn't so open
to trans people either, because they were trying to position
their platform in more of away from gender identity and
focusing on on sexual orientation and relationship up. So they
were like, we don't have a place anywhere. Yeah. So,
(15:03):
at the same time that the group the gutter Dykes
are leafletting the conference to protest Elliot's inclusion, keynote speaker
Robin Morgan was blasting Elliott and trans women in general.
In her speech. She called Elliott an opportunist, infiltrator, and
a destroyer. Morgan said, I will not call a male
she thirty two years of suffering in this androcentric society
(15:27):
and of surviving have earned me the title woman. One
walk down the street by a male transvestite five minutes
of his being hassled, which he may enjoy, and then
he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain.
And this is a refrain that, I mean, this is
still going on, that the mis gendering, the purposeful attempt
(15:48):
to cause pain by misgender ing trans people, is something
that still goes on. I mean, we saw it come
out in full force when Caitlyn Jenner was on the
cover of Vanity Fair exactly. But so in the wake
of a speech and the wake and in the wake
of the leafleting, Elliott gets on stage to perform, but
the turf's got violent. They were threatening her, and they
(16:10):
jumped on stage to assault her. But again, not all feminists,
not all lesbians, not all women of this movement felt
the same way. Writing in the publication The Tide, which
is a lesbian newsletter, one woman did speak up for Elliott.
She wrote, this woman is insisting that Beth Elliott not
(16:32):
be permitted to perform because Beth is a transsexual. Beth
was on the San Francisco steering committee for the conference,
a pan of the original group that gave birth to
the idea. She's written some far out feminist songs, That's
why she's here. No, we do not cannot relate to
her as a man. We have not known her as
a man. She is a woman because she chooses to
be a woman. What right do you have to define
(16:54):
her sexuality? And I just thought that this was a perfect,
as I said, lightning Rod moment to highlight the division
between turfs and non turfs, basically everyone and everyone else.
And and it pedals so much in those same myths
(17:14):
about trans people that we have talked about on past podcasts,
that they're really just trying to deceive us and infiltrate
and where gender as a costume. Um. So it's just
it's so again and again and again reading about this,
especially the history and obviously how it's still going on today.
(17:38):
It's unfortunate to see people in the name of feminism
really just recycling the same kinds of lies that feminism
ultimately is trying to dismantle. Well. So, unfortunately, though that
conference and Beth Eliott's exclusion, we're not the only sour
notes in the seventies. UM. We also have Olivia Records UH,
(18:03):
which was a woman's music collective in Los Angeles receiving
hate mail and death threats for hiring a trans woman,
Sandy Stone, as a recording engineer and UH Stone has
written about how you know, we were all having a
great time. We were making music, we were working together
for the feminist cause for women, supporting women and other
(18:24):
lesbians and other feminists. It was great. And then a
boycott and smear campaign organized by Janice Raymond eventually drove
Stone out of the collective, which did attempt to defend her.
They pinned an essay for a lesbian publication saying that hey,
Sandy has decided to give up her male identity and
(18:48):
now she's faced with the same kinds of oppression that
other women and lesbian's face. She must also cope with
the ostracism that all of society imposes on a trans
sexual being like, hey, everybody has a past, but this
is the present. We need to focus on the present,
and we are all about supporting fellow women and fellow lesbians.
(19:09):
That is not how people like Janice Raymond saw it. No,
Janice Raymond saw it as again essentially a guy deceiving
and infiltrading a sacred female space. And I mean it's
so unfortunate too, because you know, in the bigger context,
Olivia Records was a pretty incredible thing happening if you
(19:30):
consider how today, but especially back then, how male dominated
the music industry was, um but silver lining. Sandy Stone
would go on to write an essay The Empire Strikes Back,
a post trans sexual manifesto that became essentially the foundation
(19:52):
of transgender studies around the world. Yeah, and it also
got people thinking. Robin Tyler, who was part of the
feminist comedy duo Harrison and Tyler, have been scheduled to
perform at that same conference as Beth Elliott in nineteen
seventy three, and later in an interview, she reflected on
that reaction to Stone, and she says, you know what's interesting,
(20:14):
rather than fighting who's oppressing us, turfs go after the
most oppressed people instead of building a coalition. And that's
just shocking to me. And Kristin that's what you said
earlier about, um, the need to sort of come together
and fight for the same thing rather than tearing each
other down exactly. UM. And then finally, we wanted to
(20:36):
talk about the Michigan Women's Women with a Y Music
Festival or mish Fest mitch Fest that was started in
nineteen seventy nine as a women Born, Women Again, Women
with Wise event and it is still intermittently held today
and basically thousands of women would come, set up camp cooke,
(20:58):
take classes, and enjoy a safe space. There was one
woman reflecting on how incredible it would be to go
to this festival where you would be out in the
woods and it would be dark, but you didn't have
to be scared of the dark because you were just
surrounded by all these other women who were wanting to
have a good time. But no trans women have been
(21:19):
allowed because of the notion that it would endanger that
safe space and the sense of personal liberation that it offered.
And that was something too that was brought up in
that New Yorker piece by Michelle Goldberg and Julius Serrano
also commented on Missfest because it has happened in recent years,
(21:42):
right and there have been transactivists protests outside of the festival,
basically saying this is not okay that we're not allowed
to come share this safe space as well. Well, yeah,
I mean, I think there were activists, but I think
what was heavily reported on was when some transactivists responded
(22:02):
to the trans exclusionary policy of the festival by defacing
some property, spray painting some things, um, which was another
way for Turfs and others to point and say, see,
this is essentially this is why we can't have nice
things because they're dangerous. Trans people are dangerous. Trans people
are dangerous. Um, you're deceptive, you're mentally ill, and there's
(22:27):
no reason that you should be included in an event
for women with a why they say, Now, when we
get a little deeper into this trans exclusionary radical feminist
fight against against trans inclusion, a lot of it comes
down to this idea that trans women, especially are over
(22:52):
reliant on gender, are using gender as some kind of
a crutch to again to and filter, rate and deceive. Yeah,
it's sort of an it's sort of an interesting circular
argument about gender. Is it a social construction? Is it biological?
What is it? Writing in that New Yorker piece, Michelle
(23:14):
Goldberg says trans women say that they are women because
they feel female, that, as some put it, they have
women's brains and men's bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion
of a quote female brain. They believe that if women
think an act differently from men, it's because society forces
them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential.
In the words of Lear Keith, a speaker at rad
(23:36):
Fem's respond, femininity is quote ritualized submission. And so this
is kind of the check no boxes issue, the you
shouldn't you shouldn't feel compelled or compel others to say
that you are female or male. Trans people are hurting
themselves with surgery or hormones when they should just learn
(23:57):
to accept themselves as they are. You're playing into the binary.
Gender doesn't exist. Female is a social construct. And that's
an idea that Amanda Marcott over at Slate picks up
on when discussing writer Eleanor Burkett's argument that Caitlyn Jenner
and other trans women constitute a threat to feminism. Now,
it's worth noting that Amanda Marcott and on the other side,
(24:20):
Eleanor Burkett. There these are just two people who are
making these arguments. Plenty of other people have been part
of this conversation, but this I thought the article of
its slate was a good highlight of the conversation, and
Marcott asks, why be suspicious of trans women's socially constructed gender?
Then if female quote unquote female is always a construct anyway,
(24:42):
she says, And do you really believe it's just socially
constructed if you're arguing for biologically women born women only spaces?
So it's an argument that kind of just goes in
a circle of like, well, wait, so if you're saying
that it really is just a construct and that feminine
(25:03):
women are just putting on a costume of femininity to
appease the patriarchy, then how is the trans quote unquote
performance of gender and femininity any different than a sist
woman's performance of gender and femininity? And why should trans
women not be included in women only spaces? Well, I
(25:26):
would think that in this pocket of radical feminism, most
of us are doing it wrong in their eyes, wouldn't
you think, because you would need to divorce, divorce yourself
of any outer trappings of femininity in order to truly
(25:50):
achieve this this idea of feminism that they have, right, Yeah,
I don't know, And and I mean, Kristen, you mentioned
muddying the waters earlier. And I mean, the things that
we're touching on at the moment are they're not all
from the same people. And I think that's what makes
(26:10):
it complicated. Because some radical feminists are saying, divorce yourself
from everything that is male and masculine and be androgynous.
Some people are saying, embrace everything that is feminine and
womanly in you. Some people are just saying, like, just
turn away from men and just sleep with women or
(26:30):
live with women and don't you know, have any connection
to men at all. So, but not all of these
different groups are saying the same thing. I mean, it's
honestly mind boggling and seems to lead to dead ends
whichever way you turn. Yeah, and it's also it's also
I don't know how productive it is to tell people
(26:53):
how to live and what's like, I mean, I think
conversations about the patriarchy or odd viously important and enlightening.
And I'm not sure that to me, it's akin to
saying the roof is leaking, so I just burned down
the whole house. Yeah, um, but you know I love
(27:17):
an h G TV metaphor, let's renovate this feminist house.
That's right. Well, you know women are good at interior
decor so. In the first half of the show, we
focus a lot on transphobia. But now let's talk about transactivism,
because transactivists are loud and proud, and transgender people are
(27:40):
more visible than ever before and actively fighting and simply
by living and being vocal, are are fighting these turf
stereotypes circling around hate, fear, and exclusion. I mean, you
have people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mak, Caitlin Jenner,
(28:01):
and Jazz Jennings to only name four who are putting
human faces on the issue that really didn't exist with
this level of visibility at all in say the seventies
or eighties. Yeah. I mean, certainly transactivists are just as
vocal as they always have been, but it's just now
I feel like that they're being heard, that people are
(28:24):
willing to say, Okay, no, wait, what are you saying,
Let's actually listen to this and actually give you a
chance to speak. Um. These activists are fighting for inclusion, yes,
but they're also fighting for safety, for recognition of their
right to exist and to be taken seriously. They're advocating
for things like admission to women's only colleges and acceptance
in spaces supposedly only for women. Like we mentioned at
(28:46):
the top of the podcast, they're also raising awareness about
the number of trans people killed every year, which in
the US as of mid August was at fifteen according
to an article in Time magazine. And they're still fighting
this stigma that being trans is a mental illness, that
their sexual deviance, that their deceptive, or just that it's
(29:07):
a passing phase. They'll change their minds because one common
refrain among trans exclusionary radical feminists is that trans women
suffer from something called autogyn ophelia or sexual arousal at
the thought of being female or having female genitalia. And
his term was coined by a guy named Ray Blanchard
who's a retired psychiatry professor, who used it to describe
(29:31):
a neurotic compulsion to become a woman rather than it
conceived female identity. So again, I mean, it's just like
framing them as deviance, as this is just being a
fetish essentially. And some of the heroes of the turf
movement or platform or position are those individuals who have
(29:54):
transitioned and who then have come out and said that
they regretted their decision and went back to living as
a man or a woman. Um. These people are often
cited by turfs as saying, see, you just get a
little therapy and it all gets straightened out in your head. Oh,
but that sounds so similar to conversion therapy. Gay conversion therapy,
(30:16):
where in those on the way opposite end of the spectrum,
where you have hyper conservative people who do elevate people
who have come out and then gone back in the
closet quote unquote thanks to conversion therapy. Their elevated say
oh look see see it's just a phase. Yeah, when
in reality, no one individual of any type of group
(30:38):
can stand for an entire population. And I should also
clarify to the distinction between we're talking about gender identity
in terms of the trans issue and sexual orientation with
the gay conversion therapy. So a little apple's oranges, but
nonetheless startling similarities between these two groups which are ideologically
(30:59):
on opposite ends of the political spectrum. And a big
aspect of transactivism too is fighting against actions that are
specifically intended to oppress them, not just insensitivity or maybe
a little ignorance on the part of sis people, but
(31:19):
things like miss gendering or refusing to use the correct
or preferred pronouns. Uh. This is big with writer Sheila Jeffreys.
Tour writer Sheila Jeffreys, who does refuse to use preferred pronouns.
She writes that used by men of feminine pronouns conceals
the masculine privilege bestowed upon them by virtue of having
been placed in and brought up in the male sex cast.
(31:43):
So there's no acknowledgement there that trans women are women.
There's still that assertion that no trans women are just
men who are putting on a costume. And part of
transactivism against CIS, sexism and society does involve too speaking
(32:03):
out on things that they perceive as oppressive, regardless of intention,
So things like celebrations of sists, women's bodies, and biology.
So we did an entire podcast, for instance, all about
this period pride movement in quotes at a celebration of
(32:24):
menistruation culturally like we've kind of never seen before really,
things like that. Um, things like the vagina monologues there
have been on on some college campuses. Vagina monologue performances
canceled because they're seen as trans exclusionary, and also things
like the quote unquote real women or real beauty ads
(32:47):
that we've seen. We've seen a huge uptick in this
from companies like Dove or Pantine who focus on this
real womanhood, which is sort of an indirect throwback to
the early rad fem claim of embracing true womanhood is
the way to um achieve true liberation. They draw links
between you know, how can you say that these women
(33:09):
in this ad are true women? What is a true woman? Right?
And and this too, you know, gets to the body
positivity things like real women have curves and things like
that of stepping back and saying, wait, what do we
really mean by real And also within the healthcare scope,
ignoring that trans men can get pregnant and also have
(33:32):
periods and abortion reproductive rights as a trans issue too,
or holding women only events that expressly exclude trans women,
or not admitting trans women to women's colleges. That's been
a huge issue in the past few years. Yeah, and
so it's it's these it's this area, this area of well,
(33:54):
we don't mean to offend you or we don't mean
to exclude you, and trans people saying well, but you're
excluding me and a fending me and oppressing me anyway,
regardless of your intention. It's this sort of area that's
getting a lot of coverage in the think pieces nowadays,
people writing about feminism and trans inclusion or exclusion, because
(34:15):
a lot of writers, particularly SIS women, have been very
vocal about saying not everything can be for everybody. Uh,
you're just being too politically correct, You're being too sensitive,
and they're essentially telling these transactivists to calm down, which
we all know telling someone to calm down never works
out well. I mean, there are plenty of people who
(34:37):
wouldn't necessarily be called radical feminists otherwise, but who have
still by activists earned that turf name because they say
that these transactivists are taking things too far. One of
those people is Brent Margrad Monica Potts, who talked about
the whole women's college issue in The New Republic in February.
(34:59):
She points that for women's only colleges except trans women
and to except trans men, and she in her essay,
which I thought was pretty reminiscent of the complaints that
we've talked about over political correctness, Potts argues that women
still like super duper need the confidence incubator that is
(35:21):
the woman only college setting, and she says that erasing
references to women sisterhood and their bodies or like you said,
kristin canceling performances of the Vagina Monologues is indistinguishable from
old school misogyny. So her the crux of her argument
is that it should be okay that not everything, all
the time is for everybody. Um. But then she does
(35:46):
go on to say that women's spaces and language are targeted,
which is a pretty loaded term, are targeted by transactivists
because women readily give up power. She writes, quote women,
especially young ones, hold power so delicately and uncomfortably they're
ready to give it up as soon as someone accuses
(36:07):
them of being selfish. Which this was the off ramp
for me in this piece where I don't agree with
that at all. I think that saying that it's being targeted,
um strategically like that is uh, well, I'll just say
I don't agree that it's being strategically targeted like that
because I think that also again paints trans people as
(36:30):
devious rather than seeking safe spaces as they've been seeking
for so long. Yeah, So she she basically goes on
to say that, hey, there's plenty of other liberal arts
schools that are safe spaces for gender questioning students or
or sexuality questioning students, many of them being former women's
only colleges. Um, So basically, why don't you just go
(36:54):
there and leave our women's only colleges alone, you trans people.
An unrelated note, there are some people concerned about, you know,
these these women who are not turfs being labeled turfs
for like Monica Potts is doing raising, you know, a
need for which he says, these sacred spaces, the sisterhoods
(37:16):
and things like that. For someone like that to then
be by some activists called a turf, that that is
simply a weapon also to silence women. So it's like,
are we are we really progressing the conversation or is
everyone just trying to tell everyone else to shut up?
What's going on? It kind of feels like everybody's telling
(37:39):
each other to shut up. McDonald, which is a pseudonym
by the way, was writing in The New Statesman also
in February and says that, uh, the transactivists who are
like pots was talking about, wanting to be included in
women's only spaces are a small subset of ex dreamists
(38:00):
who are trying to impose their definition of reality and
their political agenda on everyone. And McDonald too points out
the whole vagina monologues cancelation issue in addition to complaints
about discussions of pregnancy and abortion rights and menstruation. So
I think Pots and McDonald, the anonymous McDonald are basically
(38:22):
saying we should be able to accept trans people for
who they are and also celebrate women's bodies and spaces
and not be called turfs because of it, basically saying
that those two things can coexist. And you know that
one issue that people like Pots and McDonald and a
(38:46):
lot of just media outlets in general, when reporting on
this kind of issue bring up our uh, people labeled
turfs having their appearances at college campuses or in public
spaces hand sold due to outcries from transactivists or just
feminist activists who are like, no, get your hate speech
(39:07):
away from me. Um and Julius Serrano, whom we mentioned
earlier in the podcast. Um wrote about this as well
in her response piece and the Advocate to that New
Yorker piece that really got a lot of people talking
and thinking about this in and she said, you know, sure,
turfs should be free to speak and assemble whenever, wherever,
(39:29):
but an l g pt Q organization would be hypocritical
to host performers who advocate for trans woman exclusion. And
isn't a college that claims to protect students and faculty
from gender based discrimination facing a conflict of interest if
it invites the speaker who says trans people are just
sexually deviant. Yeah good point, Yeah, good point. But in
(39:55):
that Advocate piece, one thing that Toronto really hammered home
was that her far bigger concern with all of this
is the media. And I think that we're part of this, Caroline,
because we were talking about this exact thing, the media
focusing so much and debating so much over this kind
(40:18):
of transactivism rather than talking about the very real day
to day experiences and discrimination and violence that trans people face.
You know, one of the things that she was most
distraught about with that New Yorker piece was that it
simply posed this whole thing as a cat fight of
(40:42):
this group versus this group, where she was like, no,
this is not this is a distracting No, this is
distracting focus away from where the real attention needs to
be placed in terms of actually improving trans people's lives,
because when we focus so much on this, it paints
(41:05):
trans people as just out to take away everything again,
as being interlopers. So, on the one hand, I think
it was really important that we have this conversation about
turfs because of the way, you know, as we talked
about at the top of the podcast, how the term
the acronym has taken on a life of its own,
(41:27):
and how a lot of people wield it without really
understanding it. I think it's important to talk about that.
But is there a danger of talking about all of
this too much? Well, do you mean that perhaps we
should focus more on the individual people or the groups
of people in the conversation rather than labeling people. I
(41:50):
guess what I'm thinking is, I'll answer your question with
another question. What I'm wondering is, how do we reframe
this conversation that is very exclusionary focused of you have
one group wanting to exclude these people, and you have
(42:11):
another group who you know is fighting against exclusion. What
happens if we reframe this conversation to really focus in
on inclusion, Because on the one hand, I think it's
important for us to be able to talk about women's
(42:32):
bodies and to talk about menstruation, periods, vaginas and demetriosis,
these kinds of things, um, that we talked about on
the podcast all the time. At the same time, too,
you and I want to be as inclusive as possible,
and trans lives matter, and we you know, never want
to disinvite trans people to the party because you know,
(42:57):
we want to build coalitions. So how do we how
do we make all of this inclusive? Can we do?
Or am I wanting too many things at once? I
think we can be inclusive, and I know that you
and I have worked very hard to be inclusive, and
we have gotten many letters from trans listeners who say, hey,
(43:19):
thanks for the acknowledgement that there are different types of
bodies and that, um, different types of people have periods
or don't have periods. UM. I do think that including
trans people in the conversation does not do away with
the importance of talking about, like you said, women's biology, because,
(43:45):
especially when you've taken into the account the history of
women being divorced from their bodies and women's biology being
considered gross and dirty and too sexual and we shouldn't
talk about it. Um, so you and I are in
sort of an interest position of we talk a lot
about health and biology and sexual health and stuff like that,
(44:06):
but we also talk about a lot of social issues
like turfs, like transactivism. Um and so, so that's sort
of a long winded way of saying that I think
both of these conversations need to happen and exist side
by side, and that perhaps some of our conversations and
others could be reframed to make sure that we do
(44:29):
include all of those different types of bodies. Well. Absolutely,
because by the same token, we have also received letters
and Facebook comments and tweets from people saying, hey, you
know what, when you're talking about especially things like menstruation
and periods, don't be so sissextist about it. Recognize that
(44:49):
you know, transmit experience these things too, um, which we
absolutely want to do. Well. I think one thing we
can all agree on is that the term rhetoric is
very harmful. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to why why
(45:11):
I try to harm? Why try to harm others emotionally, physically, mentally? Um,
why would you out a trans person or or a
gay person or anyone? Why would you why would you
target people in order to cause pain. And I understand
(45:33):
that some radical feminists have the perspective that anything tied
to men at all, ever, is the enemy, but that's
ignoring the very real, the very real fact that trans
women are women. Well. I also think that it really
(45:56):
says a lot that since this really started bubbling up
in the nineteen seventies, especially to now, it's not like
we've seen the kind of massive cultural sea change really
embracing and advocating for turf platforms in the way that
we have seen, especially in just the last handful of years,
(46:20):
a legitimate cultural see change in terms of recognizing and
accepting um trans people as people, and in terms of
mainstream feminism of doing a more concerted job of including
(46:42):
trans people as well and inviting them to the table
and working as allies for you know, the issues that
affect them. Yeah, it's all a work in progress, Caroline,
it's a work in progress. I'm I'm really interested to
hear from. But I know that there's aspects of this
(47:03):
conversation that we didn't touch on. I mean, I'm incredibly
interested to hearing people from. I don't I don't want
to say both sides of this argument because I don't
want to paint it as a catfight like like Goldberg did,
but I'm interested to hear from listeners. I know a
lot of you have opinions on this well, and I
(47:23):
think it's just so important to remember that, like so
many of the isms that exist, feminism also exists on
a spectrum. You know, there is no one feminism, and
people often mistakenly paint feminism as wrong or misguided because
(47:45):
they see this one pocket over here on the spectrum
and assume that the whole thing is tainted because of it.
So with that, Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
Com is where you can send your letters. You can
also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
We do hope to hear from you, and we've got
(48:07):
a couple of letters to share with you right now. Well,
I have a letter here from Devon in response to
our Feminist Anthropology episode. Devon says, I cannot thank you
enough for doing a podcast on feminist anthropology. I studied
Anthwer in college, and I'm not an anthropologist now, but
(48:27):
I do work for a feminist organization. Despite only spending
one week in all of my years in school studying
feminist anthropology and spending the rest of the time on
the same judgmental englishman. Anthropology had a massive impact on
my views as a feminist. Even if you don't end
up using your Anthwer degree in a practical sense, you'll
use it every day when you meet new people. Anthropology
(48:48):
taught me the incredible skill of how to find meaning
and the little things that build culture. Oftentimes the meetings
we find show longstanding evidence of the patriarchy, which is
amazing because then we know what to fight and work against.
We can't change the culture of sexism unless we know
what we need to change. Then there's the rare moment
when we look at a ritual or a moment and
(49:08):
find that all along it's been feminist and it's been beautiful.
There's a definite subset of anthropology that is specifically feminist,
but I also believe that anthropology is inherently feminist. Anything
that makes you question the culture you live in in
order to find a history and purpose of previously unquestioned
actions is a feminist practice. I wasn't at all surprised
(49:29):
to hear that most anthropology PhD students are women, but
it still makes me feel good to hear that the
subject I love and an incredibly grateful for is populated
by these smart women. Thanks again for a great listen. Well,
I've gotta let her here. From Kirsten on young women's
voices and glottal fry, she writes, I'm slowly working my
(49:49):
way through your extensive series and recently listen to your
episode our young Women Ruining American Speech. I'm a nineteen
year old female broadcast journalist for the US Air Force.
A to cool Kirsten. Part of our training is heavily
concentrated on our speech patterns and tone of voice. A
lot of young women have a much more difficult time
with the course because of glottal fry that is just
(50:11):
so ingrained in our vocal register. They can actually fail
out or be reclassified if they can't unlearn it. You
have to audition to book the job, and many young
women are turned away if older women are judging the
audition because their voices are simply to quote young, thin
and high. We're taught to fake deeper, more authoritative voices
(50:32):
by slowing down and breathing deeper. The males have a
much easier time of the course, really only having to
master articulation and speed, while the women have a lot
more to correct to be considered terrible. Love your podcast both,
Thanks so much, Kirsten. That is fascinating and you know
what phrase I love glottal fry delicious salty. Well, we
(50:59):
can't wait to hear are from you as well, dear listener. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with links to our sources so you
can read up on all of this, you could say,
complicated stuff we've been talking about. Head on over to
(51:21):
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
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