February 15, 2020 • 53 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. In this classic episode, 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 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and welcome to stuff I've never
told your protection of I heart idios how Stuff Works.
Today's classic is in part brought to you based on
our conversation we had around um J k Rowling and
(00:28):
if you remember, at the end of two thousand nineteen,
one of the things that was trending on Twitter was
turf which is trans exclusionary radical feminist. So I thought
it would be a good idea to to bring this
episode back, this episode looking into what that means, all
(00:48):
that entails, after we had our conversation around our first
update and and problematic women. Yeah, so we hope you
enjoy Welcome to Stuff mob Never told you. From how
stupports dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:12):
Caroline and I'm Kristin. This week, Kristin and I are
taking a hard look at basically straight feminisms LGBT problem today,
So specifically we are talking about trance exclusionary radical feminists.
Now turf as is the acronym for that is considered
(01:35):
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, we introduced the idea of radical feminism
and the lavender menace, and so today's episode is building
(01:57):
off of that. But so, Kristin, could you give us
a little refresh sure on what the lavender menace is? Yeah? So,
the lavender menace was a term coined by feminine mystique
author and president of National Organization of Women Betty fre
Dan to describe her discomfort with feminists aligning themselves with
(02:23):
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 that because the rampant homophobia
of the time, um and the you know, still persistent
(02:44):
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 lavender menace might in hib
it mainstream feminism from moving forward, to which those radical
(03:06):
lesbian feminists that she was so scared of essentially took
it on as their mantles, saying, Okay, we will reclaim
this term. We will become the lavender menace, 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
(03:28):
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 Steinham publicly stood up for
the needs and recognition of lesbians. But it really gets to,
like you said, this lingering still shortcoming when it comes
(03:52):
to white sis gender straight feminist being more inclusive. 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
(04:15):
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
nonman involved lifestyle. Um even going so far as for
straight women to embrace political lesbianism as a way to
(04:36):
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.
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
(04:58):
an unhealthy mirroring of male privilege or patriarchal sex roles.
And they maintained that women are basically perfect and that
true love can only exist between women. And it's this
focus on true womanhood in quotes that often ignored class
and race issues, but it totally barred trans women. Yeah,
(05:21):
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
look at that, then definitely listen 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
(05:45):
some radical feminist circles and how this also reflects more
broadly on how people think about feminism today and what
radical feminism means. And so people might be wondering, people
who aren't familiar with the is she might be wondering,
(06:05):
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 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
(06:29):
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
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
(06:51):
they end up saying, hey, you were born a man,
I consider that you are always a man. And these circles,
these old schools ter circles were certainly alive and well
in the nineteen seventies, but we're really going to talk
about what's going on today, especially because when you look
(07:11):
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
not really advocating for gender equality because you have some
of these radical feminists out here who are mis and dross,
(07:33):
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
small segment of the feminist spectrum, and how they are
(07:54):
even distinct from radical feminists, and how radical feminists are
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 that, yes,
feminism does have many many branches. It is a tree
with many many branches, not all of which overlap and
(08:18):
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, feminists or fighting
with each other again. And I really don't want to
(08:39):
present this conversation of 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 bloom today is
(09:03):
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, where did
(09:27):
turf come from? So? The term is credited to Australian
blogger TikTok, who is also assist Gender Woman UM and
Tigtok 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 meant
(09:49):
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 cont text and
who's saying it. And so in that same vein, many
of these women who were called turfs definitely opposed the term,
saying that it is a slur and that they prefer
(10:09):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:57):
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 is author of The Whipping Girl wrote in the
Advocate quote from their point of view, they should be
(11:19):
referred to as merphs 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
(11:41):
that 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 TERFs, these trans
exclusionary radical feminists, um really embrace. Yeah. Well, and she
(12:03):
was 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
(12:25):
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 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. Yeah, and
(12:49):
so it is worth uh clarifying, yes, that not all
radical feminists are transphobic, and that there are plenty of
trans women actives 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 dot
(13:10):
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, whether
(13:32):
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
(13:53):
and don't realize some of us wish they would all
be dead. And von Door'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
(14:14):
of 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
(14:36):
conference 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
(14:57):
a lightning rod moment 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
(15:19):
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.
(15:40):
And then when it comes to the gay rights movement,
in the same way that Betty Ford 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 sexual orientation and relationships. So they were like,
we don't have a place anywhere. Yeah. So at the
(16:03):
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
(16:24):
of suffering in this Andrew centric society 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. The
the mis gendering, the purposeful attempt to cause pain by
(16:48):
mis gendering 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.
But so in the wake of this 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 jumped on stage to assault her.
(17:12):
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 be permitted to perform
because Beth is a transsexual. Beth was on the San
(17:35):
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 her sexuality? And I
(17:56):
just thought that this was a perfect as I said,
lighting 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 about trans people
that we have talked about on past podcasts, that they're
(18:20):
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. It's
unfortunate to see people in the name of feminism really
(18:43):
just recycling the same kinds of lives that feminism ultimately
is trying to dismantle. Well. So, unfortunately, though that conference
(19:06):
and Beth Elliott's exclusion, we're not the only sour notes
in the seventies. Um. We also have Olivia Records UH,
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
(19:27):
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
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.
(19:51):
They pinned an essay for a lesbian publication saying that, hey,
Sandy has decided to give up her male identity, and
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 transsexual being. Like, hey,
(20:13):
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. That is not
how people like Janice Raymond saw it. No, Janice Raymond
saw it as again essentially a guy deceiving and infiltrating
a sacred female space. And I mean it's so unfortunate too,
(20:36):
because you know, the in the bigger context, Olivia Records
was a pretty incredible thing happening if you 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
(20:59):
trans sexual manifesto that became essentially the foundation 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, had been scheduled to perform at that
same conference as Beth Elliott in nineteen seventy three, and
(21:20):
later in an interview she reflected on that reaction to
Stone and she says, you know what's interesting, 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
(21:43):
the same thing rather than tearing each other down exactly UM.
And then finally we wanted to 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
(22:04):
it is still intermittently held today and basically thousands of
women would come, set up camp Cooke, 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
of these other women who were wanting to have a
(22:27):
good time. But no trans women have been 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
(22:48):
commented on Missfest because it has happened in recent years, right,
and there have been transactivist protests outside of the festival. Basically,
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
(23:09):
heavily reported on was when some transactivists responded 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
(23:30):
essentially this is why we can't have nice things. They're dangerous.
Trans people are dangerous. Trans people are dangerous. Um, you're deceptive,
you're mentally ill, and there's 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,
(23:57):
a lot of it comes down to this idea that
trans women, especially are over reliant on gender, are using
gender as some kind of a crutch to again, to
infiltrate and deceived. Yeah, it's sort of an it's sort
of an interesting circular argument about gender. Is it a
(24:21):
social construction, is it biological? What is it? Writing in
that New Yorker piece, Michelle 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
(24:43):
sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lear Keith,
a speaker at rad 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
(25:06):
are hurting themselves with surgery or hormones when they should
just learn to accept themselves as they are. You're just
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 Gender and other trans women constitute a
(25:28):
threat to feminism. Now, it's worth noting that Amanda Marcott
and on the other side, 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
(25:51):
unquote female is always a construct anyway, 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
(26:12):
really is just a construct and that feminine 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 assists woman's performance of gender
and femininity? And why should trans women not be included
(26:35):
in women only spaces? Well, I 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
(26:57):
of femininity in order to truly 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
(27:18):
the moment are They're not all from the same people.
And I think that's what makes 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
(27:38):
people are just saying, like, just turn away from men
and just sleep with women or 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,
(27:58):
and it's also it's also I don't know how productive
it is to tell people how to live and what
to like. I mean, I think conversations about the patriarchy
are obviously important and enlightening, and I'm not sure that
(28:20):
to me, it's akin to saying the roof is leaking,
so just burned down the whole house. Yeah. Um, but
you know I love 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
(28:44):
now let's talk about transactivism, because transactivists are loud and proud,
and transgender people are 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.
(29:09):
I mean, you have people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mak,
Caitlin Jenner, 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
(29:33):
just now I feel like that they're being heard, that
people are 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
(29:55):
and acceptance in spaces supposedly only for women, like we
mentioned at the top of the podcast asked. 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 of their sexual deviance, that their deceptive, or just
(30:19):
that it's 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 autoguyn ophelia or sexual
arousal at the thought of being female or having female genitalia.
And this term was coined by a guy named Ray
Blanchard who's a retired psychiatry professor UM, who used it
(30:43):
to describe a neurotic compulsion to become a woman rather
than a 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
(31:05):
who have 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
(31:25):
conversion therapy gay conversion therapy, 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
(31:47):
individual of any type of group 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 a gay conversion therapy,
So a little apple's oranges, but nonetheless startling similarities between
(32:08):
these two groups, which are ideologically 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
(32:28):
part of SIS people, but 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
(32:51):
and brought up in the male sex cast. 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 out on things
(33:17):
that they perceive as oppressive, regardless of intention, So things
like celebrations of sis, women's bodies and biology. So we
did an entire podcast, for instance, all about this period
pride movement in quotes and a celebration of menistruation culturally,
(33:38):
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
(34:10):
unquote real women or real beauty ads that we've seen.
We've seen a huge uptick in this from companies like
Dove or Pantine who focused on this real womanhood, which
is sort of an indirect throwback to the early rad
fem claim of embracing true womanhood as the way to
um achieved true liberation. They draw links between you know,
(34:33):
how can you say that these women 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
(34:54):
that trans men can get pregnant and also have periods
and abortion reproductive rites 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
(35:15):
it's it's these it's this area, this area of well,
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 offending 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
(35:35):
writing about feminism and trans inclusion or exclusion, because 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
(35:58):
all know telling someone to calm down never works out. Well,
I mean, there are plenty of people who 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
(36:20):
women's college issue in The New Republic in February. She
points out that four 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
(36:43):
still like super Duper need the confidence incubator that is
the woman only college setting, and she says that erasing
references to women sisterhood and their bodies or like you said,
Kristen canceling performances of the Vagina Monologues is indistinguished ble
from old school misogyny. So her the crux of her
(37:03):
argument is that it should be okay that not everything,
all the time is for everybody. Um. But then she
does 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,
(37:25):
quote women, especially young ones, hold power so delicately and
uncomfortably they're ready to give it up as soon as
someone accuses 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,
(37:49):
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 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
(38:14):
being former women's only colleges. Um. So basically, why don't
you just go there and leave our women's only colleges alone,
you trans people? And 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,
(38:37):
raising you know, a need for which she says, these
sacred spaces, the sisterhoods 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
(38:58):
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 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 Potts was talking about wanting to
(39:20):
be included in women's only spaces are a small subset
of extremists 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.
(39:42):
So I think pots and McDonald, the anonymous McDonald are
basically 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
(40:06):
that one issue that people like Potts and McDonald and
a 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 canceled due to outcries from transactivists or just
(40:30):
feminist activists who are like, no, get your hate speech
away from me. Um and Julius Serrano, whom we mentioned
earlier in the podcast, Um wrote about this as well
in her response piece in The Advocate to that New
York Geru piece that really got a lot of people
talking and thinking about this, and she said, you know,
sure turfs should be free to speak and assemble whenever wherever,
(40:54):
but an l g P t 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 a speaker who says trans people are
just sexually deviant. Yeah good point, Yeah, good point. But
(41:20):
in that Advocate piece, one thing that Torono 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
(41:43):
this kind 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
(42:06):
cat fight of 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,
(42:30):
it paints 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
(42:51):
its own, 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.
(43:16):
I 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
(43:37):
have another group who you know it 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
(43:57):
women's bodies and to talk about menstrue, ration 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
(44:17):
to disinvite trans people to the party because you know,
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
(44:38):
and I have worked very hard to be inclusive, and
we have gotten many letters from trans listeners who say, hey,
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
(44:59):
t and people in the conversation does not do away
with the importance of talking about, like you said, women's biology,
because 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
(45:20):
shouldn't talk about it. Um. So you and I are
in sort of an interesting position of we talk a
lot about health and biology and sexual health and stuff
like that, 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
(45:42):
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 include all of those different types of bodies. Well, absolutely,
because by the same token, we have also received letters
(46:02):
in 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 susceptist about it. Recognize that
you know, trans men experience these things too, um, which
we absolutely want to do. Well. I think one thing
(46:23):
we can all agree on is that the terf rhetoric
is very harmful. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to why
why I try to harm Why try to harm others emotionally, physically, mentally? Um?
(46:44):
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
that some radical feminists have the perspective that anything tied
(47:06):
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
says a lot that since this really started bubbling up
(47:27):
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,
a legitimate cultural see change in terms of recognizing and
(47:51):
accepting um trans people as people, and in terms of
mainstream feminism of doing a more concerted job of including
trans people as well and inviting them to the table
(48:11):
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 people. I know that there's aspects of this
conversation that we didn't touch on. I mean, I'm incredibly
(48:34):
interested to hearing people from I don't know. I don't
want to say both sides of this argument because I
don't want to paint it as a cat fight 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 think it's just so important to remember that,
like so many of the isms that exists, feminism also
(48:56):
exists on a spectrum. You know, there is no one feminism,
and people often mistakenly paint feminism as wrong or misguided
because they see this one pocket over here on the
spectrum and assume that the whole thing is tainted because
(49:18):
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 a couple of letters to share with
you right now. Well, I have a letter here from
(49:42):
Devon in response to our Feminist Anthropology episode, Devon says,
I cannot thank you enough for doing a podcast on
feminist anthropology. I studied anthro in college, and I'm not
an anthropologist now, but I do work for a feminist organization.
Despite only spending one week in all of my years
in school studying feminist anthropoloogy and spending the rest of
the time on the same judgmental Englishman, anthropology had a
(50:04):
massive impact on my views as a feminist. Even if
you don't end up using your anth degree in a
practical sense, you'll use it every day when you meet
new people. Anthropology taught me the incredible skill of how
to find meaning in 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
(50:25):
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 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
(50:47):
you live in in order to find the history and
purpose of previously unquestioned actions is a feminist practice. I
wasn't at all surprised to hear that most anthropology PhD
students are women, but it still makes me feel good
to hear that the sub chicked I love and an
incredibly grateful for is populated by these smart women. Thanks
again for a great listen. Well, I've got a let
(51:07):
her here from Kirsten on Young Women's Voices and glottal fry.
She writes, I'm slowly working my 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. Hey pretty cool, Kersten.
Part of our training is heavily concentrated on our speech
(51:29):
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 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
(51:50):
are simply to quote young, thin and high. We're taught
to fake deeper, more authoritative voices by slowing down and
reading 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 too correct to
be considered terrible. Love your podcast well, thanks so much, Kirsten.
(52:16):
That is fascinating and you know what phrase I love
glottal fry delicious salty. Well, we can't wait to hear
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
(52:36):
with links to our sources so you can read up
on all this. You could say complicated stuff we've been
talking about. Head on over to stuff Mom Never told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com? Yes,
Hey, this is Annie and welcome to stuff I've never
told your protection of I heart idios how Stuff Works.
Today's classic is in part brought to you based on
our conversation we had around um J k Rowling and
(00:28):
if you remember, at the end of two thousand nineteen,
one of the things that was trending on Twitter was
turf which is trans exclusionary radical feminist. So I thought
it would be a good idea to to bring this
episode back, this episode looking into what that means, all
(00:48):
that entails, after we had our conversation around our first
update and and problematic women. Yeah, so we hope you
enjoy Welcome to Stuff mob Never told you. From how
stupports dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:12):
Caroline and I'm Kristin. This week, Kristin and I are
taking a hard look at basically straight feminisms LGBT problem today,
So specifically we are talking about trance exclusionary radical feminists.
Now turf as is the acronym for that is considered
(01:35):
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, we introduced the idea of radical feminism
and the lavender menace, and so today's episode is building
(01:57):
off of that. But so, Kristin, could you give us
a little refresh sure on what the lavender menace is? Yeah? So,
the lavender menace was a term coined by feminine mystique
author and president of National Organization of Women Betty fre
Dan to describe her discomfort with feminists aligning themselves with
(02:23):
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 that because the rampant homophobia
of the time, um and the you know, still persistent
(02:44):
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 lavender menace might in hib
it mainstream feminism from moving forward, to which those radical
(03:06):
lesbian feminists that she was so scared of essentially took
it on as their mantles, saying, Okay, we will reclaim
this term. We will become the lavender menace, 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
(03:28):
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 Steinham publicly stood up for
the needs and recognition of lesbians. But it really gets to,
like you said, this lingering still shortcoming when it comes
(03:52):
to white sis gender straight feminist being more inclusive. 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
(04:15):
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
nonman involved lifestyle. Um even going so far as for
straight women to embrace political lesbianism as a way to
(04:36):
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.
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
(04:58):
an unhealthy mirroring of male privilege or patriarchal sex roles.
And they maintained that women are basically perfect and that
true love can only exist between women. And it's this
focus on true womanhood in quotes that often ignored class
and race issues, but it totally barred trans women. Yeah,
(05:21):
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
look at that, then definitely listen 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
(05:45):
some radical feminist circles and how this also reflects more
broadly on how people think about feminism today and what
radical feminism means. And so people might be wondering, people
who aren't familiar with the is she might be wondering,
(06:05):
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 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
(06:29):
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
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
(06:51):
they end up saying, hey, you were born a man,
I consider that you are always a man. And these circles,
these old schools ter circles were certainly alive and well
in the nineteen seventies, but we're really going to talk
about what's going on today, especially because when you look
(07:11):
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
not really advocating for gender equality because you have some
of these radical feminists out here who are mis and dross,
(07:33):
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
small segment of the feminist spectrum, and how they are
(07:54):
even distinct from radical feminists, and how radical feminists are
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 that, yes,
feminism does have many many branches. It is a tree
with many many branches, not all of which overlap and
(08:18):
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, feminists or fighting
with each other again. And I really don't want to
(08:39):
present this conversation of 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 bloom today is
(09:03):
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, where did
(09:27):
turf come from? So? The term is credited to Australian
blogger TikTok, who is also assist Gender Woman UM and
Tigtok 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 meant
(09:49):
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 cont text and
who's saying it. And so in that same vein, many
of these women who were called turfs definitely opposed the term,
saying that it is a slur and that they prefer
(10:09):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:57):
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 is author of The Whipping Girl wrote in the
Advocate quote from their point of view, they should be
(11:19):
referred to as merphs 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
(11:41):
that 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 TERFs, these trans
exclusionary radical feminists, um really embrace. Yeah. Well, and she
(12:03):
was 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
(12:25):
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 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. Yeah, and
(12:49):
so it is worth uh clarifying, yes, that not all
radical feminists are transphobic, and that there are plenty of
trans women actives 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 dot
(13:10):
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, whether
(13:32):
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
(13:53):
and don't realize some of us wish they would all
be dead. And von Door'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
(14:14):
of 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
(14:36):
conference 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
(14:57):
a lightning rod moment 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
(15:19):
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.
(15:40):
And then when it comes to the gay rights movement,
in the same way that Betty Ford 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 sexual orientation and relationships. So they were like,
we don't have a place anywhere. Yeah. So at the
(16:03):
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
(16:24):
of suffering in this Andrew centric society 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. The
the mis gendering, the purposeful attempt to cause pain by
(16:48):
mis gendering 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.
But so in the wake of this 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 jumped on stage to assault her.
(17:12):
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 be permitted to perform
because Beth is a transsexual. Beth was on the San
(17:35):
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 her sexuality? And I
(17:56):
just thought that this was a perfect as I said,
lighting 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 about trans people
that we have talked about on past podcasts, that they're
(18:20):
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. It's
unfortunate to see people in the name of feminism really
(18:43):
just recycling the same kinds of lives that feminism ultimately
is trying to dismantle. Well. So, unfortunately, though that conference
(19:06):
and Beth Elliott's exclusion, we're not the only sour notes
in the seventies. Um. We also have Olivia Records UH,
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
(19:27):
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
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.
(19:51):
They pinned an essay for a lesbian publication saying that, hey,
Sandy has decided to give up her male identity, and
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 transsexual being. Like, hey,
(20:13):
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. That is not
how people like Janice Raymond saw it. No, Janice Raymond
saw it as again essentially a guy deceiving and infiltrating
a sacred female space. And I mean it's so unfortunate too,
(20:36):
because you know, the in the bigger context, Olivia Records
was a pretty incredible thing happening if you 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
(20:59):
trans sexual manifesto that became essentially the foundation 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, had been scheduled to perform at that
same conference as Beth Elliott in nineteen seventy three, and
(21:20):
later in an interview she reflected on that reaction to
Stone and she says, you know what's interesting, 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
(21:43):
the same thing rather than tearing each other down exactly UM.
And then finally we wanted to 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
(22:04):
it is still intermittently held today and basically thousands of
women would come, set up camp Cooke, 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
of these other women who were wanting to have a
(22:27):
good time. But no trans women have been 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
(22:48):
commented on Missfest because it has happened in recent years, right,
and there have been transactivist protests outside of the festival. Basically,
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
(23:09):
heavily reported on was when some transactivists responded 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
(23:30):
essentially this is why we can't have nice things. They're dangerous.
Trans people are dangerous. Trans people are dangerous. Um, you're deceptive,
you're mentally ill, and there's 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,
(23:57):
a lot of it comes down to this idea that
trans women, especially are over reliant on gender, are using
gender as some kind of a crutch to again, to
infiltrate and deceived. Yeah, it's sort of an it's sort
of an interesting circular argument about gender. Is it a
(24:21):
social construction, is it biological? What is it? Writing in
that New Yorker piece, Michelle 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
(24:43):
sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lear Keith,
a speaker at rad 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
(25:06):
are hurting themselves with surgery or hormones when they should
just learn to accept themselves as they are. You're just
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 Gender and other trans women constitute a
(25:28):
threat to feminism. Now, it's worth noting that Amanda Marcott
and on the other side, 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
(25:51):
unquote female is always a construct anyway, 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
(26:12):
really is just a construct and that feminine 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 assists woman's performance of gender
and femininity? And why should trans women not be included
(26:35):
in women only spaces? Well, I 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
(26:57):
of femininity in order to truly 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
(27:18):
the moment are They're not all from the same people.
And I think that's what makes 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
(27:38):
people are just saying, like, just turn away from men
and just sleep with women or 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,
(27:58):
and it's also it's also I don't know how productive
it is to tell people how to live and what
to like. I mean, I think conversations about the patriarchy
are obviously important and enlightening, and I'm not sure that
(28:20):
to me, it's akin to saying the roof is leaking,
so just burned down the whole house. Yeah. Um, but
you know I love 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
(28:44):
now let's talk about transactivism, because transactivists are loud and proud,
and transgender people are 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.
(29:09):
I mean, you have people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mak,
Caitlin Jenner, 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
(29:33):
just now I feel like that they're being heard, that
people are 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
(29:55):
and acceptance in spaces supposedly only for women, like we
mentioned at the top of the podcast asked. 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 of their sexual deviance, that their deceptive, or just
(30:19):
that it's 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 autoguyn ophelia or sexual
arousal at the thought of being female or having female genitalia.
And this term was coined by a guy named Ray
Blanchard who's a retired psychiatry professor UM, who used it
(30:43):
to describe a neurotic compulsion to become a woman rather
than a 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
(31:05):
who have 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
(31:25):
conversion therapy gay conversion therapy, 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
(31:47):
individual of any type of group 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 a gay conversion therapy,
So a little apple's oranges, but nonetheless startling similarities between
(32:08):
these two groups, which are ideologically 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
(32:28):
part of SIS people, but 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
(32:51):
and brought up in the male sex cast. 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 out on things
(33:17):
that they perceive as oppressive, regardless of intention, So things
like celebrations of sis, women's bodies and biology. So we
did an entire podcast, for instance, all about this period
pride movement in quotes and a celebration of menistruation culturally,
(33:38):
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
(34:10):
unquote real women or real beauty ads that we've seen.
We've seen a huge uptick in this from companies like
Dove or Pantine who focused on this real womanhood, which
is sort of an indirect throwback to the early rad
fem claim of embracing true womanhood as the way to
um achieved true liberation. They draw links between you know,
(34:33):
how can you say that these women 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
(34:54):
that trans men can get pregnant and also have periods
and abortion reproductive rites 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
(35:15):
it's it's these it's this area, this area of well,
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 offending 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
(35:35):
writing about feminism and trans inclusion or exclusion, because 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
(35:58):
all know telling someone to calm down never works out. Well,
I mean, there are plenty of people who 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
(36:20):
women's college issue in The New Republic in February. She
points out that four 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
(36:43):
still like super Duper need the confidence incubator that is
the woman only college setting, and she says that erasing
references to women sisterhood and their bodies or like you said,
Kristen canceling performances of the Vagina Monologues is indistinguished ble
from old school misogyny. So her the crux of her
(37:03):
argument is that it should be okay that not everything,
all the time is for everybody. Um. But then she
does 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,
(37:25):
quote women, especially young ones, hold power so delicately and
uncomfortably they're ready to give it up as soon as
someone accuses 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,
(37:49):
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 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
(38:14):
being former women's only colleges. Um. So basically, why don't
you just go there and leave our women's only colleges alone,
you trans people? And 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,
(38:37):
raising you know, a need for which she says, these
sacred spaces, the sisterhoods 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
(38:58):
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 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 Potts was talking about wanting to
(39:20):
be included in women's only spaces are a small subset
of extremists 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.
(39:42):
So I think pots and McDonald, the anonymous McDonald are
basically 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
(40:06):
that one issue that people like Potts and McDonald and
a 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 canceled due to outcries from transactivists or just
(40:30):
feminist activists who are like, no, get your hate speech
away from me. Um and Julius Serrano, whom we mentioned
earlier in the podcast, Um wrote about this as well
in her response piece in The Advocate to that New
York Geru piece that really got a lot of people
talking and thinking about this, and she said, you know,
sure turfs should be free to speak and assemble whenever wherever,
(40:54):
but an l g P t 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 a speaker who says trans people are
just sexually deviant. Yeah good point, Yeah, good point. But
(41:20):
in that Advocate piece, one thing that Torono 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
(41:43):
this kind 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
(42:06):
cat fight of 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,
(42:30):
it paints 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
(42:51):
its own, 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.
(43:16):
I 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
(43:37):
have another group who you know it 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
(43:57):
women's bodies and to talk about menstrue, ration 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
(44:17):
to disinvite trans people to the party because you know,
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
(44:38):
and I have worked very hard to be inclusive, and
we have gotten many letters from trans listeners who say, hey,
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
(44:59):
t and people in the conversation does not do away
with the importance of talking about, like you said, women's biology,
because 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
(45:20):
shouldn't talk about it. Um. So you and I are
in sort of an interesting position of we talk a
lot about health and biology and sexual health and stuff
like that, 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
(45:42):
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 include all of those different types of bodies. Well, absolutely,
because by the same token, we have also received letters
(46:02):
in 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 susceptist about it. Recognize that
you know, trans men experience these things too, um, which
we absolutely want to do. Well. I think one thing
(46:23):
we can all agree on is that the terf rhetoric
is very harmful. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to why
why I try to harm Why try to harm others emotionally, physically, mentally? Um?
(46:44):
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
that some radical feminists have the perspective that anything tied
(47:06):
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
says a lot that since this really started bubbling up
(47:27):
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,
a legitimate cultural see change in terms of recognizing and
(47:51):
accepting um trans people as people, and in terms of
mainstream feminism of doing a more concerted job of including
trans people as well and inviting them to the table
(48:11):
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 people. I know that there's aspects of this
conversation that we didn't touch on. I mean, I'm incredibly
(48:34):
interested to hearing people from I don't know. I don't
want to say both sides of this argument because I
don't want to paint it as a cat fight 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 think it's just so important to remember that,
like so many of the isms that exists, feminism also
(48:56):
exists on a spectrum. You know, there is no one feminism,
and people often mistakenly paint feminism as wrong or misguided
because they see this one pocket over here on the
spectrum and assume that the whole thing is tainted because
(49:18):
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 a couple of letters to share with
you right now. Well, I have a letter here from
(49:42):
Devon in response to our Feminist Anthropology episode, Devon says,
I cannot thank you enough for doing a podcast on
feminist anthropology. I studied anthro in college, and I'm not
an anthropologist now, but I do work for a feminist organization.
Despite only spending one week in all of my years
in school studying feminist anthropoloogy and spending the rest of
the time on the same judgmental Englishman, anthropology had a
(50:04):
massive impact on my views as a feminist. Even if
you don't end up using your anth degree in a
practical sense, you'll use it every day when you meet
new people. Anthropology taught me the incredible skill of how
to find meaning in 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
(50:25):
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 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
(50:47):
you live in in order to find the history and
purpose of previously unquestioned actions is a feminist practice. I
wasn't at all surprised to hear that most anthropology PhD
students are women, but it still makes me feel good
to hear that the sub chicked I love and an
incredibly grateful for is populated by these smart women. Thanks
again for a great listen. Well, I've got a let
(51:07):
her here from Kirsten on Young Women's Voices and glottal fry.
She writes, I'm slowly working my 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. Hey pretty cool, Kersten.
Part of our training is heavily concentrated on our speech
(51:29):
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 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
(51:50):
are simply to quote young, thin and high. We're taught
to fake deeper, more authoritative voices by slowing down and
reading 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 too correct to
be considered terrible. Love your podcast well, thanks so much, Kirsten.
(52:16):
That is fascinating and you know what phrase I love
glottal fry delicious salty. Well, we can't wait to hear
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
(52:36):
with links to our sources so you can read up
on all this. You could say complicated stuff we've been
talking about. Head on over to stuff Mom Never told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com? Yes,
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