Gender-critical feminism
Gender-critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or TERFism,[1][2][3][4] is an ideology or movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology":[5] the concept of gender identity and transgender rights, especially gender self-identification. Gender-critical feminists believe that sex is biological and immutable,[6] while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, to be inherently oppressive. They reject the concept of transgender identities.[7]
This article is about the movement originating within radical feminism. For the broader or related right-wing movement, see anti-gender movement.
Originating as a fringe movement within radical feminism mainly in the United States,[4][8][9] gender-critical feminism has achieved a degree of prominence in the United Kingdom, where it has been at the centre of a number of high-profile controversies.[10] It has been linked to promotion of disinformation[11][12][13] and to the anti-gender movement.[14] Anti-gender rhetoric has seen increasing circulation in gender-critical feminist discourse since 2016, including use of the term "gender ideology".[5] In several countries, gender-critical feminist groups have formed alliances with right-wing, far-right, and anti-feminist organisations.[15][16][17][18]
Gender-critical feminism has been described as transphobic by feminist and scholarly critics,[1][4] and is opposed by many feminist, LGBT rights, and human rights organizations.[19][20] The Council of Europe has condemned gender-critical ideology, among other ideologies, and linked it to "virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people" in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and other countries.[21] UN Women has described the gender-critical, anti-gender, and men’s rights movements as extreme anti-rights movements that employ hate propaganda and disinformation.[22][23]
History
Early history (before 2000)
Although trans people were active in feminist movements in the 1960s and earlier,[92] the 1970s saw conflict among some early radical feminists over the inclusion of trans women in feminism.[93][94]
In 1973, trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists from the Daughters of Bilitis voted to expel Beth Elliott, an out trans woman, from the organization.[95] The same year, Elliott was scheduled to perform at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, which she had helped organize; a group of trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists calling themselves the Gutter Dykes leafletted the conference protesting her inclusion and keynote speaker Robin Morgan updated her speech to describe Elliott as "an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer – with the mentality of a rapist".[95][1][96] An impromptu vote was held with the majority supporting her inclusion in the conference; when Elliott subsequently entered the stage to perform the Gutter Dykes rushed to the stage to attack her and attacked performers Robin Tyler and Patty Harrison who had stepped in to defend her.[95][1][96]
At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally, trans-exclusionary radical feminists tried to stop Sylvia Rivera from speaking.[95] Jean O'Leary publicly denounced Sylvia Rivera as "parodying womanhood" and Lesbian Feminist Liberation distributed flyers seeking to keep "female impersonators" off the stage.[97]
Trans-exclusionary radical feminist activists protested Sandy Stone's position at Olivia Records, a trans-inclusive lesbian separatist music collective. In 1977 The Gorgons, a trans-exclusionary lesbian separatist paramilitary group, issued a death threat to Stone and came to the event armed though were intercepted by security. Escalating threats against the collective motivated Stone to leave the group.[95]
Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, published in 1979, examined what she considered to be the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, in particular the ways in which the "medical-psychiatric complex" was medicalizing gender identity, and the social and political context that contributed to the image of gender-affirming treatment and surgery as therapeutic medicine.[98] Raymond maintained that this was based in the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering", and "making of woman according to man's image", and that transgender identity aimed "to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality".[98] The book goes on to say that "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact" and that "the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence".[99] Several authors have since characterized this work as transphobic and constituting hate speech, as well as lacking any serious intellectual basis.[100][101][102][103]: 233–234
In 1991 Nancy Burkholder, a trans woman, was ejected from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF), after refusing to answer when another woman asked her whether or not she was transgender.[104][95] This removal was justified by the retroactive instatement of a womyn-born womyn policy by the MWMF organisers.[103]: 233–245 For both the 1992 and 1993 MWMF events, Janis Walworth, a cisgender lesbian feminist, organised an educational and outreach program at the MWMF distributing pamphlets titled "Gender Myths".[96] During the 1993 MWMF event, Walworth was told by event security that she and any trans women in their group would be required to leave the event "for their own safety".[96] Although an offer of bodyguard protection was provided by a group of leather lesbians attending the festival, Walworth's group decided instead to set up an outreach camp outside the festival gates.[96][95] This camp, later known as Camp Trans, continued to provide education and outreach attempts while protesting the festival's trans exclusionary practices until the festival's final event in 2015.[96][95]
By country
United Kingdom
In 2016, the House of Commons' Women and Equalities Committee issued a report recommending that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 be updated "in line with the principles of gender self-declaration".[105] Later in 2016, in England and Wales, a proposal was developed under Theresa May's government to revise the Act to introduce self-identification, with a public consultation opening in 2018. This proposed reform became a key locus of conflict for the emerging gender-critical movement, seeking to block reform of the Act, with a number of groups such as Fair Play For Women, For Women Scotland, and Woman's Place UK being formed. 2018 found a significant majority of respondents in favour of the GRA reforms,[106] however, in 2020, Boris Johnson's government dropped the reforms, instead reducing the cost of a gender recognition certificate and moving the application process online.
Another key locus of conflict for the emerging movement was the stance of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on trans issues. In 2015, Stonewall had begun campaigning for trans equality, with Stonewall head Ruth Hunt apologising for the organisation's previous failure to do so.[107] In 2019, the LGB Alliance was founded in opposition to Stonewall, accusing the organization of having "undermined women's sex-based rights and protections" and attempting "to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender".[108]
2019 saw the formation of the Women's Human Rights Campaign (now Women's Declaration International) by noted gender-critical feminist Sheila Jeffreys and co-founder Heather Brunskell-Evans. The group published a manifesto titled the Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights, which argued that recognising trans women as women "constitutes discrimination against women" and called for the "elimination of that act".[109][110]
2019 also saw the preliminary hearings of Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development, in which tax expert and researcher Maya Forstater made a claim that she had been discriminated against by her employer for her gender-critical beliefs. In June 2021 Maya Forstater, who lost her job with the Centre for Global Development, won an appeal against the original employment tribunal decision.[111] The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that gender-critical beliefs, such as the view that sex is fixed and should not be conflated with gender identity, did qualify for protection under the Equality Act 2010. This means that "gender critical" beliefs are protected "philosophical beliefs" for equality law purposes. In June 2023 Forstater was awarded more than £100,000 in compensation by an employment tribunal.[112]
A 2020 paper in SAGE Open said that "the case against trans inclusion in the United Kingdom has been presented primarily through social media and blog-type or journalistic online platforms lacking the traditional prepublication checks of academic peer review".[113] Some public figures such as Graham Linehan[114][115][116] and J. K. Rowling[117][118][119] have often been featured in gender-critical social media posts. The Internet forum Mumsnet has also been a prominent hub of online gender-critical discourse.[120][121]
Gender-critical views are common in the British media.[28][122] The British press frequently publishes articles critical of trans people and trans issues.[122] In 2018, the US version of The Guardian published an editorial condemning an editorial in the UK version of The Guardian for transphobia, because it portrayed trans rights as being opposed to the rights of cis women.[123] Drawing on theory of radicalization, Craig McLean argues that discourse on transgender-related issues in the UK has been radicalized in response to the activities of what he terms the anti-transgender movement that pushes "a radical agenda to deny the basic rights of trans people (...) under the cover of 'free speech'".[124]
In Resolution 2417 (2022), the Council of Europe condemned "the highly prejudicial anti-gender, gender-critical and anti-trans narratives which reduce the fight for the equality of LGBTI people to what these movements deliberately mischaracterise as 'gender ideology' or 'LGBTI ideology'. Such narratives deny the very existence of LGBTI people, dehumanise them, and often falsely portray their rights as being in conflict with women's and children's rights, or societal and family values in general. All of these are deeply damaging to LGBTI people, while also harming women's and children's rights and social cohesion". The resolution further deplored "the extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people that have been occurring for several years in, among other countries, Hungary, Poland, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom".[21][125][126]
United States
Although gender-critical feminism originated in the United States in the 1970s, it has largely fallen out of favor among American feminists.[28] Some gender-critical organizations do remain, however, such as WoLF, a gender-critical feminist organization that operates mainly within the United States.[28]
South Korea
In 2016, the radical feminist online community Womad split from the larger radical feminist online community Megalia after Megalia issued a ban on the use of certain explicit slurs against gay men and transgender people. This change in policy led to the migration of anti-LGBT members.[127][128]
Legal cases in the UK
In 2019, the Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development tribunal case was launched by Maya Forstater, crowdfunding over £120,000. Earlier that year, Forstater's consulting contract for the Centre for Global Development was not renewed after she made a number of social media posts saying that men cannot change into women.[134] Forstater subsequently sued the centre, alleging that she had been discriminated against because of her views.[135] Forstater lost her initial case, with the judge ruling that her beliefs were not protected under the Equality Act due to their absolutism. However, in April 2021, the initial judgement was reversed, with the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that gender-critical beliefs were protected under the Equality Act.[136] A full merits hearing on Forstater's claim that she lost her employment as a result of these beliefs was heard in March 2022, and the decision, delivered in July 2022, was that Forstater had been subjected to direct discrimination and victimisation because of her gender-critical beliefs.[137]
In October 2020, Ann Sinnott, at the time a director of the LGB Alliance, initiated a legal case calling for a judicial review of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance on the Equality Act 2010, crowdfunding almost £100,000 for legal fees. In May 2021 the case was found by the court to be unarguable, Justice Henshaw stating that "the claimant has shown no arguable reason to believe the Code has misled or will mislead service providers about their responsibilities under the Act".[138]
The Forstater case has been used as a precedent for several claims of discrimination against people holding gender-critical views. Successful claims include cases against a barrister's chambers, Arts Council England, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, Westminster Council and Social Work England. A claim by someone who had misgendered service users at the Department for Work and Pensions failed. The barrister Georgiana Calvert-Lee commented to the Guardian: "Above all, in a pluralistic society, which is what we want, you have to accept that people are going to have different views."[139]
In January 2024, Jo Phoenix was successful in a claim against the Open University for discrimination on the grounds of gender-critical beliefs. The tribunal ruled that she had been constructively unfairly dismissed, and that she had suffered victimisation and harassment in the form of an open letter from 386 of her colleagues, as well as individual disparagement for her views, including one professor comparing her to "the racist uncle at the Christmas table".[140]
