Anti-Inclusion Feminism: What Are They Afraid Of?

In Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein discusses the attacks made on transgender and transsexual individuals by some cultural feminists (Bornstein 75-77). She chooses to title this section with a question, one that I believe gets to the heart of the issue-What are they afraid of? (Bornstein 74) 

            Bornstein’s main example of the anti-inclusionary feminist is Janice G. Raymond, and she discusses two primary fears present in Raymond’s work. The first is a fear of a loss of power, specifically the invasion of “women only” spaces by someone who was not born a female, who may then seek to assume a position of power and control (Bornstein 76). Bornstein makes the point that such fears are not historically without precedent, and brings up the example of the nadle (Bornstein 75). The nadle comes from the Navajo culture, and was a male-to-female transgender person whose social role was to suppress uprisings of women (Bornstein 75). The fear that Raymond has of transgender and transsexual people becoming a part of feminism seems to be a fear that they will become a modern day equivalent of the nadle. Second is the fear of deception, which she presents as a form of rape (Bornstein 76). This again echoes the fear of the nadle and that hiding one’s transgender or transsexual status may be used in order to gain power. Bornstein to an extent seems to agree with this point, describing it as “an unworthy stance, more heinous if one’s invisible status is maintained with the purpose of gaining power” (Bornstein 76).

            While these fears give a basic understanding of the fears of anti-inclusion feminism, the issue goes far deeper than Bornstein can explore in a few short paragraphs. These issues are described and rebutted in Eli R. Green’s Debating Trans Inclusion in the Feminist Movement (http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J155v10n01_12). In this article Green pays special attention to the works of Janice Raymond and their impact on modern day feminism. 

            In Green’s article, a clearer picture of Raymond’s view of trans individuals is presented to the reader. She assumed that “woman-ness” could only come from being born female, and did not believe that it could exist in a male body (Green 236-237). I believe that it is this thinking that drove many of her fears, as she assumed that if they were allowed into “women only” spaces, it would represent an intrusion of maleness and an extension of the patriarchy into the female sphere. She could not accept them as women, and instead saw them as a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing.

            She also saw trans individuals as diametrically opposed to the idea of feminism. Drawing on the statistic that, at the time, a majority of transsexual surgeries were male-to-female, she concluded that trans men were incredibly rare, and an anomaly (Green 237). She explained this by saying that feminism inhibits the existence of trans men, and that feminists will not identify as trans men as the result of being feminists (Green 237). Specifically, she thought that trans men were simply women seeking to avoid the oppression associated with being women, which can be equally fulfilled by feminism (Green 238). She took this logical fallacy and turned it around, saying that trans people cannot be feminists because they are trans. Overall, her view of trans women was, as Green puts it, of “deviant men on a mission to destroy or at least usurp the success of the feminist movement” (239).

            While I find these claims patently ridiculous, there still exists today a branch of feminism which continues to hold on to Raymond’s fears. The message may have changed somewhat since 1979, but the fear that trans people are not feminist enough, and may be dangerous to the feminism as a result, is still present (Green 240). However, these views are, in my opinion, extremely damaging to feminism as a whole. 

By refusing to consider trans people as a legitimate part of the feminist movement and by delegitimizing their identities, feminism is pushing away allies and becoming oppressive in and of itself. Why is it better to simply push these people away than to open a dialogue and determine how to incorporate their struggles and experiences into the feminist movement? As Green points out in the concluding comments of the article, feminism has hardly been static throughout the history of the movement (Green 246). It has made changes and will continue to make them. Why then, is it so infeasible to change to accommodate trans individuals?

I believe that the heart of anti-inclusion feminism is fear, based on a lack of understanding and a historical precedent of misinformation. The key to reducing this fear, and thus reducing the pushback against trans people being a part of feminism, is communication. Hopefully a meaningful dialogue can finally put to rest the false fears of Janice Raymond, of the wolf sheep’s clothing trans woman whose very existence is diametrically opposed to feminism. Instead, they can be seen as the women that they are, as people who are not defined by their genitals, and who may have experienced and evaluated the system in ways that traditional feminism may not have thought of before. And in the end I believe that this will make feminism stronger.

Bornstein, K. (1994). Gender outlaw: On men, women and the rest of us. London: Routledge

Green, E. R. (2006). Debating trans inclusion in the feminist movement. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 10(1-2), 231-248.