Feminism
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The relationship between trans theory and feminism is both contested and controversial. While early encounters between feminism and the emergent trans movement were often marked by hostility, over time there has been a greater willingness among feminists to take on board issues raised by trans activists. Not only does this reflect widening support within feminism for a more personalized and nuanced approach to gender, but it also demonstrates a growing awareness of the parallels and overlaps that exist between sexism and transphobia . At the same time, supporters of the trans movement have increasingly recognized the extent to which its thinking may be applicable to all women (Scott- Dixon, 2006). Such an alignment of ideological forces has been recognized most acutely by transfeminist scholars and activists, whose objective is to advance the social role of trans women, together with those who are sympathetic to their needs. Nevertheless, other feminists have viewed trans theory – and, with it, the notion of transfeminism – as deeply problematic. In part, this reflects the difficulty of reconciling feminism’s stress on the distinctions between sex and gender, and between biology and culture, with a rejection of gender binaries of all kinds, a task that becomes yet more difficult if difference feminism is taken into account. Further concerns have flowed from the alleged clash between trans rights and women’s rights. Some feminists argue, for example, that if anyone who self-identifies as a woman is a woman, this could allow male-bodied people to intrude into women’s spaces, threatening to erode women’s identities, safety and privacy. Supporters of the transmovement havenevertheless held that suchviews reflect the influence of a strain of anti-trans thinking within feminism, commonly termed ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminism’ (TERF), although its proponents prefer to call themselves ‘gender critical’. TERF emerged in the 2000s but grew out of ideas developed within 1970s radical feminist circles. It is trans-exclusionary in the sense that it opposes trans rights generally and calls for the exclusion of trans women from spaces and organizations specifically designed for women. Such positions are underpinned by the core TERF belief that trans women are not women, a stance that is also commonly associated with conservatism. Queer theory The term ‘queer theory’ was coined in 1990 by the Italian-American feminist theorist Teresa de Lauretis. This reflected the tendency within the LGBTIQ community in the 1980s for ‘queer’ – once a term of homophobic abuse – to be reclaimed as a means of denoting a radical and unapologetic rejection of conventional sexual identities. The link between ‘queer’ and ‘theory’ was largely forged by the application of poststructuralism to the analysis of sexuality, especially in thewritings ofMichel Foucault. Being primarily concernedwith the construction of the human subject, Foucault treated sexuality as a discursive social production rather than an essential and biologically rooted part of a human. From the perspective of queer theory,
therefore, sexuality is not a natural, fixed, core identity, but something that is fluid, plural and continually negotiated. Although queer theory was built on foundations that had been shaped by feminism, and especially the encounter between lesbian feminism and the gay liberation front, many queer thinkers now believe that sexuality can and should be theorized independently from feminism. In that sense, queer theory has been said to go beyond gender, sexual identity being prioritized over gender identity. Perhaps the defining feature of queer theory is robust opposition to heteronormativity (sometimes dubbed anti-heteronormativity). Hetero normativity establishes heterosexuality as the baseline for humankind, a
Transphobia: Prejudice against or dislike of people who do not conform to prevailing expectations about gender identity. Heteronormativity: Institutional and other arrangements that present heterosexuality as the ‘normal’, natural and/or preferred way of life for human beings.
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