What does it means to be trans? Theories and views deployed by TERFs

If according to TERFs “men” and “women” should be defined according to certain biological characteristics such as the presence of genitalia, reproductive organs or chromosomes and trans people are not really the gender that they identify as, then what are transgender individuals according to them? What leads one to transition?

TERFs have developed and adopted diverse theories in order to explain our existence in a way that supports their worldview. The majority of these efforts are directed towards denying the identity of trans women and AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) nonbinary individuals, who they view as a threat.

One of the theories frequently deployed by TERFs that applies to all trans individuals revolves around the idea that trans activists are preaching that certain preferences and personality traits imply that certain individuals belong to a specific gender. A person with a “masculine” personality and tastes that are culturally considered masculine, for instance, would be gendered as a man.

Thus, a girl who enjoys martial arts and has an imposing personality or a boy that enjoys dresses and makeup could be led to believe that they are transgender and pressured to transition, since their tastes and behaviour would be incompatible with their assigned gender. To put it in a few words, this theory consists in the idea that transgenderism is based on identification with gender stereotypes associated with another gender.

Some TERFs go as far as affirming that transgender activists are intentionally targeting gender nonconforming children and teenagers with the intention of convincing them that they are transgender.

This theory is clearly absurd. Among trans individuals and activists, there are many different visions about what makes one transgender, but none of these visions corroborate with this narrative. According to many transgender activists and health professionals that work with trans individuals, the identification with activities and characteristics associated with another gender might be an indicative that a given individual is transgender, but this identification in itself does not mean that this particular individual is transgender, and should be considered together with a host of other factors.

And how can one sustain that idea when so many transgender individuals, activists or not, behave in a way that doesn’t conform at all to stereotypes surrounding the gender that they identify as. This is the case of “masculine” trans women and “feminine” trans man, whose existence is either ignored or mocked by TERFs.

Of course, there are many transgender individuals who conform to cultural ideas about their gender. But aren’t there many cis people whose behavior conforms to gender stereotypes? If this is the case, then why criticize only transgender people if not as a justification for transphobia? Besides as already mentioned, there are plenty of gender nonconforming transgender individuals, people who are frequently mocked for their appearance and labelled as “transtrenders” by TERFs.

Another theory common among TERFs is the idea that trans individuals transition due to internalized homophobia/lesbophobia. According to this theory, gays and lesbians are transitioning due to being uncomfortable with same-sex sexual relations and romantic relationships, changing their gender so they can have “pseudo-heterosexual” relationships, since transgender people belong to the gender they were assigned at birth according to TERFs.

Those who support this theory also frequently claim that transitioning is a way for transgender individuals to escape homophobia/lesbophobia, presenting a vision where the weight of transphobia is less significant than that of homophobia/lesbophobia.

Of course, this theory quickly falls apart once we analyse the lives and experiences of transgender individuals. Many transgender people are gay, lesbian, bisexual or pansexual, and many have lived as these before coming out as transgender. And by asking them if they feel more oppressed for their sexual orientation than for their status as transgender and listening to their answers it quickly becomes evident how absurd is the idea that transitioning is way to escape homophobia/lesbophobia.

When it comes to how TERFs view trans men and AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) individuals, they are usually seen as victims of the patriarchy. By (correctly) questioning the ways that patriarchal oppression affects women by placing them in a subordinate position, by exposing them to objectification and sexual violence and by causing them to developed many forms of neurosis about their bodies, they frequently (wrongly) conclude that such individuals are women who are identifying as transgender and transitioning in order to escape that oppression.

Thus, they would be victims of the patriarchy that are attempting to escape their oppression by identifying out of it instead of organizing and fighting against it, sisters and comrades lost to “trans ideology”.

This perspective has the pretension of being in solidarity with these individuals while depending on ignoring their narratives about their own bodies, experiences and identities, infantilizing these individuals by treating them as victims who don’t know what is best for them and rejecting the solutions that they seek for the issues that affect them.

When it comes to transgender women and AMAB nonbinary individuals, TERFs present a series of theories that are extremely degrading, and which tend to present us as threats to cis women.

One of the most popular and damaging perspectives about trans women that strongly influenced TERF thought is articulated in the book “The Transsexual Empire”, written in 1979 by American TERF Janice Raymond, who contributed to the attack on public medical services offered to transgender individuals during the mandate of notorious conservative president Ronald Reagan.

In her book, Raymond elaborates the idea that an identification with gender stereotypes is the main cause of transsexualism (she never uses the term “transgender”), which seeks to shape people and transform them into a fake version of the “opposite sex” based on stereotypes. According to her (and many TERFs), if gender stereotypes were destroyed, everyone could behave whichever way they want to without having to identify as a given gender and transitioning would be unnecessary, making it a false solution.

Thus, transsexuals are presented as a creation of patriarchal medicine that seeks to reinforce gender stereotypes and strengthen the patriarchy while creating a way for “men” to invade women’s spaces disguised as women as well as a source of profit for a series of professionals and industries such as the pharmaceutical industry. Raymond refers to the health professionals, industries and institutions involved in the transition process as “the Transsexual Empire”.

According to her, the medical establishment has created and is now vigorously promoting transsexualism and silencing dissident professionals. In her view, transgender individuals are victims that are led to believe in false solutions to problems that have a deeper cause while also being agents of the patriarchy promoting the oppression of women in the case of trans women.

This view demonstrates a complete ignorance of the development of the medical practices involved in the transition process. The health professionals that pioneered such practices, people such as Magnus Hirschfield and Harry Benjamin were dissidents within the medical establishment who had to fight for such practices to be accepted and implemented.

Besides, trans individuals are not passive agents tricked by doctors who shoved medical procedures down our throats. On the contrary, trans people have historically been fighting for and demanding access to these procedures, pressuring health professionals on an individual level and organizing collectively in order to fight for the rights to access these services.

Also, health professionals that deal with trans individuals have been historically reluctant to prescribe hormones or surgeries to trans individuals, which goes against the narrative that portrays these professionals as sinister agents of the patriarchy tricking gullible people into medically transitioning. It is worth noting that such professionals have frequently complained about the insistence and urgency with which transgender people demand such medical services.

The placement of barriers by health professionals that make it more difficult for transgender individuals to access medical services is known as “gatekeeping”. These barriers are a frequent source of frustration for those that must go through many arbitrary obstacles such as long psychiatric evaluations by professionals that are often operating under outdated paradigms in order to obtain access to medical services necessary to their transition.

Here, we should recognize that health professionals often pressure transgender individuals to conform to gender stereotypes, although this is slowly changing. This pressure comes often from psychiatrists who judge the transgender status of patients according to how well they conform to stereotypes associated with their gender.

But transgender individuals are not mere victims that conform to these stereotypes without questioning them, often resisting these attempts at making them conform, questioning such narratives and presenting alternative narratives, as well as organizing and working together with the objective of eradicating such psychiatric practices. Besides, the already mentioned existence of gender nonconforming trans individuals is a living proof of that resistance.

Another aspect of Raymond’s work is the idea that the focus on transsexualism as a phenomenon is the transgender woman (a man in her vision), depicting us as something created by men for men. Thus, the existence of trans men, who go largely unmentioned in her work, has the purpose of hiding that “fact” according to her.

The real focus of transsexualism would then be transgender women, who are “raping female bodies by reducing the female form to an artefact, appropriating this body for themselves” with the objective of “colonizing feminist culture, politics and sexuality” according to her.

And no trans woman is more threatening to her than those that occupy feminist spaces, especially if they happen to lesbians. According to Raymond, trans women who frequent such spaces are males that invade and “penetrate” female spaces with metaphorical phalluses, sabotaging these spaces and destroying them with their “male presence”.

The accusations launched by Raymond were not limited to feminist transgender women as a group. In her book, she directed a series of attacks against Sandy Stone, a feminist trans woman that was part of a music collective created by feminist lesbians named Olivia Records. What ensued is one of the most emblematic cases of how TERF “activism” operates.

The controversy began when TERF “activists” found out that Stone was a transgender woman and sent out a series of letters to the collective accusing her of infiltrating it and attempting to destroy it from the inside with her “male energy”. When the campaign against her began, Stone had already been living with other members of the collective for years, and all of them knew that she was transgender.

Answering the accusations, the collective denied the allegations made about Stone. Still, incited by the accusations, which were reinforced after the publication of Raymond’s book, more TERFs began to manifest against Stone’s presence in the collective. They sent letters, caused a ruckus in many meetings and threatened violence if Stone remained in the collective. These threats included death threats.

The climax of these actions occurred during a performance of the collective that took place in Seattle. A group of TERFs known as Gorgons claimed that they would kill Stone if she performed in the event. Security was reinforced due to the threats. During the event, some Gorgons showed up armed but were disarmed by the security team.

In the end, after some deliberation, Stone decided to leave the collective in order to avoid more trouble. This was the result of a series of situations that were caused not by the presence of Stone, who had been a member of the collective for years, but by the accusations of TERFs that turned Stone into a target simply for being a transgender woman in a feminist collective. Still, Raymond used the case as a supposed example of the harm caused by the presence of a trans woman in a feminist space.

Nowadays, we still see the influence of Raymond and others who have echoed her positions in discourses that attempt to portray trans women as males who act as agents of the patriarchy by turning themselves into false women with the aid of patriarchal medicine in order to invade female spaces, thus creating conflicts between cis and trans women while blaming trans women for creating that conflict with our mere presence.

Other theories cited by TERFs as a way to attack trans women revolve around the idea that our gender identity is nothing more than a sexual fetish, portraying the process of transition as the fulfilling of a male fantasy. Those who talk of such theories often see trans women as sexual predators, accusing us of forcing others to participate in our fetishes by demanding to be treated as women.

The most notorious of these theories, which is also the one most cited by TERFs is the typology developed by sexologist Ray Blanchard in the course of a series of studies released between 1985 and 1993 and popularized by psychologist J. Michael Bailey. This typology remains popular among anti-trans groups. According to Blanchard, the transition of transgender women (who he refers to as males) is motivated by sexual reasons, and all trans women can be classified into two distinct categories: “androphile transsexuals” and “autogynephilic transsexuals”.

Androphiles, who he refers to as “homosexual transsexuals”, are defined primarily by their attraction to men. Thus, in Blanchard’s vision, they are extremely feminine gay men who decide to transition in order to attract male partners. According to him, those that belong to this category tend to have a more feminine gender expression and to transition earlier than those who do not belong to it.

On the category of “autogynephilic transsexuals” he places trans women who are lesbians (heterosexuals in his terms), bisexuals, pansexuals and asexuals. Blanchard affirms that those in this category are heterosexual men with a paraphilia that directs their desire for women towards their own bodies. Thus, their sexual desire supposedly becomes centered around the fantasy of their own bodies as feminine bodies, which he claims causes dysphoria and the desire to transition.

Bisexual and pansexual transgender women are referred by him as “pseudo-bisexual transsexuals”, since according to him, women belonging to this group only seek out men in order to feel more feminine by being penetrated by them, denying the possibility that they might feel attracted to the male body. As for asexuals, those are explained away as individuals whose sexual desire for their bodies as women is so strong that it overshadows any desire for others, making them “sexually self-sufficient” individuals.

This typology and the studies from which it originates contain many methodological and epistemological inconsistencies. For a start, his studies were conducted on a small number of clinical patients. The credibility of his results is also compromised by the fact that they were not successfully reproduced by other researchers.

Another problem with his methodology is that he decided to classify the participants according to their sexual orientation beforehand rather than formulating his categories based on his results, which begs for conclusions that fall within his original classifications. Besides that, he makes no comparison between transgender women and cisgender women, which would be necessary in order to find out to what extent the sexuality of the participants of his study differ from the sexuality of cis women. This methodological flaw raises the possibility that when talking of “autogynephilic transsexuals” he might be pathologizing forms and expressions of sexuality which would not be considered a paraphilia if observed in cis women.

Researcher Charles Moser conducted a study where he interviewed a group of women with the objective of investigating whether they become sexually aroused by their own bodies. According to his results, 93% of the women interviewed experience such arousal sometimes and 28% frequently.

Besides, Blanchard affirms that all transgender women can be classified into two distinct categories which do not overlap, with no exceptions to this rule. A quick look into the lives and experiences of trans women shows that many cannot be placed under either of these categories, and obvious fact that was validated by posterior studies.

Even in Blanchard’s own studies, he found individuals that challenge these categories. But instead of questioning the categories themselves he chose to claim that these individuals were falsely representing their experiences, thus manipulating his results in order to maintain these categories. By choosing to simply dismiss data that challenge his typology he makes his theory essentially unfalsifiable, which seriously undermines its scientific credibility.

It is also clear that many of the claims he makes are absurd unless one completely ignores the experiences of transgender women that challenge such claims. One instance is the idea that bisexual transgender women do not truly feel attracted to the male body, which calls for their sexuality to be classified as “pseudo-bisexual”. Besides, a study conducted by Blanchard himself showed bisexual trans women to have a level of androphilia higher than their level of gynephilia on average.

Another problem with Blanchard’s methodology is that he doesn’t investigate other possible hypothesis and interpretations of his data such as the hypothesis that arousal at the idea of having a female body might be a product of dysphoria rather than the opposite. I believe such a hypothesis to be much more plausible.

Lastly, it is also worth noting that Blanchard is a conservative homophobe who has claimed that homosexual sex should be classified as an abnormality. The fact that TERFs are willing to accept uncritically half-baked theories articulated by conservatives if these theories serve their goals says a lot about them.

Another theory with even more serious methodological flaws which has recently become another weapon wielded by TERFs in their crusade against transgenders is the idea of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (RODG). This theory affirms that there has emerged a new form of gender dysphoria that is completely distinct from previously known forms.

This supposed dysphoria, which is theoretically affecting teenagers in particular, would be characterized by its sudden emergence in individuals that have never shown any signs of dysphoria, being tied to influences exerted by social media, digital media and the social environment of those affected by it, which raises the hypothesis of a social contagion. Another characteristic pointed by supporters of the theory is a decline in the mental health of those supposedly suffering from it after they begin to transition, as well as the deterioration of the relationship between them and their parents. It is also claimed that this condition affects AFAB individuals disproportionately,

Before we dive into these claims, it is worth looking at the origins of the theory and the concept. The term originated in three websites: 4thwavenow.com, Transgendertrend.com, and YouthTransCriticalProfessionals.org. The two first websites are focused on parents that are concerned about “transgenderism” among young people, while the third is dedicated to health professionals that disagree with the medical consensus on how to deal with transgender kids and teenagers.

A quick analysis of these websites reveals that all of them are infested with transphobic ideas and permeated by language that is extremely degrading when talking about trans individuals and the process of transition, which is often described using terms such as “chemical and surgical lesions” and “auto-mutilation”. All three websites are also filled with absurd suggestions of substitutes to transition or to the gender-affirmative approach such as doing yoga and sleeping well.

These websites are also filled with transphobic and pseudoscientific theories about transgenders such as the already mentioned idea that transgender people are sexual fetichists, as well as baseless allegations against trans individuals. Besides, accounts of parents of trans teenagers and kids from there show that they tend to be skeptical of the identities of their children, and they are constantly encouraged by other parents in these websites to deny these identities.

It was in such websites that the researcher Lisa Litman (who has never worked with trans youth) searched for parents of transgender kids and teenagers to answer a survey composed of 90 questions (multiple choice and open-ended). Based on data collected from 256 answered surveys, she published a study on the academic journal PLOS One, giving a supposedly scientific basis to the term RODG. The term was quickly picked up by controversial researchers such as Ray Blanchard and Lisa Marchiano, who also writes for conservative website Quillette.

Before we speak about the glaring methodological flaws of the study, it is worth talking about where she chose to publish it. PLOS One is an open access journal with a publishing philosophy that differs from most by allowing almost anything to be published after a simple technical revision. Criteria such as the way that the author interpret the data rarely come into play. This allows for the publishing of studies that would be rejected by most academic journals, which is evidenced by the fact that Litman was able to publish a study with an extremely problematic methodology.

But what are the problems with her methodology? First, we have that fact that she took all her samples from three websites that share the same ideology, and which tend to be transphobic and to treat the gender identities of transgender youth with skepticism. Besides, the term RODG itself was coined in these websites. Thus, the sampling taken from them is not representative of the overall population and was almost certainly chosen with the intention of confirming the RODG thesis, since it would require a baffling incompetence as a researcher to unintentionally chose a sampling from such sources.

Another issue is that all the surveys are directed at the parents of trans youth, completely ignoring the perspectives of their children . This becomes even more problematic when one takes into account that it is well established in the literature on transgender youth that parents very often misrepresent and misunderstand their experiences. To make things worse, all parents were recruited from anti-trans websites, which indicates that their tendency to misrepresent the experiences of their children is likely much worse than average.

Even if such tendencies weren’t a factor, the experiences and perspective of trans youth themselves are a key component if we want to study their dysphoria, and the lack of such a component seriously compromises the study’s credibility.

As if all the methodological issues with the way Litman obtained her data weren’t enough, she also interpreted it in ways that ignored simpler explanations for it, as well as previous scientific literature on the topic.

One instance is her claim that the fact that a large part of the trans youth she studied had many trans friends who also often came out as transgender at around the same time seems to indicate that a social contagion might be a work. She also cites as further evidence for that hypothesis the fact that many of these groups were formed before the individuals in them publicly came out.

The fact that trans individuals tend to form groups in order to protect themselves from discrimination and establish relationships with people who can understand their life experiences is well observed. Thus, there is nothing strange with trans youth being surrounded by trans friends. Even the mathematical calculations that Litman performed in order to demonstrate the supposed unlikelihood of observing so many “clusters” of trans friends do not corroborate with her hypothesis, as was demonstrated by Serano.

Besides, it is worth noting that this hypothesis is worthless without the perspective of the trans teenagers and kids. How to know if they had not come out as trans to each other and to other close friends before? And isn’t it usually the case that trans individuals tend to first come out to their close friends? This is even more plausible when considering that the parents recruited in for the study tend to have an anti-trans perspective which is very likely to make their children more reluctant to come out to them.

This hypothesis is much more consistent with what we already know about trans youth, and it is a much more plausible explanation for what is being observed than the idea that a social contagion is causing teenagers to identify as transgender.

Another problematic aspect of the way Litman interprets her data is her hypothesis that the deterioration of the mental health of the trans youth that were analysed and of the relationship between them and their parents is the product of a new form of dysphoria. The sampling indicates that a large part of the parents involved are transphobic and tend to deny the gender identity of their children, which evidently affects the relationship between them as well as the mental health of the children.

Besides, there is ample scientific evidence that one of the main factors that affect the mental health of trans individuals (especially trans youth) is how accepted their identities are, especially by their families. When we take that in consideration, it becomes much more likely that the deterioration of their mental health is a product of the rejection they experience from their families instead of something caused by a new form of dysphoria, but Litman chooses to ignore that hypothesis in order to push her narrative.

Even the idea that the increase in AFAB transgender teenagers is a product of a new form of dysphoria makes less sense than the hypothesis that such an increase is a result of the increased visibility of transgender men and AFAB non-binary individuals, which is a factor that aids the process of self-discovery of such individuals.

When we analyse the study as a whole, it becomes clear not only that its methodology for data collection is seriously flawed but also that Litman ignored interpretations that are more straightforward and in agreement with previous studies in favor of those that fit the narrative of RODG. It is also worth noting that no serious organization that works with transgender people supports this concept. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) for instance, urges people not to use the term, since it not a concept that has any credibility among health professionals that work with transgender individuals.

Everything seems to point out that this is another attempt to find ways to deny the validity of the gender identities of trans youth in order to attract negative press and make it more difficult for such youth to access the medical services necessary to their transition, all under the guise of protecting them. Whether such judgment is accurate or not, the fact remains that there is no proper scientific basis for the concept.