Show Us on the Doll Where Gender Hurt You

A Critical Examination of TERF Ideology

Up until about two years ago, I was a gender critical feminist — otherwise known as a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF). Well, not really, but I did agree with a number of their points.

I engaged, for many years, in elaborate thought experiments and held onto narrow definitions of the concepts “sex” and “gender” with the goal of showing myself that gender does not actually exist. As a result, I convinced myself that trans folks—especially those who medically transitioned—are at best misguided, and at worst seriously ill.

Needless to say, I was wrong.

However, in the year before I came out, I was enamored with one particular thought experiment.

Imagine there is a planet identical to Earth except for one key difference: the planet does not have any human females. Let’s call it Phallo Prime — you know, because.

If the reproductive improbabilities involved in imaging this world bug you, try to pretend that Phallo Primian scientists solved their reproductive issues eons ago with birthing pods or some other sci-fi thing and then promptly forgot females ever existed. Or, maybe you can pretend that magic has always existed on Phallo Prime—sweet, sweet, men who love men (MLM) magic. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Are we good on the baby-making thing? Ok.

Now, take a second to picture the society that might exist on this world and how it might be similar to or different from ours.

Chances are, such a world would be similar to ours in many respects. After all, it would be inhabited by people that are identical in every way to about half of our population.

Social life would probably revolve around the same basic things. Phallo Primians would likely have complex politics, relax by engaging in physical activity or the arts and so on. Racism would almost assuredly still exist on Phallo Prime, as would ableism, classism etc. Nachos would probably still be a thing. Phallo Primians might have comparatively more public art of dongs than we do, but who’s to say if that’s a bad thing?

Despite these similarities, it should be clear that this hypothetical single-sex society would be different from ours in a few key ways. For example, sexism as we know it on Earth wouldn’t exist on Phallo Prime because there would be no “second sex” to oppress.

It is also safe to say that “gender dysphoria,” and “trans folks” as we know them would not exist. Even assuming transgender identities have physical “causes”(say brain structures etc.), individuals on Phallo Prime with those physical traits would never have cause to “transition.” No Phallo Primian would would wish their body were female because females would not exist. Nor would any of them say that they are or want to be women because women wouldn’t exist. You can’t want to be something that you don’t even have a concept for.

In fact, without a preexisting social context in which other sexes and genders exist, saying that you are or wish to be another sex or gender would be absurd.

Alright. Can you picture it? Is Phallo Prime now fleshed out in your mind? Good. What do you think their public art is like?

“The Bean” by Roman Boed (CC BY 2.0) — Imagine something like this, but more dong-shaped.

I used this thought experiment as a way of reiterating to myself the following:

Gender is a social construct tied to assigned sex, and does not exist outside of that assignment. As such, to the extent that “being a woman” or “feeling like a woman” is a thing, only someone who was assigned female at birth can possibly understand or experience it, and vice versa for men. Because that’s what gender ultimately is — the experience of a particular sex in society. The desire to be, or belief that you are, the other sex/gender is then either caused by societal pressure to fit into invented gender roles, or evidence of a psychological problem. If you believe yourself to be, or desire to be another sex/gender than the one assigned to you at birth, it is best to simply make peace with your personality and your body — they need not define you.

Makes sense, right? It’s all there in the thought experiment. Trans women aren’t actually women, nor are trans men actual men, and trans folks ought to just make peace with their assigned sex/gender because gender doesn’t exist outside of oppressive structures.

So, yeah… uh… about that.

After a year of repeatedly saying these things to myself, I came out. A couple months later, I started medical transition, and a couple months after that, I started living full time as a woman. As it turns out, I was wrong and my conclusions were stupid.

I desperately wanted the TERF perspective to be true because cissexism and transphobia are so pervasive in our society that constantly struggling with my own meaning/context in ways that drove me to depression was preferable to being a well-adjusted and happy trans person. I didn’t want to be trans. I wanted to be happy, and because of the way society treats trans folks, I saw those two things as mutually exclusive.

I thought that if I convinced myself gender didn’t really exist and that trans folks were at best misguided and at worst crazy, I would be able to let go of all the things that made me feel uncomfortable and unhappy with my assigned sex/gender. So, I avoided interrogating the conclusions I had come to.

To be fair, I never really engaged in the “community” built around TERF theory. Being read as male (which I would have been) in that environment tends to make it pretty difficult to engage with others. And, even when I was in the midst of my TERF phase, I was bad at it.

I never used my thought experiments to actively oppress and invalidate others. Hell, until now I never even mentioned them to anyone other than my wife — and even then, I only mentioned them because I wanted her to say “yep, you’re right,” so I could feel validated in denying who I was. I never even took the time to complain about “transtrenders” on the internet.

In fact, now that I think of it, I missed a number of opportunities to be self-righteously horrible to other people. I never argued that people ought to be cut off from care that has been proven to drastically improve their health outcomes. I never accused anyone of child abuse for supporting their trans child. I was mean-spirited, but the only person I really hurt with my rhetoric was myself.

Joking aside, as a result of my time believing many of the things that TERFs believe, I have a lot of empathy for people who fall into their whole mindset. It’s not hard to fall into their mindset, even when you’re trans. So, I suspect it’s downright easy for cis people who have never questioned their gender or felt anything resembling “gender dysphoria” to fall into it and never climb back out.

Because here’s the thing: there is some logic present in the TERF platform.

Gender is highly contextual to the society one lives in, and without reference to sex, gender as we know it today likely would not exist. TERFs also rightly identify that a significant aspect of being a “woman” or “man” in our society is about experiencing systematic oppression and privilege respectively. They are also correct in believing that the pressure put on people to conform to predetermined gender roles and “perform” their genders in a way that society accepts is a horrible, no good, very bad thing.

Unfortunately, almost everything else they believe is unfounded and poorly reasoned.

This is because TERFs are motivated, philosophically speaking, by the belief that the concept of “gender” is the culprit for all gender-related problems — both historically and currently. Because this belief has more merit if one assumes gender can’t exist without direct physiological sex reference, they firmly deny any definitions of gender that allow gender to exist separate from assigned sex. For TERFs, believing it is possible for someone to have a gender that is not in alignment with their assigned sex threatens their class-based narrative, and has the potential of reinforcing oppressive structures based on gender.

However, none of this is true. Gender can exist without reference to sex, and that fact does not in itself reinforce oppressive structures based on gender — in fact, it is far more likely to challenge those structures than reinforce them.

Back to Phallo Prime for a second. Remember: no females, lots of public art with dongs, and no such thing as sexism, but otherwise essentially the same as Earth. Got it? Good.

For TERFs to be right about their absolute tie between sex and gender, “gender” cannot exist on Phallo Prime.

However, does anyone honestly believe that the society on Phallo Prime would be lacking in a concept that at least partly resembles our concept of “gender” or “gender role?” Does anyone actually think that people on Phallo Prime wouldn’t find ways to express and comport themselves within socially established categories based on real or imagined differences in a way that might map in some way to broad definitions of gender?

Sure, Phallo Primians would not use terms like ‘man’ or ‘woman’, ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, ‘butch’ or ‘femme’ etc. to describe these categories because the sex dichotomy wouldn’t exist as it does on Earth. However, if there is one thing we humans are good at, it’s taking our wide individual variability and boiling it down to group identities. We have a knack for finding others with roles, behaviors, interests, appearances and outlooks similar to our own and explaining/understanding ourselves by way of reference to each other and to those who are not as similar to us.

In this way, Phallo Primian “genders” could compound a variety of discrete traits in much the same way ours do. Their “genders” might not divide along binary lines, and they might not be obligatory in the same way that ours are — since there would be no reference to physiological sex — but it’s not hard to imagine that gender might exist on Phallo Prime in some form. There’s even a non-zero chance that Phallo Primians would have a gender system where their genders match “man” and “woman” almost exactly — simply without reference to sex.

If this is case — if it is possible to have social categories and roles similar in some way to the ones we have for gender but without reference to sex — does that not indicate that physiological sex is not wholly constitutive of such categories? Sex differences might have helped to give rise to gender categories on Earth, but that does not mean they are necessary and that the link between sex and gender is absolute.

Did somebody say “turf?”

It is possible to believe that gender is socially constructed and tied to sex without believing that it is entirely socially constructed and that its tie to sex is absolute.

In fact, it is possible to see this without having recourse to any Phallo Primian “genders” that could exist. TERFs are able to pretend that the link between sex and gender is absolute only by treating sex in particular as a concrete, immutable thing. This goes against current scientific understanding, and shows little understanding of the purpose and function of science to begin with.

Besides, we have living breathing people who do not meet the rigid sex definitions TERFs use. The intersex community is not a thought experiment. Many intersex people are assigned, treated, and perceived as having a gender — as being men and women. Certainly, not all of them identify with the gender they have been assigned, or any gender for that matter, but some most certainly do.

This is possible because sex and gender are not things, they are multivalent descriptive categories. Sex and gender come after the fact as a means of explaining and contextualizing already existing states of affairs.

Because of their willful disregard for this sort of epistemological nuance, TERFs engage in all sorts of oppressive and invalidating behaviors based on the assigned sex of others.

The fact that TERFs attempt to tell others what they can and cannot be based on their assigned sex is not without a bit of irony. Referencing radical feminism in order to oppress others based on their assigned sex requires a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness and a not insignificant degree of malice.

Over time, the best explanation I have come up with for why TERFs cling to their position is that they experience gender as painful.

Gender has been such a harmful force in their lives that they cannot conceptualize an informed and healthy individual finding comfort or validation in it. They cannot imagine people finding positive personal meaning in gender outside of direct rebellion against it. They despise gender so much that it cannot be anything to anyone other than the oppression that they have felt and perceived it to be in their own lives.

And let’s be honest, happy and healthy trans folks who are empowered and supported are a threat to the TERF worldview. It is in the best interests of TERFs for gender to hurt trans folks in the way it has hurt them — because every time someone experiences gender as hurtful, they are more likely to agree with them, just like I did.

But maybe, gender doesn’t need to be dismantled. Maybe, gender simply needs to be interrogated and extracted from oppressive structures. Maybe, the primary issue at hand in oppression along gender lines is people trying to make it into something its not and other people into something they are not.

Maybe, gender does not need to hurt. This was certainly my realization, and the past two years of my life have been all the better for it.