Certain self-proclaimed “radical feminists” are intensely transphobic. A classic example would be Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire, perhaps the bible of “radical feminist” transphobia. A more recent example would be the blog femonade, and its many essays on the exploitative and sexist “ideology” of “transgenderism”:

http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/sorry-sex-pos-transwomen/

http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/the-neo-vagina-monologues/

http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/vagina-as-fuckhole-hurts-men-too/

Here’s the dirty little secret of this ideology: anti-transgender “radical feminists” come from the exact same place as patriarchal misogynists. I have five reasons why:

1. Anti-trans “radical feminists” blame the victim. Just like women in general are blamed for being raped by misogynist scumbags everywhere, transwomen are blamed for being oppressed by a society with essentialist binary notions of gender identity.

2. Anti-trans “radical feminists” see some identities as superior to others. Just like how patriarchy is based around the idea of men as superior to women, transwoman-bashing is based around the idea of the born woman identity as superior to the transwoman identity.

3. Anti-trans “radical feminists” see gender as based on biological sex. Just as patriarchs proscribe gender roles based on one’s genitalia, “radical feminists” who hate transwoman proscribe gender identities based on one’s genitalia.

4.Anti-trans “radical feminists” fear the other. Just as privileged males fear women as alien and fickle, “radical feminist” transphobes fear that transwomen are male predators.

5. Anti-trans “radical feminists” deny privilege. Not even in the way most people under patriarchy deny privilege, but rather in the way that anti-feminist masculists deny privilege. “Radical feminists” who hate transwomen and see them as privileged exploiters are like masculists who claim we live in some kind of PC feminist dystopia where men are oppressed by women. In a world were transwomen are beaten, raped and killed for their gender identity, claims of trans privilege and exploitation of cis women by transwomen are a sick, sick joke.

“Radical feminist” transbashing even involves double standards, just like patriarchy:

http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/is-eminem-a-transwoman/

If there’s one thing that should leap out at you, besides the disgusting hatred towards transwomen, it’s that the quote she’s attacking as glorifying misogynist abuse is actually a statement protesting patriarchy. How much you wanna bet she’d applaud the very same quote coming from a ciswomen?

Between this and the support amongst some “radical” feminists for using the violence of the state to ban pornography and prostitution, some “radical feminists” end up a lot closer to fundies then they’d think: