Several high-profile liberal women have recently complained about the language used to make room for transgender activism, which, according to these women, threatens to “erase women.”
New York Times columnist Pamela Paul recently accused progressive institutions such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the American Civil Liberties Union of pushing a “misogynist agenda.” (Planned Parenthood does not use the word “women” on its homepage; NARAL has used the phrase “birthing people” instead of “women”; and the ACLU did not name women specifically in a tweet listing the groups of people who will be hurt by the end of Roe, according to Paul.) Musician Macy Gray recently told British journalist Piers Morgan, “Just because you go change your parts, doesn't make you a woman, sorry.” That same day, actor Bette Midler expressed a similar sentiment in a tweet:
These arguments are increasingly common, and very flawed. Trans rights are no threat to women’s rights. On the contrary, the two are complementary. Further, this kind of pinched, suspicious thinking is not a good foundation for any kind of liberatory perspective.
The “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” movement, popularized in recent years around celebrity young adult author J.K. Rowling, was originally posed as a defense of women. But as anyone familiar with British politics knows, gradually the second two words have de facto disappeared from the TERF agenda, replaced by an obsessive fixation with attacking trans people. Many "Harry Potter" fans have watched in despair over the last few years as Rowling has steadily become more of a bitter, ranting transphobic ideologue, along with many other British writers.
I should also note that these complaints are ludicrously exaggerated. While it’s true that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use the word “woman” on its homepage (“you” is the main pronoun), it is by no means allergic to the word, as a brief glance at its “Women's Services” page will confirm. The same is true of the ACLU’s Twitter account.
Trans rights are no threat to women’s rights. On the contrary, the two are complementary.
By the same token, Midler is wrong to imply that the word “woman” has been somehow banned. The activist demand here is that when referring to the entire population of people capable of pregnancy, people should use inclusive words. But when referring to specific individuals or groups who identify as women, doing so is fine.
But a bigger problem is the sheer pettiness of the complaint. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that this more inclusive language is clumsy or offensive, it is beyond question that it is not even close to important for women’s rights when we consider the ongoing storm of legal changes that are already predominantly harming women and girls. Roe v. Wade is gone. Abortion is already banned almost entirely in many states, even for victims of rape and incest. A pregnant 10-year-old recently had to flee from Ohio to Indiana to end her pregnancy, according to the Indianapolis Star. And yet some choose to raise a fuss over some organizations supposedly declining to say a particular word.
While Paul and Midler equate trans activists to right-wing misogynists, Planned Parenthood is not cutting back its reproductive services for women out of some deference to trans people. Conservatives are forcing it to do that.
What trans people want, like any of us want, is to be treated with full human dignity. Trans people want access to health care, to have their identity respected by the rest of society, and above all to not be hurt or killed. That project has substantial inherent overlap with any program of women’s liberation. After all, women need health care and have suffered gender-based oppression and violence for centuries. More broadly, there is general utility for different oppressed groups in teaming up to resist oppression, in keeping with the famous Martin Niemöller poem.
Even the effort to change certain language norms to be more inclusive to trans men has an arguable benefit for women because it leans against the current trend in conservative rhetoric of viewing women solely through the prism of childbearing.
Indeed, if there is a threat to women’s rights in this discussion, it is in transphobia itself. Lurking in the subtext of Paul’s article is an ugly undercurrent: She complained that “to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary.” This both implies that cisgender women are scientifically (and therefore more legitimately) female in a way that trans women are not (“biological women”) and partakes of the false, bigoted stereotype that men routinely fake trans status so they can infiltrate female organizations and commit sexual abuses. Why else would the presence of “males” be “threatening”?
The effort to change certain language norms to be more inclusive to trans men has an arguable benefit for women because it leans against the current trend in conservative rhetoric of viewing women solely through the prism of childbearing.
If we examine the actual proposals to defend women from the false threats of the trans community, they typically include subjecting young girls to invasive genital inspections or concocting scientifically dubious criteria for booting people without two X chromosomes out of women’s sports.
Dislike for some minority is not a good foundation for protecting one’s own rights. Better to keep an open mind about other people, particularly when they are asking for basically the same thing downtrodden groups have demanded for centuries, and keep one’s eye on the real enemy: right-wing patriarchy.