Whose Fault Is It? It's Feminists' Fault!

Coming this week: two videos on the intersection of feminism and gender ideology

Today, The New York Times previewed its upcoming six-part audio series called “The Protocol”—which I happen to think is a great title. It promises to explore how “trans and gender nonconforming kids in the US have been able to get medical treatment to transition”—including where youth gender medicine “came from, who it was meant to help, and how it got pulled into a political fight that could end it altogether.”

Well, I happen to be writing a book about that very topic, so I am of course curious to listen. How we got to the point where we’re viciously fighting can’t be explained without examining the various modes of thought behind those very concepts: that trans kids are born in the wrong body, or that gender nonconformity—not behaving according to sex stereotypes—requires medicating.

How much did feminism contribute to this situation? Great question, which first has to be answered with other questions: What is feminism? How many different branches and schools are there, and how much influence did and do they have—on each other, on society?

I get into this in further detail in the book, but for now, suffice it to say that first and second wave feminist movements were concerned with women’s sex-based rights: the right to vote; the right to work outside the home and in fields once available only to men; the right to an education; the right to have credit cards or bank accounts; the right to not be raped by one’s husband, etc etc.

A small subset of feminists argued that the path to eradicating sex-based oppression was to eradicate the categories of sex altogether, though the more common path was to chip away at stereotypes, expectations, and policies—at “gender,” or “gender roles.” Still, some believe that the marginally feminist idea of sex as a construction paved the way for “trans women are women,” and for the eroding of sex-based boundaries over which we battle today.

Others think that the third wave of feminism, focused on intersectionality and inclusivity—meaning: including trans women—opened the door to what we’re experiencing now, with males competing against females in sports, or legally entitled to use women’s spaces, based on identity, not bodies. (Notice how The New York Times reports on the sports issue, explaining that a Trump official was “referring to trans girls as males”—as if they are not actually male.)

Others still might point to feminist objections to trans inclusion from early days, courtesy of Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire.

We may debate how much feminists are responsible for the current moment, but it’s clear that feminists have been grappling with these issues for decades, and that they’ve perplexed, vexed, and divided us.

I recorded two discussions about this topic. The first, recorded several weeks ago, was with Holly Lawford-Smith, associate professor in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and author of Gender-Critical Feminism and Feminism Beyond Left and Right. The second, recorded last week, was with psychologist/sexologists J. Michael Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen, and Marco Del Giudice, who organized a conference called The Big Conversation, on “the origins, mechanisms, and meanings of sex/gender differences.”

These conversations grew from interactions on a listserv that Bailey started and has been running for nearly 30 years, which includes many of the world’s foremost experts on sex and gender—and includes a few wayward feminist journalists, like yours truly. I will release them tomorrow and the next day.

In the meantime, comments are open for those who want to discuss the role of feminism in the the situation we find ourselves in today, in terms of the transgender issue.