Posted on June 04, 2025. Rewritten on July 07, 2025.
For some background, some feminists define themselves as trans-exclusive or gender-critical radical feminists (shortened to TERFs or GCs). Often their stances suggest that radical feminism leaves out transgender women while perpetuating transphobic narratives and invalidating the transgender experience and identity. The large frequency of these "feminists" in online spaces, probably driven by well-known figures like J.K. Rowling, have worsened the reputation of radical feminism overall.
Radical feminism aims to dismantle the patriarchy, the deeply rooted system of dominance and control over those who are deemed inferior, including cisgender women and other marginalized communities. Gender essentialism, the basis for the patriarchy, normalizes the suffering women experience by asserting that their biological features are what defines their social roles and subordinates them to men's rule.
Accordingly, radical feminism must inherently be supportive of the gender and sex distinction, what many TERFs call "gender ideology," against essentialism, as it clearly identifies the distinction between the social, cultural expectations, norms, and traits (gender) that are placed on women's bodies (sex) to maintain control over them and serve men's desires and the fact that there is no natural link between the two concepts.
Here I touch on my speculations on the transgender identity and share my interpretation of radical feminism that includes transgender people within different concepts.
Gender socialization is the process whereby individuals learn about gender norms and gain their gender identity by internalizing them [1][2]. I break down this definition into two actions in accordance with its definition: certain agents teach gender norms based on assigned-sex-at-birth and the child internalizes them. Parents are the first performers of the former action - later come teachers, the child's peers, and the media [3].
The latter part, internalization, is complicated - it's essentially an unconscious process of the child, whereby they accept the gender norms they were exposed to [4]. When the psychological states of mind and consciousness come into play, empirical studies are difficult to carry out, highlighting that we can only arrive at certain conclusions through speculations.
Considering that gender socialization constitutes gender identity, I argue that if a child who was assigned male at birth internalizes norms relating to femininity, the child will realize they are a transgender girl/woman later. Does this mean the child was raised with female gender norms rather than male ones despite her biological features? That's unlikely, as even transgender women would be told to avoid feminine behaviors - in compliance with the former part of gender socialization, where sex-assigned-at-birth plays a role.
How does this compare to people who identify as men but exhibit feminine characteristics, aka feminine men? I now focus on gender labels, which are arguably a part of gender norms. The sentences, "I am a woman." or "I am a man," are reflections of gender identity, which we accept is built on the internalization of gender norms. So, what could have been is that transgender women have internalized the opposing gender norms to the extent where they also adopt the gender label "woman" and identify with it.
What affects this state of internalization to align with opposing gender norms is a mystery to me. What makes a person more likely to internalize certain ideas? It's difficult to answer such a question because of the nature of consciousness.
It's obvious that transgender women's socialization greatly differs from that of cisgender men, as no cisgender men would sincerely claim that they feel like a woman. I feel like TERFs tend to miss this point. It's not the critical factor, the attitudes of agents that perpetuate gender norms toward the child but the child's internalization of those norms as they navigate society, which build their gender identity. Thus, transgender women don't experience "male socialization," or transgender men "female socialization."
To sum up, the patriarchy's oppressive tool, gender as we name it separately from sex, is perpetuated in a real, profound way because of gender socialization, and transgender people obtain their gender identity similarly to how their opposite sex-assigned-at-birth does. Therefore, transgender women are indeed women, transgender men are indeed men, both by socialization like in how cisgender women and men are, and the terms "women" and "men" are socially constructed.
TERFs point out that transgender people reinforce gender roles, but they ignore that cisgender people also reinforce them as much. Everyone is inclined to conform to gender norms, as a result of gender socialization. Our likes, tastes, and choices have simply been influenced by the patriarchy, as we've been raised under it. It's odd to concentrate specifically on transgender people.
Transgender women might have internalized misogyny, just like cisgender women might. In addition, transgender women are not women because of gender norms alone but rather their gender identity and how they perceive themselves, which is built on a state of internalization and thus has a depth of complexity.
Gender-affirming care has often been hinted at to reinforce gender norms. However, policing people into their assigned sex, in itself, is a patriarchal act. No matter how one modifies their body under what circumstances, sex reassignment disrupts the patriarchy by challenging the categorization and control of people based on their anatomy, and non-conformity to the norms associated with one's sex-assigned-at-birth still challenges the gender norms, which intersect with radical feminist goals.
Also, is it really a reinforcement of gender norms when one is born male but identifies as female and exhibits feminine or masculine characteristics as they wish?
It's known that some people who carry XX chromosomes develop testes, those with XY, ovaries, and some have ambiguous primary sex characteristics, which compose intersex traits. During their infancy, some endure surgeries to tailor their bodies into conformance with a fully male/female body, but this serves no practical purpose than reinforcing the sex distinction itself. Such a medical practice reveals the desire to distinguish men and women to create the patriarchal hierarchy, where the focus on sex is driven by the social, cultural, political reality.
TERFs' sex-classes distinction of male and female and regulating who belongs to what group is inherently a patriarchal motive - it's like men would enjoy the idea of distancing themselves from women to frame women as the class they oppress with the additional affirmation that such an oppression is natural and biological. This boils down to the idea of gender categories once again but is much harder, if not, impossible to liberate women from.
The intersex reality mirrors an aspect of gender identity: In the same way not everyone fits into "male" and "female" in terms of sex, some people don't associate themselves with two boxes of "man" and "woman" in terms of gender. A social construct imposed on and internalized by individuals must be liable to varying perceptions thereof in the individual - much wider than the spectrum of sex.
When the idea of gender identity emerges, the fixed norms assigned to sexes to constitute subordination necessarily lose their importance. "Man" doesn't mean "strong" anymore, or "woman" doesn't mean "weak" anymore. Is this not the future we want?
When someone identifies as non-binary or with the more nuanced labels of demigender, agender, bigender, or polygender, they exclaim a defiant "You cannot force me into rigid norms based on my sex!" or "I'm not accepting what rank you perceive me to belong to and conform to your oppressive, patriarchal hierarchy!"
A transgender person definitely knows the distinction between what is oppressive and what really should be the case - they can distinguish that women's oppression is not something one should stand behind. Since they can identify their own non-conformance to societal structures, they develop an increased awareness of those. In this sense, transgender people pose no risk of conservative regression but only revolutionary progress.
When a person assigned male at birth claims that they are a woman, they abandon their superior, masculine rank - how can this contribute to the patriarchy? On another note, transgender people are very rare and wouldn't wish to suffer from gender incongruence. When someone transitions, how much of an impact do they make other than annoying some conservatives and hence definitely challenging some oppressive bits? Anti-transgender policies being passed on by conservative governments is no coincidence.
It's widely accepted that invalidating transgender identities is harmful for transgender people's mental health, and the treatment of gender dysphoria is in transitioning, so can it really be a win for the radical feminist position to lead transgender people, who are challenging the status quo, to worse mental health outcomes or even suicide?
Transphobia is misogyny in response to the transfeminine identity, driven further by the abandonment of the male sex/masculinity, which the patriarchy highly values to maintain subordination. It's not only the reproductive bodies of cisgender women, some of whom are additionally punished for their infertility in a similar position to transgender women, but also the social conceptions attached to the female body and resemblance to it that constitutes oppression.
In conclusion, transgender women experience the world in a similar way to cisgender women although the way they obtained their connection to womanhood might differ slightly. I'm of the notion that women are not a biological but rather a political group - in this vision, why does it even matter how transgender people socialize and become as such?
Gender abolition would predict the stop of gender socialization, and in turn, gender labels, norms, and identity would eradicate over time. It wouldn't matter what genitals, chromosomes, or hormones an individual possesses outside of the medical context. Perhaps, the terms "male" and "female" would be comparable to "left-handed" and "right-handed" in their current level of importance.
How does this relate to transgender people? It's real that no one really knows what's in our pants, chromosomes, or hormones but rather makes assumptions of our gender identity based on our presentation. I theorize that this assumption creates a part of the conflict some transgender people experience, as their sex-assigned-at-birth is not what they align with.
Following gender abolition, transgender people wouldn't have to socially transition and conform to gender norms surrounding their identity, which would help them feel more perceived as the body they wish to be in, and would be able to express themselves without further struggle.
The more freedom we let people explore their gender identity, define it on their own terms, and affirm them, the less value and importance we put on categorizing people into gender and sex labels, and the closer we are to achieving gender abolition and liberation. Transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people are a necessity in the fight against the patriarchy.
It's no wonder that fascist conservatives are hostile against transgender people, and TERFs' adoption of a similar rhetoric is rather demeaning to radical feminism. On the contrary, some radical feminists were supportive of gender as a social construct and opposed gender essentialism.
"The discovery is, of course, that "man" and "woman" are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both. The discovery is inescapable: We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete," writes Andrea Dworkin in her book Woman Hating [5].
Further, Andrea's spouse before her death, John Stoltenberg, affirms that she was an ally of transgender people [6]. Simone de Beauvoir's famous quote, "One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman," portrays a social constructivist statement. Catharine MacKinnon and many other radical feminists follow these authors.
Women's oppression is strongly tied to the oppression of other marginalized communities. The LGBTQ+ community faces oppression as it challenges the patriarchy and heteronormativity by promoting the gender and sex dichotomy and defying gender norms, which I touch on more in depth in another blog post.
Radical feminism must be intersectional, as the patriarchy oppresses marginalized communities in a similar way to cisgender heterosexual women, and liberation requires the recognition of how oppression is shaped by different factors, like race, orientation, class, and ability.
It's necessary that we include transgender people, who are actively resisting the patriarchy and are discriminated against on that basis. The transgender existence showcases that the patriarchy is not a natural or sustainable system but rather, a harmful, damaging one to continue our lives in.