Unecessary Straps and Pouches and Belts and Clasps

"feminist theory: from margin to center" by bell hooks is a book on radical feminist theory. give it a shot. we are better allies than we are enemies.

Okay so 1. gender abolition isn't owned by radical feminism and trans forward gender abolitionist theory exists perfectly fine without your bullshit anyway. 2. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center is about the marginalization of Black women in feminism and is quite literally a criticism of everything wrong with the second wave movement and subsequently radical feminism.

radical feminism as a term has become associated with essentialism, separatism, cissexism, classism and racism and not for no reason. that has been the face of radical feminism for a hot while. "radical feminism" does have a lot more rich and complex history than people often afford it, and radical feminism did not start as one unified ideology but was an umbrella term. but the term did not get poisoned on accident and we cannot simply write off all of the harms associated with radical feminism as "not real radical feminism." even if we want to use the term "radical" in the original sense (focusing on the root causes of gender oppression, in an intersectional manner) i question how useful it is to reclaim something that is still actively being used, and is heavily associated with, a deeply harmful line of feminist thinking.

i do not like people trying to "reclaim" radical feminism for trans people because as far as i've seen, despite all insistence that its about reviving the "good" parts of radical feminism & distinguishing it from cultural feminism, people still keep doing all the shit that turned people off from radical feminism in the first place (the essentialism, separatism, cissexism, classism, racism). it seems clear that people generally think of radical feminism as primarily being defined around "mean to trans women" and when people find out things are More Complicated Than That, they jump straight to "once you remove the blatant transphobia then you have the Good Pure Kind Of Radical Feminism!" but that doesn't fix the problems, for trans people and for feminism in general.

i think if there is any reclaiming to be done with the term "radical feminism" it would have to come after there's been more of a reckoning in trans and feminist spaces with how harmful gender/bio essentialism, female separatism, cissexism is, and what it actually means to reject and resist those things. we have terms like transfeminist and visionary feminist and revolutionary feminist which can serve the exact same purpose in describing a kind of transformative, socialist, intersectional feminism that strikes at the root of gendered oppression. there's a lot of tough fucking conversations we are actively struggling to have, and the trans people i see proudly identifying as radical feminists are the ones struggling against those conversations, and repeating the mistakes of their white middle class radical feminist grandmothers.

Rhetorical dogwhistles are things that most people would not be able to identify as bigoted because they're INTENDED to have plausible deniability.

The wording changes are meant to be subtle enough that people really can mix them up accidentally when they don't have much information!

So when the gender critical movement calls trans women "transwomen", they're hoping for 2 things.

this usage will spread enough among people who don't know any better, to give transphobes the plausible deniability of not LOOKING like a frothing bigot constantly.

the usage grammatically places trans women in a different category than other women; it's changing "trans" from an adjective to part of a noun to make this distinction.

The more we can avoid this usage, the less deniability have transmisogynists have when using it, and the less rhetorical ground we cede to the degendering and misgendering of trans women.

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no, he didn't do that, it's a blatant and malicious misrepresentation of the text.

no, he didn't explicitly do that, although you can argue semantics and implications to make the case that he did.

no, he didn't do that, but i wish he did.

yes, he did do that, but it was in a poorly written story where everyone was out of character.

yes, he did do that, but it was under extenuating circumstances not reflective of his true values.

yes, he did that, but it doesn't negate the harmful actions of other characters in the story.

yes, he did do that, and it was entirely justified.