metaphysically enigmatic

radical feminism is built on women's rights activism approached from the root of systemic misogyny. radical feminism is about female liberation and women's rights - ALL females, and ALL women.

As Dworkin describes, biological sex is not definitively the dictator of gender. Because gender isn't real, gender isn't tangible; gender is a set of characteristics and roles forced upon human beings based on their biological sex characteristics.

gender abolition is a crucial part of radfeminism. recognising that gender and sex are separate concepts entirely is essential to being a radical feminist.

so, how can this coexist with transgenderism? In Woman Hating, Dworkin directly addresses homosexuality and transsexuality as deviations from the societal expectation of binary, gender-essentialist, heterosexual, "correct" behaviour. Dworkin states that these deviations, including transsexuality, are not necessarily morally wrong. She also recognized that transsexuality and homosexuality are REAL, tangible concepts, unlike gender itself.

we live in a binary world. we live in a world with rigid, strict structures for people based on their sex characteristics. the dichotomy between man and woman in our human society is the dichotomy between the oppressor and the oppressed.

but, like Dworkin acknowledges, not everyone fits into that binary, because that binary is meaningless, and that binary isn't real.

transsexuals and transgender individuals exist. that's the second fact that must be established.

it's not uncommon to see a self-proclaimed TERF online reference dworkin as a justification for their transphobia. TERFs will claim their radical feminism is somehow ... genuine radical feminism, when it is based on gender essentialism and arbitrary bigotry. Dworkin, if you actually read her works and have an ounce of media literacy, never establishes or recognized this as a form of real radical feminism.

According to Dworkin's logic, transsexual individuals can easily coexist with gender abolition. Because, at the end of the day, radical feminism still DOES take biological reality as an important factor in its activism. TERFs are just misunderstanding how biological reality exists alongside the construct of gender in the context of the real world. As I already mentioned but will reiterate here: we live in a binary, gendered world, and that fact is both inevitable and fundamental.

because of the social context we live under and have lived under for millennia, some individuals are going to internalize the concept of gender, and while gender itself isn't real, it does become an aspect of identity for some people, making it a factor in how human beings live and behave. for some people, furthermore for the majority of people without sex or gender dysphoria, the gender that was assigned to them based on their biological sex is the gender that becomes a part of their identity. these individuals, cisgender people, are then [typically] raised socially as either a girl or a boy, then a woman or a man respectively.

if gender dysphoria didn't exist, we wouldn't HAVE transgender people. but we do, and i would hope we all know that. these people, trans people, are the human beings who have an internalized connection to gender that wasn't the gender they were assigned based on their sex and subsequently raised as.

here comes the nuance: gendered people, including transgender individuals, can coexist with the abolition of a misogynistic social construct. radical feminists can and SHOULD abolish the oppressive system of a concept that isn't even real, but that does not justify discrimination against the individuals who tangible live as a gendered person, female and woman, male and man, male and woman, or female and man (and any other genders that exist culturally depending on human geography).

I am not saying that trans women live their entire lives as women, considering most trans women are male people who were assigned the boy/man gender and raised as such, but I AM saying that transgender women are women. They are simply women with different experiences. And yes, there is a lot of misogyny that has to be unlearned for people who are born as men but live as women. That does not diminish the fact that they are women, because gender is nothing more than an aspect of identity for some people, and if someone faces gender dysphoria as a boy/man-assigned male, and they have a genuine connection to the gender of woman, they are a woman, and they deserve access to the resources they need to transition socially to a woman. vice versa for trans men.

Female liberation is another fundamental aspect of radfeminism. And that means ALL female people: women, non-gendered females, and FtM/FtX transgender people. no, trans women should not be the focus of this particular aspect of radical feminism, because they are not female people. And, for the millionth time, I want to reiterate that just became a woman isn't female, doesn't mean she isn't a woman, because gender and sex are separate - one a social construct that manifesta itself as an aspect of identity, and the other a biological reality. female liberation should always be included in radfeminism, as should trans women, and the two are NOT mutually exclusive. trans women are simply a different type of women, and thereby do not necessarily have a place in ALL aspects of radical feminism, but they are still genuinely women who deserve a place in general radical feminism.

excluding trans women from radical feminism because they are not female is discrimination and discrimination is the very thing radical feminism exists to end.

for all the TERFs out there reading this - I unfortunately have to clairfy that I am not talking about what you consider to be "fake" transgender people or transsexuals. like the whole men-who-transition-solely-to-go-into-womens-bathrooms debate, those people are an extreme minority, and, frankly, the whole debate is just a bigoted scare tactic from conservatives that you somehow buy into. and before you bring up the 2/3rds of transgender women in prisons are there for sexual assault, you need to recognise that that is STILL a minority, and an incredibly obscure dynamic. furthermore, trans women are not INHERENTLY bad, nor are males in general. to imply such is to go everything radical feminism even stands for. therefore, we must treat trans women WITHOUT PREJUDICE. Just because SOME trans women are bad people does not mean you are justified in automatically deeming every trans woman a bad person before even knowing who they are.