Blog # 76: Feminism Must Be Led by Love, or Not At All
Posted on March 30, 2012 by transmeditations
http://transmeditations.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/feminism-must-be-led-by-love-or-not-at-all/Recently, I have experienced a round of attacks by some radical-identified feminists and lesbian feminists for my writings and transgender advocacy. There is a long history of conflict between transgender/transsexual people, especially trans women, and radical feminists and lesbian feminists that dates back beginning in the 1970s. The pinnacle of this battle was when lesbian feminist Janice Raymond published her notorious book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male in 1979. For nearly 15 years, Raymond's anti-transsexual screed often stood as THE feminist statement on transsexualism. However, beginning in the early to mid-1990s, there was an explosion in transgender advocacy, visibility, writing and speaking out. Within Women's Studies, ->-bleeped-<- was re-evaluated and seen in an entirely new light thanks to writings by luminaries such as Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, Martine Rothblatt, Judith Butler and many others.
I have a unique place in this complicated issue because I came out as transgender in 1992, 20 years ago, at the same time that I started life as an undergraduate and declared a Women's Studies major. I was lucky in that my Women's Studies professors were incredibly supportive of me as a transgender person and an emerging trans-feminist scholar and activist. Some of them knew little about the subject, but they approached it with an open mind and an inclusive feminist mindset. When I first read Raymond's text, I wept because I thought that my identities as a transgender woman and as a feminist were mutually exclusive. But when I began to dig further, I quickly found out that Raymond's view was NOT the only option, or even the most common, within feminism and Women's Studies. In intervening years, I have discovered that her book is so much junk science, motivated by hatred and a narrow ideological agenda based in outdated lesbian feminist ideology. As I read more, talked with diverse colleagues, and began to write papers about trans-feminism, I began to understand that not only were ->-bleeped-<- and feminism not mutually exclusive, they are in fact close cousins whose work meshes exceedingly well. Queer, feminist and trans movements and theoretical schools are revolutionary, and each compliments the other in helping scholars and activists alike to pose pivotal, critical questions about the nature of gender and sexuality in this society.
