When people ask me why, as a cishet woman, I’m so passionate about transgender rights, I always tell them it started with Harry Potter. As a musical theater kid, I always had a lot of gay friends, but it wasn’t until I immersed myself in the world of fandom and conventions that I made a lot of trans friends.
“It’s this story,” I used to say, “about a kid who always knew he was different. And then, after years of trying to hide who he is, someone comes along and says, ‘yep, you’re different… and it makes you so, so special.’ I think that resonates with transgender and gender diverse people, and with anyone who can relate to the complicated journey of learning to love yourself when you don’t fit easily into an assigned box.”
When I started going to meetups, conventions, and themed concerts, I met so many people who related to Harry. I met people who were transgender, nonbinary, asexual, pansexual, kinky, intersex, queer, and poly. I met neurodiverse people, people who struggle with their mental health, and people who found solace from a trauma history in this community.
As I got to know this extraordinary rainbow of humans, my horizons broadened. I geeked out on gender theory. I went to the Transcending Boundaries conference. I learned about Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. I read Kate Bornstein and Jennifer Finney Boylan. I saw Laverne Cox speak. I started to develop an understanding of intersectionality and why talking about it is important.
So when JK Rowling wrote That Essay Bashing Transgender People (link deliberately not included – you can Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about), my heart broke. A little bit of this was personal – fandom had been a huge part of my life, and now I’m struggling to decide if I even want to introduce Harry Potter to my child when he’s older. But mostly my heart broke for my friends who built entire facets of their trans identity around their experience of coming of age with Harry.
What is a TERF?
TERF stands for Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist.
In layman’s terms, this means someone who believes in women’s rights and gender equality, but only from a binary, determined-by-genitals-and-chromosomes perspective. From their point of view, someone who is born with XY chromosomes and a penis is a boy who grows up to be a man, and someone who is born with XX chromosomes and a vagina is a girl who grows up to be a woman. Full stop.
Most TERFs don’t define themselves this way, and many (including Rowling) claim that they accept trans people… they just don’t accept their identities. (Hate the sin, love the sinner?)
But they believe in equal pay for equal work (for ciswomen, at least), and that a (cis)woman’s place is in the House and also the Senate. And that gender is the radical idea that (cis)women are people. But none of this has anything to do with trans people, and especially not trans women, who grew up with “male privilege”?
Flawed logic and blind spots
Except that transwomen didn’t grow up with male privilege… When they watched Cinderella, they didn’t identify with Prince Charming. They identified with the title character, and internalized the same ideas that cis girls do about what their allowed roles are – all while simultaneously battling gender dysphoria.
(And these same folks fail to acknowledge the female socialization of trans men, and the impact that has on their sense of selves. All this is to say nothing of non-binary folks who are told, across the lifespan, to pick a box.)
Furthermore, biological sex isn’t binary. Most babies have either XX chromosomes and a vagina or XY chromosomes and a penis. But as many as 1% of babies are intersex. In other words, they diverge from those tidy boxes. Some intersex folks are born with ambiguous genitals; others “appear” decisively male or female and often don’t learn they’re intersex until they try to have a baby. But regardless, this is a not insignificant number of people, and any theory of gender that says “you’re male if you’re born with a penis; you’re female if you’re born with a vagina” ignores the countless people for whom, on a biological level, this is simply not true.
Because of these things, and other blind spots, I would argue that feminism that does not encompass people of all genders is not really feminism at all.
Feminism is believing that women are more than their physical characteristics.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone claiming to be a feminist who believes that a woman is defined by her waistline, breast size, eyelash length, or haircut. And the same can be said of “functions” that are considered to be female. A cis woman who doesn’t menstruate, can’t (or chooses not to) become pregnant, doesn’t produce milk to feed her child, or experiences vaginal dryness is still universally considered to be a woman.
It’s inherent to the ideas of feminism that women are valued for their minds, their contributions to society, their personalities, their value systems, their ability to connect with others, and hundreds of other non-physical attributes. So how can anyone claiming to be a feminist say that womanhood exists solely in a person’s physical body? This claim lacks internal consistency.
TERF mentality is grounded in the patriarchy.
The patriarchy says men have to be strong, athletic, sexually proficient, confident, breadwinning, bulldozing, stoic, financially successful, and unquestioningly heterosexual. Any deviation from these characteristics calls into question whether you are a “real man”.
The patriarchy says women have to be feminine, sweet, attractive, socially adept, sexy but not promiscuous, nurturing, eternally youthful, subservient, and able to make everyone around them comfortable. Any deviation from these characteristics calls into question whether you are “good enough” as a woman.
In other words, the patriarchy serves no one.
I mean, it serves straight, white, able-bodied, cisgender men better than most – but even these people lose a lot by having to bury emotions, and by not being able to explore and pursue the whole array of interests and personality traits that should be available to them.
The patriarchy is inherently homophobic and transphobic. It says that any deviation from the prescribed forms of gender expression is unacceptable. And for this reason, TERFs are an extension of the patriarchy.
What to do about this
Remember that using inclusive language matters. Try to choose gender neutral terms whenever possible, not only when referring to traditionally gendered professions (“housekeeper” is better than “cleaning lady,” for example) or in greetings (“Have a nice day, sir” versus just “Have a nice day”), but also when referring to things that we think of as inherently gendered.
When I was pregnant last year, I was mindful of talking about “pregnant people”, and very aware of how often people used the phrase “pregnant women” instead. (Also, can we maybe stop having gender reveal parties?)
Thinx and other menstrual product brands have been great about marketing their products to “people with periods”. In fact, this verbiage was the impetus for JK Rowling’s transphobic rant.
Being mindful about accurate pronouns also matters – but what matters more is shifting the way you think of someone to align more closely with their identity so that the pronouns come as easily as they do for the cisgender people in your life.
If these things are uncomfortable, that’s okay. Anything that’s new feels uncomfortable at first. Practice it until it feels more comfortable. Learn about people’s lived experiences with an open heart, and if someone has the courage to tell you that you’ve hurt them, listen with humility.
As for Harry Potter, I don’t know what I’ll do. That’s a bigger question that’s tied up in how to grieve fallen heroes and whether “cancel culture” is the best reaction when a person does a bad thing. But I do know that JK Rowling has publicly and loudly perpetuated a transphobic narrative that does actual harm to people I love and care about. And I won’t allow myself to be complicit by staying silent.