Sex Essentialism: TERF patriarchy and smelly vaginas
TERFs battle over who has the correct vaginal odor in order to determine female validity. I’ve noted many times that while Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) […]
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How “Feminism and gender politics” appears across the Collective corpus
This article appeared 2 year(s) after the theme’s highest annual presence in the registered corpus in 2013.
Relative presence by year
Peak year indexed to 100Presence by member publication
- Transadvocate.com178
- The TERFs97
- Cristan’s Research3
Frequently co-occurring concepts
- Transgender identity and history178
- Community and organizing132
- Violence, safety, and dehumanization90
- Media, rhetoric, and discourse79
- Culture, identity, and representation63
- Law and civil rights61
- Education and youth46
- History, archives, and memory45
- Healthcare and medicine41
- Science, evidence, and expertise35
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- Interpretive analysis128
- Historical analysis78
- Critical theory55
- Media and discourse analysis50
- Clinical and medical analysis45
- Psychological analysis45
- Qualitative and interview research22
- Ethical analysis20
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- Public accommodations and facilities40
- Civil rights and anti-discrimination27
- Criminal justice and public safety22
- Research ethics and data governance14
- Housing and social services9
- Education policy8
- Labor and employment policy7
- Elections and democratic governance6
Values measure relative presence in the registered Collective corpus, not public search interest or public opinion.
Sources that reference this article
References over time
Available scholarly citations plus verified non-scholarly sourcesDebunking the Dialectic of Design and Dimorphism
Given this, it is always interesting to me to see members of other oppressed groups using these dialectics against trans people. I’ve always noticed that TERFs talk about the bodies of trans women the way that misogynists talk about the bodies of cis women. This, then, seems to be why…
TERF Academic Rewrites History
Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all…
Are Misogynist, Homophobe, & TERF slurs?
I say this to call attention to the “firm, unsentimental, continuous recognition” that those who share in the effects of woman-hating share a destiny, like it or not. A sex essentialist cis woman named Janice Raymond infamously asserted that “the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating…
On Free Speech, No-Platforming, and the Media’s “Transgender Debate”
Some of you might remember that Germaine Greer, a TERF the Radical Feminist Andrea Dworkin took to task for trying to pass off patriarchy as feminism, made some small waves for appealing to the patriarchal vagina smell trope in order to claim that trans women aren’t real women. However, what’s…
(Re)Introducing inclusive Radical Feminism
As a trans historian, it’s distressing that it is now common for anti-trans narratives to be presented in the media as representing radical feminism. Radical feminist institutions like Olivia Records and the West Coast Lesbian Conference were staunchly trans-inclusive, and it’s unfortunate that this radical feminist tradition is given so…
Rowan Atkinson makes more sense than BBC’s “Woman’s Hour”
Indeed I would wager that the proportion of trans people who, like me, consider themselves to be social constructivists rather than essentialists is very much higher than among cis people. Of course, one doesn’t have to peer into the festering mire that is TERF discourse to realize that this is…
#CisPrivilege, UK’s Green Party and freedom of speech
Some of you might remember that Germaine Greer, a TERF the Radical Feminist Andrea Dworkin took to task for trying to pass off patriarchy as feminism, made some small waves for appealing to the patriarchal vagina smell trope in order to claim that trans women aren’t real women. However, what’s…
You might be a TERF if…
30.) Appeal to vaginal odors as being a sexed essence which demarcates an authentic sexed status, so that trans women aren’t actual women because the vaginas of trans women are so smelly that it causes “serious smell issues” while, simultaneously being so non-smelly that a trans woman can never know…
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Adds research, documentation, or primary-source context.
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Provides a contextually related perspective from elsewhere in the Collective.
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