Prescription: This paper is recommended to be consumed with (preferably after) Kaitlyn Seever’s fantastic work “Gender Ideology as a Political Weapon: The Global Rise of the Anti-Gender Movement.” This paper can be viewed as an extension of Kaitlyn’s work to some extent by expanding and highlighting the transwomen aspect in particular. 

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Introduction

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), also known as the sex-based feminists or gender-critical feminists, are feminists who criticize the inclusion of transwomen in the feminist movement. Their critiques reflect a tension inherent in feminist discourse today. Positioned as a defense of ciswomen’s rights, sex-based feminism claims that the rights of transwomen are fundamentally incompatible with the rights of ciswomen, and that any efforts to expand their rights not only undermine the rights of ciswomen but also reinforces patriarchy. However, this paper argues that sex-based feminism inadvertently reinforces patriarchal structures, rather than resisting them. Transwomen are not the products of patriarchy; instead, the product of patriarchy is the sex-based feminists’ perception that there is an unresolvable tension between cis and trans women.  

 

Sex-Based Feminism: Transwomen Holds the Knife of Patriarchy

One of the most famous pieces that advocates against the inclusion of transwomen in the feminist paradigm is the book The Transexual Empire by Janice Raymond. Published in 1979, this book represents early sex-based feminists’ perception of how the inclusion of transwomen negatively impacts the rights of ciswomen. To Raymond, biological men’s transition to become women is in and of itself  a product of patriarchal perception of femininity: “...a male fantasy of feeling like a woman trapped in a man’s body, the fantasy rendered flesh by a further male medical fantasy of surgically fashioning a male body into a female one.” [1] The “male imagination” of the female body, in practice, translates into the process of therapies and surgeries, creating artificial female bodies that are consistent with this imagination. Raymond contends that it is in this process in which the gendered stereotypes of what femininity looks like from a male perspective are being reinforced, which is precisely a dynamic that feminism has been trying to counter.[2] This argument is also echoed by contemporary sex-based feminists. For example, in Gender Hurts, Sheila Jefferey similarly argues that “Feminists have fought to remove the definition of what a woman is from these masculine institutions and develop their own understandings” and that biological men’s claims to self-define gender “subject womanhood to men’s power to define once again.”[3] For the sex-based feminists, being inclusive to transwomen therefore becomes a surrender to patriarchy and a backslide of feminism. 

 

The second major issue that the sex-based feminists often have with transwomen is the lack of “female reality” (or history, or experiences) among transgender women as well as their continuous access to male privileges. For the sex-based feminists, on the one hand, transwomen are not women and should not be considered women precisely due to the lack of experiences of subordination and suffering, experiences that ciswomen often have to go through due to their biological body. This argument implicitly suggests that such experiences are essential for the construction of womanhood and therefore for determining one’s eligibility to be a woman. For example, Raymond argues that “It is this female reality that the surgically-constructed woman does not possess, not because women innately carry some essence of femininity but because these men have not had to live in a female body with all the history that entails.”[4] Here, she uses the term “female reality” to particularly refer to ciswomen’s history of subordination and oppression.

 

On the other hand, sex-based feminists believe that transwomen’s continuing access to men’s privileges further disqualifies them from being considered eligible for womanhood. To Raymond, transgendering offers biological men a means to remain invasive toward and maintain power over ciswomen while camouflaging themselves under a noninvasive, vulnerable veil:

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Because transsexuals have lost their physical ‘members’ does not mean that they have lost their ability to penetrate women—women’s mind, women’s space, women’s sexuality. Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women so that they seem noninvasive.[5]

 

Similarly, Jefferey also argues that:

Use by men of feminine pronouns conceals the masculine privilege bestowed upon them by virtue of having been placed in and brought up in the male sex caste. If men are addressed as ‘she’, then all this privilege, which affects their speaking position and may be crucial to their choice to be ‘women’ in the first place, is disappeared.[6]

 

Along the same line, she further adopts specific examples to illustrate the privileges she argues transwomen possess over ciswomen. In her interview with wives whose husbands have transitioned, she found that these wives often struggle with their husbands’ transition. However, the wives’ perspectives are often not honored; rather the needs of biological men who are transgendered and deemed in need of protection are honored. Jeffreys contends that whose voice is honored and cared for is a masculine privilege that “elicits the approbation of patriarchal communities and organisations, and the blaming of women.”[7]Another example Jeffreys articulates is the idea of the “patriarchy dividends.” She points that while the wage gap tends to be gendered, transwomen can still receive patriarchy dividends in the workplace. Transwomen can escape the sexualized comments that are often common among their ciswomen colleagues; they also tend to receive greater resources and respect for their works compared to their ciswomen counterparts.[8]

 

Interestingly, for the sex-based feminists, patriarchy contributes to the emergence of transwomen. Raymond conveys this belief clearly in her book: “I use the words patriarchal society to define my view of the social context in which the problem of transsexualism arises.”[9] She also goes further and argues that “Transsexualism is thus the ultimate, and we might even say the logical, conclusion of male possession of women in a patriarchal society. Literally, men here possess women.”[10] In a sum, for the sex-based feminists, patriarchy causes the emergence of transwomen and any attempt to include transwomen in the feminism paradigm will only backfire feminism by reinforcing patriarchy. 

 

Beyond academia, sex-based feminism also prevails in everyday life. J.K. Rowling’s active participation in advocating against the inclusion of transgender women provides an example of this issue’s prevalence in social contexts. This issue was recently highlighted in response to Imane Khelif’s, an intersex, female-identifying boxer, victory over her counterpart. Khelif ultimately won the 2024 Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing.[11] Rowling denied the womanhood of the female-identifying boxer when she posted on X  that “The International Olympic Committee has violated all sports rules by putting a man against a woman...”[12] The fairness critique is another common argument that the sex-based feminists often adopt to argue against the inclusion of transwomen. The inclusion of transwomen in single-sex competitions, including sports and beauty pageants, is deemed as unfair for the ciswomen participants and often phrased as a further attempt of biological men to compete with the already limited resources available resources for ciswomen.[13] Fundamentally, this argument echoes the idea that transwomen often still have access to the male benefits: either implicit or explicit, physical or mental. 

 

In addition to her advocacy against Imane Khelif, JK Rowling has actively pushed back against multiple pieces of legislation designed to protect the rights of transwomen in the United Kingdom. One example is the Scottish Hate Crime Act that came into force in 2024. The Act aims to strengthen Scotland’s pre-existing protections against hate crimes by expanding the definition of protected characteristics to include age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity.[14] JK Rowling responded to the passage of this law on X: 

In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls’ single-sex spaces... Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of 'woman' to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women's and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.[15]

 

Based on Rowling’s argument, the central message of the sex-based feminists is clear: the “emergence” or “creation” of transwomen is itself a product of patriarchy; expanding the rights of transgender women and opening up chances for men to claim themselves as women will make cis-women less safe; expanding protections on transwomen or considering transwomen as women will only reinforce patriarchy. Transwomen should therefore never be considered women, and the inclusion of transwomen is fundamentally anti-feminist. 

 

Who is Guilty? Patriarchy Holds the Knife

The sex-based feminists’ attacks against transwomen is often grounded on the victimhood of women. From their perspective, womanhood signifies a uniquely important identity because of women’s experiences as the victims of subordination and oppression. Jeffreys makes this point the most explicitly: “As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position.”[16] In making the case that vulnerability is an inherent characteristic of womanhood, sex-based feminists  reinforce the very problem of gender normativity and patriarchy that they criticize. 

 

In addition, the sex-based feminists wrongly believe that transwomen are a reflection of patriarchy. However, the true product of patriarchy is the assumption that the rights of transwomen and ciswomen conflict. Sex-based feminists believe that the privileges and resources available to women are scarce and therefore they attempt to gate-keep femininity and womanhood based on a narrow definition of sex so that transwomen are not eligible to compete for the same resources as ciswomen.  However, this dynamic ultimately conforms to the logic imposed by patriarchy: rights and privileges are finite and are distributed from the top, and only the designated groups will be able to enjoy these. Under the sex-based feminist logic, how women’s rights and resources are made scarce by patriarchy is never addressed; the patriarchal logic is never dismantled. 

 

Furthermore, sex-based feminism supports patriarchy by adopting two types of sexism: traditional sexism and oppositional sexism.[17]The former says that masculinity is better than femininity, while the latter emphasizes the gender binary system, arguing that one must either fit into the male or the female category. Both types of sexism are essential for the rule of patriarchy. The sex-based feminism reinforces patriarchy by adopting both forms of sexism implicitly. They presume that women tend to be vulnerable and deserve more protection, which is what traditional sexism suggests; they seek to exclude transwomen from the category of women and label them as potential threats to ciswomen’s rights, which is what oppositional sexism implies. 

 

The issue is further complicated by the political right wings’ successful institutionalization of sex-based feminism. In the United Kingdom, for example, on April 16, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of women refers to “a biological woman and biological sex.” This definition explicitly excludes transwomen from the legal definition of women and results in widespread consequences regarding how equality laws will be applied in the country.[18]

 

Similar backlashes have occurred in the United States. On January 20, 2025, the same day of President Trump’s inauguration, he issued an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The executive order condemns ideologies that “deny the biological reality” and “permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.” The executive order targets transwomen in particular by advocating for dismantling the gender ideologies and returning to the era in which only biological sex should be considered. 

 

The language of the executive order mirrors the arguments of the sex-based feminists. Not only does the executive order contend that the gender ideologies are “replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts,” it also similarly justifies its anti-gender and anti-trans women stance by evoking the rights of ciswomen. In the words of the executive order, the gender ideologies should be considered as efforts “to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” which have “a corrosive impact” by undermining laws and policies that are designed to provide “sex-based opportunities” for the “biological category of ‘woman’.” With that being said, President Trump ended the purpose section of the executive order by saying, “Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”[19] 

 

The similarities between the arguments from the sex-based feminists and the justification used by the executive order is not a coincidence. In fact, it represents the deliberate effort to weaponize sex-based feminism to advance the interests of the political right wing (which is nicely captured by Kaitlyn Seever’s work “Gender Ideology as a Political Weapon: The Global Rise of the Anti-Gender Movement”). Camouflaging itself as an attempt to protect women’s rights, the political nature of the executive order is often ignored and may be mistakenly seen as an authentic effort for women. However, in practice, such statements decrease the possibility of allegiance formations among women, reinforcing the heterosexual, patriarchal framework. 

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Conclusion

This paper demonstrates that the conflict between ciswomen and transwomen perceived by the sex-based feminists is itself a product of patriarchal frameworks that pit marginalized groups against one another. While the sex-based feminists criticize the patriarchal structures that have historically subordinated women and consider the inclusion of transwomen as a win for patriarchy, they simultaneously reinforce the patriarchal structures by adopting traditional and oppositional sexism. Their framing of womanhood as inherently linked to biological suffering, their insistence on gatekeeping who qualifies as a woman, and their acceptance of scarcity-based models of rights distribution all reflect patriarchal logic rather than resisting it. Furthermore, their portrayal of transwomen as threats to ciswomen’s rights fails to address the root causes of women's vulnerability—patriarchal domination itself—and instead displaces the blame onto another marginalized group. True feminist resistance must seek to dismantle the foundations of patriarchy altogether—an effort that requires solidarity, not division, among all women.
 

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Bibliography

Bialystok, Lauren. “Transgender Inclusion in Single-Sex Competition: The Case of Beauty Pageants.” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 3 (2016): 605–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24871359.

Haq, Sana Noor. “UK Supreme Court Says Legal Definition of 'Woman' Excludes Trans Women, in Landmark Ruling.” CNN, April 16, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/16/uk/uk-supreme-court-ruling-definition-woman-intl/index.html

Jeffreys, Sheila. Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. London: Routledge, 2014.

Raymond, Janice G. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979.

Ritman, Alex. "J.K. Rowling in New Controversy After Appearing at Paris Event With Woman Convicted of Assaulting Trans Woman." The Hollywood Reporter, March 13, 2024. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jk-rowling-paris-boxing-controversy-1235964201/.

Rowling, J.K. (@jk_rowling), “The International Olympic Committee has violated all sports rules by putting a man against a woman...,” X, November 18, 2024, https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1858554525201695168

Rowling, J.K. 2024. “Scotland’s Hate Crime Act comes into effect today. Women gain no additional protections, of course, but well-known trans activist Beth Douglas, darling of prominent Scottish politicians, falls within a protected category. Phew!” X (formerly Twitter), April 1, 2024. https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615.​

Serano, Julia. 2007. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press.

 

Endnotes

1.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), xx.

2.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), xv.

3.  Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London: Routledge, 2014), 7.

4.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), xx.

5.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), xx.

6.  Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London: Routledge, 2014), 9

7.  Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London: Routledge, 2014), 91.

8.  Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London: Routledge, 2014), 191.

9.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 14.

10.  Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 30.

11.  Alex Ritman, "J.K. Rowling in New Controversy After Appearing at Paris Event With Woman Convicted of Assaulting Trans Woman," The Hollywood Reporter, March 13, 2024, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jk-rowling-paris-boxing-controversy-1235964201/.

12.  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling), “The International Olympic Committee has violated all sports rules by putting a man against a woman...,” X, November 18, 2024, https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1858554525201695168.

13.  Lauren Bialystok,“Transgender Inclusion in Single-Sex Competition: The Case of Beauty Pageants.” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 3 (2016): 605–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24871359.

14.  Scottish Parliament. 2025. Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. Accessed April 25. https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/hate-crime-and-public-order-scotland-bill.​

15.  J.K. Rowling. “Scotland’s Hate Crime Act comes into effect today. Women gain no additional protections, of course, but well-known trans activist Beth Douglas, darling of prominent Scottish politicians, falls within a protected category. Phew!” X (formerly Twitter), April 1, 2024. https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615.

16.  Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London: Routledge, 2014), 9.

17.  Julia Serano, 2007. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press.

18.  Haq, Sana Noor. “UK Supreme Court Says Legal Definition of 'Woman' Excludes Trans Women, in Landmark Ruling.” CNN, April 16, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/16/uk/uk-supreme-court-ruling-definition-woman-intl/index.html

19.  Donald J. Trump. Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. Executive Order 14168. January 20, 2025. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/.​