The ontological woman

A history of deauthentication, dehumanization, and violence

Bibliographic Data

ID3415466
AuthorsCristan Williams (Transgender Archive, USA, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume68
Issue4
Pages718-734
Publication date2020-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038026120938292
OpenAlexW3048526635
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited8

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) make use of an ethical, moralistic framework to support specific rhetoric and behavior. Taken together, these form a self-referential ideology that functions to protect an essentialist ontology, which reliably harms cisgender, transgender, and feminist communities. Through an examination of the historical record of US radical feminist and TERF discourses, including first-hand accounts, this article considers how the ontological framework that inspires TERF rhetoric and behavior has functioned as a cycle of moral fulfillment, even as it necessitates the eradication of trans bodies. The article analyzes how TERF morality, rhetoric, and action construct social forms through a sexed binary by relying on an appeal to the natural, which serves to objectify ontological embodiment. It also foregrounds the different historical and contemporary positionalities of trans-exclusionary and trans-inclusive radical feminisms, and concludes with a reminder of the complementary attributes of trans feminism and radical feminism that are evidenced by decades of cooperation

Appeal · Dehumanization · Epistemology · Essentialism · Feminism · Ideology · Morality · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Philosophy

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