Summary
Gender-critical ideology, while claiming feminist roots, harmfully excludes transgender individuals, undermines feminist solidarity, distracts from patriarchal structures, and risks aligning with conservative agendas.
The Impact of Gender-Critical Ideology on Women and Society
Gender-critical ideology, also known as TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) ideology, is a belief that sex is immutable and that transgender identities are false. These narratives are expressed by several high-profile [check notes] “feminists” such as JK Rowling, Jo Bartosch, Julie Bindel and several others.
While claiming roots in radical feminism, gender-critical ideology represents a harmful divergence that negatively impacts not only the transgender community but also cisgender women and society as a whole.
By centring a narrow and biologically deterministic view of sex and gender, gender-critical ideology fosters division, undermines feminist solidarity, misdirects focus from the fundamental structures of patriarchy, and ultimately aligns with far-right conservative agendas that harm all marginalised groups, together with human rights to bodily autonomy.
At its core, gender-critical ideology is characterised by the belief that sex assigned at birth is the sole determinant of womanhood and that transgender women are not women because they were assigned male at birth. Even trans women who have had gender-affirming surgery and have legally changed sex by way of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 are still targeted online by gender-critical activists.
Gender-critical authors and journalists also take a very one-sided view, often spreading wild misinformation about both trans women and trans men – a narrative their followers blindly follow. A great example is Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which has been roundly criticised by many feminists and trans people, including myself.
Gender-critical ideology stems from a focus on biological characteristics, particularly reproductive capacity, as the defining feature of being a woman. This leads to the exclusion of transgender women from women’s spaces based on the premise that their experiences and identities are fundamentally different and potentially threatening to cisgender women.
This exclusionary stance has profoundly negative consequences for transgender people. It denies their lived experiences and self-identification, causing significant psychological distress and invalidation. Furthermore, by excluding transgender women from women’s spaces that are meant to offer support and safety, gender-critical ideology exacerbates their vulnerability to violence and discrimination. Transgender women, particularly transgender women of colour, suffer disproportionately high rates of sexual and physical violence. Indeed, statistics show that trans people in the UK suffer crime at twice the rate of cisgender people. To exclude trans women from spaces meant to combat such violence is not only hypocritical but actively harmful.
Recently, one radical feminist, Jean Hacket, was actively leafleting in Sheffield, demanding that trans women prisoners (all of whom are no risk to women) should be excluded from female prisons. The reality is that, in total, there are just five trans women in prisons in England and Wales. Meanwhile, research from Dr Olga Sharinova (Leicester University) and Dr Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea (Open University) showed that 29% of trans women held in the male estate were being sexually abused.
Beyond the direct harm to transgender individuals, gender-critical ideology is also detrimental to cisgender women and the broader feminist movement.
By fixating on a biologically essentialist definition of womanhood and creating a huge division within feminism, it undermines the crucial principle of solidarity with other feminists who welcome trans people. Indeed, it is fair to say that many mainstream feminists detest the gender-critical movement and those who partake in it.
Early radical feminists understood that without solidarity between women from different backgrounds, no movement to liberate women could ever succeed. Gender-critical ideology fractures this potential for collective action, diverting energy away from the shared goal of dismantling patriarchy and policing the boundaries of womanhood, often leading to attacks not just on trans people but cisgender women who dont look “feminine enough”.
Moreover, the narrow focus on biological sex misdirects attention from the societal structures of patriarchy that oppress all women, regardless of their gender identity. Radical feminism, at its root, seeks to understand and challenge the “root structures of women’s oppression”. By fixating on who is “really” a woman, gender-critical ideology risks obscuring the broader systems of male dominance that impact everyone.
There are huge dangers of reducing feminism to a singular narrative or failing to identify who speaks for women without clear links to feminist goals, tactics, and histories. Gender-critical ideology presents such a reductionist and exclusionary narrative.
Perhaps most concerningly, given the state of world politics is that, gender-critical ideology aligns with far-right, fascist viewpoints that seek to uphold traditional and binary notions of sex and gender. There are many instances where trans-exclusionary discourse has occurred outside of feminist spaces and been generated within reactionary culture-war conflicts, such as in the debate over transgender rights and in the context of religious freedom laws as has manifested itself in Project 2025 as currently being played out in the United States. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is one such organisation that advocates this narrative. A named “hate group” in the United States, they operate in the UK with an income budget of £1.3 million pounds. It is unknown how much of this budget is passed on to the gender-critical activists, but almost certainly, it’s a significant sum.
By echoing arguments about the immutability of sex assigned at birth and the perceived threat of transgender identities, the gender-criticals find themselves supporting agendas that are ultimately harmful to women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQLGBTQ LGBTQIA+ is an inclusive term that includes people of all genders and sexualities, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, and allies. While each letter in LGBTQIA+ stands for a specific group of people, the term encompasses the entire spectrum of gender fluidity and sexual identities. https://abbreviations.yourdictionary.com/what-does-lgbtqia-stand-for-full-acronym-explained.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT+ rights, and other progressive causes.
The hypocrisy of radical feminists manifests very clearly in their anti-pornography work, joining hands with the Christian right (such as the ADF and Heritage), illustrating the potential for alignment with conservative forces when focusing on narrow definitions of gender and sexuality.
For society at large, gender-critical ideology fosters division and prejudice against a vulnerable minority group. It contributes to a climate of misunderstanding and hostility towards transgender people, hindering the progress of broader social justice movements aimed at inclusivity and equality for all. By promoting exclusionary practices, gender-critical ideology undermines the potential for a truly intersectional feminism that recognises and addresses the multiple forms of oppression faced by different demographics.
The divisions between cisgender and transgender people are detrimental to the overall aims of the liberation of all women in their diversity and only make the fight against broader systems of oppression harder.
To conclude, while claiming a radical feminist lineage, gender-critical ideology represents a harmful deviation.
It is detrimental to transgender individuals by denying their identities and increasing their vulnerability. It harms cisgender women and the feminist movement by undermining solidarity and misdirecting focus from the systemic roots of patriarchal oppression. It negatively impacts society by fostering division and aligning with conservative agendas, including the loss of abortion rights.
A genuinely radical and liberatory feminism must be inclusive of all who identify as women, working in solidarity to dismantle the structures of patriarchy that harm everyone, regardless of their gender identity.
The focus should remain on the shared struggle against male dominance rather than on creating exclusionary definitions of womanhood.
