Trans Genders and Gender Abolition

Part two of a three-part talk with UK feminist Mallory Moore on trans feminism, trans conflict, and trans care.

In this analogy, gender is an orange. It will make sense eventually. Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash

Note: This is Part Two of a three-part story. You can read Part One here and Part Three here.

When I came out in 2020, I’d already had a relatively long career as a public feminist. I had been part of the first wave of underpaid or unpaid 2000s-era “feminist bloggers” who paved the way for the eventual Hairpin-Toast-Rookie-XOJane-etc. explosion of third-wave feminist-branded media. In the year or so before I came out, I had noticed that TERFs were getting increasingly good at imitating the style and talking points of that movement, and it mattered to me to say that its actual pioneers had often been trans people, whether or not we were out at the time. I didn’t have any illusions as to my own significance, but I didn’t want to sit quietly in the closet while trans people were cast as a threat to feminist movements we had built.

The idea that transphobes have a monopoly on feminism, or even “radical feminism,” is TERF propaganda: There have always been trans women and trans allies in feminist spaces, from Beth Elliott organizing the West Coast Lesbian Conference to Sandy Stone working at Olivia Records. Transmasculine people have always contributed to…