For some reason, the Medium algo saw fit to pop this article onto my front page this morning. Two years have passed since it was published, so, for all I know, it no longer addresses a real issue, but a quick search suggests that TERF is still a thing, so…

TERFism addresses the central issue of feminism, viz., the social relevance of sexual assignment. If it makes no difference what sex you are, i.e., if all gender channeling is societal, then how do trans people even know that they are trans? Are gays just dishonest trans people? What is the difference, to themselves, between a gay male and someone who perceives herself as a woman in a man’s body? Obviously, it’s not choice of sex partners — I understand there are gay trans people, i.e., lesbians in male bodies — but it seems fair to ask how such people know their “sex” without the thing that alerted them to their miscoding having social consequences?

So, radical feminists must, I think, reject the idea that anyone, particularly a child, can “know” that they have the “wrong” sexual equipment. If boys aren’t snips and snails, and girls aren’t sugar and spice, then how does a child know which, if either, he, she or they are? Trans-sexuality is simply incompatible with “it’s all nurture” feminism. How else, then, can the radical feminist see the matter? (And, as I imagine most radical feminists would argue, if you don’t accept the “it’s all nurture” argument, what’s left of “feminism” other than drawing lines between acceptable and unacceptable stereotyping and social coercion?)