Julie Bindel, long standing Radical Feminist since the late 70's into the 80's and notorious transphobe/transmisogynist, wrote a long think piece about just how transphobic Andrea Dworkin was back in 2024 [ here ] (original publication in 2023).
Bindel writes about how she and Dworkin bonded over making fun of other women at a conference Dworkin was speaking at. Bindel writes:
During that week, we became friends, laughing until we cried at the absurdity of men’s behaviour. As you might imagine, humour among feminists who campaign against rape and femicide tends to be quite dark. Pointing to the rabid identity politics of some women, such as those who began every question from the floor of the conference with, “As a working-class lesbian mother…” and such like, we came up with absurdities such as, “Speaking as a headless woman…”
This is a side note, but the blatant misogyny of "We spent the week laughing about the absurdity of men, here is an example of us making fun of other women" should not go over your heads here.
Bindel goes on to describe the "hate the sin, love the sinner" approach that she and Dworkin shared about trans people, writing:
Dworkin was a friend to the disaffected, the abused, the oppressed, the maligned, and the misunderstood. She hated bullying and would have extended empathy and understanding to any trans person experiencing it. In that respect, she was indeed a “trans ally”—as am I. But let’s be clear about one thing: Every political and intellectual bone in her body would have detested gender ideology.
Dworkin had huge empathy with individuals who attempted to step out of the gender cage, which she recognised as a social construct. She said what radical feminists have long understood: that “gender” as a set of externally imposed expectations should be abolished, because it causes harm to women and girls. Dworkin was, though, dead-set against the notion that, as part of the project to abolish gender, men could or should identify as women; and she would have been appalled at unnecessary medical “adjustments” to the body, when it was, to her mind, patriarchy as a whole that cried out for “adjustment”—indeed, abolition.
Bindel then goes on to talk about the quote from Dworkin's first book Woman Hating (1974) that gets passed around to argue that Dworkin supported trans people. In this quote Dworkin extends empathy to transsexual people and says:
"Every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions."
However, Bindel makes it clear that Dworkin's views evolved and changed — beginning with Dworkin's endorsement of the notoriously transmisogynist radfem book The Transsexual Empire: the Making of the She-Male by Janice Raymond in 1979.
In the earlier Women Hating, where she expressed her less-than-fully-developed views, Dworkin described transsexuality as an “emergency measure for an emergency condition.” I discussed this claim with her at the Brighton conference, because it had always intrigued me. She said, and I am paraphrasing but I recall the conversation very clearly, that until females were liberated as a sex class, and men were no longer required to uphold patriarchal values that harm women, both men and women would seek to escape the system of “gender.”
Meaning, in Dworkin's mind, transsexuality and transgender identity were simply a means of misguided people attempting "to escape the system of gender" — not any legitimate identity. Transsexuals and transgender people were, at best, pitied, NOT accepted by Dworkin.
The only thing I will ever wholeheartedly agree with Julia Bindel on is that we need to stop trying to shape Dworkin's legacy into something trans accepting. Because it's not. Andrea Dworkin was not an ally to trans people. Radical Feminism was never and will never be friendly to trans people.
If you can stomach transphobic shit, I recommend reading the article in full and doing your own research into the history it opens a window into.
You should know Radical Feminist history — not because you agree with the ideology, but so you don't buy into it when someone tries to sell it to you disguised under a false veneer of trans acceptance.
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