The line between the Right’s fascistic politics and so-called “gender-critical” feminism is thin — especially in debates over sex, gender, and recognition

In the past few days, the Supreme Court has heard arguments both for and against allowing transgender individuals to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity. Arguments on both sides draw on claims about fairness and competitiveness, performance data, hormone levels, and the timing of medical transition. Reading coverage of these cases made me think about the deeper foundation shared — often implicitly — by both camps in this debate. The controversy repeatedly returns to two questions: What is sex? And what is gender?

These questions caused me to revisit Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender? — particularly Chapter Five, “TERFs and British Matters of Sex: How Critical Is Gender-Critical Feminism?” While trans participation in sports is not Butler’s primary focus, the chapter nevertheless speaks directly to the conceptual terrain on which contemporary sports bans are justified and contested.

Butler opens the chapter by situating the anti-gender ideology movement:

It would be wrong to assume that the anti-gender ideology movement has taken a single form as it appears in different regions and countries. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 134)

This is largely self-evident. Churches and religious institutions, along with national governments, approach the anti-gender ideology movement in different ways. The rhetoric, institutional practices, and kinds of punishment vary widely, making clear that the movement is not homogeneous. Yet this heterogeneity is not limited to religious institutions or governments. It also appears among those who self-identify as feminists.

Butler writes:

The debate between feminists who call themselves “gender critical” and those who insist that feminist alliances must include trans and genderqueer people has become a matter of intense public conflict, bullying, censorship campaigns, and claims of hostile workplace environments. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 134–135)

A heated contemporary debate has emerged between two feminist positions. On one side are those who describe themselves as “gender-critical” feminists; on the other are feminists who explicitly align themselves with transgender and genderqueer people. Feminism has historically functioned as a political alliance rather than a singular doctrine, so the turn toward exclusion is noticeable.

Butler identifies this conflict as especially pronounced in the United Kingdom, where debates over sex and gender have silenced academic voices — particularly those grounded in critical theory. These voices are increasingly excluded altogether from public discourse on gender and sex. Butler continues by defining the terms of what constitutes “gender-critical feminists”:

The gender-critical feminists seek to dispute trans identity, particularly the claims of trans women, arguing that sex is real and that gender is constructed, by which they mean both false and artificial. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 136)

Gender-critical feminists “dispute trans identity,” forming a political alliance restricted to those defined as female at birth. Paradoxically, this position treats gender as a social construction while insisting that sex is a fixed reality. Butler challenges this distinction, arguing that both sex and gender are constructed. (More analysis on this will follow.)

Butler writes:

Although public debates in the United Kingdom have increasingly distinguished between feminists on the one hand and gender studies proponents on the other, such a distinction is nonsense, and plays to the decision that trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) seek to exacerbate. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 137)

The United Kingdom has become a prominent site for conflict between feminists and so-called “gender-critical” feminists. The central claim advanced by gender-critical feminism is that there exists a true feminism grounded in the interests of people assigned female at birth. For these thinkers, anatomical classification is treated as immutable, while movements that include trans and genderqueer people are dismissed as the product of “gender studies” ideology. This rhetoric is akin to that of the far right, which frames gender studies as a form of indoctrination.

This distinction obscures the fact that the categories male/female and man/woman do not emerge from individual choice. These categories precede us as social assignments. Rather than eternal truths, these categories are imposed and reiterated through norms. Butler writes:

Gender categories change through time, and feminism has always relied on the historically changing character of gender categories in order to demand changes in the way that women and men are defined and treated. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 138)

Ironically, those who insist on the immutability of sex concede that gender has changed over time. Yet feminism itself has only been possible by recognizing that norms, institutions, and even the criteria that define the categories of male and female are historically contingent and continually reshaped. At this juncture, Butler takes aim at the gender-critical individuals:

If gender-critical feminists wish to be critical, then they should give some thought first to the history of the term “critique” and its place in struggles for social transformation.

With critique comes a new way of understanding the world, one that can be essential to struggles for social change and the opening up of new possible ways of living. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 141)

To be critical requires an understanding of how the concept of “critique” has operated within sites of political struggle. Once sex and gender are understood as products of a social order structured by rigid norms and institutions — maintained through disciplinary mechanisms — it becomes possible to apprehend the world differently. Openness to alternative epistemic frameworks is a necessary condition for engaging in struggles for equality.

This line of analysis culminates in Butler drawing a parallel between gender-critical feminists and the Right. Though, there are important differences:

To be fair: whereas the Right refers to its position as “anti-gender ideology,” the trans-exclusionary feminists focus on “gender identity ideology,” marking a difference, perhaps, but letting the echo resound with right-wing and often fascist politics. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 142)

The primary difference between gender-critical feminists and the Right lies in how each articulates its position. The Right frames its stance via “anti-gender ideology,” whereas gender-critical feminism presents its stance as a trans-exclusionary politics grounded in a kind of feminist discourse. This distinction seems largely nominal as both positions produce fascistic politics.

Butler writes:

It is paradoxical to see conservative Supreme Court justices secure trans rights against discrimination on the basis of existing sex discrimination law, while feminists who claim ownership over the categories of sex exercise a paternalistic prerogative to strip people of their rights to self-definition in order to fight against a phantasmatic attack on “womanhood.” (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 143)

Interestingly, even a conservative Supreme Court has affirmed certain protections for trans people, insofar as such protections align with existing precedent on sex discrimination. Yet some who identify as feminists continue to advance the myth of sex as immutable, a framework within which trans people are pathologized. Although this chapter does not present a singular methodological approach to gender analysis, Butler situates her argument within her broader theoretical project, particularly her engagement with the psychoanalytic concept of the “phantasm” developed in earlier chapters. Butler argues that gender-critical thinkers perceive a “phantasmatic attack” on the category of womanhood itself — an imagined threat to the coherence and stability of what constitutes womanness.

Gender-critical feminists frequently claim that trans people “steal” something from so-called “real women” assigned female at birth. As Butler argues, this framing treats sex as a form of property — something one owns and can have stolen. Within this logic, trans existence appears as a theft of sex. Yet what is really being lost or stolen? If the category of sex precedes any individual birth and acquires its significance prior to one’s own existence, then what is at stake in its supposed appropriation? Sex is not property — it is a classificatory regime.

Butler writes:

Unfortunately, the anti-trans argument takes a further step, insisting that trans women are male predators in disguise, or that they could be. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 144)

These arguments extend beyond claims that trans people appropriate or “steal” sex; they specifically portray trans women as inherently predatory. Butler connects this logic to earlier moments in feminist history, citing figures such as Andrea Dworkin, whose critique of pornography aligned with the Christian Right. While Dworkin’s intentions were not to target or endanger specific groups, her framework was politically weaponized. This occurred at a moment when LGBTQ+ representation in media — including pornography — was especially important.

Furthermore:

Like Trump, Orbán, Meloni, the Vatican, and all others on the Right who refuse self-determination as the basis for sex reassignment, trans-exclusionary feminists argue that gender mutability is an illegitimate exercise of freedom, an overreach, an appropriation, and so they support bureaucratic, psychiatric, and medical barriers to exercising that right. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 145)

Butler lists powerful actors and institutions that work to preserve sex and gender as immutable categories. These forces reject self-determination — the recognition of one’s own placement within or beyond a given category — as a legitimate basis for sex reassignment. Gender-critical feminists align with this logic insofar as they treat gender mutability as unnecessary for legal protection. In doing so, TERFs support the further entrenchment of institutional power, particularly within psychiatric regimes, which continue to regulate trans people.

Butler moves to discuss prominent TERFs and how they were targeted:

Of course, [Kathleen] Stock and J.K. Rowling both are rightly appalled by the online bullying they have received, and I will not condone that kind of behavior, no matter who does it. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 150)

Although Butler disagrees with Kathleen Stock and J.K. Rowling, it is evident that Butler finds extreme online bullying to be unacceptable. It is much more productive to have a better conversation — one where people are open to dialogue and deliberation. The problem, however, is that having productive conversations is a difficult task:

But one reason that better conversation is difficult to have is that TERFs are denying the existence of people who have had quite a hard time gaining social recognition, legal protection from discrimination, and adequate and affirming health care. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 150–151)

The denial of trans people’s right to live safely makes a productive debate almost impossible, particularly when questions of life and death are at stake. Butler explicitly disagrees with Rowling’s claim that the material gains secured by women assigned female at birth will be erased and redistributed to those who do not belong to that category. To speak of sex and gender as immutable is to misunderstand the historical reality in which we are situated. Butler argues:

If sex is legally assigned and registered and can be reassigned and reregistered, can we not conclude that the reality of sex has changed, or that that change is now part of our historical reality? (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 150–153)

Thus, Butler makes her point superbly clear: if sex is a legal category that continually gets assigned — and has the possibility of being reassigned — then is this change not part of our historical reality? This is the argument that TERFs do not adequately conceptualize.

Butler continues:

… [gender-critical feminists] select the examples that support their own bias and incite their own and others’ fear, and proceed as if they are only communicating an obvious unassailable truth. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 155)

Like the political right, gender-critical feminists often present selected evidence — frequently anecdotal — to support conclusions they have already reached. Butler addresses this through the example of prison placement. Many argue that trans women should not be housed in women’s prisons (nor trans men in men’s prisons), on the grounds that men are statistically more likely to commit sexual assault. Within this logic, the presence of a penis is treated as a proxy for sexual threat, such that trans women with penises are cast as inherently dangerous. On the surface, this reasoning appears straightforward; yet it is inconsistent.

Butler notes that sexual assault is already pervasive within many women’s prisons, most often perpetrated by prison guards. These assaults occur within a clear power asymmetry which leaves many women unable — or afraid — to contest violations. Yet when have you seen a single protest from the Right or TERFs to get men prison guards out of women’s prisons? This raises a more fundamental question: why is sexual violence so prevalent in prisons in the first place? The issue appears not as a problem introduced by trans inclusion, but as a systemic feature of carceral institutions.

Butler states:

Calling for segregation and discrimination can only seem “reasonable” when this phantasmatic construal of the penis as weapon is organizing reality. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 158)

The demand to segregate prisons on the basis of genitalia appears reasonable when the penis is constructed as an inherent weapon. Butler traces this assumption to the logic of the phantasm, in which the penis comes to organize social reality through imaginaries of domination and control. Butler writes:

The organ is phantasmically invested with social power under some conditions and becomes the site of a fearful fantasy under others. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 160)

This phantasmatic construction of the penis is ironic, given that trans women are trans precisely because of their disidentification with hegemonic forms of masculinity. Rather than embodying masculine domination, trans women unsettle the very association between anatomy and gendered authority that the phantasm presupposes.

Butler continues:

Rowling makes clear that the trans women with whom she was just professing solidarity are actually men in her view, and that they are dangerous fakes. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 165)

Rowling repeatedly claims that she is not targeting trans people and states her calls for solidarity. Yet, in the same breath, she denies the legitimacy of trans existence, casting trans people as “dangerous fakes” rather than real. Thus, such solidarity can only be extended on the condition of trans erasure.

Butler writes:

Whereas the argument in favor of self-declaration as adequate honors the dignity and freedom of those who seek social and legal recognition as a sex, or a gender, different from the one assigned at birth, the pathologizing model invests the authority to decide one’s gender in medical and psychiatric institutions that are often the least equipped to understand the life-affirming dimensions of transitioning or of living out one’s truth. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 166)

Here, Butler contrasts two models of recognition. The first affirms self-declaration, allowing trans people to be the authors of their own lives and to have their freedom and dignity recognized without external authorization. The second is the pathologizing model, which treats trans existence as a condition to be medicalized and diagnosed before it can be acknowledged. Within the second model, trans identity is cast as an abnormality, intelligible only through the authority of institutions.

Of course, Butler sides with the self-declaration model:

The categories need to open for so many people to live, to find life livable, even as the categories are important to seize for those who have not yet been recognized within their terms. (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 169)

Only by affirming individuals in their capacity for self-determination can life be made livable. To refuse alignment with the right’s fascistic politics is to reject the pathologizing model of recognition and to stand instead for self-declaration as a condition of freedom and equality.