Lesbian, feminist, TERF: a queer attack on feminist studies

Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2023

Faced with the proliferation of TERF rhetoric outside academia, this article proposes a case study of an anti-trans, anti-gender, anti-sex work graduate student at a progressive American institution to challenge feminism to address the ways in which it is providing a space of unchallenging silence for TERF views to remain a nonissue and receive academic support and accreditation. An examination of this specific student highlights a narrative of radicalization occurring during her studies at the university. A challenge for cis feminists to self-reflect and step up, this article argues that cis feminism has for now failed to address the transphobia in its midst, thus forcing trans students and scholars to lose faith in feminism and to find care and support elsewhere.

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2019

Higher education professionals with a keen eye and commitment to advocacy face many obstacles through their work. Manifesting the realities of embodiment of these identities, with professional duties and implications can be treacherous. Evidence exists of marginalized voices being silenced by the majority when speaking about their own lived experiences and community, but how is this situated for queer and trans educators? This project aims to investigate this phenomenon to better understand how these educators transverse educational institutions who continue to relegate issues of inclusion to a tertiary level, preferencing instead neoliberal logics of diversity management regarding LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, & transgender) inclusion. Education professionals who have queer embodiments face a dilemma. Do we do our job and forsake our activist commitments, in turn, being complicit in oppression, or do we forsake our job to stand in solidarity with our kin? This project explores the way three activistscholar navigate being an outsider in the academy. Using creative autoethnography to explore our own experiences of facing personal and professional backlash, we explore how to tear down the brick and mortar in order to build a new formation of an institution built upon radical inclusion.

2015

This article considers queer-driven student activism at Smith College, as well as admissions policy shifts at a number of prominent U.S. women’s colleges for transgender women’s inclusion. The author illustrates how student attempts to dismantle the transmisogyny at Smith as a purportedly feminist “women’s” space, as well as some women’s colleges’ shifts in admissions policy, challenge divisions between transgender and cisgender women. This paradigmatic shift reflects the campuses as comparative havens for gender and sexual exploration, the influence of postmodern gender theory in understanding identity, and the growth of “queer” as an all-encompassing signifier for sexual and gender transgression.

Transgender Theory: Complicating Feminist and Queer Theory As a trans theorist and trans person myself, I recognize the importance of trans theory, especially as a student who has to constantly seek out ways to study transgenderism and transsexuality in the academy; trans theory should not be something one has to search for, but should be readily available as a viable resource for any student wishing to study gender and sexuality. Gender variance affects everyone, not just trans individuals. Some of the questions this paper will be answering are: What is trans theory? Why is trans theory important? Where does trans theory belong in academia? Does transgender theory belong in feminist theory, where many trans-identified individuals have felt historically marginalized? Or does transgender theory belong in queer theory, where queer has been associated most prominently with sexual identity and not gender identity? I am giving voice to the tension that exists within feminist theory and queer theory and transgender theory's place within it. Transgender theory does not currently have a home within academia. Transgender theory belongs in the institution and the best place for it may just be a place of its own. This paper could help establish trans theory as a relevant, significant, and important place within the academy. Using standpoint theory, I am arguing that trans theory cannot be fully incorporated by feminist and queer theory and needs institutional grounding to stand alone within academia.

This article is an institutional auto-ethnography of a crisis in which the WGS center I direct was almost closed due to lesbian programming, contextualized by meta-disciplinary discussions of Women's Studies as besieged (or not) and as affect-laden (as opposed to intellectually rigorous). It also includes a critique of NWSA for its refusal to work against homophobia with the same vigor with which the organization addresses racism and imperialism, and for its historical and contemporary reluctance to address lesbian-baiting as a disciplinary concern.

This essay maps the epistemological terrain trans* studies may face as it is widely incorporated into queer studies programs, often housed within women's studies departments. Over the past two decades, queer studies and women's studies have rapidly professionalized, producing new modes of disciplinary power that may seek to either include or cite trans* studies, often without fully welcoming its specific material and political investments. Under such conditions, trans* studies may find itself heard largely as a "but" —an epistemic blockage, a distraction from proper objects, a hindrance to customary methods—that must be disciplined.

MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, 2020

This article outlines a research experiment on the space of my office in relation to my often-resistant stance as a queer feminist media educator in a Canadian public university. I explore how my educational identity is outwardly expressed, and consider the functions or impacts of this expression on others. This is important to me because I want to ensure that my daily academic performance and embodiment aligns with core feminist principles of equity and collectivity. The research analyses twenty-four pictures that randomly capture both wider aspects and close-ups of the room; the site of the office is both the subject and object of investigation. Questions guiding this analysis are: what does my office space represent to my colleagues and students, or what does it communicate? Does my office evidence the values of inclusivity, dialogue and respect that I cherish, or does it function to exclude? How does it orient me in relation to others in the space? Who does it work for and against? What kind of pedagogy does it signal, and does it produce or engage any ontological or epistemological standpoints? What does it perform? Does my office succeed in resisting the often conservative, neoliberal, and heteropatriarchal forces that strongly shape my world in a careerist applied education program? These questions engage core social justice educational concerns about how pedagogical choices enact or inhibit equitable orientations in academic institutions.

Religious Studies Review, 2018

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