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

ABSTRACT

While much has been said about the diversity industry and about transexclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), little has examined their relationship to one another or to academic feminist, queer, and trans studies. This article considers a “queer attack on feminist studies” at our small liberal arts college as a case study for thinking through these relations. A handful of students and diversity staff termed feminist studies faculty TERFs not because of any actual transphobic behavior, but because of our work to question gender systems and ideologies. By examining how some students and diversity office staff alike mobilized the TERF, as well as the ideologies that allow for slippages among the terms “lesbian,” “feminist,” and “TERF,” we outline how the lesbian and the feminist are in danger of becoming permanently reactionary figures. In so doing, we reflect on the relationship between performing diversity work and policing academic studies of gender and sexuality, ultimately arguing that the mobilization of the TERF can function both to further extend the work of the diversity industry and also to call into question academic feminist, queer, and trans studies.

KEYWORDS:

• TERF
• lesbian feminist
• feminist studies
• moral panic
• diversity industry

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Abe Weil, CJ Jones, and four anonymous reviewers for feedback that dramatically improved our arguments. Our most profound thanks go Taite Shomo and Jules Struzyna, two former Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies students whose feedback on previous drafts of this article was rooted in their weathering the storm about which we write alongside us. Their experiences defending their major inspired this article.

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carly Thomsen

Carly Thomsen is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. She is the author of Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming and the producer of a related documentary film, In Plain Sight. Her next book, Queering Reproductive Justice, is forthcoming with University of California press. Her work on LGBTQ activism, queer rurality, reproductive justice, intersectionality, and feminist pedagogy is published in various journals, including: Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy; Feminist Studies; Feminist Formations; and Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice. Email: [email protected]

Laurie Essig

Laurie Essig is Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. Her most recent book is Love, Inc.: Dating Apps, the Big White Wedding, and Chasing the Happily Neverafter (UC Press, 2019). Her next book, The Road to Hell: How Good People Make Everything Worse, is an exploration of the dangers of affective rather than structural change. She has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Conversation, and Lesbian Studies. Email: [email protected]