1700s to early 1900s

Late 18th-century English feminists Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Robinson both spoke of the Chevalier d'Éon as an example of an inspiring woman.^[17]

In 1866, anti-rape activist Frances Thompson became the first transgender woman to testify before the American Congress when she testified about the abuse Black women faced during the Memphis massacre of 1866.^[18]

In 1919, the German Weimar Republic–era Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a sexuality advocacy and research institution, was founded in Berlin. As well as advocating for women's emancipation, sex education, and access to contraception, the institute prominently endorsed LGBT rights and oversaw the development of several advances in trans healthcare, including coining the term "transsexualism" and performing sex reassignment surgery.^[19][20][21] Institute founder Magnus Hirschfeld's closest collaborator in the feminist movement was Helene Stöcker, whose Deutscher Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform was directly affiliated with the institute.^[19][22] Both Hirschfeld and Stöcker viewed women's liberation as intertwined with that of gay and transgender people.^[23] Anarchist feminist Emma Goldman also spoke favourably of the institute's work, writing in one of her letters to Hirschfeld that it was "a tragedy ... that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life."^[24] Soon after the Nazis took power in 1933, the institute was forcibly shut down, becoming the first large target of the Nazi book burnings.^[25][26]

Second wave (1970s–1980s)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, corresponding roughly to the second wave of feminism, there were several notable clashes between feminists (especially early radical feminists) over the inclusion of trans women in feminist spaces. A significant early dispute occurred in 1973 during a scheduled performance at the West Coast Lesbian Conference by transgender lesbian folk-singer and co-organiser of the event Beth Elliott.^[27] Elliott had previously served as vice-president of the San Francisco chapter of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis and edited the chapter's newsletter, Sisters, but had been expelled from the group the same year on a 35–28 vote on the grounds that she did not qualify as a woman.^[28][29] After a lesbian separatist group leafleted the conference against her presence, a vote was held among attendees on whether to allow her to remain, with over two-thirds voting in her favor. Despite the results of the vote, Elliott chose to leave after threats of further disruption were made. The following day of the event, Robin Morgan used her keynote speech to criticise Elliott, describing her as a "man" and "an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer – with the mentality of a rapist."^[30][31]

Later the same year, a conflict arose between Jean O'Leary, a founder of lesbian advocacy organization Lesbian Feminist Liberation, and Sylvia Rivera and Lee Brewster, after O'Leary said in a speech at the Christopher Street Liberation Day event: "we support the right of every person to dress in the way that she or he wishes. But we are opposed to the exploitation of women by men for entertainment or profit."^[32] O'Leary later regretted her stance against trans women and drag queens, saying that "looking back, I find this so embarrassing because my views have changed so much since then. I would never pick on a transvestite now."^[33] "It was horrible. How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?"^[34] Another incident occurred in 1978 when a trans woman asked to join the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT). In response, the organization voted to exclude trans women.^[35] LOOT wrote: "A woman's voice was almost never heard as a woman's voice—it was always filtered through men's voices. So here a guy comes along saying, 'I'm going to be a girl now and speak for girls.' And we thought, 'No you're not.' A person cannot just join the oppressed by fiat."^[35]

Radical feminist Janice Raymond published The Transsexual Empire in 1979.^[36] In it, she criticised contemporary medical and psychiatric approaches to gender transition, arguing instead that "the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence," and accused trans women of reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes. Several academics, researchers and writers characterized these views as extremely transphobic and/or hate speech.^{[37][38][39][40]} Empire also included a chapter criticising "the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist", devoting a section to Sandy Stone, a trans woman who worked as a sound engineer for feminist record collective Olivia Records.^[36] The collective publicly defended Stone, but after continued pressure, including an incident where a trans-exclusionary group that issued death threats showed up to an Olivia event with guns, Stone resigned.^[41] She later wrote The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,^[42] a response to Raymond's Empire and a foundational work in the field of transgender studies.^[43]

Not every early radical feminist opposed trans acceptance.^[44] Andrea Dworkin, for example, viewed gender reassignment surgery as a right for transgender people.^[45][46] She also wrote a letter to Raymond critical of The Transsexual Empire, which commented that of the transgender people she met in Europe (who she called a "small, vigorously persecuted minority"), she "perceived their suffering as authentic", and related their experiences to Jewish and female experiences.^[46] Dworkin said that it was a myth "that there are two polar distinct sexes".^[47] The notion that human sex is not a naturally discrete binary, and that this conception is the result of gendered cultural and political processes, was later taken up and developed by authors like Anne Fausto-Sterling^[48][49] and Judith Butler.^[50][51][52] Concerning the oversight of the existence of these trans-inclusive radical feminist views, as well as of the role of trans women in the feminist struggle, historian Susan Stryker remarked that "transsexual women were active in the radical feminist movement of the late 1960s, but were almost entirely erased from its history after 1973."^[53]

Third wave (1990–2000s)

The third wave of feminism saw much greater acceptance of transgender rights, largely due to the influence of philosophers such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Judith Butler,^[54][55] who argued for greater inclusion and examination of other developing fields (such as critical race theory and queer theory) within feminism. Butler in particular argued that women's liberation required a questioning of gender itself, and that accepting gay, trans, and gender-nonconforming people would promote this sort of questioning.^[55] After them, other feminist authors like Cressida Heyes have embarked on projects of "finding grounds for solidarity" between trans and cisgender women, considering "woman" a family-resemblance concept rather than an essential or univocal one.^[43][40][56]

In the early 1990s, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MichFest) ejected a transgender woman, Nancy Burkholder.^[57] From that point on, the festival maintained it was intended for "womyn-born womyn".^[58] The group Camp Trans formed to protest this policy and to advocate for greater acceptance of trans women in the feminist community. A number of prominent trans activists and feminists were involved in Camp Trans, including Riki Wilchins, Jessica Xavier, and Leslie Feinberg.^[59] MichFest considered allowing post-operative trans women to attend, but this was criticized as classist, as many trans women could not afford sex reassignment surgery.^[60] Lisa Vogel, MichFest's organizer, said protesters from Camp Trans engaged in vandalism.^[61] The festival ended in 2015.^[62]

Fourth wave (2010–present)

Trans march with banner reading "Collective feminist revolutionaries against all hetrocissexist and racist violence" from Paris, 2017

Many fourth-wave feminists are trans-inclusive.^[54] US organizations such as the National Organization for Women,^[63] the Feminist Majority Foundation,^[64] and Planned Parenthood^[65] support and advocate for trans rights, as do most Canadian feminist organizations^[66] and most African feminists.^[67] The influence of trans-exclusionary feminists has waned significantly,^[68] though they are still somewhat influential in the United Kingdom.^[11][14]

Colonialism

Argentine feminist Maria Lugones has argued that the gender binary is a colonial imposition that has been used to divide and subjugate people.^[81] Building on Lugones's work, Brooklyn Leo of Pennsylvania State University has argued that "the resistant-creative work of trans bodies of color liberates not just the folds of our own flesh from the Western gaze, but also sustains a new place of possibility for the cis accomplices who also refuse the privileges of the colonial/modern gender system."^[82]

In a 2020 paper in Feminist Criminology, Nishant Upadhyay of University of Colorado, Boulder argued that "transphobia is enmeshed in white feminism's colonial and white supremacist epistemological frameworks, and that their transphobia, in turn, continues to reproduce gender as a colonial myth" and that the "reduction of the category of 'woman' has been long challenged" by "Black, Indigenous, women of color, Third World, and transnational feminists for decades, if not centuries".^[83] In her book Me, Not You, Alison Phipps argues that "white feminism has a long history of policing the border" and that trans-exclusionary feminists "have much in common with conservatives who claim that increased immigration will result in increased rape".^[84]

Legal codification of gender

Caterina Nirta of Royal Holloway, University of London has argued that both trans people and feminists would benefit from abandoning "the categorical compartmentalisation of identity and spaces."^[85]

Commenting on Québec's Bill 2 in 2021, Florence Ashley of the University of Toronto has argued for the abolition of gender markers in legal documents, saying that they "help naturalize social categorizations based on gender" and pointing to historical research that found such markers were first introduced in France for the purposes of enforcing conscription, preventing queer couples from getting married, preventing gender diversity, and marking women as lessers under the law.^[86] Marie Draz of San Diego State University has argued that the "hegemonic account of gender as the organization of biological sex serves to obscure the role of racial and colonial domination and the differential allocation of gender across racial lines" and that legal gender classification serves as an "anchor point that reiterates the power of the state to classify and know its citizens."^[87]

Sex reassignment surgery

In her 1974 book Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin called for the support of transgender people, whom she viewed as "in a state of primary emergency" due to "the culture of male–female discreteness". She wrote: "every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions." She also said that transgender people might disappear within communities built on androgynous identity, as there would no longer be any gender roles to conform to.^[45][88]

In 1977, Gloria Steinem wrote that while she supported the right of individuals to identify as they choose, in many cases transgender people "surgically mutilate their own bodies" in order to conform to a gender role tied to physical body parts, concluding with the quote: "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?" Although meant in the context of transgender issues, the quote is frequently misinterpreted as a general statement about feminism.^{[89]: 206–210} The same year, she also expressed disapproval that the heavily publicized transition of tennis player Renée Richards (a trans woman) had been characterized as "a frightening instance of what feminism could lead to" or as "living proof that feminism isn't necessary", and wrote, "At a minimum, it was a diversion from the widespread problems of sexual inequality."^[89] Steinem's statements led to her being characterized as transphobic for some years.^[90] In a 2013 interview with The Advocate, she repudiated the interpretation of her text as an altogether condemnation of sex reassignment surgery, stating that her position was informed by accounts of gay men choosing to transition as a way of coping with societal homophobia. She added that she sees transgender people as living "authentic lives" that should be "celebrated".^[91]

Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire purported to examine the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, in particular the ways in which the "medical-psychiatric complex" was medicalizing gender identity, and the social and political context that contributed to the image of gender-affirming treatment and surgery as therapeutic medicine.^[36] Raymond maintained that this was based in the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering", and "making of woman according to man's image", and that transgender identity aimed "to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality."^[92] Several authors have since characterized this work as extremely transphobic and constituting hate speech, as well as lacking any serious intellectual basis.^{[37][38][39][40]}

In her own 1987 book Gyn/Ecology, Mary Daly, who had served as Raymond's thesis supervisor,^[93] argued that as sex reassignment surgery cannot reproduce female chromosomes or a female life history, it could "not produce women".^[94] Sheila Jeffreys and Germaine Greer have made similar remarks.^[95] In a response to related remarks by Elizabeth Grosz, philosopher Eva Hayward characterized this type of view as telling trans people who have had sex reassignment surgery: "Don't exist."^[96]

Socialization and experience

Some feminists argue that trans women cannot fully be women because they were assigned male at birth and have experienced some degree of male privilege.^[97] Radical feminists generally see gender as a system in which women are oppressed for reasons intrinsically related to their sex, and emphasize male violence against women, particularly involving institutions such as the sex industry, as central to women's oppression.^[98][99]

The sociologist Patricia Elliot argues that the view that one's socialization as a girl or woman defines "women's experience" assumes that women's experiences are homogeneous and discounts the possibility that trans and cis women may share the experience of being disparaged for their perceived femininity.^[100] Similarly, Transfeminist Manifesto author Emi Koyama contends that, while trans women may have experienced some male privilege before transitioning, trans women's experiences are also marked by disadvantages resulting from being trans.^[16]

In "Growing Up Trans: Socialization and the Gender Binary", Michelle Dietert and Dianne Dentice write that when youth embody non-standard gender roles or otherwise deviate from expectations of their assigned sex, the gender binary becomes a form of control by authorities, enforcing social norms upon them. In their view, this begins at early socialization, and transgender youth, especially gender-nonconforming children, often experience different treatment, leading to a fear of reprisals as they attempt to please their family and peers and navigate their understanding of their gender and societal expectations.^[101] They argue that socialization affects transgender youth differently, especially if they are gender-nonconforming.^[102]

Transfeminist Julia Serano has referred to implying that trans women may experience some degree of male privilege pre-transition as "denying [them] the closet", and has compared it to saying that a cisgender gay person experienced straight privilege before coming out. She has also compared it to if a cisgender girl was raised as a boy against her will, and how the two scenarios tend to be viewed differently by a cisgender audience, despite being ostensibly similar experiences from a transfeminine perspective. Finally, she has noted how the idea of "male socialization" or "male privilege" tend to be weaponized against transfems, an example being "if a trans woman gets upset, angry, or assertive, and someone attempts to pin that on her supposed "male privilege" — yet they would never have considered calling out those same behaviors if they thought that she was a cis woman".^[103]

In 2017, while discussing whether trans women are women, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, "trans women are trans women." She acknowledged that transgender women face discrimination for being transgender and said she sees this as a serious issue, but also said, "we should not conflate the gender experiences of trans women with that of women born female."^[104] She later expanded on her comments, saying, "From the very beginning, I think it's been quite clear that there's no way I could possibly say that trans women are not women. It's the sort of thing to me that's obvious, so I start from that obvious premise. Of course they are women, but in talking about feminism and gender and all of that, it's important for us to acknowledge the differences in experience of gender. That's really what my point is. Had I said 'a cis woman is a cis woman, and a trans woman is a trans woman', I don't think I would get all the crap that I'm getting, but that's actually really what I was saying."^[105]

Transgender women in women's spaces and organizations

Laurel Westbrook and Kristin Schildt have argued that the gender trans people are classed as by society can vary from space to space, with the spaces segregated according to strict interpretations of biology doing so to uphold the oppositeness of genders required for heterosexuality and gender binarism.^[106] Shannon Weber of Wellesley College has argued that "excluding transgender women from admission [to women's colleges] by virtue of biological determinism falls into the same types of anti-feminist ideologies that would historically bar all women from education based on assumptions about the meaning of their biology."^[107]

In 1996, Germaine Greer (at the time a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge) unsuccessfully opposed the appointment to a fellowship of her transgender colleague Rachael Padman.^{[108][109][110]} Greer argued that because Padman had been assigned male at birth, she should not be admitted to Newnham, a women's college. Greer later resigned from Newnham.^{[111][112][113][114]}

A 2004 opinion piece by British radical feminist Julie Bindel titled "Gender Benders, beware" printed in The Guardian caused the paper to receive two hundred letters of complaint from transgender people, doctors, therapists, academics and others. The editorial expressed her anger at Kimberly Nixon and her views on transgender people.^[115][116] Transgender activist group Press for Change cite this article as an example of 'discriminatory writing' about transgender people in the press.^[117] Complaints focused on the title, "Gender benders, beware", the cartoon accompanying the piece,^[118] and the disparaging tone, such as "Think about a world inhabited just by transsexuals. It would look like the set of Grease" and "I don't have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s [jeans] does not make you a man."^[115][119]

Transfeminism

Equality March 2021 in Kraków, Poland

Transfeminism, or trans feminism, aims to synthesize feminist and transgender discourse. Transfeminists argue that there are multiple forms of oppression and sexism, and that trans and cisgender women have shared interests in combating sexism.^[43] Influential transfeminists include Julia Serano and Diana Courvant. According to Emi Koyama, the two primary principles of transfeminism are that all people should not only be allowed to live their own lives in whichever way they choose and define themselves however they feel is right, but should also be respected by society for their individuality and uniqueness, and that each individual has every right, and is the only one to have the right, to possess complete control over their own bodies. There shall be no form of authority—political, medical, religious, or otherwise—that can override a person's decisions regarding their bodies and their wellbeing, and their autonomy is fully in the hands of that sole individual.^[120] Transfeminist critics of mainstream feminism say that as an institutionalized movement, feminism has lost sight of the basic idea that biology is not destiny. In fact, they argue, many feminists seem perfectly comfortable equating sex and gender and insisting on a given destiny for trans persons based on nothing more than biology.^[121][122] Transfeminism aims to challenge the fixedness of gender that its supporters believe traditional approaches to women's studies depend upon.^[123]

Cyberfeminism and xenofeminism

Cyberfeminism is a branch of feminism that focuses on cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. The term was coined in the early late-1980s and early-1990s, particularly after the publication of "A Cyborg Manifesto" by feminist Donna Haraway, which argued for feminism to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics. Out of cyberfeminism grew xenofeminism, arguing for the use of technology as a means towards the abolition of gender. Feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks published a manifesto titled Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation that argued against the conception of nature as immutable and the conception that what is natural is good, declaring that "if nature is unjust, change nature!"^[124] Xenofeminism has positioned itself as explicitly trans-inclusive and as rejecting the gender binary.^[125] Feminist Helen Hester has linked DIY self-help movements by second wave feminists and biohacking performed by trans people as a continuing lineage of emancipation.^[126] In a 2019 article in Feminist Review, Emily Jones said the movement noted how "essentialism and identity politics haunt the contemporary feminist and queer movement" and that instead of "wishing to eradicate what are seen as gendered traits, xenofeminism wants gender to explode and diffract: 'let a hundred sexes bloom!'. Thus, for xenofeminism, gender-abolitionism is about disrupting asymmetric gender systems and dispersing them, unpicking 'culturally weaponized markers of identity that harbour injustices', including gender as well as race, ability, class and sexuality."^[127]

Relations with conservatives

Some gender-critical feminists have been linked to conservative groups and politicians who oppose legislation that would expand transgender rights in the United States,^{[158][159][160][161]} the United Kingdom,^[162] and Australia.^[163] The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American civil rights nonprofit, reported in 2017 that American Christian right groups were trying to "separate the T from LGB" by casting transgender rights as antagonistic to feminism and lesbian or gay people. The report said this trend was "part of a larger strategy, meant to weaken transgender rights advocates by attempting to separate them from their allies, feminists and LGBT rights advocates."^{[15][160][164]}

In January 2019, The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, hosted a panel with members of the self-described radical feminist organization Women's Liberation Front opposed to the US Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity.^[160] Heron Greenesmith of Political Research Associates, an American liberal think tank, said that this collaboration was in part a reaction to the trans community's "incredible gains" in civil rights and visibility, and that anti-trans feminists and conservatives capitalize on a "scarcity mindset rhetoric" whereby civil rights are portrayed as a limited commodity that must be prioritized to cisgender women over other groups. Greenesmith compared this rhetoric to the prioritization of the rights of citizens over non-citizens and white people over people of color.^[160] Bev Jackson, one of the founders of the LGB Alliance, once argued that "working with The Heritage Foundation is sometimes the only possible course of action" since "the leftwing silence on gender in the U.S. is even worse than in the UK." She later clarified these comments, saying she did find links to The Heritage Foundation "problematic" due to their support for "anti-women policies", "Yet it was their publicity that made it possible to launch a gender-critical movement in the U.S."^[165]

In a 2020 article in Lambda Nordica, Erika Alm of the University of Gothenburg and Elisabeth L. Engebretsen of the University of Stavanger, said that there was "growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances, between "gender-critical" feminists (sometimes known as TERFs - Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), religious and social conservatives, as well as right-wing politics and even neo-Nazi and fascist movements" and that the convergence was linked to "their reliance on an essentialised and binary understanding of sex and/or gender, often termed 'bio-essentialism.'"^[166] Another 2020 article, published in The Sociological Review, said that "the language of 'gender ideology' originates in anti-feminist and anti-trans discourses among right-wing Christians, with the Catholic Church acting as a major nucleating agent", and that the term "saw increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse" from around 2016. It further stated that "a growing number of anti-trans campaigners associated with radical feminist movements have openly aligned themselves with anti-feminist organisations."^[167]

In a 2021 paper in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Hil Malatino of Pennsylvania State University said that gender-critical feminism in the US has "begun to build coalition with the evangelical Right around the legal codification of sex as a biological binary" and that "popular news media frames transphobia as part of a rational, enlightened, pragmatic response to what is variously called the 'trans lobby' and the 'cult of trans.'"^[168] Another 2021 paper, published in Law and Social Inquiry, said that "a coalition of Christian conservative legal organizations, conservative foundations, Trump administration officials, Republican party lawmakers, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists has assembled to redefine the right to privacy in service of anti-transgender politics", and that "social conservatives have cast the issue as one of balancing two competing rights claims rather than one of outright animus against a gender minority population."^[169]

International organisations

UN Women works to protect the rights of transgender people,^[170][171] and "urgently calls on communities and governments around the world to stand up for LGBTIQ+ rights."^[172]

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) supports LGBTIQ rights and opposes the anti-gender movement, and has described trans-exclusionary feminists as "trojan horses in human rights spaces" that seek to undermine human rights; AWID said that anti-trans activity is "alarming", that "the 'sex-based' rhetoric misuses concepts of sex and gender to push a deeply discriminatory agenda" and that "trans-exclusionary feminists ... undermine progressions on gender and sexuality and protection of rights of marginalized groups."^[173]

The International Alliance of Women along with its over fifty affiliates worldwide support LGBT+ rights and have expressed concern over "anti-trans voices [that] are becoming ever louder and [that] are threatening feminist solidarity across borders."^[174]

Africa

In 2010, the Social, Health and Empowerment Feminist Collective of Transgender Women in Africa was formed.^[175][176]

The Americas

Asia

Europe

The European Women's Lobby (EWL) is trans-inclusive.^[224] EWL called for more attention and research into discrimination against trans women and lesbians and their specific health needs.^[225] EWL has said that "women with multiple identities are rendered more vulnerable to discrimination, violence and violation of their rights. The situation of (...) transgender women has long been made invisible. It is urgent to make sure that all policies are designed to not leave a single girl or woman behind."^[226]

United Kingdom

Further information: Transgender rights in the United Kingdom

A banner at a protest in the United Kingdom in 2020

The UK government's 2018 consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 became a locus of conflict between trans-exclusionary radical feminists and advocates for trans acceptance.^[14] The GRA requires that one be medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria and live for two years in one's felt identity before legally changing gender.^[262] Proposed reforms would allow one to self-declare one's legal gender without a diagnosis or waiting period.^[263] While the UK's Equality Act 2010 permitted providers of single-sex or sex-segregated services such as women's shelters to deny access to transgender people on a case-by-case basis, a 2016 report of the House of Commons's Women and Equalities Committee^[264] recommended that providers no longer be permitted to exclude persons who had obtained legal recognition of their "acquired gender" under the GRA.^[265]

Groups including Fair Play For Women and Woman's Place UK were founded in opposition to the proposed reforms.^[266][267] The groups have been condemned by feminists who support the reforms. London Feminist Library organiser Lola Olufemi described Woman's Place UK as "a clearly transphobic organisation" after withdrawing from an event at the University of Oxford that featured WPUK supporter and Oxford professor Selina Todd.^[268]

British trans-exclusive feminist groups objected to the proposed GRA self-ID reform as eroding protections for women-only safe spaces and liable to abuse by cisgender men^[269][270]—issues disputed by advocates of reform and unsupported by current evidence.^[271][272] A 2020 paper in SAGE Open said that "the case against trans inclusion in the United Kingdom has been presented primarily through social media and blog-type or journalistic online platforms lacking the traditional prepublication checks of academic peer review".^[273] Pro-trans feminist academics such as Akwugo Emejulu and Alison Phipps view self-declaration as a right for transgender people.^[274]

In October 2018 the UK edition of The Guardian published an editorial on GRA reform supporting a lessening of the barriers to legal gender change but also stating that "Women's oppression by men has a physical basis, and to deny the relevance of biology when considering sexual inequality is a mistake", and that, "Women's concerns about sharing dormitories or changing rooms with 'male-bodied' people must be taken seriously."^[14][275] Journalists from The Guardian's US edition wrote an editorial repudiating their UK counterpart's stance, stating that it "promoted transphobic viewpoints" and that its "unsubstantiated argument only serves to dehumanize and stigmatize trans people".^[14][276] In March 2019 more than 160 women, including Emma Thompson and members of the UK parliament, cosigned an open letter expressing solidarity with trans women and support for GRA reform, organised by LGBT charity Time for Inclusive Education.^[277][278]

Seven Scottish women's groups – Close the Gap, Engender, Equate Scotland, Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid, Women 50:50, and Zero Tolerance – released a joint statement during the GRA consultations endorsing the proposed reforms and stating that "we do not regard trans equality and women's equality to be in competition or contradiction with each other."^{[279][280][281][282]} The Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre has indicated that it accepts trans people as volunteers and the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has maintained individual gender-neutral bathrooms.^{[283][284][285]} Feminist direct action group Sisters Uncut has stated that "trans people and gender-nonconforming people experience disproportionate levels of violence ... if we don't centre those who exist on the margins, what kind of movement is that?"^[286][287]

In 2021, an Employment Appeal Tribunal in the case of Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development (CGD) found that gender-critical beliefs pass the legal test of a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010 because they "did not seek to destroy the rights of trans persons".^[128][129] While Forstater was "delighted to have been vindicated", the CGD described the decision as a "step backwards for inclusivity and equality for all".^[288]

In November 2021, the Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum hosted a debate on the topic of conversion therapy, following the launch of a public consultation on how to ban the practice.^{[289][290][291][292][293]} The panel consisted of Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley, campaigner Jayne Ozanne, and gender-critical feminist and barrister Naomi Cunningham.^[292] A letter said to be signed by more than a hundred legal professionals objected to Cunningham's inclusion on the panel, describing her as "anti-trans".^[289] Kelley called for a complete ban on conversion therapy.^[292] Cunningham presented a "gender-critical" view that there are multiple explanations for why a young person may call themselves transgender, such as unease at being gay, so a ban on therapists exploring these alternative explanations amounts to "the most savage conversion therapy ever invented".^[291][294] Ozanne spoke about her personal experience of conversion therapy, but also described Cunningham's speech as "very insensitive" and "transphobic", which Cunningham denied.^[292]

Drawing on theory of radicalization, the sociologist Craig McLean argues that discourse on transgender-related issues in the UK has been radicalized in response to the activities of new lobby groups that push "a radical agenda to deny the basic rights of trans people ... under the cover of "free speech'".^[295] Finn Mackay argued that "during the pandemic, the ceaseless attacks on and lies told about trans people in our media have only increased ... the fact that our media is awash with conspiracy theories about trans lives ... should be a national shame."^[296]

Oceania

The Māori Women's Welfare League and the National Council of Women of New Zealand are trans-inclusive and have supported a shift to legal gender self-determination.^[297]