‘So, it’s not necessarily about exclusion’

Abstract

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists challenge transgender people (specifically women) from within a claimed feminist struggle. They exclude transgender women and instead claim they are men colonising women’s spaces. I present a conversation analytic and analytical membership categorisation case study of a national radio interview in which the spokesperson for a trans-exclusionary feminist political group debates with the host on the nature of trans women and their exclusion from women’s spaces. I show how the interviewee accomplishes trans exclusion in talk,, often without making explicit claims about trans women, by constructing both biologically essentialist and experiential distinctions between trans and cis women, constructing trans women as participants in patriarchal oppression, and by problematising a claimed redefinition of the category woman being enacted by trans women. This analysis highlights how transphobic (and specifically transmisogynistic) attitudes are accomplished in social interaction through sequential action and categorial inferences.