TERF by Any Other Name: The Constitutive Rhetoric of Gender-Critical Feminism

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In this essay, I argue that gender-critical rhetoric has successfully constituted a new feminist subject position for cisgender women who deny trans existence but claim the TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) label has become a slur. The “gender-critical feminist” identity redefines transantagonism from a form of hate into a necessary feminist pursuit, empowering its constituents by alleviating their discursive, material, and ideological contradictions. Attuning Charland’s constitutive rhetoric framework to Sylvia Wynter’s concept of overrepresentation, this analysis suggests that the racialized and cisgendered dimensions of U.S. gender-critical feminism qualify it as a fascist feminist project interconnected with fascist/feminist movements in the UK and Europe. By leveraging white cis paranoia, eugenicist biopolitical logics, and reactionary discursive tactics, gender-critical feminism re/produces itself as an overrepresentational project dedicated to conservative politics of purity and fear.