A collaborative writeup by /u/BJ581 and /u/IfWordsMeanThings with a quick editorial review by /u/DontDoxxMe

We attended the Stanford-sponsored seminar, “The TERF Industrial Complex: Transphobia, Feminism and Race” on August 26, 2020. For posterity, we scraped the site, accessible here. Additionally, /u/BJ581 created a complete transcript (!) of the event: Part1, Part2. The audio is here.

1: What is a “TERF”?

This event was meant to be an assessment of the views of so-called ‘TERFs’ (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) on transgender issues and their impact on society, feminism, and political discourse. Despite the name, no actual TERFs were invited to speak at this event, and in fact, the panelists were all male, with two identifying as trans. The event was hosted as part of a series of Zoom conferences referred to as The Clayman Conversations, hosted by Stanford via The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Host Adrian Daub interviewed:

• Jules Gill-Peterson (associate of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Histories of the Transgender Child)

• Marquis Bey (African American Studies at Northwestern and the author of Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism)

• Grace Lavery (associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and the author of Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan)

Much of this presentation wildly misrepresented and dismissed the concerns of gender critical feminists. The first question asked of the panelists related to their idea of what exactly a TERF is and how they impact the lives of trans people, in physical and digital spaces. All panelists had differing ideas of what a TERF is, how they ‘operate,’ and what they believe.

Gill-Peterson described the “TERF that lives in my head” and the physical embodiment of a TERF, which he explains as a kind of physical force of transphobia. He goes on to describe the TERFs he finds most interesting as white mothers who incorrectly fear their daughters suddenly becoming trans. He punctuates this point with a dismissal of the idea that “suddenly becoming trans” is even possible or “a thing.” This dismissal of the concerns of gender critical feminists is a common theme; Gill-Peterson especially spent a large portion of his talking time dismissing the concerns of mothers, and white mothers in particular, regarding the transing of children.

Throughout the presentation, TERFs were discussed as figures, as a sort of mythical force without real form, without real human qualities, an embodiment of transphobia and bubbling, irrational hatred. Bey described TERFs as, “a kind of perverse gadfly annoying the public with their trans antagonism.” He went on to say that TERFs undermine radical feminists and perpetuate patriarchy with their nostalgic, “cisnormative,” second wave ideals.

2: The definition of the TERF Industrial Complex

Grace Levery attempted to define the TIC as being made up of 3 groups:

• Gender critical feminists, who are nostalgic for second wave feminism

• Alt-right and anti-woke trolls (such as Graham Linehan, who was described as deranged)

• “Liberal institutionalists”, who don’t have a lot in common with Gender Critical feminists, but believe that free speech is being threatened.

Grace also believes that a rift is beginning to form between these groups, as evidenced by Linehan being banned from Twitter, and the GenderCritical subreddit being banned. This quote is notable for its untruths: > A TERF is a person that makes alt-right troll techniques and politics acceptable to liberals

3: The Political Questions Do Not Interest Them

In the minds of the presenters, the political questions about the definition of women, for the purposes of protecting sex-based rights, have already been answered (ie, trans women are women, pass it on, get over it, etc), and it’s time to move onto more “interesting” questions. Indeed, they see these political matters of women’s prisons, restrooms, locker rooms, and sports as trivial:

Lavery: > The constant attempt to relitigate trans women are women, instead of answering questions about de-carceration, abolition, sex work, medical, access to medical care, access to healthcare. You know, I refuse to, to litigate those things [“Trans women are women”] now.

With regards to women’s prisons:

Lavery: > ..I’m not interested in you telling me you have a strange casuistical construction about a prisoner who decides that they’re trans halfway through, it’s all so fictional. They’re interested in these fictional, hypothetical, ethical questions, and I could not care less.

With regards to women’s sports:

Lavery: > ...we don’t need to establish more and more casuistical reasoning about what to do if someone, wanted to win Wimbledon by pretending to be a woman. It’s, it’s an insult to our collective intellect.

With regards to women’s restrooms:

Lavery: > And, you know, again, the idea that we have to begin those conversations with, ‘well you know, I checked my chromosomes and my chromosomes tell me this much, and then, having to deduce what my chromosomes were, I decided to go to that bath[room]...[interrupted by moderator].

This idea that the political questions are boring was best encapsulated by Jules Gill-Peterson, who said:

I think that we also are entitled to, and deserve much more, than just political discourse, right? We deserve metaphysics...I mean, cause ours will be a lot more fun, we deserve gossipy things.

Grace Lavery echoed this sentiment with:

On the list of things that trans women deserve, I think metaphysics is important, you know? We need to be able to think about meaning, about the nature of things, about the nature of identity, the nature of desire, the nature of love, the nature of embodiment.

This use of “metaphysics” was never defined better than this, unfortunately. Yet, this term “metaphysics” was used several more times as a kind of catchall for anything that the trans presenters wanted, but did not have. The presenter (Adrian Daub) twice tried to ask them to better define this term metaphysics, at the behest of people in the Q&A portion of the Zoom meeting (who were not visible to each other, only to the presenters)...unfortunately, in both cases, his connection glitched and he was unable to ask the questions. So, naturally, the presenters continued to ramble on without a clear definition.

To recap this point: the trans presenters have galaxy-brain-ascended past trivial matters such as women’s spaces, and onto bigger questions like...well, whatever exists in their own heads, I guess.

4: There were some bold racial assertions

Gill-Peterson in particular repeatedly perpetuated the tired rhetoric that radical feminism is white feminism. Ironically, this accusation is a very western view of radical feminism, since feminists in many other parts of the world would just call radical feminism, feminism. This accusation aside, Gill-Peterson’s distaste for white radical and gender critical feminists is clear throughout the presentation. At one point he states, “Why are, why is it, white women’s job to police the category ‘woman’ right?” Which is to wholly ignore the many brave women of color who have lent their voices to the gender critical half of this debate. Ironically, this statement came after this one: “...black trans women and brown trans women aren’t even, like, don’t even register under the imaginary that TERFs operate on. They’re not even, like, worthy enough to be harassed in that way because they’re so devalued.'' So, Gill-Peterson, after having made the claim that gender critical feminists so devalue trans women of color that they don’t “harass” them, proceeds to completely dismiss the women of color engaging in the gender critical debate. He does not see fit to hear the voices of gender critical women of color, perhaps he is projecting his own devaluing of women of color onto “TERFs.”

All of the presenters continued assigning blame for the “transphobia” of gender critical women to white women, particularly British white women and often implied that being gender critical is hand in hand with being racist. These attempts to downplay the concerns of gender critical women as the trivial concerns of boring white women continued in response to nearly every question in the discussion. Gill-Peterson states, “It is to pursue the cause of civilization, so called, and to think about the regulation and reproduction of the race as white women’s sort of, duty. And so, of course, those are the same women who now can be terrified at the idea that white children assigned female at birth might not turn out to grow up to be women.” As though only white women would be so frivolous as to express concern for children being medicalized and consenting to life changing surgeries as young teens. Forgetting, of course, that parents of all colors, have come forward to express concern for their children at the hands of trans ideology.

5: A couple other interesting notes:

• According to the moderator, 1000 people registered, and ~500 attended.

• The moderator’s internet glitched frequently. Several times, he would start to ask a question and his screen would freeze for 5-10 seconds. This resulted in the usual awkward “Can you repeat that please”, and prompted occasional derailments and presenters choosing to continue on their current topics in a few instances.

• The language the presenters used was academic to the point of being incomprehensible. Marquis Bey was the worst with this. Here’s an example: > But still, for me, the TERF, as a figure, seems important because the TERF serves, in my estimation, as this affirmation of the, or to the larger public of the purported like, golden years of feminist activism which contrasts with the supposed, “too farness” of contemporary radical trans insurrectionary thinking and activism.

• Jules Gill-Peterson dropped a particularly scary and telling quote that was worthy of noting: > I’m sure people are afraid of me and that maybe gives me some delight to imagine.

• The Zoom meeting had a Q&A chat box, but the questions were only displayed to the presenters. Near the end, Grace claimed that, this whole time, the chat box had been spammed by “TERFs and gender critical feminists and trol ls”, yet tellingly never revealed any. While making this claim, he dropped a real banger: > I am always just struck by the kind of leaden pedantry of ‘What is a lesbian if men can be women?’...these boring one-line questions...it’s very easy to answer these questions. Get real. Have a real conversation.

This sentiment was echoed by Daub with “get some new material.”

6: Conclusion

These people sat there, looked into a camera, and said these terrible things. We saw it, we heard it, we recorded it, we transcribed it. So in 10 years when Stanford backtracks, there will be evidence.