The idea of abolishing gender is quite widespread in the LGBTQIA+ circles I’m familiar with; it certainly has a relatively long history, rooted in radical feminism beginning with Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex1 and, in recent years, seems to be making a strong comeback, adapted to queer experiences as well. The aim of this article will therefore be to define gender abolitionism (even though it is a fairly diverse and broad school of thought) and, as the title suggests, to offer a critique of it: my experience with these tendencies (precisely because there is no single form of abolitionism) has in fact been fundamentally negative and often even harmful to transsexual individuals. Finally, this article will also offer a critique of the language currently used in LGBTQIA+ circles, arguing that it is ineffective and inefficient in identifying patriarchal structures and mechanisms, and that a substantial revision of this language is necessary. I want to emphasize, however, that I am not writing this article because of the negative experiences resulting from this approach: the negative experiences are merely a logical consequence of this approach; just as at least one of my Sisters has had worse experiences than I have. These experiences will not be described directly, to prevent them from being dismissed as anecdotes of little value—actions carried out by a few “bad apples”— even though the foundation of this ideology lies in second-wave feminism—specifically radical feminism, a movement known both for its blindness to hierarchical structures such as white supremacy and for its never-hidden contempt toward trans women, just to name a few points—and that gender abolitionist thought explicitly contains the seeds of the very behaviors that my Sister and I have experienced. Essentially, this article will be a more systematic expansion of another article of mine, Gender is fluid? Good for you. which I wrote some time ago.
As mentioned in the introduction, gender abolitionism is essentially an umbrella term referring to a range of trends that, while diverse, share a common foundation; in general, I find it easier to divide them into two main tendencies: a radical feminist one (chronologically the first) and a queer one. As one might easily imagine, gender abolitionism refers to any movement that views gender as an undesirable cultural, social, and psychological category that must therefore be eliminated, both at the systemic and interpersonal levels.2 Gender is understood as a purely social construct (a set of rules, behaviors, and expectations that, when repeated, reinforce themselves) which has consequently created a hierarchical system of domination in which cis men are at the top and the rest of the world is beneath them—a system that cannot be taken into account because gender can only be understood as essentially binary. All of this is certainly familiar to anyone who has at least some familiarity with the LGBTQIA+ “community” (or, more simply, hasn’t been living under a rock for the past 15 years), and certainly “gender is a social construct”—one of the most frequently repeated slogans of this century—is something I can in some way agree with, even though I set out with the intention of criticizing gender abolitionism; if you’ve read my previous article, you’ll know that I acknowledge that the modern set of prescriptions has a sort of birthdate, setting aside the history of patriarchy—which, in any case, places cis men at the top of the hierarchy—which is already something that should give us pause. Gender, in this school of thought, is fundamentally a cage3 that limits the infinite possibilities of human beings in the most extreme (and, in my experience, most common) examples; in those that tend to present themselves as more diplomatic, it is simply a legacy of the past or the hierarchical system itself.
First of all, I believe it is necessary to define what is meant by “gender” in the two major abolitionist tendencies. This is particularly straightforward in TERF abolitionism, which views gender either as “gender theory”—the social bogeyman of recent years—or as something that conflates and reduces biological sex and gender to the same level. Queer abolitionism, though equally simplistic, is slightly more complex because it conflates gender as a social construct (“blue is for boys, pink is for girls”) with gender identity (whether or not there is a mismatch between inner and outer expressions), gender expression (what we choose to convey to the world regarding whether or not we belong to a particular gender: mannerisms, clothing, etc.), and Patriarchy—that is, gender as a class—four concepts that are strictly distinct from one another but become synonymous with one another.4 While, as far as radical feminism’s abolitionism is concerned, I don’t think there’s much to say5 (though I’ll discuss it at length later on, since the roots of the ideas discussed in this article lie precisely in radical feminism), I find it necessary, with regard to queer abolitionism, to highlight the great confusion that has arisen over the years around the various categories that are recognized, but have been jumbled together, creating—even within what purports to be the queer “political struggle”—an indescribable jumble that has, in fact, weakened the foundations of language, making it impossible for heterocis people to understand what on earth we’re talking about.6 The confusion over terms and concepts is, sadly7, the common denominator of everything that, in recent years, has come to be considered queer theory—a theory that has gone so far as to create the monstrosities of people who define themselves as non-binary for political reasons.
In my opinion, one of the pillars underpinning the conceptual confusion of queer abolitionism is the work of Judith Butler, particularly the theory of gender performativity, which has been terribly misinterpreted8. In queer abolitionism, gender is viewed as a performance, a staging: nothing more than a theatrical performance. This is absolutely not what Butler ever intended, as she subsequently explained9 and has clarified for years. This misinterpretation has created the impression that gender is therefore something one can choose to wear or not, a mask that can be removed in favor of another at will. The performative dimension of gender, in Butler’s view, is rather a cultural construction whose existence is inherently unstable and whose continuation is possible only through acts that are conveyed as messages to the outside world. While still maintaining a view that ignores the person performing the act—both in Butler’s work and in queer abolitionism—and at the same time denies that there could be anything within people that drives them to act, thereby removing any possibility of action from the person themselves and focusing solely on the act itself, it is quite clear that going so far as to claim that gender is drag10, as one sometimes hears online, or even simply to say that gender is a performance, is something very different that effectively strips gender of any material consequence—which Butler has never denied, quite the contrary; it is, moreover, completely at odds with Butler’s own position, which focuses on the act while denying an active role to the person performing it; in queer abolitionism, it is the person who decides which act to perform, while the act itself loses all significance. In both cases, one certainly openly denies—even while failing to understand it—the inner experience of those who feel a disconnect with their own bodies and with how their bodies should appear11. What I find essential to emphasize, however—and which will become clearer in a moment—is that placing the burden and responsibility of performance (and of any struggle) solely on the individual depoliticizes demands that I, too, initially find acceptable, while simultaneously creating new prescriptions that, as prescriptions, are anything but liberating12, imbuing a movement that performs, in the Butlerian sense, good intentions into a form of purity politics, sacrificing potential material power in favor of symbolism. Ironically, therefore, they end up performing anti-patriarchal radicalism13 and forcing others to do the same, rather than focusing on the real problem, by placing impossible standards on the shoulders of individuals. Before I’m accused of defeatism: I’m not saying that the individual doesn’t have their own responsibilities; what I’m saying is that all the responsibility rests on the shoulders of individuals, with no intention of looking instead to collective projects in which every person is free to live as they please without having to feel a barrage of insults raining down on them regarding who they are, how they behave, or how much they reinforce gender roles. Opposition to a norm that becomes the new norm is just as oppressive as the norm it seeks to eliminate, if that opposition prevents a freedom that does not undermine other freedoms—never mind further misinterpreted slogans such as “the personal is political.”
If you’ve read some of my most recent articles, Essentialism, Deconstructionism, and Complexity and Who’s Afraid of Science?, you’ll know that my stance on transsexuality and trans lives is based—just as the most up-to-date research is—on a biopsychosocial model, or, to put it in Serano’s terms14, a holistic model. Precisely because I am a materialist, in fact, I cannot help but consider the person as a whole; and Serano herself offers further insight both in her second book, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, and in the video Do Trans People Reinforce Gender?15, by drawing the distinction—which I find fundamental—between gender constructionism and gender artifactualism: gender constructionism is, that is, the school of thought according to which gender is something that “does not arise in a direct and unadulterated manner from biology, but rather is shaped to some extent by culture—by socialization, gender norms, and the gender-related ideology, language, and labels that constrain and influence our understanding of the matter”, whereas artifactualism is a school of thought that “discount or purposefully ignore the possibility that biology and biological variation also play a role in constraining and shaping our genders”. Now, before some detractor comes along to distort what I’m saying—as has already happened in the past—let me repeat something fundamental for the umpteenth time16: essentialism is completely foreign to me. I do not believe that there is truly anything that can be considered universally or solely masculine or solely feminine, nor have I ever believed for a single moment in my life that the two categories are natural and perfectly separate and opposed to one another. Returning to the two schools of thought identified by Serano, while on the one hand I have no major issues with constructionist thought—since I, too, am (on some level) a constructionist—I do, however, have major issues with artifactualism, which is almost completely overlapping with gender abolitionism and, at least in part, with radical feminism; it is also my duty to emphasize that artifactualism is the most common and socially acceptable position. By considering gender as an artifact—that is, a product and symbol of a culture and nothing more—artifactualism effectively denies the direct and intimate experiences of “binary” transgender people17 and often regards “identification”18 with one of the two most common genders as “false consciousness” and/or the product of the internalization of patriarchal rules and roles. This last point is confirmed by John Stoltenberg, husband of Andrea Dworkin, a historical radical feminist, who, in an article19 in which he attempts to portray Dworkin as an ally of trans people—even though she was anything but, despite the clumsy attempt by Stoltenberg and subsequent dubious figures on various social networks—quotes a passage, for some reason described as “prescient and empathetic,” from Dworkin’s own Woman Hating:
There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency . . . as a transsexual. There are three crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.
Let’s start with a few premises: Dworkin was relatively close to and supportive of—at least in past decades—the work of Janice Raymond, the genocidal and infamous author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. In Raymond’s own Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism20, which contains several quotes from Dworkin, the latter is portrayed as a supporter of Raymond’s genocidal work, particularly when it is stated that:
Dworkin’s life partner, John Stoltenberg, has channeled and championed Dworkin as a trans ally, singling me out as guilty of the biological essentialism that Andrea would have abhorred. With the backing of Stoltenberg, who is also Dworkin’s executor, gay writer Martin Duberman wrote in his 2020 biography of Andrea:
For a time … she had been somewhat friendly with Janice Raymond, whose transphobic 1979 book The Transsexual Empire … deplored the ‘medicalization’ of gender that encouraged surgical intervention to create ‘a woman according to man’s image’.” Stoltenberg claimed that Andrea “deplored my view and let me know at length” (Duberman, 2020, p. 161, italics mine).
Andrea and I had several conversations in the mid-1970s when I was writing The Transsexual Empire, and I don’t recollect any ‘at length disagreement’ with my critique.
Clearly, I have no reason to trust anything that comes out of Raymond’s genocidal mouth or pen, and it’s possible that Dworkin initially held views similar to Raymond’s and later changed his mind. Thank Goddes, if that were the case. Similarly, however, I have no reason to trust Stoltenberg either, and in this case, it is precisely because of what he himself presents as evidence of some form of Dworkin’s “allyship” toward the trans community.
In the quote from Dworkin that Stoltenberg provides, we initially read that, for the radical feminist, it was indeed a right for transsexual people to undergo sex reassignment surgery. This would require a separate article, but to put it briefly, reducing the experience of dysphoria to the genital area alone is, at best, shamefully disrespectful of trans lives and the experience of dysphoria. Personally, there is much more that causes me immediate dysphoria—especially physical characteristics that put me at risk when I leave the house, primarily body and facial hair.21 As much as I appreciate the emphasis on the need to survive our conditions, those conditions can only be set by us. On the second point, I don’t have much to say; it is trivially idealistic and based on a false premise: it is not our understanding of the categories of “man” and “woman” that prevents us from living with dignity, but the violence that manifests itself when we move from one to the other. The third point, however, is the one on which I intend to focus most: Dworkin is actively and openly advocating for the end of transsexuality. Dworkin, as an artifactualist (and/or abolitionist), not only denies trans people’s fundamental understanding of their own gender identity, but also sets as the very ultimate goal of her androgynous world the disappearance of transsexuality. This is definitely the last thing I would expect from some alleged ally of the trans community.22
Furthermore, Dworkin and Stoltenberg, albeit in a very subtle and implicit way, argue something that Serano, on the other hand, brings to light admirably: binary transsexuality23 reinforces gender categories and roles. The naive Stoltenberg himself writes this in his own words in the cited article:
This third point was Andrea’s vision for the future: a society in which everyone is free from gender polarity and from the social hierarchy that reifies and requires it.
The underlying logic of Stoltenberg and Dworkin is precisely the one denounced by Serano, who demonstrates that even the genocidal Janice Raymonds, in The Transsexual Empire, advanced similar ideas:
Within [a patriarchal] society, the transsexual only exchanges one stereotype for the other, thus reinforcing the fabric by which a sexist society is held together.24
Whether or not Dworkin was as genocidal as Raymonds is obviously not the purpose of this article25, but rather to understand how these seemingly progressive ideas are the product of a tradition that includes that very same genocidal writer; and the fact that these ideas are present, perhaps in different forms and to varying degrees, but present nonetheless, even among people and in circles within the LGBTQIA+ community and in much of today’s “inclusive” feminism, which in fact chooses, more or less consciously, to ignore the direct experience of transsexual people and the gender dysphoria that in many cases is also disabling. Historically, in fact, transsexual people—especially transsexual women—have been essentially forced to adhere as strictly as possible to gender norms in order to gain access to medical care and live a normal life: as I explained in my previous article Transmedicalism isn’t what you think it is, Harry Benjamin established the first standardized process for accessing medical care to treat gender dysphoria, and with his book The Transsexual Phenomenon26, he created what is known as the Benjamin Scale—a scale that classified trans women as more or less “true transsexuals”27 based not so much on the distress they experienced, but primarily on the social role they assumed: in the table providing an “in-depth” description of the Types28, we can in fact see how Benjamin describes the sexual habits according to which the transsexual Types were classified, in an extremely stereotypical manner even with regard to sexual orientation (Benjamin, of course, is careful not to label the sexual lives of the Types on his Scale as “heterosexual,” though he also avoids labeling them “homosexual”); as Sandy Stone points out in The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto29, Benjamin’s book was obviously very well known among trans women of the time, who followed Benjamin’s guidelines as religiously as possible. Our adherence (or lack thereof!) to behaviors and presentations that are strictly associated with either the male or female gender, the pursuit of surgical procedures, and everything related to transsexuality are therefore not only a treatment for dysphoria, of course, but also a necessity for survival that enables access to medical care—at a very basic level, when one is able to undergo surgeries that go beyond cis fixation on our genitals—and even a minimum level of safety when walking down the street30; and in any case, as Serano further explains, cis people are not subjected to the same levels of scrutiny as trans people. As the late Emi Koyama wrote in her Transfeminist Manifesto:
It is unnecessary -- in fact oppressive -- to require women to abandon their freedom to make personal choices to be considered a true feminist, for it will only replace the rigid patriarchal construct of ideal femininity with a slightly modified feminist version that is just as rigid. Transfeminism believes in fostering an environment where women’s individual choices are honored, while scrutinizing and challenging institutions that limit the range of choices available to them.
Beyond individual experiences—and to avoid, as I mentioned earlier, certain experiences being dismissed as merely anecdotal—I would like to invite you to ask yourselves: Is transsexuality truly accepted in LGBTQIA+ spaces today, or is it met with opposition? How are binary trans people31 treated in the face of such ideas, which are objectively present in those spaces? How is a trans woman’s femininity viewed in cis-feminist circles? Why is it that transsexual people, who demonstrate that biological sex and the gender assigned at birth are by no means immutable or natural categories, and that oppositional sexism and the much-maligned gender binary are in reality entirely imaginary constructs?32 Countless trans women—myself included—feel repulsion at the very idea of having to deal with cis feminists or queer people, especially as they begin to develop an awareness of their own material conditions and to recognize transmisogyny, even when they may not know the word to define it.
In conclusion, these views—which are, unfortunately, so widespread—are fundamentally idealistic, that is, they assume that structural changes and changes in material conditions can result from individual symbolic and performative behaviors; they are obviously transphobic and, above all, transmisogynistic—as I hope my regular readers can understand by themselves—and misogynistic, because there can be no transmisogyny without misogyny (not to mention that the vast majority of radical feminists reduce women to “oppressed beings” without considering anything else); and they are fundamentally authoritarian, denying individual freedom of choice and making the anti-norm the new norm.
Strictly speaking, it is actually the sex abolitionism.
Although this last point is usually denied by those who embrace and advocate for gender abolitionism—claiming that individuals’ identities are not affected—the very arguments they put forward actually confirm that gender as an identity and the interpersonal realm are, in fact, central to the abolitionist discourse. Throughout this article, I will provide evidence to support this claim.
Gender freedom vs freedom from gender? An invitation to take tensions seriously (Riva, 2025, pages 357-358, 364) https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/f76fbeec-019c-490c-91ab-4feafe57f3c9/2025%20RIVA%20N.%20Liberta%cc%80%20di%20genere%20vs%20liberta%cc%80%20dal%20genere%3f.pdf
You just have to listen to queer discourse to realize this.
Red Flag Alert - Anti-Trans Genocide in the USA - #3 https://www.lemkininstitute.com/red-flag-alerts/red-flag-alert---anti-trans-genocide-in-the-usa---%233; UK Supreme Court rules legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t
Let me make it very clear that, while I believe it’s important for the heterocis world to understand what we mean, this isn’t out of a desire for assimilation, but for the sake of effectiveness and efficiency, which are necessary in a genuine political struggle; moreover, I myself, before I came out and began my transition, never understood what the hell they were talking about.
All you have to do is look beyond Instagram posts to learn stuff.
Even taking into account some of the problems with Butler’s work itself, which we’ll get to in a moment
Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender | Big Think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc
Combining a misunderstanding of one of Butler’s concepts with a quote from RuPaul is brave.
I’ll limit myself to talking about the body, since I myself don’t exactly conform in my gender expression—I blend masculine and feminine elements (and besides, I could pass only thanks to a miracle); however, we must also consider that there are people, both cis and trans, who do conform, without this necessarily being something negative.
In this regard, I suggest reading the Transfeminist Manifesto by the late Emi Koyama, who passed away recently, to get an idea of what I mean.
Whatever you mean by “radical”.
I want to highlight that I often disagree with Serano, as I also pointed out in a recent article on transmedicalism, so I don’t view her as some goddess of transfeminism who has come down to earth to save us all; however, her perspective is certainly almost always—if not always—pointing in the right direction.
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (2013, digital); Do Trans People Reinforce Gender? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn4FwNgB18I
I’ve genuinely lost count of how many times I’ve had to repeat this.
There are no binary trans people, but you aren’t ready for this discussion yet, especially since you’re just spouting slogans instead of actually studying.
A term I can’t stand and that has done more harm than good, but to make it easier for you to understand…
Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/john-stoltenberg-andrew-dworkin-was-trans-ally/
2021, digital.
Passing is also a means of survival.
I don’t even want to beat a dead horse, but Stoltenberg’s choice to write “transwomen” and “transfolk”—all one word—is just as “ally-like” as Dworkin’s positions.
See 17
From Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, quoting The Transsexual Empire.
Although I think that dreaming of a world without transsexuality provides the answer to the question.
1966, digital.
The dear Benjamin refers to these women using the masculine form.
Page 19
1987, digital.
As a brick, I’d have facial feminization surgery tomorrow if I could afford it.
See 17.
Do you remember Note 17? Well, now you’re ready for this discussion.
It's not that there are no binary trans people. It's that there are no binary people in general. Sex is a hierarchy and the terms man and woman are spectrums where we all fall somewhere there