LONDON — U.K. lawyer, activist and cultural commentator Charlotte Proudman penned an opinion piece for The Independent newspaper today, urging fellow radical feminists to disavow transphobia and instead renew the campaign against “pornography,” following the lead of SWERF icons Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.
Proudman wrote today that “being a radical feminist means being a trans ally at the same time.”
Her op-ed for The Independent appears to be a response to radical feminists in the U.K. and U.S. who espouse both TERF and SWERF positions, which are widely condemned by trans rights and sex worker rights activists.
But while Proudman would like her fellow radical feminists to stop targeting, stigmatizing and endangering the lives of trans women, she also continues to promote measures like the “Nordic Model” of sex work, which prevents sex workers from earning a living by criminalizing their customers.
Last November, she tweeted, “Sex work. It’s not sex because it’s not mutual & wanted. It’s not work when there’s a risk of rape and there’s no dignity. We need @nordicmodelnow.”
Although such positions are antagonistic to sex workers and therefore appear to place Proudman in the SWERF camp, her essay does take issue with TERFs. It begins, “I hate the term TERF: trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Radical feminism has been co-opted by a few powerful transphobes who do not represent radical feminist ideology. As a result, many of the students I taught at Cambridge were anti-radical feminists. They believed radical feminism was inherently transphobic. But it isn’t.”
Proudman then states, “I align myself with radical feminism and am trans-inclusionary (let’s use RFTI, shall we?).”
Bringing Out the SWERF Icon Big Guns
According to Proudman, the proof that “radical feminism upholds the rights of trans people,” is the work of “the OGs of radical feminism: legal scholar professor Catharine MacKinnon and the late author, Andrea Dworkin. Both trans allies. We need to remember this, and reclaim radical feminism for all women and oppressed groups.”
Both cis women and trans women, Proudman argues, “are harmed under the patriarchy and their unique experiences must be included in our feminism. There are very many trans women who live their feminist politics loud and proud every day: opposing the exploitation of sex workers, violent and degrading pornography, and all forms of male violence against women and girls.”
Trans Women Sex Workers as Automatic Victims in SWERF Doctrine
One of the main arguments Proudman presents to convince her fellow radical feminists to support trans women is that some trans women are sex workers, which she seems to believe automatically makes them victims.
“As early as 1983, Dworkin and MacKinnon both recognized the objectification and violation of trans people in pornography,” Proudman writes. “As such, their anti-pornography civil rights ordinance, which allowed women harmed by pornography to claim damages through the civil courts, also included trans people.”
By “pitting trans people against cis women,” Proudman concludes, “the patriarchy’s work is being done for those who uphold it. They’re making us fight amongst ourselves over scraps, when we should come together in solidarity and demand real rights — or revolution.”
