Gender-Critical or Gender-Inclusive?: Radical Feminism is Associated with Positive Attitudes toward Trans* People and Their Rights

Identifying as a feminist and endorsing liberal feminist values are associated with positive attitudes toward trans* people and their rights. However, since the late 1970s, one branch of radical feminism has argued for a biological essentialist definition of binary gender categories. More recently gender-critical feminism has appealed to radical feminism when describing trans* rights as a threat to biologically-defined women’s politics and safety. To understand debates around the evolution of trans* rights, three studies (N = 502), examined the associations between diverse feminist perspectives and identifications, gender binary beliefs, and attitudes toward trans* people and their rights. Study 1 updated an existing measure of different feminist perspectives. Study 2 showed that endorsements of intersectional, and radical feminist perspectives were associated with positive attitudes toward trans* people and their rights. Study 3 revealed that both intersectional and radical feminist identifications were also associated with positive attitudes, whilst endorsing gender binary beliefs was associated with negative attitudes. These results challenge the assumption that support for trans* rights is inconsistent with either general feminist or specifically radical feminist positions and inform both debates around the evolution of trans* rights and existing tensions within feminist movements.