by Cerys Organ

Dr Victoria Browne’s part B module, ‘Gender and Global Politics’, was illuminating in that it pushed my understanding of social constructions to consider not only gender but also the sex dichotomy as aspects of the patriarchal production of ‘essential’ and ‘natural’ binaries. This topic has become prominent throughout the last few years with the rise of the self-defined Gender Critical (GC) movement, otherwise known as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) feminism, and recent discourse surrounding the UK Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. This blog presents my personal viewpoint on sex, gender, and the implications of gender-critical debate.

Sex and gender are seemingly simple concepts, with the former describing the biological category based on reproductive functions and anatomy, and the latter being the social constructions and norms associated with sex. However, sex is a gendered concept itself, and we cannot look to biology to ground social claims about the male-female distinction. While there are numerous tests for sexually dimorphic traits, such as chromosomes, reproductive organs, proportions of sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics, some people may have inconsistent results, i.e., not all female or not all male. The male-female dichotomy ignores and invalidates intersex people, whose existence demonstrates that sex is better understood as a spectrum rather than a binary.

Butler, a prominent feminist philosopher, argues that feminist critique must understand how categories of gender and sex are constructed and inhibited by patriarchal power structures. Gender is a performance of sex, which manifests in numerous ways in our day-to-day lives. For example, one sex often dominates in many occupational fields; women are much more likely than men to pursue a career centred around care, such as nursing or teaching. This can be linked to the perception of women as gentler than men, more nurturing, and maternal, which derives from socio-cultural interpretations of motherhood as a biological function.

Taking sex categories and their culturally associated gender norms as biologically and universally true rationalises and legitimises systems of oppression as inevitable consequences of our bodies, which simultaneously reproduces and is a result of institutionalised misogyny. This circular process of reinforcement makes sex-based assumptions and practices so ingrained and normalised that gender norms appear to be a product of nature or common-sense.

The terms ‘women’ and ‘men’ denote a common identity that explicitly corresponds to biological sex. However, gender is not always constituted the same way across different historical and geographical contexts, due to the intersections of ethnic, religious, and class-related influences. The category of ‘woman’ in particular transcends any one definition, due to the lack of a consistent biologically-rooted or culturally-universal identity. Just as oppression is not monolithic and shared across time and space, neither is womanhood.

Women-only spaces are a point of contention for GC feminists/TERFs, such as gendered public bathrooms or sports competitions. They argue that making women-only spaces trans-inclusive enables predatory men to infiltrate and exploit spaces that are intended to keep males out for safety, privacy, and dignity reasons. On the surface, this seems like a legitimate concern, but this is precisely why the movement is so dangerous, as it is not supported by credible evidence. Whilst categorising sex and gender has proven useful in both our everyday language, and in that it gives women political visibility, an uncritical and dogmatic use of gendered terms such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in a political/legal context can and has led to an exclusionary, essentialising, and self-defeating movement of misunderstanding at its most innocent, and hatred at its most sinister.

Characteristics such as race, ability, sexuality, class, etc., are inextricable from ‘womanliness’ and intersect to uniquely oppress people within these biological or social categories. Abusive rhetoric about boxing Olympian gold-medallist Imane Khelif’s gender, as well as Serena Williams’ experience with ‘transvestigation’, exemplify that women of colour disproportionately face allegations of being transgender or not ‘woman’ enough. The racialised element to gender politics, with Western gender norms being rigidly Euro-centric and based on heterosexual white ideals of the feminine, exposes women of colour to scrutiny despite their personal identification or anatomy.

Exclusionary practices undermine core feminist goals, and the UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman has practical and worrying implications. For example, the politicisation of bathrooms has increased the risk of butch-presenting women being othered for their appearance, and women arrested by British Transport Police may be strip-searched by male officers if the officers suspect that they are transgender. Manufactured fear around trans people and the political support for such sensationalised threats exposes all women to potential discrimination and assault. GC feminists/TERFs end up defining an identity based on the exclusion of those who fail to conform to normative prerequisites, which sustains the domination of one worldview to determine who is valid and who is not, opening us up to socio-political regression for women as a marginalised group.

About me:

I am entering my final year of the International Relations BA at Loughborough University. Throughout the course, I have found myself consistently gravitating towards critical feminist frameworks to understand global politics. This year, I hope to centre my dissertation around feminist and postcolonial issues in Gaza, and then go on to extend this research in postgraduate study.

Recommended further reading:

Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge

• Carayol, T. (2024) ‘I am a woman’: Imane Khelif hits back in gender row after claiming gold, The Guardian [online], 10 August. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/10/i-am-a-woman-imane-khelif-hits-back-in-gender-row-after-claiming-gold (Accessed 30 March 2025).
• Karni, A. (2025) House Passes Bill to Bar Trans Athletes From Female School Sports Teams, The New York Times [online] 14 January. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/us/politics/house-trans-athletes.html (Accessed 13 February 2025).
• Litchfield, C., Kavanagh, E., Osborne, J., and Jones, I. (2018) ‘S’ocial media and the politics of gender, race, and identity: the case of Serena Williams, European Journal for Sport and Society 15(2), pp.154-170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2018.1452870
• Nicholson, L. (1994) ‘Interpreting Gender’, Signs 20(1), pp.79-105. Online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174928
• Serano, J. (2022) ‘Transgender People and “Biological Sex” Myths’, Medium [online] 17 July. Available at: https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a (Accessed 19 June 2025).
• Syal, R. (2025) ‘British Transport Police amends strip-searching policy after supreme court gender ruling’, Guardian [online] 17 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/17/trans-women-uk-railways-strip-searched-male-officers (Accessed 19 June 2025).
• Tudor, A. (2023) ‘The anti-feminism of anti-trans feminism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 30(2), pp.290-302. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068231164217
• The Supreme Court (2025) For Women Scotland Ldt (Appellant) v. The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) [online]. Available at: https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf

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