“Discourses of Trans Surgery”: Transfeminists, TERFs, and Medical Transnormativity in Second Wave American Feminism

Abstract

This article explores how transfeminists and TERFs understood the relationship between trans identity and trans medical procedures in the US Second Wave feminist movement of the 1970s. Building off of recent historical research on transfeminists involvement in the Second Wave, as well as the theoretical development of “transnormativity,” this article expands the conversation to explore how trans and anti-trans actors contributed to the creation of a transnormativity in which sex reassignment surgeries were central to trans identity itself. This is explored through historical source analysis and close reading of various articles from 1970s feminist publications a long with an analysis of Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire. Through this I argue that both trans activists and TERFs of the Second Wave espoused a limiting view of trans identity and experience in which the trans subject is only a creation of medical procedures.