Ethnographic engagement reveals emotional motivations in a gender-critical collective, suggesting complexities in trans-exclusionary views.
In this article, I argue for an ethnographic engagement with trans‐exclusionary feminism. Using my fieldwork in a gender‐critical collective in the United Kingdom as an example, I show how feminist anthropology can give insights into the motivations and emotional trajectories of gender‐critical feminists. By contextualizing the highly affective emic notion of female solidarity , I show how feelings mobilize the trans‐exclusionary view that womanhood can only ever exist for cis women. I argue that it is a responsibility of feminist anthropology to contribute to knowledge that can be useful in disputing exclusionary feminisms. Taking this research as a case in point, I believe that this is done most effectively through an intentional ethnographic engagement with proponents of exclusionary feminist politics.
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Henrike Kraul (2025) studied this question.
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