Sara Ahmed delivers a searing historical diagnosis of a movement that claims to protect women while systematically erasing trans people from the feminist record. Rather than getting bogged down in the noise of current policy battles, Ahmed reframes the conflict as a deliberate act of historical amnesia, arguing that "gender critical" feminism operates by "blanking"—a term she borrows from the history of white feminism's exclusion of Black and brown voices—to manufacture an illusion of unity. This is not just a debate about definitions; it is an analysis of how power decides who gets to be remembered and who is rendered invisible in the fight for rights.
The Mechanics of Erasure
Ahmed's central thesis is that the current hostility toward trans rights is not a new phenomenon but a recycled tactic of exclusion. She draws a direct line from the 1970s, when Black feminists were ignored in white-dominated spaces, to today, where trans people are treated as interlopers threatening a fragile solidarity. She writes, "Blanking is how feminism became 'white feminism.' The word blank comes from white. Feminism became white not because Black and brown women were not there, speaking, knowing, creating, as feminists, but because we were blanked, not recorded as being there." This historical parallel is the piece's most potent tool, forcing readers to confront the possibility that the current "sex realist" movement is repeating the very errors it claims to oppose.
The author suggests that this erasure is strategic. By removing trans people and queer theory from the narrative, "gender critical" activists create a false sense of organic unity. As Ahmed puts it, "That removal creates a feeling of unity. That some feminist spaces are experienced as more unified is a measure of how many are missing from them." This framing is effective because it shifts the blame from the excluded to the excluders, highlighting that the perceived "threat" to feminism is actually a manufactured crisis designed to consolidate power.
Critics might argue that the comparison between racial exclusion and gender identity debates risks conflating distinct forms of oppression. However, Ahmed is careful to state she is not analogizing race and sex directly, but rather pointing to the shared mechanism of exclusion. She notes, "I am not analogising race and sex/gender but suggesting that sex is treated as that organic thing ('bonded on the basis'), as what would or should unite women unless it is taken away by those pesky others who have entered the room later or too late."
"That removal creates a feeling of unity. That some feminist spaces are experienced as more unified is a measure of how many are missing from them."
The Myth of Biological Certainty
Ahmed dismantles the core argument of "gender critical" feminism: that sex is a fixed, biological reality independent of human interpretation. She challenges the idea that sex is like the earth being round, proposing instead that it is a social and material construct. "It is an important way they can and do justify having the same arguments about sex as Trump or other fascists and patriarchs (we wouldn't disagree with him if he said the earth was round!)," she writes, noting the irony that these groups align with authoritarian figures on the nature of reality. Her counter-argument is sharp: "If there were no humans would the earth still be round? Yes. If there were no humans, would there still be sex? No."
This section is crucial because it exposes the ideological function of "common sense." Ahmed argues that by treating sex as an unchangeable fact, these activists bypass decades of feminist critique that questioned the very nature of biological determinism. She observes, "When 'gender critical' feminists argue that sex is common sense, they push aside the substantive critiques of common sense made within feminism itself." The author suggests this is a recruiting device, a "fantasy 'out,'" that appeals to those seeking a simple, materialist explanation for complex social problems. While some might argue that biological sex is indeed a material reality that cannot be wished away, Ahmed's point is that the meaning assigned to that biology is always political and historically contingent.
Weaponizing History
Perhaps the most damning part of Ahmed's analysis is her critique of how "gender critical" feminists appropriate feminist history. She argues that they engage in an "instrumental" reading of the past, cherry-picking concepts like "sex class" to justify exclusion rather than liberation. She points out that the suffragettes did not use the language of sex-based rights to exclude, but to include: "if anything, claiming rights for women, to vote, to have access to education, was about not being barred because of one's sex."
Ahmed highlights how figures like Shulamith Firestone are misread. Firestone's work on "sex class" was not about preserving biological distinctions but about politicizing them to eventually eliminate the sex distinction itself. Ahmed writes, "When the concept of 'sex class' is used to imply that 'female' and 'male' are just natural and biological entities that feminists need to protect or preserve the work of that concept is blanked." This is a profound insight: the current movement is not recovering a lost feminist truth, but actively distorting it to serve a new agenda of exclusion. The stakes are high, as Ahmed notes, "I know from conversations with feminist academics that it is becoming harder to do feminist work, to organise our events and spaces, because of the hostile environment created by 'gender critical' feminism."
Bottom Line
Sara Ahmed's argument is a powerful corrective to the current narrative, successfully reframing the trans rights debate as a struggle over historical memory and the very definition of feminist solidarity. Its greatest strength lies in exposing the "blanking" mechanism that allows exclusion to masquerade as protection. The argument's vulnerability, however, lies in its reliance on the reader accepting the premise that biological sex is entirely a social construct, a point that remains a flashpoint for those who prioritize biological essentialism. Readers should watch for how institutions, particularly universities and funding bodies, respond to this manufactured controversy, as Ahmed predicts the environment will only grow more hostile for those who refuse to participate in the erasure.