Feminist movements have long been divided over the question of whether and how women share a biological essence, and with what consequences for those represented by or excluded from feminist projects. This paper explores this tension in the context of national debates about the rights and recognition of transgender (trans) women in the United Kingdom (UK) and France. Madeleine Pape develops the concept of biofeminism: a variety of feminism that pursues and deploys scientific knowledge in order to embed a certain vision of “sex” and womanhood into gender equality projects and policy. Pape focuses, in particular, on the rise of feminist groups whose objective is to exclude trans women from women-only spaces, with attention to how they engage in epistemic mobilization to convince policymakers that “sex” – understood as an unchangeable form of binary female/male difference – defines the essence of women's lived experiences. Pape examines this phenomenon in the context of: (1) proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act in the UK that would decrease the barriers to obtaining legal recognition of one’s gender (2017 and 2020), and (2) calls to broaden the definition and tracking of féminicide in France to include the murders of trans women (2020).
