Jeffreys will be interviewed on the WORT program Access Hour.
A controversial feminist known for her negative portrayal of transgender people will be featured on a WORT 89.9 FM show, prompting complaints from the community.
Sheila Jeffreys is scheduled to be on Access Hour on Monday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. Jeffreys is known in feminist and transgender communities as a "TERF," a derogatory acronym that stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist."
As transgender people gain wider acceptance, feminism grapples with how to accommodate transwomen. Some, like Jeffreys, have decided they aren't women.
A political science professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Jeffreys has portrayed transgenderism as a sexual fetish and says it undermines the struggle for women's rights. She's written: "Transexualism opposes feminism by maintaining and reinforcing false and constructed notions of correct femininity and masculinity." She also degrades transgender reassignment surgery: "The newly carved-out orifices of male-bodied transgenders do not resemble vaginas; rather, they create new microbial habitats in which infections develop and cause serious smell issues for their owners."
Listener control
The show's content is not endorsed or programmed by WORT, a non-profit, primarily volunteer community station that broadcasts at 89.9 FM.
Jeffreys will be on an episode of Access Hour, a weekly Monday night show that turns control over to people and organizations in the community, says Molly Stentz, the station's news and public affairs facilitator.
Listeners or community groups who apply to host the show are required to follow FCC guidelines, including rules against swearing and electioneering. But the hosts can talk about whatever they want.
"This hour is the hour we set aside for community folks to say what they will," Stentz says. "We've had people on with anti-science views, anti-religious views, views that are neither factual nor popular."
WORT doesn't screen topics to make sure they're interesting, relevant or non-controversial, Stentz says. "We don't promise it's good," she says. "It's anything from a high school band that has never played a show to someone discussing an obscure religion to someone ranting about labor politics to someone discussing water meters."
"It reflects people in the community," she adds. "We don't curate it."
Stentz acknowledges there have been complaints about Jeffreys and says that members of the WORT community are interested in countering her views throughout the week on the station's other programs.
The station's Karma Chavez, a UW professor who specializes in gender and sexuality theory, is preparing a special episode of A Public Affair for Wednesday, Nov. 12, at noon, to address issues of "transgenderism, radical feminism, and media framing of gender."
Co-opting feminism?
The Access Hour with Jeffreys is being hosted by Thistle Pettersen, a Madison musician and activist who applied for the slot. She said she first became aware of the schism in feminism two years ago, when she attempted to host a workshop at an anarchist book fair in the Twin Cities.
Her description of her workshop read in part: "This workshop is intended for womyn, or female-bodied people who grew up socialized female. If you don't fit into that category, again, you are welcome to come as an ally, but the focus of our discussion will be specifically on the liberation of female folk and how our struggle relates to anarchy, general social organizing, and anarchist circles in the Midwest."
Pettersen says her workshop description prompted numerous threats on her Facebook page, accusing her of being transphobic. "There was a man on the Facebook page who threatened to beat me up with a baseball bat and break my guitar."
Since then, Pettersen says she feels the struggle for women's rights has increasingly been "hijacked" by "men who transgender to women."
"It's really becoming increasingly difficult to have a rational discussion about how gender harms girls and women, because the conversation has shifted to how transwomen are hurt by feminism."
Pettersen says she intends to ask Jeffreys -- who will not be in Madison, but participating via phone -- about her new book, Gender Hurts: a feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism.
"We're going to talk about how transgenderism has taken over liberal feminism and seriously harmed lesbianism and lesbian culture."
Pettersen adds that radical feminists do not wish transpeople harm and that almost all violence perpetuated against transpeople is done by men.
"We're not violent," she says. "Patriarchy and male violence is the problem. And we need to allow women to be a group and we have a right to organize, without men present."
A vulnerable group
Cabell Gathman recognizes that WORT isn't endorsing the views of Pettersen or Jeffreys in giving them a platform, but still wishes the station wouldn't give them a microphone.
Her organization, Wisconsin 5-2-1, which advocates on behalf of bisexual and pansexual people, sent a letter to WORT calling Jeffreys' ideas "hate speech."
Transgender people are already one of the most vulnerable groups today and don't need more hate directed their way, she says. She cites WORT's mission statement: "WORT shall be committed to radio programming with a human perspective -- respecting all peoples and their environments." By providing a platform to Jeffreys, the station is failing to respect all people, Gathman says.
"We fully respect the legal rights of freedom of speech," Gathman says. "[But] the community doesn't have to provide a platform to people with hateful ideas. And providing that platform has real negative effects on people in the community who are the most vulnerable."
Gathman cites a study (PDF) from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs that shows transpeople are often victims of violence.
The issue has had local implications. Gathman notes that a transgender West High School student committed suicide last year and that transgender people face extremely high rates of violence.
"That kind of thing directly follows on a cultural narrative that treats Jeffreys' ideas as something we should take seriously," Gathman says. "In fact, what she's calling for is treating transpeople as less than people."
Chavez, who chair's the station's programming committee, agrees with Gathman that transpeople are vulnerable. As a group, they experience high rates of homelessness, job discrimination, violence and police harassment.
Chavez says arguments like Jeffreys are "a very problematic perspective that tries to define women."
Although she is uncomfortable that WORT is giving Jeffreys a platform, Chavez understands that censoring her could establish a bad precedent.
For her A Public Affair show on Nov. 12, Chavez will feature Finn Enke, a UW-Madison professor of history, gender and women's studies, and director of the LGBT Studies Certificate Program, who edited Transfeminist Perspectives: In and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies.
Enke, Chavez says, examines issues that ciswomen (a non-transgender woman) and transwomen share. "These questions of gender oppression are very much integrated," Chavez says. "The kinds of misogyny that ciswomen experience are the same kinds of misogyny that transwomen experience."
Early supporters
Laura Gutknecht is offended by many of Jeffreys' ideas, but she doesn't fault WORT for putting them on the air.
Gutknecht, who is the station's chief engineer, came out as a transwoman on a WORT show almost 20 years ago.
"I know that WORT struggles with this whole matter, but by the same token, I hope the listeners realize that WORT has for decades now been very pro-transgender," Gutknecht says. "To just single out one show on a program, whose very name indicates that its intent is to be a public forum, I worry that people are losing perspective."
That's not to say Gutknecht doesn't take issue with Jeffreys' ideas. She says she is contemplating calling in during the phone-in portion of the show.
She wonders how, if transwomen are a threat to feminism, what are transmen? And Gutknecht wonders: "How am I a threat to feminism? And why can't people like myself be feminists? And why can't men be feminists?"
Gutknecht worries that the uproar over the show will end up giving Jeffreys' ideas more attention than they deserve. But she also trusts people can make up their own minds.
"As a transgender woman, I am offended by the things that are said, but I also understand the mission of the Access Hour," she says. "When people say outrageous things, generally the public is sensible enough to tag them as outrageous and make their own decisions."
[Editor's note: This spelling of Finn Enke's name has been corrected in this story. Joe Tarr has contributed reports to WORT-FM's In Our Backyard news show.]
