Academic Publications
women’s studies international forum
ALWAYS ENDANGERED, NEVER EXTINCT: EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY BUTCH LESBIAN IDENTITY IN THE UK
This article presents empirical data from survey research into lesbian and queer masculinities in the United Kingdom, conducted in 2017, which garnered over two hundred responses. Four dominant themes emerged from the data gathered. These themes addressed: distinctions and relationships between the sexed body and gender identity; the contradictions of identifying with masculinities while critiquing hegemonic masculinity; a sense of anxiety or loss around a perceived decline of lesbian community and identities within it, particularly the identity of butch lesbian; and also the great variety of trans identities and how they are defined and distinct. There were many considered responses under all the above themes on the changing meaning of the butch lesbian signifier, from forty self-identified butch lesbians as well as from those identifying with other terms, and this topic is the focus of this article.
I will explore the meaning and resonance of the butch lesbian identity in the UK context, and the sometimes rocky relationship to the explosion of newer terms describing sex and gender identities, such as masculine of centre (MOC), non-binary (NB), gender non-conforming (GNC) or transmasculine. While there was some unease that newer terms might or may have already eclipsed the category of butch, alongside a common assertion that the category of butch is considered old fashioned, ‘butch’ was still a term that valiantly persisted and held sentimental and political value. Many participants were keen that this identity be included and distinguished in the contemporary rainbow of possibilities for sexuality and gender identities in the UK.
book review: judith butler, who’s afraid of gender 2024
Butler’s latest book is an accessible summary of the background to the current gender-wars, and an appeal to solidarity. It will be readable to activists and academics alike; fast paced and passionate, it fizzes off the page with righteous exposure of inexcusable alliances between anti-trans campaigns and the far-right, illustrating how none of us will win in the Gilead they have in store; too many are not even intended to survive it. This may sound dramatic, but when you read Butler’s collated accounts of Christian fundamentalism, fascist dictators and their plans for us, you begin to think that maybe we aren’t all reacting enough.
Journal of lesbian studies
NO WOMAN’S LAND? REVISITING BORDER ZONE DENIZENS
This article presents empirical data from survey research into lesbian and queer masculinities in the United Kingdom, conducted in 2017, which garnered over two hundred responses. Dominant themes emerged which addressed the differences between the sexed body and gender identity; the contradictions of identifying with masculinities while critiquing hegemonic masculinity; a sense of anxiety or loss around a perceived decline of lesbian community and identities within it, particularly the identity of butch lesbian; and, finally, the variety of trans identities and how they are defined and distinct. The focus in this article is on the latter theme, the variety of trans identities, and particularly the shared experiences of individuals across different identifications. Namely, I consider how butch, non-binary, and queer individuals reported possible areas of resonance and recognition with transgender or transmasculine experiences or the experiences of trans men. I argue that rumors of “border wars” have been exaggerated, as these territories are often overlapping. In addition, some individuals inhabit multiple sites of identity or shift between and across shared sites. Degrees of sex and gender dysphoria were not only reported by trans-identified individuals, and while not all such individuals adopted a trans identity, this was not necessarily because these border zone denizens felt a strong connection to femaleness or womanhood; often far from it.
social movement studies
POLITICAL NOT GENERATIONAL: GETTING REAL ABOUT CONTEMPORARY UK RADICAL FEMINISM
In this article, I present data from qualitative research with 30 self-identified radical feminists who are currently active in the British feminist movement. I explore how participants defined their feminism, and threats to it – particularly challenges to organising women-only political space. I also focus on how participants related to the term third wave feminism, their definitions and critiques of this type of feminism as they perceived it. Many of the radical feminists in my research were keen to disassociate from the term ‘third wave’ and expressed an allegiance and connection to second-wave radical feminism, including those radical feminists too young to have any direct connection to that ‘wave’, being born too late to be politically active during the 1970s and 1980s.
the cat magazine
FAREWELL DEAR FRIEND: THE SOCIOLOGY OF PET GRIEF
An introduction to the sociology of pet grief, looking at data from the British Mass Observation Project and considering theories from the field of Animal Studies as well as Butler's theory of 'grievability'. Visit research profile at the University of the West of England to find link to a PDF of the article in The Cat magazine.
theory culture & society
Finn Mackay on Radical Feminism. Visit staff profile and research outputs on University of the West of England to see links to articles and free PDFs.
feminist review
RECLAIMING REVOLUTIONARY FEMINISM
Generally, saying: ‘feminist’, is revolutionary enough in this day and age, it’s far more of a statement now than it was back in the eighties. And no, I wouldn’t say I was a Revolutionary Feminist now ‘cos I’m less separatist than I was at that time and I think it’s got overladen with such baggage that I’d have to spend about ten minutes defining what I meant. (Interview with Al Garthwaite, Leeds, 20 January 2012) In this article, I shall explore some understandings, and misunderstandings, of the school or type of feminism known as Revolutionary Feminism, a uniquely British school of feminism, founded in 1977. The quote above is taken from my interview with a prominent and influential British Revolutionary Feminist activist named Al Garthwaite. The interview forms the basis of this article and the research was part of my PhD on the British Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) from the 1970s to today. Among many of her legacies, Al founded the Reclaim the Night (RTN) marches in the United Kingdom in November 1977, traditionally women’s night-time, street protest marches against male violence against women (VAW). Also involved in the establishment and running of the UK WLM national newsletter ‘WIRES’,1 Al was at the hub of organising in the feminist hotbed that was Leeds, in Yorkshire in the North of England, in the 1970s and 1980s. Visit research profile at the University of the West of England to find detailed abstract and links to journals.
women’s studies international forum
Mapping the routes: An exploration of charges of racism made against the 1970s UK Reclaim the Night marches
This article addresses early charges of racism, made against the original UK Reclaim the Night (RTN) marches in the 1970s. These charges appear to have stuck, and been accepted almost as a truism ever since, being maintained in several academic texts. Using archive materials, and recent, empirical qualitative research with founding RTN activists and participants, I shall investigate the emergence of RTN in the UK in 1977 and the practicalities and influences behind this type of protest. I will also consider possible reasons behind the charges of racism, addressing justifiable critiques and concerns. I will conclude that the specific charges made against the first RTN marches were inaccurate. However, I will also explore possible reasons why concerns about racism surrounded these marches at their formation. Visit University of the West of England research profile for detailed abstract and free
book chapter
Political not generational - book chapter
In the 1990s you could not move for stories about the death of feminism, the lack of politics in younger women and indeed the political disengagement of youth as a whole. Now though the media are busy suggesting that our social movement is in fact enjoying a third or even fourth wave; the precise number seems to change almost monthly. When it is commented on, this new visible resurgence of feminist activism is often attached particularly to younger women, furthering a generational narrative that tends to position older and younger women as opponents on a battlefield of feminist theory. This linear and simplistic explanation of the progress of feminism as a social movement suggests that across the Western world at least, feminism has moved from a recognisable first wave in the 1800s and 1900s, through to a second wave from the late 1960s into the 1980s and now, perhaps, a third wave appearing since the 1990s and arising ‘out of a critique of the second wave’. In this chapter, I shall bring in the voices of feminist activists involved in the British Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) and outline how they themselves understand the third wave. In 2012 I interviewed and surveyed over one hundred activists of many different backgrounds, based all over England, UK. The research was cross-generational, the respondents were from all different age groups, from teens to sixties. For many of these activists, the term ‘third wave’ freights particular political ideologies, and is not used simply as a generational referent or chronological marker point. Radical feminists, in particular, voice strong opposition to the term, and refuse deterministic classification as third wave merely because of their age or because they are currently active in this latest resurgence of feminism. Several of the radical feminists I spoke to were aged in their twenties and thirties, technically they could be viewed as a ‘new generation’ of activists, as some of these third fourth or whatever wave of feminists, yet their feminism had more in common with the theory and activism associated with the second wave. For them, their feminism was nothing to do with their age, and everything to do with their politics.
book chapter
FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN MOVEMENT: UK ACTIVISM AGAINST VAW - BOOK CHAPTER
This chapter will look at UK feminist activism against male violence against women, from the 1970s to the present day. From the often controversial theories of Radical and Revolutionary Feminists, theory and activism against male violence appears today to be a largely unifying and mobilising issue; one that is central to the contemporary UK feminist movement. Familiar areas of conflict remain however, as power relationships between women trouble notions of unified Sisterhood and solidarity, and raise questions for the means and ends of protest. Where once these debates remained mainly in the domain of small Consciousness Raising or CR groups in women’s homes around the UK, new social media has made virtual CR possible on a much larger scale, involving a new generation in debates and controversies old and new. The chapter concludes that despite the persistence of such, still urgent discussions, the subject of male violence against women has evolved to become a mainstream area of campaigning for the current Women’s Liberation Movement, and indeed in wider society.
Discover Society: Tories Flush GRA Reform
A recent article on the front page of The Sunday Times announced that the Government has finally decided what to do with their 2018 consultation on modernising the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004. After being open for four months and receiving around 100,000 responses the Government kicked it into the long grass for a couple of years and have now decided to do nothing to reform the GRA. However, sources told the Sunday Times, they may take back control of toilets by setting up some sort of centralised toilet division and instructing local authorities to ban trans women from women’s public toilets, unless they have had genital surgery and do not have male anatomy.
chapter: Raising Awareness and Improving Responses to Gender-Based Violence: The Contribution of Feminist Thought and Activism
Hypatia book reviews - radical feminism
This is a particularly important time to be reconsidering and revisiting radical feminism. The contemporary visibility of trans rights movements, and the unsurprising, accompanying backlash from a variety of camps makes this a politically charged and tense moment for reflection on the herstory, present, and future of this school of feminism.
These two books both acknowledge this; indeed, both books start with an almost apologetic tone, and the writers situate themselves and their own feminism as being on a journey that takes them in and out of agreement with some of the classic texts and figures from the American second wave of feminism from the late 1960s into the 1980s.
lesbian feminism
Lesbianism is the term used to describe a sexual orientation, sexual acts and desires, and romantic and sexual love between women. During the period known as the feminist Second Wave across the Western world, roughly from the late 1960s and into the late 1980s, an influential school of feminism emerged called lesbian feminism. This school of feminism put into practice and further developed theory from another adjacent strand of feminism, radical feminism. Lesbian feminism did not always emphasise lesbianism as a sexuality, but sometimes, in its rhetoric, presented this as a political choice to prioritise women, within a feminist context. Linked to this is the phenomenon of political lesbianism, frequently mistaken to mean enforced sexual relations between women, regardless of their sexual preferences. Political lesbianism, in fact, heralded from an essentialist form of cultural feminism, which promoted the reclamation and aggrandisement of women’s social role in patriarchy as a superior form of value and culture which should be adopted by all, men and women, regardless of their sexuality. In this chapter, I will explain and explore these terms and the strands of feminism they are associated with.
The Philosopher
Summer 2022: PERSON
Third issue of The New Basics series.
Finn Mackay reviews the history of queer activism and queer theory, while situating this history in the context of our current fraught political situation;
Feminism and Protest Camps
Entanglements, Critiques and Re-Imaginings
Chapter 4. ‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try): Gendered Contestations and Contradictions at Menwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp - Finn Mackay
Left Feminisms
This book brings together a decade of interviews with key feminist academics. Through sensitive and nuanced conversations, Jo Littler brings to life actions, arguments and solutions generated by diverse feminist thinkers on the left.
Beginning as an interview series for the journal Soundings, this collection has since grown into one of the most vibrant, interesting and accessible records of feminist theory and action in recent years. The conversations in Left Feminisms explore the complex relationships between the personal and the political. Academic and activist journeys of the interviewees are interwoven with analysis of social and cultural change and strategies for solidarity.
From discussions of the gendered dynamics of the far right in the US, to sexism and racism in UK academia, to organising against household debt in Argentina, the book offers a range of insights that traverse a broad spectrum of feminist politics in the twenty-first century. Including interviews with Nancy Fraser, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sheila Rowbotham and Veronica Gago, this collection is an important archive in its own right. It will be indispensable to feminist activists, academics and anyone interested in the history and present of feminism on the left.
What Matters Most:
Conversations on the Art of Living
Edited by Anthony Morgan. The politics of gender and identity – Finn Mackay with Jana Bacevic
The ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus insisted that philosophy should be concerned with nothing less than τo τιμιώτατον (to timiotaton), generally translated as "what matters most". This collection of philosophical conversations by many of the world's leading thinkers seeks to honour Plotinus' vision by addressing questions related to the art of living. When thinking about the art of living, we may conjure up ideas of therapy, meditation, peace, happiness, and so on. However, this collection aims to expand the scope of this idea, foregrounding social and political questions, alongside more traditional existential ones. How are we to think about the art of living together, of living with technology, of living under oppression, of living in the end times? These engaging and urgent conversations invite us to think anew about the complexities and challenges involved in living a good life in a world characterized by uncertainty and change.
Signs: Exploring Transgender Law and Politics
Catharine A. MacKinnon, with Finn Mackay, Mischa Shuman, Sandra Fredman, and Ruth Chang