I'll show you mine if you show me yours: Refuting TERF rhetoric with vagina art

Abstract

What follows is an examination of a biological body part, the vulva, represented in art and how people of differing sex and gender identities can protest society’s notions of normal and abnormal with the same imagery. With the rise in trans exclusionary radical feminism, or gender critical feminism, these feminists argue that feminism is only for the female sex and including other identities like trans women detracts from the movement. My examination of the vulva art that follows demonstrates that despite the biological nature of the imagery and the different identities of the artists that use them, their purposes build onto one another rather than nullify each other’s. Thus it is identity that ultimately matters, not biology.