Building an Intersectional and Trans-Inclusive Criminology: Responding to the Emergence of “Gender Critical” Perspectives in Feminist Criminology

This article responds to claims advanced by “gender critical” feminists, most recently expressed in a criminological context by Burt (2020) in Feminist Criminology, that the Equality Act—a bill pending in the United States Congress—would place cisgender women at risk of male violence in sex-segregated spaces. We provide legal history, empirical research, and conceptual and theoretical arguments to highlight three broad errors made by Burt and other trans-exclusionary feminists. These include: (1) a misinterpretation of the Equality Act; (2) a narrow version of feminism that embraces a socially and biologically deterministic view of sex and gender; and (3) ignorance and dismissal of established criminological knowledge regarding victimization, offending patterns, and effective measures to enhance safety. The implications of “gender critical” arguments for criminology, and the publication of such, are also discussed.