ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship of non-trans feminists to trainpersons constitutes a relatively new crisis in the way that differences with others are addressed, differences within what gets considered the collective identity of feminism and differences in understandings of sexual politics. It offers a specific example of what Sandy Stone calls the rage of radical feminist theories. The chapter discusses the author's view by Kimberly Nixon, the transwoman whose exclusion from that organization is at the heart of the legal dispute. It discusses the failure to recognize transwomen's claims to legitimacy challenges the political identity of the women's movement itself. The chapter describes the location of feminist politics in a presumed universal and stable identity of women as the problematic basis on which Nixon's claim to womanhood has been rejected by the women at Rape Relief and by their supporters. Members of Rape Relief have no trouble deciding who real women are, or knowing what psychological capacities they possess.
