Constructive criticism for Tara Knight

Sara Moiseff, 4/27/26

(For the record, I have received Knight’s express permission to publish this article.)

Tara Knight and I have been involved in a bit of a public feud. She criticized me; I criticized her. My criticism, motivated more by anger than by professional prudence, was laced with cruelty. Implicit in some of this cruelty was racism. My article was harshly lambasted, and for good reason: certain portions of that article were totally unacceptable. Furthermore, the article's harsh and personal tone provoked harassment against Knight, something which I — naïvely — did not foresee and certainly did not intend. I am sorry for publishing that article.

Lost in all this hullabaloo are my actual criticisms of Knight. Although I have retracted the original article, I remain intensely critical of her work. In the interest of seeing her work improve — as well as explaining publicly why I refrain from associating with Knight's work — I wish to present my constructive criticism in a way that does not repeat the cruelty of the original article.

Knight has been criticized incessantly, both constructively and destructively. She has made a series of genuinely serious mistakes, and has received well-warranted criticism for these mistakes. However, she is also a Black trans woman who has been harassed, called slurs, and slandered by professional journalists. Regardless of what Knight has done, this harassment is both unacceptable and unproductive. Those who harass Knight are despicable.

Despite my criticisms of Knight, I am glad to see her writing. Trans-feminism has historically been — as with so many strands of feminism — incredibly white. The most famous American trans writers — Leslie Feinberg, Sandy Stone, Susan Stryker, Julia Serano — have mostly been white. Given that Black trans women have been largely barred from traditional publishing (whether trade or academic), I am glad to see any Black trans woman sharing her perspective. The world needs more Black trans-feminists.

Why is Knight so controversial? Most people who clicked on this article likely already know: in January 2026, Knight claimed to have received a letter from the FBI ordering her to cease publication of her book. This alarmed many trans people, as it suggested that the United States government was significantly ramping up its (already intense) persecution of transgender people. After a few weeks of panic and floundering, it was revealed in an article by The Needle that the letter was fake.[i] Even this was not without controversy — the journalist who wrote the exposé also engaged in some anti-Black slander of Knight, particularly on social media. However, the article's core claim was accurate, and was confirmed by Knight: the FBI letter was never real.

Was Knight lying or mistaken? She claims to have received a letter from a stalker posing as the FBI. She claims to have believed that this letter was genuine. However, even if this claim is true, it is difficult to believe the story as Knight tells it. Even after the article exposing the letter as fake was published, it took several days for Knight to admit that the letter was fake, and she provided at various times conflicting stories, some of which will be recounted below.

Also at issue is Knight's use of AI. Her most blatant use of AI is one to which she has admitted: a fabricated Andrea Dworkin quote.[ii] Also infamous is a clearly AI-generated image of the FBI letter, published by The Needle.[iii] Knight has, at different times, provided different explanations for why and how she created this image. In one social media post, she claimed that she was panicked, did not have the letter on hand when The Needle requested it, and thus sent an AI-generated replica.[iv] In a personal conversation, Knight told me that the image published by The Needle was a real photograph of the letter, blurred to protect her personal information. This does not appear to be true: the image published by the needle contains numerous artefacts of AI generation, including nonsensical text (the letter's greeting appears to read "Desecalel Torara cright" a rather poor imitation of "Dear Tara Knight"). Why has Knight provided two different stories? Why are both so implausible? Even granting Knight the benefit of the doubt, it is difficult to believe that she was being fully honest throughout the FBI letter affair.

These do not appear to be Knight's only uses of AI-generated content in her published work. A peculiar passage in her book, Going Rogue, has led to some — credibly, in my view — to suggest that parts of this book were generated by AI. The passage in question reads as if an LLM artefact:

The full version of Part II: The Politics of Abandonment from Going Rogue: A Diatribe continues as a Black trans woman feminist pessimist explores the empty guarantees of "community" in this section of Going Rogue: A Diatribe.[v]

If Knight wrote this passage herself, it is difficult to imagine why she wrote it. Why did she switch to the third person? Why did she include the title of the book twice? If this passage is imagined instead as the mangled remnant of a ChatGPT prompt, it suddenly snaps into perfect clarity. It cannot be definitively proven that this passage, nor any other portion of the book, was generated by AI. Knight denies that they were, while admitting that the fake Dworkin quote was AI-generated. But in the case of the Dworkin quote, Knight only admitted that it was AI-generated because she was backed into a corner — the quote was blatantly fabricated, both because it was demonstrably not something that Dworkin had ever said, and because it linked to a ChatGPT prompt! Knight's behavior suggests that she admits wrongdoing only when the evidence is overwhelming, as also demonstrated by the FBI letter debacle. When she claims that this portion of the book is not AI-generated, I do not feel that I am able to trust her.

Blogger Morgan Woodfall makes a decent case that there is widespread AI usage in Knight's work.[vi] There are at least two clear cases — the fake Dworkin quote and the AI-generated image of the letter — and several more cases that seem likely — the passage from Going Rogue, and several cases of odd double-spaces that, as Woodfall argued, are best explained as LLM artefacts. Is that, then, two clear cases of AI usage? Is it four? Or, if Knight was willing to use AI four times, perhaps there are more than four. When an author is caught using AI once, one begins to wonder: how many other times did she get away with it?

I take AI usage in published writing very seriously. I consider it on par with plagiarism: although it is not technically directly stealing from any particular author, LLMs are often trained on the work of authors who did not give permission for their work to be used in this way. Furthermore, publishing work that contains AI-generated material constitutes the same sort of dishonesty as plagiarism: an author claims to have written something that she did not, in fact, write. This is a serious credibility issue. AI-generated writing is known to make frequent factual errors. In essays that do not contain citations (some of Knight's work does, but much does not), it is difficult to verify factual claims. The combination of a history of AI usage, a frequent failure to cite sources, and generally sloppy writing, makes it difficult to parse the good from the bad, the true from the false.

Knight has addressed her AI usage in various ways. She ended one article with: "If you love it when a girl ai generates blackly donate here" (spelling original), followed by a link the Ko-fi page where she takes donations.[vii] A sarcastic joke, perhaps? Perhaps.

With that context in mind, let us return to the article that Knight wrote about me.[viii] In my original article, I argue that Dworkin's theory of pornography stands on dubious analytical ground.[ix] I continue to believe that this is true. I am particularly concerned for the ways in which Dworkin's theory can easily collapse into a reactionary position. Dworkin was notably hostile to sex workers throughout her career, and although she was strongly opposed to obscenity law, fans of Dworkin with less commitment to nuance could easily use her arguments to support obscenity law. Dworkin is associated with reactionary feminists because Dworkin's positions are easy to appropriate for reactionary ends. Dworkin is popular with transphobes because — as I argue below — she publicly allied herself with transphobia.

Knight's criticism of my essay are harsh. She accuses me of "sleight of hand", of suffering from "argumentative failure".[x] Some of her criticisms are well-warranted — I alternate between discussing Andrea Dworkin in particular, and the anti-pornography feminist movement in general, as if those two things are homogenous and interchangeable. My decision to open the article with a specific discussion of Andrea Dworkin frames the entire article as it is about Dworkin, which is not in fact what I intended. Parts of the article are about Dworkin; other parts are about the broader anti-pornography tradition. This is sloppy framing on my part.

And yet, many of Knight's criticisms do not hold water. Knight challenges my read of Dworkin's position on pornography, writing,

[Dworkin] claimed commercial pornography in its late-twentieth-century industrial form is a specific, unprecedented, historically novel apparatus for the reproduction of the ideology of male sexual dominance, and that its scale and intimacy, its direct conditioning of male sexual response, give it particular ideological force.[xi]

This is a compelling read on Dworkin — but did Dworkin really claim this? Throughout her article, there is one thing that Knight stubbornly refuses to do: quote things that Andrea Dworkin actually said. Given Knight's specific history of misrepresenting Dworkin, this omission is damning. When I challenged Knight about this particular claim, she admitted that it was incorrect and that she had written the article quickly, and told me that she would revise it and release a new article. It is shocking that Knight would attempt such harsh criticism of my article while simultaneously publishing such poorly-thought-out work. Evidently, Knight has not adopted the analytical rigor that she accuses me of lacking.

Particularly questionable is Knight's continued insistence that Dworkin was a trans ally. Knight has recently become acquainted with John Stoltenberg, Dworkin's husband who for years has claimed that Dworkin was not transphobic.[xii] Knight concurs, writing, "Dworkin herself did not take Raymond’s position. Dworkin’s public record on trans women is overwhelmingly supportive..."[xiii] Raymond is the author of The Transsexual Empire, which makes the famous claim that "all transsexuals [i.e. transsexual women] rape women's bodies."[xiv] (Knight's claim here is perplexing, considering that in an earlier article she admitted that "Dworkin's position on trans people ... was complicated" and "evolved over time."[xv] Why does Knight no longer acknowledge this complexity in here recent article? Has her friendship with Stoltenberg caused her to view Dworkin through rose-colored glasses, or is her writing simply sloppy?)

Dworkin's public record on trans issues is spotty, as Knight acknowledged in her first article but failed to acknowledge in her most recent article. Dworkin does have a record of explicitly trans-positive statements, including arguing in her first book that "every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation", which "should be provided by the community as one of its functions."[xvi] In private correspondence to Raymond, published some years ago by Stoltenberg, Dworkin wrote,

Male-to-female transsexuals were in rebellion against the phallus and so was I. Female-to-male transsexuals were seeking a freedom only possible in patriarchy, and so was I. The means were different, but the impulses were related. I haven’t changed my mind.[xvii]

These comments, made in the '70s, one public and one private, display admirable empathy towards transsexual people that would seem to put Dworkin at odds with such tranny-haters as Robin Morgan, Janice Raymond, and Mary Daly. But Dworkin's later comments tell a different story. Most infamous is Dworkin's endorsement of Raymond's Transsexual Empire. Raymond specifically thanks Dworkin for commenting on chapter 4,[xviii] the chapter in which Raymond claims that all transsexuals are rapists — and specifically names trans woman Sandy Stone, accusing Stone of (metaphysical) rape.[xix] Dworkin was aware of the book even before it was published — and when it was published, Dworkin had this to say:

Janice Raymond asks the hard questions and her answers have an intellectual quality and ethical integrity so rare, so important, that the reader wants to think, to enter into critical dialogue with the book. ... Crucial reading. (emphasis original)[xx]

Dworkin, when presented with a book that accused all transsexuals of being rapists, and that advocated for conversion therapy forcing all transsexuals to detransition, called it "Crucial reading."

Dworkin's public transphobia continued. In Intercourse, she argues that Joan of Arc — who insisted on wearing male clothes and was executed for it — was not a transvestite.[xxi] As I argue in chapter 8 of Tran/Women (as yet unpublished), Dworkin's hostility towards trans people prevents her from accurately analyzing Joan's cross-dressing: "Dworkin's insistence that she was not [a transvestite] is heavily colored by Dworkin's cisgenderism: she interprets transvestism only as sexual fetish, and is unable to conceptualize cross-dressing as meaningful unto itself."

In Heartbreak, her 2002 memoir, Dworkin has this to say of a trans man: "...one at least has become a male through surgery — her [sic] head and heart were always right there."[xxii] In a 2000 interview, when Dworkin is asked about an Israeli transsexual woman, the interviewer writes: "She's not interested in gay men, she's interested in women."[xxiii]It is unclear whether these are Dworkin's words; the (oddly anonymous) reporter paraphrases rather than quoting. Perhaps the characterization of the transsexual woman as a "gay man" is the reporter's, not Dworkin's. Or perhaps, near the end of her life, Dworkin had hardened into transphobia. Just five years before her death, Dworkin is given a chance to include trans women in her feminism. So far as we can tell, she chooses exclusion instead. One might be tempted to refer to this as trans-exclusionary radical feminism.

What can be made of this conflicting evidence? Why would someone who had once advocated in favor of access to transsexual surgery endorse a book calling all transsexuals rapists? At best, Dworkin was a fairweather friend to transsexual people. However, a different read is, I believe, more likely. In the first half decade of her career, Dworkin made one significant and strongly supportive statement about trans people, followed by one harsh attack. Over the next 25 years, she made only occasional references to trans people, but nearly all of them were hostile or dismissive. It would appear that she changed her mind on trans issues in the years following her letter to Raymond. Stoltenberg's — and Knight's — insistence that Dworkin was a trans ally is wishful thinking. In Stoltenberg's case, it is likely a combination of rose-colored glasses for the woman he partnered with, as well as a posthumous attempt to manage her public image. Was Andrea Dworkin transphobic? It is difficult to say for certain. Was she cissexist? Undeniably. Did she publicly ally herself with transphobia? Certainly.

Knight's original criticism of my article had significant flaws. When these flaws were criticized, Knight immediately admitted that they were flaws, and told me she would retract the article and publish an updated version — but so what? That Knight was willing to publish the original unedited piece is a testament to the low standard to which she holds her own work.

(In my original article, I challenged Knight to actually apply Dworkin's theories in her own analysis, rather than merely saying that she likes them. Since that article was published, Knight has, to some extent, done so.[xxiv] I still hope to see her apply and engage Dworkin on a deeper level.)

In another recent essay, Knight re-examines the history of American feminism, arguing that modern women have been denied access to the framework of radical feminism.[xxv] This essay is compelling: Knight challenges common wisdom about feminism, and ends with a call to action, prompting women to resuscitate the fury, bravery, and rigor of the radical Second Wave. Knight demonstrates a thorough familiarity with the history and literature of American feminism, especially Second Wave feminism. And yet, even in this essay — one of Knight's best — there are significant omissions. Most damning is the total lack of citations. Knight's complex historical claims go entirely unsourced. How can the information she gives be verified? This is particularly an issue when Knight makes contentious and nuanced historical claims.[xxvi] For example, she claims that Ms. Magazine was largely responsible for liberalizing a once-radical movement. Knight writes,

The conversion was a specific editorial project. Steinem’s own writing across the decade of Ms. is an archive of how the translation happened. Steinem was, and is, a talented and committed feminist, and caricaturing her misses what matters. What matters is the specific effect of her editorial voice across a decade of enormously influential mass-market publishing. That effect was to convert a radical analysis into a liberal self-improvement project. She understood the analysis she was converting. The conversion happened because the magazine had a business model and the business model required the conversion.[xxvii]

This is a complex historical claim. Is it accurate? It is difficult to say. I am not personally familiar with the history of Ms. Magazine. Were this claim made in a work of typical historical scholarship, the author would likely provide citations to specific articles demonstrating these developing viewpoints, or would perhaps cite a previous historian who had made the same argument. Knight does neither: she presents the claim, unsourced. Citations are not a formality: they are the mechanism by which nonfiction writing can be challenged, verified, and looked into. Historical writing with no citations is only half-complete.

This problem continues. Knight recounts the sex wars, and the nuance with which she does so suggests that she may be drawing on Lorna Bracewell's book. But Knight does not mention or cite Bracewell — Knight does not cite any sources. Is she informed by Bracewell's historiography? Who knows! Knight characterizes the sex wars as a loss by radicals and a victory by liberals, and although this is true, it is more accurate to frame the end of the sex wars as a subsumption of all radicalism by liberalism. The two camps of feminists in the sex wars were both radical, but they were radical with different positions — and when the sex wars ended, the sex-radical position had been watered down into pro-sex liberalism.[xxviii] Knight has previously criticized me for citing Bracewell without engaging Bracewell's arguments. This is odd, both because I do engage Bracewell's arguments in my article, and because Knight's oversimplistic framing of the sex wars — which could be read to imply that the sex-radical faction was liberal — fails to engage Bracewell's thesis. Those who live in glass houses should be wary of throwing stones.

Knight makes several other startling omissions. Most shocking is a total failure to mention anti-pornography feminists' long history of hostility toward sex workers. If Knight wishes to redeem the legacy of the anti-pornography movement, she must reckon with this sordid history; rather than doing so, she ignores it. Also largely absent from the article is discussion of radical feminism's racism. Knight briefly discusses the issue, but sidelines it — a failure that becomes especially glaring when she discusses Susan Brownmiller's book, Against Our Will. Brownmiller is rather notorious for her racist interpretation of Emmett Till's lynching, and has been appropriately criticized by Black feminists, including Angela Davis[xxix] and Kimberlé Crenshaw.[xxx] Knight neglects to mention this issue. When Knight frames Ti-Grace Atkinson as a plucky underdog, she neglects to mention Atkinson's history of racism[xxxi] and transphobia.[xxxii] These women's racism is largely a product of gender monism — the belief that sexism is the primary axis of oppression. In a gender-monistic framework, all women are subordinate to all men,[xxxiii] and thus any amount of female cruelty towards men is treated as justified, because this cruelty is seen as going against the existing power structure. This framework enables racism, because it enables white women to be intensely cruel to Black men under the guise of righteous anger. In reality, white women's cruelty towards Black men reinforces — rather than challenging — existing hegemonic structures. Furthermore, gender monism centers the experiences of white upper/middle-class women by downplaying the importance of racism or class oppression in women's lives. Although Knight acknowledges the importance of the Combahee River Collective's articulation of proto-intersectionality, Knight makes no real mention of the monism trap into which Brownmiller, Atkinson, and occasionally even Dworkin[xxxiv] fell. Additionally, although Knight does engage and criticize radical feminist transphobia — such as Raymond's infamous polemic — she somewhat understates radical feminists' cruelty towards trans women. Attempts were made by radical feminists on both Sandy Stone's and Beth Elliott's lives;[xxxv] these assaults were encouraged, indirectly, by Robin Morgan and Janice Raymond. Those feminists who, after the attack on Stone, endorsed Raymond's book (including Gloria Steinem[xxxvi] and Andrea Dworkin), share culpability for the violence done to Stone. Knight's criticisms, even when present, are incomplete.

Furthermore, although Knight demonstrates an impressive familiarity with the feminist literature of the 20th century, she neglects to mention recent and relevant feminist literature. Knight is not the only feminist who has, in recent years, attempted to re-radicalize the feminist movement. Writers such as Rafia Zakaria,[xxxvii] Kyla Schuller,[xxxviii] and most directly relevant, Talia Bhatt[xxxix] have made similar arguments.. I know from personal communication with Knight that she is familiar with Bhatt's work. Why does she totally omit Bhatt from her writing? Many of the arguments that Knight makes are arguments already made by Bhatt — for example, Bhatt's theorization of "intersectional antifeminism"[xl] feels especially relevant to this particular essay. Where are these authors in Knight's essay? Why does Knight proceed "as though the terrain has not already been mapped"?[xli]

Also conspicuously absent from Knight's analysis of the downfall of radical feminism is the radical feminism/cultural feminism divide. This framing, advanced primarily by Alice Echols, identifies two distinct strains of the politically radical wing of the Second Wave: radical feminism denaturalizes sex roles, believing that these roles are merely imposed upon men and women via socialization.[xlii] Cultural feminists, conversely, argue that women are in some way good and men are in some way bad. Cultural feminists homogenize and spiritualize womanhood, often adopting bioessentialist beliefs. Bioessentialism — to say nothing of the collapsing of women's differences — has been harshly criticized, and for good reason, by Black feminists, such as the Combahee River Collective.[xliii] This split is significant, because many writers and activists who identify as radical feminists had beliefs that in fact aligned more closely with cultural feminism, such as Mary Daly and Janice Raymond. Cultural feminist beliefs are reactionary, and the subsumption of radical feminism by cultural feminism is one significant factor in the downfall of radical feminism. Knight's failure to mention this is remarkable.

Finally, near the end of the article, Knight positions gender critical feminists and trans feminists as "enemies" who, in fact, share a common enemy: "the reorganization of the world against women."[xliv] It is odd and innacurate to treat the gender-critical movement as a legitimate branch of feminism. Certainly, the trans-exclusionary radical feminist movement — often conflated with the gender critical movement — is a legitimate, albeit bigoted and reactionary, form of feminism. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists seek a world without male supremacy, but go about it in a misguided and counterproductive way. The gender-critical movement, however, is different. This movement, spearheaded by such figures as J.K. Rowling and Helen Joyce, is not a feminist movement. It is a movement that often co-opts the language of feminism, but it is not a movement that challenges male supremacy. The movement accepts the legitimacy of male supremacy, and attempts to secure the position of cissexual (usually white and straight) women within that system. The gender critical movement does not share a common enemy with trans-feminists, nor with feminists in general, because the gender critical movement's only enemy is transgender people: the gender critical movement does not stand in opposition to male supremacy. Certain niche gender criticals do; the movement as a whole does not.

Knight postures at thorough analysis, and comes close, but completely fails to mention several key issues. "The absence is structural."[xlv] Knight's historiography is impressively erudite and incessantly incomplete.[xlvi]

Knight's work has genuinely improved in dramatic ways. Many of her recent articles do include citations. She tells me that this is partially in response to my original article, which flatters me. Many of her recent articles contain useful analysis. If these articles existed in a vacuum, I would probably have nothing but moderate praise for them. However, Knight's public image remains scarred by her documented history of AI usage, as well as the FBI letter scandal. It is for these reasons, among others, that I have been hesitant to discuss Knight in public, let alone cite her essays in my writing.

Knight's work, then, appears to be on an upward trajectory. If this trajectory continues, Knight has a real possibility to become a valuable trans-feminist author. And yet, such valuable contributions are not easily achieved; they require hard work. They require especially hard work in Knight's case, on account of her past controversies. It is far easier to gain trust than to re-gain it. The difference in quality between Knight's recent articles and the articles she was writing a few months ago is dramatic. I hope that the difference in quality between her current articles and the articles she is writing a few months from now is equally dramatic. I hope that Knight never again becomes embroiled in controversy involving forged government documents. I hope that Knight never again publishes words fabricated by AI. I hope that Knight shifts her focus away from quantity and towards quality.

Knight has a second book releasing soon. I sincerely hope she learns how to improve from criticism of her work. However, given (a) her history of AI usage, (b) the very real possibility that she was blatantly lying throughout the FBI letter scandal, and (c) a number of other things that have been alleged to me about Knight in private, some but not all of them likely slander — I personally will never publicly cite or endorse Knight's work.

‍ ‍

Anyone who uses this article as pretext for harassing Knight is reprehensible. Don't be a prick.
‍ ‍

Want more? Buy a copy of Feminism Needs Trans Women.

‍ ‍i Jane Migliara Brigham and Artemis T. Douglas, “Rumors of FBI Letters Threatening Trans Public Figures Center on an AI-Generated Document,” The Needle, January 16, 2026, https://theneedlenews.com/2026/01/alleged-fbi-letters-are-fake-2026-01-16t18-18-47-05-00copy-of-alleged/.

‍ ‍ii Tara Knight, “Violence Writes Itself on the Body,” Bundleofstyxx, January 5, 2026, https://substack.com/home/post/p-183551608.

‍ ‍iii Brigham and Douglas, “Rumors of FBI Letters Threatening Trans Public Figures Center on an AI-Generated Document.”

iv This post is archived in Morgan Woodfall, “Tara Knight Is a Bad Actor,” Errata, April 15, 2026, https://morganwoodfall.substack.com/p/tara-knight-is-a-bad-actor.

‍ ‍v Tara Knight, Going Rogue: A Diatribe & Love Outside Community (Pattern Books, 2025), 11.

‍ ‍vi Woodfall, “Tara Knight Is a Bad Actor.”

‍ ‍vii Tara Knight, “Do I Hate Other Transsexuals (Yes, but Read Me Anyway),” Bundleofstyxx, February 12, 2026, https://substack.com/@bundleofstyxx/p-187816287.

‍ ‍viii Tara Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living,” Bundleofstyxx, April 19, 2026, https://bundleofstyxx.substack.com/p/reading-doesnt-equal-living.

‍ ‍ix Sara Moiseff, Pornography: Women Possessing Bad Theory, April 19, 2026, https://www.saramoiseff.com/dworkin.

‍ ‍x Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living.”

‍ ‍xi Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living.”

‍ ‍xii John Stoltenberg, “Andrea Dworkin Was Not Transphobic,” Medium, April 8, 2021, https://johnstoltenberg.medium.com/andrea-dworkin-was-not-transphobic-6f4f94bdf4a1.

‍ ‍xiii Tara Knight, “How We Lost the War,” Bundleofstyxx, April 19, 2026, https://bundleofstyxx.substack.com/p/how-we-lost-the-war.

‍ ‍xiv Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979; Teachers College Press, 1994), 104.

‍ ‍xv Tara Knight, “Dworkin’s a TERF and You’re a Sexist,” Bundleofstyxx, April 9, 2026, https://bundleofstyxx.substack.com/p/dworkins-a-terf-and-youre-a-sexist.

‍ ‍xvi Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (Plume, 1974), 185.

‍ ‍xvii John Stoltenberg, “We All Need a Gender Off-Ramp,” Medium, April 12, 2021, https://aninjusticemag.com/we-all-need-a-gender-off-ramp-ceb5006b864.

‍ ‍xviii Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, viii.

‍ ‍xix Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, 103.

‍ ‍xx Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Beacon Press, 1979), back and front covers.

‍ ‍xxi Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, 1st Basic Books ed (BasicBooks, 2007), 131.

xxii Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (Continuum, 2006), 152.
Quoted in Jude Doyle, DILF: Did I Leave Feminism? (Melville House, 2025).

xxiii “Take No Prisoners,” The Guardian, May 12, 2000, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/may/13/politics1.
"Special thanks to Juliana who has — against my great protestations — forced me to grant Dworkin the charity and nuance she deserves." Moiseff, Pornography: Women Possessing Bad Theory.

‍ ‍xxiv Tara Knight, “The Casualness Is the Violence,” Bundleofstyxx, April 24, 2026, https://substack.com/@bundleofstyxx/p-195324880.

‍ ‍xxv Knight, “How We Lost the War.”

xxvi Woodfall identifies an error in Knight's recounting of the Dworkin-MacKinnon ordinance. I cannot find the passage Woodfall is referencing. It is unclear if Woodfall is mistaken, or if Knight modified the article after it was initially published. See Woodfall, “Tara Knight Is a Bad Actor”; Knight, “How We Lost the War.”

‍ ‍xxvii Knight, “How We Lost the War.”

‍ ‍xxviii Lorna N. Bracewell, Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era, with JSTOR (Organization) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 104, 127.

‍ ‍xxix Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class, 1st Vintage Books ed (Vintage Books, 1983), 178–179.

‍ ‍xxx Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” sec. 8, University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 159n54, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8?utm_source=chicagounbound.uchicago.edu%2Fuclf%2Fvol1989%2Fiss1%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.

xxxi Atkinson, a white woman, ended her "vaginal orgasm" speech with the line: "...al de good n—rs is daide!!" (Spelling and punctuation original, censorship of the slur added.) Ti-Grace Atkinson, “Vaginal Orgasm as a Mass Hysterical Survival Response,” in Amazon Odyssey: The First Collection of Writings by the Political Pioneer of the Women’s Movement (Links Books, 1974), 7.

‍ ‍xxxii Carol Hanisch et al., “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of ‘Gender,’” August 12, 2013.

‍ ‍xxxiii Bracewell, Why We Lost the Sex Wars, 142.

‍ ‍xxxiv Bracewell, Why We Lost the Sex Wars, 147.

‍ ‍xxxv Cristan Williams, “TERF Hate and Sandy Stone,” TransAdvocate, August 16, 2014, https://www.transadvocate.com/terf-violence-and-sandy-stone_n_14360.htm; “1973: West Coast TERFs,” The TERFs, October 12, 2013, https://theterfs.com/2013/10/12/1973-west-coast-terfs/.

‍ ‍xxxvi Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 2nd ed. with a new preface and notes by the author (H. Holt, 1995), 227.

‍ ‍xxxvii Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, First edition (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021).

‍ ‍xxxviii Kyla Schuller, The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism, First edition (Bold Type Books, 2021).

‍ ‍xxxix Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem (Self-published, 2025); Talia Bhatt, Brown/Trans/Les (Self-published, 2026).

‍ ‍xl Bhatt, Brown/Trans/Les, 18–40.

‍ ‍xli Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living.”

‍ ‍xlii Alice Echols, “The Ascendance of Cultural Feminism,” in Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-197 (1989; Thirtieth Anniversary Edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

‍ ‍xliii “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” in The Portable Feminist Reader (1979; Penguin, 2025), 328–329.

‍ ‍xliv Knight, “How We Lost the War.”

‍ ‍xlv Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living.”

xlvi This turn of phrase is a nod to Sophie Lewis's criticism of Andrea Dworkin as "dazzlingly erudite and stunningly stupid." I make this allusion in dialogue with Knight — she has, rather oddly, criticized me for my use of Lewis's quotation in my own criticism of Dworkin's pornography theory. See Sophie Lewis, “Are Women Weak Jews?”: On Andrea Dworkin’s Zionism (Spectre, 2025), https://doi.org/10.63478/VRETINRM; Knight, “Reading Doesn’t Equal Living.”