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Transfeminism is the site within which activists and academics try to imagine the relations among gender, sex, sexuality and embodiment in ways that promote trans peoples and women’s liberation together, in ways that account for these differences. These differences are not solely about gender or sex; they are about nationality, class, race and ability as they affect women’s lives. Given that they play out in different social settings and constitute various subjectivities recent articulations of transfeminism use the "/" sign to signify the complicated nature of such explorations. Therefore, rather than agreeing on one theory or framework for understanding what gender or sexuality is, trans/feminisms work to explore how those relations can be reimagined in politically useful ways.

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Transfeminism has also been defined as the site within which activists and academics try to imagine the relations among gender, sex, sexuality and embodiment in ways that promote trans peoples and women’s liberation together, in ways that account for these differences. These differences are not limited to gender or sex; they are about nationality, class, race and ability as they affect women’s lives. Due to cultural, subjective, and social differences, some recent articulations of transfeminism use the "/" sign to signify the complicated nature of such explorations. Scholars such as Anne Enke have stated that rather than agreeing on one theory or framework for understanding what gender or sexuality is, trans/feminisms work to explore how those relations can be reimagined in politically useful ways.

Transfeminism In Relation To Trans Identities
Explanatory models of trans identity are important because politics and study of trans peoples depend on certain assumptions even if they are not explicitly stated. The models that are used to explain trans identities and experiences are often related to the authors assumptions about body, gender, sex and politics.

There are two major explanations of trans identity that trans people appeal to in mainstream trans activism and in academia. These explanations can be covered under two main frameworks that correspond to social and medical models of trans identity. These models are also distinguished as wrong body narrative associated with medical model and beyond-the-binary framework associated with social model.

Beyond the binary model is a social constructivist model, which takes both sex and gender as social constructions and emphasize trans peoples subjectivity concerning the right to express their gender in any way they choose. This model is influenced by Judith Butler's work. This model has been criticized for failing to account for and erasing trans peoples experiences.

The medical model supposes a difference between biological sex and gender identity that is often called gender dysphoria and treats this issue through medical intervention. The medical model has been criticized for pathologizing trans people by some prominent activists, while some other academics and activists have appealed to the wrong body model, saying that transsexuality might be a biological condition of being born in the wrong body and should be understood as an embodied condition rather than a construction.

Academic articulations of what is called transfeminism started with The Transfeminist Manifesto, in which trans identities are largely formulated according to social beyond the binary model. Writing that that sex and gender are both socially constructed and social institutions such as medicine, religion or law are oppressive due to their social power in defining one’s social identity, Koyomo also suggests that a politics of purity that excludes and punished trans (and non-trans) women’s expression of their gender identities is also oppressive to women. In this vein, Koyoma articulates transfeminism as the grounds for political coalition among feminists that engage with class, race, sexuality and other issues while working toward the goal of women’s liberation.

On the other hand, there are others like Julia Serano and Jay Prosser, who are more closely aligned with the wrong body model. For example, Serano argues for the notion of subconscious sex which may or may not be in alignment with one’s biological sex, and that society bestows privileges upon those who are in alignment. She articulates the troubling implications of seeing trans people as pure social constructs, and considers how, from a materialist view point, biology may also play a role in gendered behaviour. Serano argues that critiquing feminine behaviour as being anti-feminist itself is anti-feminist because femininity is always degraded in the society. According to Vex Lewis, her perspective illuminates the oppression trans people and women experience due to expression of femininity, while other criticis state that she leaves little room for critiquing gendered behaviour that could indeed be problematic for women.