Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on some tensions (borders and boundaries) between queer, trans and feminist politics in Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic work in Turkey, I discuss how a collective focus on the realm of death would bring feminist cis women and trans people together around a shared gender experience.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2011 every International Women's Day March has been marked by tensions between feminist cisgender women and trans activists in Istanbul, Turkey. Central to these intense exchanges have been questions that have become familiar at the intersection of feminism and queer and trans activism: What is feminism? Who is a "woman"? Who can inhabit the category of "woman"? Who is the political actor of feminism? Whose feminism counts as feminism? Which slogans and words mark the feminist political space? Which demands herald a more feminist agenda?

Placing these questions at its center, this piece reflects on borders and boundaries, and hence some ongoing tensions, between queer, trans and feminist politics, and suggests specific frameworks to resolve these tensions into coalitional political organizing. To do that, I draw on my ethnographic research and activist work in Turkey, and propose that a collective focus on the realm of death would bring feminist cis women and trans people together around a shared gender experience. In Turkey, the annual counts of cis and trans women, who are killed by cis men, has been gradually increasing. This situation makes the availability of killing a shared gendered experience for cis women and trans people. Hence, organizing around the framework of "gender killings" would allow us to develop alliances to survive and transform the very material and symbolic conditions of our gender oppression as cis women and trans people.