Dr. Julia Long And The Politics Of Saying No

A Separatist Discussion (PART 1)

Dr. Julia Long

PART 1: Dr. Julia Long, Separatism, and the Politics of Saying No

In this two-part conversation, I speak with Dr. Julia Long—a British radical feminist, lesbian activist, and academic—about the political and cultural urgency of feminist separatism. Known for her uncompromising stance on women-only spaces and her critiques of liberal feminism, Dr. Long brings a depth of knowledge and clarity that is increasingly rare in mainstream discourse. Across decades of work in women’s services, academia, and public activism, Julia Long has become a respected voice in the radical feminist movement. Her writing and lectures explore sex, power, and the structural realities of male violence, often centering lesbian feminism and the politics of refusal. In this interview, we talk candidly about separatism: what it has meant historically, how it’s evolving today, and why it remains controversial—even among feminists. We discuss the backlash against women who dare to say “no,” the commodification of lesbian culture, and the generational divides shaping this moment in feminist politics. This is Part 1 of our exchange, and it dives straight into the complexities of naming, asserting, and defending women-only space in a culture that resists it.

THE STEPPING RAZOR:

Hello Dr. Long. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. How are you?

DR. JULIA LONG:

So I’m quite well, thank you. I’m really excited to be doing this. I’ve been really looking forward to it. I know it’s taken a bit of planning, hasn’t it, to kind of get it off the ground, ‘cause life is very busy and, you know, just to find a time that we could do it. But, um, I was, I was so pleased that you got in touch with me, and just very interested and enthusiastic about having this conversation, because I feel like it’s—certainly for me—I feel like it’s really long overdue. Although I’ve had similar conversations, I guess, in the past, but, um, not so much in recent years. So it’s, um, yeah, really—I’m really, really keen to talk more and hear more about, uh, what you think as well.

THE STEPPING RAZOR:

I was honestly really nervous to reach out to you. I’ve already told you that I was attacked online, and one very prominent radical feminist went out of her way to warn other women not to engage with me. She’s made the rounds, privately and publicly, telling people not to have any dialogue with me and that I was a FBI Informant and cult leader, and she’s still actively doing that.

I just wanted to make sure you were fully aware and in the clear before speaking with me, because she might still try to send more “tea” your way. So, I thank you again, Dr. Long. To start the interview, can you please tell me what happened when you mentioned the idea of separatism in the past? What was the response like?

DR. JULIA LONG:

Well, a couple of things. Thank you again for reaching out. I don't pay attention to a lot of things, so there's that. First of all, I’m really interested that, um, maybe this is the term that everyone’s using now. I don’t know. I’m maybe a bit out of touch, but, um, until you got in touch with me and, you know, you were speaking about, um, about feminist separatism, I—I don’t know that I’d ever really come across that term as such. Because I guess I was just more familiar with the term just “separatism,” and then also “lesbian separatism.”

But I think it’s interesting that this term—specifically feminist separatism—if this is what is being used, I think that’s, that’s an interesting development in itself. Because it, it’s got a slightly different—I don’t know—maybe just a slightly different emphasis or something than in the past.

Um, and I, um—I can’t really remember a time, like, in the public, where I kind of made some big announcement about separatism using that particular term. But all I know is that at different times in the past, when myself or, like, other friends of mine have been assertive about women-only space—that we want women-only space, or that in a particular situation we felt that this space should be women-only—it just seems to have been absurdly controversial. Like, ridiculously so.

Um, so that’s very telling, isn’t it? It really tells us a lot that something that I thought is pretty obvious…So if I—I’ll give you an example. This is going back a long time now. In fact, so long ago that I’d almost forgotten about it, but I’ve been thinking about it recently for various reasons. But, um, I don’t know if you ever would have seen it, but there’s this fantastic film called Lesbiana, which is—it’s about, I guess, I don’t know—maybe 12 or 13 years old now? That it—12 or 13 years ago it came out. It’s by a brilliant lesbian feminist director called Miriam Fuer.

Anyway, so there’s this great film that was all about lesbian culture and things like the women’s music festival and a whole kind of history and celebration of lesbian separatism—or lesbian feminism, lesbianism, separatism—you know, women-only, lesbian-only spaces.

Anyway, so it was about, I think about 12 years ago, this—actually this woman and her male partner kind of, you know, interestingly enough—set up this feminist film festival in London. And on the opening night, they wanted to show Lesbiana. And I felt very strongly—and I just thought it was completely obvious—that that screening, even if the rest of the festival wasn’t, you know, was open to men as well (obviously it would be preferable if it wasn’t), but even if it was, like, that film definitely should be a women-only screening and a women-only audience.

And there was going to be a panel discussion afterwards and it just, just should be women-only. Anyway, the woman who was, you know, organizing it was adamant that that wasn’t possible and blah blah blah and the venue wouldn’t agree to it—whatever. So anyway, as it turned out, she did invite me to be on the panel. So we sat and watched it, and there was a—it was a, you know, mainly a female audience, but there were some men in the audience, which obviously felt extremely—like, I could say it felt uncomfortable—whatever. It just felt completely not right.

It was not appropriate that, you know, all these women who were interviewed and all this footage of women-only space should then be just exposed in this public way with men in the audience. So then when I was on the—I hope this is the kind of thing, this is—I don’t know, it’s not really answering the question, but it’s as close as I can get, I guess—yeah.

So then when I was on the panel and we, you know, opened the panel, the first thing I said was: I would like to—and I was actually extremely polite about it—but I said I would like to invite the men now to leave the room so that we can at least have a panel discussion and a conversation without men here. Maybe they could do that as an act of, like, solidarity with women—that they could go.

Anyway, to be honest, they all picked up their bags and went, seemed to go quite happily. I—I don’t think they minded at all. But the rest of the panel, um, the rest of the session couldn’t really get going because so many women were putting up their hands and saying that what I’d done was so wrong, and “not in my name,” and, you know, “we don’t agree with this,” and, you know, all this kind of stuff.

And then someone even wrote an opinion piece—like, I just thought, they must have really had a slow news day—they even wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian newspaper about how wrong it was for me to have made that request.

So that’s like—doesn’t that just say, tell you a lot? In that environment? And what really struck me about that was, you know, there were all this sort of, like, a younger generation of women there. I think some of the ones who, like, vehemently had to make it known how much they disagreed with me—I think some of them probably were lesbian. I’m not even sure, actually. Maybe not.

But anyway, there were these, like, young, supposedly feminist women, and they just found it intolerable that someone was requesting women-only space for what was obviously—should just be—a women-only conversation.

And what struck me was they’d all come to see this film. So they, they kind of were interested in lesbian feminism, in separatism, you know, in these—the kind of women-only culture like MichFest, and you know, these different things.

But it just struck me—they like to see it up on a screen, where it’s like in the past, it’s separate, it’s become this kind of consumer product. But if someone actually asserts those same politics within their space, they’re just going to be completely hostile to it.

Not everyone—I mean a few women did come up to me and say, “I’m really glad that you said that.” But certainly there was a very vocal, uh, group in the audience who completely didn’t agree with that.

So it’s—yeah, that was, that was quite an instructive experience. But I suppose, I suppose in terms of like my own, my own experience of separatism—for me, it kind of was more of an organic, natural process, rather than like the impression that I have now of, um, you know, like the 4B movement in Korea. And then just before we started the recording, you were telling me, like, you know, how that’s been taken up in China as well.

And obviously, um, you know, in the States. I’m not quite sure where else, but it does all seem to me really fascinating and really quite exciting. But it seems to be like this whole kind of—it seems to be quite codified. Like: no this, no that—whereas I suppose for me, in terms of my own politics, and my own life, my own personal life, my own social life, it was more kind of an organic process.

In, um, having access to women-only spaces, you know, from when I was, I suppose, like in my—my guess would be like early twenties—and then just being in those spaces more, and really enjoying and appreciating them. And then developing friendships, and then getting together with a woman, and, you know, all of this kind of thing.

That kind of led more organically to this separatist, like, way of living, rather than a very kind of specific thing with these very specific parameters, as it has now.

THE STEPPING RAZOR:

Here in the States, they do have, um—I guess 4B in the States—but the 4B that they have in the States, the ones that are popular anyway, like I said, I was banned on Reddit, I was banned on TikTok, but the 4B platforms that you see on these other platforms, like TikTok and Reddit, those spaces have allowed the trans-identified males in them.

And they’re safe in their, you know, in their operation of the 4B because men have a say in what those ladies are doing and those ladies get the safety of not being attacked by the trans activists and such. What do you think about that? Why is it that women cannot just say, “No men” when it comes to the spaces that they make for themselves? 

DR. JULIA LONG:

Let me just—because I’ve seen a bit of conversation around this, but I’ve actually just been so—it’s very recent, isn’t it? Is it kind of post-election? So it’s really recent. And, um, I just have been, like, just really busy, and so I’ve only seen little bits about it.

But, um—and I’ve seen, like, the odd tweet that says, “Oh, this kind of U.S. 4B movement, such as it is, is, you know, trans-inclusive”—in inverted commas. So I’m not really very clear. So maybe could you just explain a bit more before we talk about it? Because I know you set up—you and, you know, your group that you’re involved in was set up, like, well before this.

But—so basically, it seems—is this, is this movement basically post-election? It’s kind of an anti—like, anti-Trump and all the men who voted for Trump? It’s kind of, it’s sort of in reaction against, against that? Would you say that is…?

THE STEPPING RAZOR:

Um…4B has been around for some time. There was an article about it in 'The Cut' that was published in March of 2023.I had read about the 4B movement and couldn’t find anything like it in the U.S., so I created West 4B. Not long after, some radical feminists accused me of stealing the idea—claiming they had always “been 4B,” even before learning about what Korean women were doing.
West 4B didn’t last long on TikTok. The moment I made it clear that trans-identified males would not be included, more women turned on me than men did. And, more often than not, it was Black women who labeled me transphobic and insisted that trans women are biological women—and that their issues were more urgent than those of Black women. I strongly disagreed.

4B has been around  for a while but no one really paid attention to it. I hosted a live on TikTok and it went viral on the app, but no one ever gave me that credit. They all said that they were first to bring 4B to TikTok and to America and that I was a fraud. They then went on, copied what I did and made their own 4B groups which from what I heard are no longer in existence because most of them allowed men in those spaces. They allowed men to enter them in fear and that was it. For example, the most popular 4B space on Reddit right now is “trans-inclusive.” Many of the women who once advocated for separating from men drew the line at trans-identified males—insisting they were women.

At that point, I was outnumbered. Which I found really odd—because trans-identified males often go out of their way to claim they’re the “better” women, that they can take any man from a woman. So when I said on my TikTok lives that there would be more men available for them to choose from if women separated, it caused an uproar.

Many of them started claiming they were lesbians, and from there… it just turned into a complete mess.

Separatism just made sense to me when I learned about it. I saw so many women who have had their lives ruined by the actions of men. I saw all of these miserable women, and not only were they miserable, they were telling the entire planet that they were miserable. So when a woman comes along and says, “Well, maybe you should cut ties with these dudes so you can have some peace,” then—you know—this is when they want to put you on the cross, which is what happened to me. I believe most human beings naturally gravitate toward peace, and intelligent women understand that one man treating you well doesn’t erase the harm done by the other fifty.

I’m a survivor of abuse, and yet a prominent radical feminist mocked my experience. She claimed I had no right to speak on anything related to 4B simply because, at one point in my life, a man helped me.

What she didn’t know is that, at another point, a man shot me. At another, a man kicked my ass. She of course found this out and made fun of it, but thats neither here nor there.

The truth is, any woman who deals with men in any capacity is taking a gamble. I created West 4B to improve the odds—not by betting smarter, but by refusing to play the game at all. That’s why I moved away from social media and put my energy into building something real. The Discord I created has been incredible—the women there are on the same page. What helped me most was separating, organizing, working, and planning—with other women.  But I think, from what I’m seeing with the 4B post-election, this is just reactionary. These women are not going to cut men out of their lives, in my opinion, because they can’t even cut men out of their spaces without feeling guilty about it. At this point, it’s all a performance for most of these women—and men know it. That’s why they don’t take women seriously anymore. I think part of it stems from the fact that so many women publicly say they’d rather choose a bear over a man, yet still don’t have the discipline to stop sleeping with the very men they claim to hate.

It’s a joke now—everyone sees it.

DR. JULIA LONG:

That’s—it’s interesting to hear, like, just to kind of hear a bit more about it.

I’ve got—I suppose I’ve kind of got a few thoughts that are just based on this, you know, what you’ve told me now and the little bit that I’d heard. So, first of all, when you were saying, “Oh, so basically they do—they do include…”

So this movement that they’ve set up—if we can call it a movement—I mean, it probably won’t, realistically, as well. Things move so quickly on social media, like, how long is it even going to last?

It seems—it does seem a bit gimmicky to me. But anyway, we’ll see. But if they—If they’re saying, like, the 4B—like, don’t date—no dating men, no relationships with men...if they’re including men who pretend to be women, like, within their group, well—they’re kind of falling at the first hurdle because they have included men.

THE STEPPING RAZOR

So that’s what is happening now—these women are saying that. including the trans-identified male is under this guise of "intersectionality." And you hear a lot of liberal feminists—well, in the States, I don’t know how it is in the UK—but liberal feminists believe that intersectionality includes men into the spaces of women.

And that’s not—if you studied Kimberlé Crenshaw—if you studied her when she coined the term in 1989, she didn’t coin the term to include men.

She coined the term to explain what Black women were going through when they sued General Motors. The trans-identified male is so clever in how he flips history and rewrites it. He’s able to finesse women because they don’t know any better. Young girls today have no idea who Kimberlé Crenshaw even is. What they’re faced with is an aggressive man in a dress, delivering a sophisticated word salad about his version of feminism—and they embrace it.

Why? Because he’s a man, and they’re misinformed and that is like more proof to me that men are just bullies. It takes ages for women to listen to anything another woman say. So many girls have no idea who Frye is, and they never read books like Scum Manifesto, but they do know who Rupal and Dylan Mulvaney is. It's just a shiner package and women are caught up in it sometimes. 

And you wouldn’t know about the origins of intersectionality if you’d never spoken to a radical feminist. Because for so long, men have been telling you, “Don’t listen to what the radical feminist is saying. Listen to us.”

So these liberal feminists believe, “Well, intersectionality means including men because we accepted Black women as women.” This is what you see on these Reddit spaces.

Um, and I feel—in my opinion—these women are fearful. I feel that they don’t want to get doxxed. They don’t want to get cancelled. They don’t want to have someone say that they’re going to cut their throat. They don't want what happened to me to happen to them, so they play it very safe with these men and I don't blame them. The playground looks more fun over there. 

DR. JULIA LONG

Maybe it could—it could possibly develop into something more thought-out and more substantial. Possibly. You know, I think maybe, maybe there’s the seed of something there.

But the—I mean, the fact that they’re, you know, they’ve clearly got no idea—if they’re at a point where they think that a man can be a woman, I don’t really hold out too much hope for it, unfortunately.

Um, obviously, it’s a completely—it’s a completely incorrect interpretation of intersectionality, because I think, um—you know, as you were saying—obviously, with Crenshaw’s work, she was looking for, you know, Black women at the intersection of race and sex, you know, in really important ways.

And we don’t—it’s so funny, isn’t it, with the whole, um, kind of trans con? Because with any other area of inequality—you know, whether it’s race or, um, I don’t know, age or disability or, you know, whatever—whatever it is, we don’t then have this kind of equality consideration where someone who is not actually disabled, but who just claims to be, is also incorporated.

And so we don’t say, “Oh, this is intersectional. We have to include all these people who aren’t disabled but who pretend to be.” Like, obviously, that’s completely absurd.

So why is it that with sex—that’s the one area where that’s, you know… Because we know with race it isn’t tolerated either, when people claim to be—you know, like with, um, Dolezal. Rachel Dolezal, a few years ago. You know, it’s not—it’s not tolerated. It’s really seen for what it is.

Kind of a category where it’s not only accepted but it’s become, you know, kind of mandatory. And you have all this hostility if you don’t go along with it.

Obviously, it’s sex. So the fact that, unfortunately, these young women are very much enthralled to that lie. That is basically, an error of epic proportions that is, you know, means that anything else they do—it’s already inclusive of men, so it’s not really going to work.

But something I was thinking as well, just, you know, when you were talking about this kind of incarnation of the movement, is—it actually sounds, and I kind of feel this, actually—uh, with—I don’t know a huge amount about the movement in Korea either, so I’d be very interested to hear more.

It strikes me that all of these “no’s”—like, no to this, no to that—the fact that they all, apart from the children (which could involve—well, would involve men some way), like—it’s all very male-fixated.

So it’s like: no to doing this with men, no to doing that with men.

And it seems like, particularly in terms of the United States and the post-election, uh, 4B, it almost seems like—you know this idea of a sex strike, you know, this kind of thing? But whether it is or not, it’s—it’s actually really fixated on men in a way.

THE STEPPING RAZOR

Oh. I get what you are saying, like decentering men is actually centering them, because you’re constantly mentioning the fact that you’re decentering them. I get that for sure and I heard it before. 

There’s some women in West 4B who are actually from Korea—Korean 4B women are very Terfy. They’re very “no men are not supposed to be anywhere near this.”

And then, of course, in Korea there’s always the one liberal feminist who kind of said, “Well, we’re going to do our own 4B and include men…”

So the same thing happened in the States.

I don’t think in Korea they focus on men as much as they do in the United States, you know? I don’t think that they—I just think that they reject it because they want to.

Whereas in the United States, I think they reject it because they want a reaction from men altogether and that is problematic.

DR. JULIA LONG

The impression—and I, you know, I might be wrong—but that’s the impression I get as well.

That it’s actually about—it’s still very much about relating to men. Because it’s wanting to get a reaction and to—and to use this kind of…use it almost like a chess move or some kind of bargaining chip or something.

Which—which is kind of a bit—you know—yeah. But just—I do think, I think the whole question of even the term “separatism” as well… I mean, obviously, for most of us growing up in the kind of mainstream, male-dominated world that pretty much all of us grow up in—you know, come to adulthood in—and, you know, we’re so used to being in male-dominated environments.

The wider culture, obviously, is male-dominated. And now, in, you know, the current time, there are all these things that weren’t really around when I, you know, when I was sort of in my late teens or kind of early adulthood.

Like, you know, in terms of all the prevalence of online pornography and, you know, all these really, really vicious, sort of woman-hating cultures.

So I suppose, for me, it seems like—it seems like a really, really important and crucial first step to say—to say no to some of that. Or to say no to all of it, in fact.

And I think that’s what the 4B is doing—is saying no in that kind of very clear and direct way, which is so important. You know, it’s—it’s just—it’s so important.

And I would really like to see it—maybe now that it’s kind of gone via the States, I don’t know if there’s anything much happening here, you know, in the UK—but it’s such an obvious and really important step to me.

You know, like—I think maybe it’s in the Notes on Separatism essay. Marilyn Frye talks about this, like the importance of saying no. Is it in that essay? Anyway, it’s really, really important.

But what I feel then, that I suppose for me, quite organically happened over time, was being in lesbian communities—sort of lesbian feminist communities, separatist communities, women-only spaces—is that actually, it really moves way beyond the saying no, to a point where your whole world and your whole worldview shifts.

To be really—you know, to be far more woman-centered.

To be interested in women, interested in the kind of friendship, their culture, the, you know, personal relationships with—you know, all of this—working with women. It just really shifts.

So it’s actually—although there is that implicit no that kind of sets you on that path—it’s actually far more about women than in relationship to men in any way whatsoever.

I think it’s more that actually, men just become kind of, uh, completely irrelevant. That you—you know, just irrelevant.

And that you, uh—yeah, your whole kind of perception—it’s like your whole kind of eyesight changes to pick up colors that you didn’t pick up before, and other colors just kind of fade away.

Do you know what I mean? And I think—I can never find this quote, but I’ve got a feeling—I’ve got a feeling it’s Sonia Johnson who said it.

Maybe—I mean, you’re so knowledgeable about all this, maybe you’d be able to tell me—but, um, I think it was Sonia Johnson who came up with this term of, um—
Instead of feminist or lesbian separatism or feminist separatism, she talked about lesbian connection.

That it’s all about, again, about really centering women. Centering our relationships with women, centering lesbians, and emphasizing that thoroughly positive experience of connection—rather than the, um, having the main name being separatism, which again—it always—there’s this implied—although he’s not visible, there’s always that implied man on the other end of that.

And I really—I really like that. And you’re probably aware that there’s, like, the, um—you know, this magazine, journal, newsletter type thing called Lesbian Connection. It’s been—it’s been around for years and years.

That, that—you know, they create these networks all around the world through that. And I think that’s what—that’s kind of more what I relate to now, I suppose, for many years.

THE STEPPING RAZOR

What do you feel about women who are against separatism? Like, what do you feel about the response that you got from the tweet—the spicy tweet—that got you in trouble with J.K. Rowling and the rest of them? I feel a lot of the times women are—women are more gung-ho against being separated from men than men are.

Men are all over the place telling women to get lost, right? I don’t think they can make it more clear that they can’t stand women.

But, you know, like—it’s like the fish that jumps back into the boat after the fisherman kind of throws it back in the water. Women are kind of jumping back into the boat and defending men.  And it’s kind of like—but wait—he already said that he doesn’t like you.

Men are showing women they don’t like women. There’s violence. There’s—there’s visible hate, scorn, from men, right in your face. Like, you can’t even deny it.

But for some reason it’s women who are, you know, saying, “Well no, we can’t separate from them at all. We need them. We need to include them in everything that we do.”

Meanwhile, he’s over there like, “Leave me alone.”

DR. JULIA LONG

Yeah. It’s—it’s—it’s such an interesting conversation.

I mean, the—yeah. I wish we were in a room, like, with a few other women and, you know, to hear other voices. You know, these are the kinds of conversations that I really—I don’t know, I used to have, and I really miss that.

Not much opportunity for it lately. But, um—yeah, I love these kind of conversations.

I think—yeah, I mean, on the—you know, even just given what, you know, what I mentioned before about the fact that we’ve got this massive, hugely profitable online industry, and also, obviously, all the—you know, prostitution and all the OnlyFans—you know, all these different things.

But I was thinking particularly, like, of this online pornography industry where—where there’s just, um, the degree of, um, sadistic fantasies against women and, uh, the degree of woman-hatred that is really—you know, when you start to get an idea of any of it—it’s really quite breathtaking.

I mean, it’s quite incredible, really, that there just hasn’t been, like, a huge, really ongoing separatist movement as a really obvious, obvious kind of response to that.

It’s—you know, it’s quite incredible, isn’t it?

And I think, um—you know, because if we, you know, if we look at other movements from the past—I suppose, you know, the Civil Rights Movement would be an obvious one—but also I’m thinking of other kind of political movements of oppressed groups.

Like, the first thing that you do as an oppressed group is find common cause, like, with others who are in that same position, and join together, and move together. And, uh, you know, try and do your—whatever you’re going to do—your revolution, your activism, like, together against that oppressor.

And obviously, that was something that happened within the early—you know, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the, you know, second wave feminism—that clearly did happen.

But I just think, like, the level of woman-hatred that is just absolutely, kind of, completely routine and mundane—that is sort of visible on billboards. It’s audible in the, you know, the language that men—and actually sometimes other women—use as well.

It’s so obvious.

But there isn’t this same kind of finding common cause and separating, which to me—that’s—it’s just such a core part of any kind of liberation movement.

To be Continued…