Why cismen must oppose transphobia in all its forms
Who’s Afraid of Gender? Judith Butler’s new book is a brilliant interrogation into the ‘phantasm’ of gender and the colonial global anti-gender movements that grows more powerful the more incoherent and contradictory it is.
How should advocates for gender justice with a focus on men engage with its ideas? How should these networks engage with gender theory?
I am happy to say, the most influential already do.
The Men Engage Alliance, a global alliance of over one thousand members clearly outlines in its core principles that it is against transphobia and stands for gender justice. That it honours and celebrates the diversity of sexuality and gender and the history of these movements.
This is not the case across the board. There are networks of “pro-feminist” men who would identify as “gender critical” that campaign for “women-only spaces” that publish transphobic bile replete with slurs on the weekly.
Far more common however are advocates who campaign for men’s health who only focus on cis hetero men, explicitly ignore feminism/gender and/or refuse to call out patriarchy as the source of this malaise. What follows is often harmful rhetoric that essentialises men and women, which is obviously transphobic.
Butler’s proposal against the anti-gender movement is to take from the experience of Latin American feminist movements (such as Ni Una Menos) and their crafting of coalitions with other movements that share common experiences of precarity. According to Butler, coalitions and alliances do not have to be easy, we do not always have to agree or even get along, but we must unite against the neoliberal forces that frequently seek to foment fascist attitudes in support of consolidating state and corporate power.
I have written previously that men’s accountability to feminism should be based on solidarity, that solidarity implies collectivism, and that liberation is collective work. In this respect, Butler’s book vindicates this position, that what is at stake goes beyond just trans rights but is instead an assault on social progress altogether.
Men cannot systemically deal with our own gender vulnerabilities without applying a feminist power analysis. We cannot for instance work on the experience of male survivors of sexual violence without acknowledging that the discrimination we face when reporting sexual violence mirrors that of women. Rape culture also minimises the sexual violence we experience, suggests ‘we enjoyed it’ if the perpetrator was a woman, or denies the possibility of it altogether. Our own needs are not separate or exclusive of women’s, they are intimately intertwined.
Likewise, the trans struggle is not mutually exclusive to our needs. Most groups that advocate for men identify at the very least, harmful or “toxic” forms of masculinity (whether they use that term or not) and tend to advocate at minimum for an expansion of what can be considered masculine so that men are not limited in the way they are according to hegemonic masculinity. Are not trans people our natural comrades in this? Do trans and non-binary people not challenge this very system that seeks to pigeonhole people into an essentialist archetypical conservative fantasy of what it means to have a vagina or a penis?
Our entire work to redefine what it means to be a man for each and everyone of us, to foment a world of diverse and healthy masculinities, instead of blindly trying to perform hegemonic masculinity is complementary if not part of the same struggle. How can we be on a path to calling for more freedom and acceptance in how we choose to live our gendered and sexual lives but then close the door behind us?
There is an intense hypocrisy behind the spate of “male allies” who explore painting their nails or even just wearing the colour pink while simultaneously narrowing the same possibilities for others. Especially when for others the impact of these gendered restrictions are so much more harmful.
If that is not enough, then at the very least we must look at who the perpetrators of anti-trans violence are — who else but cis men? We owe accountability to the entire LGBTIQA+ community because of that alone.
Any serious actor against male violence understands that the more a man values patriarchal norms the more likely they are to hurt others and themself. Men who are affirming of the LGBTIQA+ community are statistically far less likely to be violent, and this extends obviously to trans and nonbinary people as well.
Who’s Afraid of Gender? Is not just a call-to-action to create the coalitions between movements that are necessary to stop the anti-gender movement, it is a call-to-reflection, to understand how our liberation is bound up in that of others.
