No offense but this doesn't explain how transmisogyny plays out in the real world to harm all women very well. I don't think you could give this essay to a transmiogynist feminist to challenge their views. It would only reaffirm their beliefs because they can accept your conclusions without changing their views of trans women in any way.
Specifically, if the function of transmisogyny is the degendering of the 'male' subject, then a transmisogynist will reject that this is reinforcing misogyny at all. It affirms their belief that hatred of trans women is just policing the male sex and for a transmisogynist feminist this is a necessary act of 'protecting women' because trans women are male and need to be policed out of women's spaces. You make the argument that this policing is done with the intent to force trans women to accept their status as patriarchs, but this is not necessarily the case. Of course a patriarchal transmisogynist is motivated in the way you describe, but a feminist transmisogynist would not have the same intention because after being policed out of women's spaces the tr*nny does not reattain her renouned patriarchal power, rather they remain as 'degendered males' - male subjects who are even below the position of woman under patriarchy. So, imagining you are a transmigoynist feminist, how is this anything other than a win? You've succesfully kept your women's space safe from a 'male invader' and left that 'male' out in the cold and without power. If you wanted to show how this outcome is not actually a win for feminism, this is not something that was done in this series of essays. You've made a case for how transmisogyny harms trans women but haven't explained why any other marginalized subject of patriarchy should care about this.
Thank you for your comment! On mulling it over, I'd like to highlight a few things:
1. I do not believe the audience of my essay is meant to be transmisogynistic feminists? For one thing, those who subscribe to such a feminism tend to be sex-essentialist and disengaged with social constructionist radfem theory (in no small part due to that selfsame transmisogyny). In my experience, very few have even heard of Wittig, leave alone being familiar with her work. As such, a transmisogynistic feminist is unlikely to have made it through part one, leave alone the end of this essay, and most likely would have been warded off by the title alone before getting to the theory and definition at all.
Personally, my intent was to take the existing tools of social constructionism and to extend them to show how naturally they can include transfeminist theory, and how a materialist approach to (trans)misogyny can help explicate its mechanisms. Deradicalizing transmisogynistic feminists was never the goal here, and indeed I principally hoped this piece would provide a useful primer to folks looking to engage with alternative feminist approaches to the mainstream, without having to default to the current transmisogynistic strain infecting the public discourse.
2. It is genuinely incredibly jarring to be told that I have demonstrated how transmisogyny hurts trans women-an aim that I’m certainly glad that I succeeded in-but that this essay falls short because I did not sufficiently explain how it harms others. Before anything else, it’s disconcerting to entertain the idea that in order to have worth, a theory of transmisogyny needs to stress how much it hurts those who aren’t its principle targets, an assertion that speaks rather poorly to how much worth is being placed in preventing the suffering of trans women. I’m going to be generous and assume that this was stated from the perspective of the transmisogynistic feminist, but as I’ve said already, that is not a category of reader I’ve kept in mind while composing this series. Even so, I’d ask whether theories of lesbophobia or the particular manifestations of orientalized misogyny directed towards certain racialized women would also be considered insufficient due to their specificity, given that bringing that specificity to light is more the point than centering hegemonic demographics in every conversation.
3. Having said that, I would also contend that if a theory of transmisogyny that begins with misogyny as an engendering force under the heterosexual regime, then goes through how this shapes the mandate of compulsory heterosexuality and only then actually addresses the core topic of the oppression of trans women feels too specific to a reader, then I don’t think that it is actually possible for said reader to be satisfied with the framework at all, given how much time was spent in building the foundation of gender as an extractive relation. If a series with that much build-up is stated to fail due to addressing trans women in the final issue, then one has to wonder whether it was speaking of and naming trans women as the principle sufferers of this particular oppression at all that was the point of objection.
Regardless, if anyone looks at this laying out of how various gendered struggles under patriarchy stem from the same misogynistic imperatives and comes away believing that theirs is disconnected from any of the others, that’s likely beyond my ability to correct. I also personally don’t quite see how one can see “the root of heterosexuality as a regime is enforced sexual difference” and “transmisogyny functions by punishing the failure to uphold that difference” and not see it as an intensified form of misogyny. Perhaps you are under the impression that I ought to trust my readers less than I do, or treat them all as transmisogynists, but I’m personally not interested in doing either.
Thank you, I see how your essays are a good introduction to a materialist feminist theory and showing how that applies to trans women is very useful, regardless of what I said earlier.
I have contradictory thoughts about the topic because of the many many years I've spent reading GC/transmisogynist feminist polemics and now trying to reconcile that with my own transness and trans-inclusive feminism. But that's not your problem to solve.
I think taken together, the three essays in this series do answer the transmisogynist feminist challenge. Transmisogynists want to say that trans women remain men/male in some meaningful way post transition. From what I understand, Bhatt is instead claiming that trans women are women who used to be boys. Bhatt is working within a social constructionist radical feminist framework that sees womanhood as the product of misogynistic processes rather than seeing misogyny as just oppression that happens to target women (see Part 1). So trans women are women because they are subject to the same processes of oppression as cis women. The fact that those who perpetuate this oppression refuse to call them that doesn't change this fact. One implication of this is that trans women have broadly the same interests as cis women and should be included in their feminism.
It also means that the usual justifications for denying trans women access to women's spaces don't hold up. Under this framework, sexual and gender-based violence is a disciplinary tool that patriarchy uses to subjugate women. Because trans women do not occupy the status of "man" under patriarchy, they do not benefit from this kind of violence and have no incentive to engage in it. Thus, they pose no greater threat to women than any other women do. Furthermore, the fact that they are subject to the same kind of gendered violence means they need these spaces as much as cis women do.
Of course, transmisogynist feminists tend to reject this kind of thoroughgoing social constructionism. But insofar as one finds oneself convinced by this analysis, I don't think one can continue to regard trans women as "male" in any way that would be relevant to feminist praxis.
No offense but this doesn't explain how transmisogyny plays out in the real world to harm all women very well. I don't think you could give this essay to a transmiogynist feminist to challenge their views. It would only reaffirm their beliefs because they can accept your conclusions without changing their views of trans women in any way.
Specifically, if the function of transmisogyny is the degendering of the 'male' subject, then a transmisogynist will reject that this is reinforcing misogyny at all. It affirms their belief that hatred of trans women is just policing the male sex and for a transmisogynist feminist this is a necessary act of 'protecting women' because trans women are male and need to be policed out of women's spaces. You make the argument that this policing is done with the intent to force trans women to accept their status as patriarchs, but this is not necessarily the case. Of course a patriarchal transmisogynist is motivated in the way you describe, but a feminist transmisogynist would not have the same intention because after being policed out of women's spaces the tr*nny does not reattain her renouned patriarchal power, rather they remain as 'degendered males' - male subjects who are even below the position of woman under patriarchy. So, imagining you are a transmigoynist feminist, how is this anything other than a win? You've succesfully kept your women's space safe from a 'male invader' and left that 'male' out in the cold and without power. If you wanted to show how this outcome is not actually a win for feminism, this is not something that was done in this series of essays. You've made a case for how transmisogyny harms trans women but haven't explained why any other marginalized subject of patriarchy should care about this.
Thank you for your comment! On mulling it over, I'd like to highlight a few things:
1. I do not believe the audience of my essay is meant to be transmisogynistic feminists? For one thing, those who subscribe to such a feminism tend to be sex-essentialist and disengaged with social constructionist radfem theory (in no small part due to that selfsame transmisogyny). In my experience, very few have even heard of Wittig, leave alone being familiar with her work. As such, a transmisogynistic feminist is unlikely to have made it through part one, leave alone the end of this essay, and most likely would have been warded off by the title alone before getting to the theory and definition at all.
Personally, my intent was to take the existing tools of social constructionism and to extend them to show how naturally they can include transfeminist theory, and how a materialist approach to (trans)misogyny can help explicate its mechanisms. Deradicalizing transmisogynistic feminists was never the goal here, and indeed I principally hoped this piece would provide a useful primer to folks looking to engage with alternative feminist approaches to the mainstream, without having to default to the current transmisogynistic strain infecting the public discourse.
2. It is genuinely incredibly jarring to be told that I have demonstrated how transmisogyny hurts trans women-an aim that I’m certainly glad that I succeeded in-but that this essay falls short because I did not sufficiently explain how it harms others. Before anything else, it’s disconcerting to entertain the idea that in order to have worth, a theory of transmisogyny needs to stress how much it hurts those who aren’t its principle targets, an assertion that speaks rather poorly to how much worth is being placed in preventing the suffering of trans women. I’m going to be generous and assume that this was stated from the perspective of the transmisogynistic feminist, but as I’ve said already, that is not a category of reader I’ve kept in mind while composing this series. Even so, I’d ask whether theories of lesbophobia or the particular manifestations of orientalized misogyny directed towards certain racialized women would also be considered insufficient due to their specificity, given that bringing that specificity to light is more the point than centering hegemonic demographics in every conversation.
3. Having said that, I would also contend that if a theory of transmisogyny that begins with misogyny as an engendering force under the heterosexual regime, then goes through how this shapes the mandate of compulsory heterosexuality and only then actually addresses the core topic of the oppression of trans women feels too specific to a reader, then I don’t think that it is actually possible for said reader to be satisfied with the framework at all, given how much time was spent in building the foundation of gender as an extractive relation. If a series with that much build-up is stated to fail due to addressing trans women in the final issue, then one has to wonder whether it was speaking of and naming trans women as the principle sufferers of this particular oppression at all that was the point of objection.
Regardless, if anyone looks at this laying out of how various gendered struggles under patriarchy stem from the same misogynistic imperatives and comes away believing that theirs is disconnected from any of the others, that’s likely beyond my ability to correct. I also personally don’t quite see how one can see “the root of heterosexuality as a regime is enforced sexual difference” and “transmisogyny functions by punishing the failure to uphold that difference” and not see it as an intensified form of misogyny. Perhaps you are under the impression that I ought to trust my readers less than I do, or treat them all as transmisogynists, but I’m personally not interested in doing either.
Thank you, I see how your essays are a good introduction to a materialist feminist theory and showing how that applies to trans women is very useful, regardless of what I said earlier.
I have contradictory thoughts about the topic because of the many many years I've spent reading GC/transmisogynist feminist polemics and now trying to reconcile that with my own transness and trans-inclusive feminism. But that's not your problem to solve.
I think taken together, the three essays in this series do answer the transmisogynist feminist challenge. Transmisogynists want to say that trans women remain men/male in some meaningful way post transition. From what I understand, Bhatt is instead claiming that trans women are women who used to be boys. Bhatt is working within a social constructionist radical feminist framework that sees womanhood as the product of misogynistic processes rather than seeing misogyny as just oppression that happens to target women (see Part 1). So trans women are women because they are subject to the same processes of oppression as cis women. The fact that those who perpetuate this oppression refuse to call them that doesn't change this fact. One implication of this is that trans women have broadly the same interests as cis women and should be included in their feminism.
It also means that the usual justifications for denying trans women access to women's spaces don't hold up. Under this framework, sexual and gender-based violence is a disciplinary tool that patriarchy uses to subjugate women. Because trans women do not occupy the status of "man" under patriarchy, they do not benefit from this kind of violence and have no incentive to engage in it. Thus, they pose no greater threat to women than any other women do. Furthermore, the fact that they are subject to the same kind of gendered violence means they need these spaces as much as cis women do.
Of course, transmisogynist feminists tend to reject this kind of thoroughgoing social constructionism. But insofar as one finds oneself convinced by this analysis, I don't think one can continue to regard trans women as "male" in any way that would be relevant to feminist praxis.
My next essay is tentatively titled "Understanding Lesbophobia" :)