There are some chilling details in Valerie Jackson’s lawsuit against Dallas county officials. Following her arrest in November 2016, Jackson describes one officer forcing her to show her breasts, and others telling her to strip from the waist down. She recounts similar treatment following arrests in 2017 and 2018, including being placed in a male housing unit, where she says officers mocked her and even filmed her in the shower.
Jackson was a victim of misogyny. And yet there are feminists who claim that, because Jackson is a transgender woman, her story and the many others like it are a “separate question” from the sexual harassment and objectification of non-trans women. Such claims are gaining traction. They are used to pit trans women’s rights against those of non-trans women. Just consider the Equality Act – a bill pending in Congress that would extend federal anti-discrimination law to include discrimination based on gender identity. Feminists who endorse these claims not only oppose the Equality Act, they joined forces with the notoriously far-right Heritage Foundation against it. As a feminist, I could not disagree more.
Philosopher Kate Manne compellingly argues that misogyny is best understood as the “law enforcement” branch of a patriarchal social order: a social order that systematically gives power to men and disempowers women. When someone “steps out of line” and fails to comply with their assigned gender role, misogyny appears on the scene. It uses tools like violence, harassment and threats to make sure the social order is maintained.
I expect most feminists will agree with these points. Nevertheless, some feminists claim that misogyny targets only those who have female sex features ( such as ovaries, vaginas and uteruses). For these feminists – sometimes called “trans-exclusionary” feminists – trans women’s interests are none of their concern. Feminism, they say, is for people who are victims of misogyny, and anyone without female sex features cannot be a victim of misogyny.
We should be alarmed by these views. Feminism’s history displays a pattern of (mostly white, non-disabled and financially stable) women deploying claims about difference to justify ignoring the needs of women of color, disabled women and working-class women. The exclusion of trans women risks becoming the latest manifestation of this terrible pattern.
On one point, I agree with trans-exclusionary feminists: feminism must be concerned with the interests of any group that misogyny targets. Where these feminists go terribly wrong is in thinking that trans women are not such a group. They are, and we can see this without having to engage in debates over what “makes” someone a woman. You do not need to have a trans-inclusive theory of womanhood (though I think you should) in order to know that trans women are victims of misogyny. Those who enact misogyny often don’t know or care what chromosomes someone has: they react to gender variance and nonconformity. Just ask Eisha Love, a trans woman who endured daily harassment at the hands of the Chicago police while in their custody. She describes being misgendered and belittled to the point of tears by the officers, who told her: “When you come to court, make sure you look cute, make sure you have your hair done.”
This is misogyny. To see why, we need to begin by understanding the nature of patriarchy and its “law enforcement” branch. Patriarchy is not simply based on the idea that men are superior to women; that is a gross oversimplification. This would not tell us anything, for example, about why trans women are targets of violence within patriarchal societies, or why a woman’s appearance is scrutinized far more than a man’s.
Patriarchy’s theoretical foundation combines three beliefs. Stating these beliefs doesn’t require the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ at all:
‘Male’ and ‘female’ are a natural, immutable and exhaustive binary.
All males should be masculine, and all females should be feminine.
Masculinity is incompatible with and superior to femininity.
The first belief asserts that every person, by virtue of their reproductive features (usually genitalia), decisively is male or female, and this can never be changed. The second dictates that males and females should comply with pervasive and strict rules about the sexual attractions, clothing, emotions, work, family roles and behaviors expected of them. (Of course, the content of these rules – what is considered masculine or feminine – varies across context, time and culture.) The final belief maintains that anything feminine is anti-masculine, and vice versa, and that masculine traits are more valuable than feminine traits.
With these beliefs laid out, we can see exactly where trans-exclusionary feminists go wrong. They fail to recognize that misogyny imposes all three beliefs on any group that defies or challenges them. And trans women do present a challenge.
But this framework also reveals the extent to which misogyny’s reach extends beyond trans and non-trans women. Violence against nonbinary persons and trans men, discrimination against gay and gender-nonconforming non-trans men, and cosmetic genital surgeries on infants who are intersex are neither separate nor separable from the violence, discrimination and body policing that non-trans women constantly experience. We have an explanatorily powerful, unifying story to tell about what holds these forms of marginalization and mistreatment together. They all are manifestations of misogyny – the force that, in Manne’s terms, “patrols” and “polices” the patriarchal order.
Members of each of these groups threaten this order in their own way. Some challenge the strict binary and immutable nature of sex categories. Others violate culturally mandated masculine or feminine social norms. Still others place explicit and unique value on femininity. Such stepping “out of line” comes at the cost of violence, harassment, coercion or other harms. That cost, in other words, is to become a target of misogyny.
If feminists want to eliminate patriarchy, we cannot pick and choose which of its victims fit beneath our wings. We can’t choose – period. An effective feminist politics must be concerned with the rights and welfare of anyone who faces misogyny as a result of challenging patriarchy’s core commitments. This politics should be especially concerned with the least privileged of such groups. Trans women like Valerie Jackson and Eisha Lova cannot be at the edges of such a politics – along with other highly vulnerable targets of misogyny, they must be at its center.
Robin Dembroff is an assistant professor of philosophy at Yale University and a public voices fellow with the OpEd Project