Cisgender women (those who are assigned female at birth and identify as women) are not safe from transphobia (strong prejudice against transgender people).
This is especially true of black women whose womanhood and masculinity has always been questioned by white supremacists.
Misogyny is the contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men.
According to the Scientific Electronic Library Online SciEILO SA — South Africa’s premier open-access searchable full-text journal database in service of the South African research community — prior to colonialism in Africa, men did not discriminate against women culturally.
Power was distributed based on seniority rather than gender.
Both men and women performed economic and political roles in society, with each serving a distinct position within the household and community.
In order to get to the root of this pertinent issue, one should also differentiate between gender and sexual orientation and intersex individuals.
According to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, sexual orientation refers to, “the emotional, romantic and sexual attraction of someone to the same sex or the opposite sex, or to both sexes.”
On the other hand, gender is: “A person’s own inner sense of being male or female (or both or neither) or transgender. A person’s gender identity may or may not correspond to the person’s body or designated sex at birth or how society sees them.”
The department defined intersex people as those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit the typical definitions of female or male.
“Some intersex persons may also have different variations of hormones or chromosomes.”
The latter applies to South Africa’s beloved athlete, Caster Semenya who is intersex and was discriminated against because of this fact.
A recent example of this was the 2024 Paris Olympics incident where Algerian fighter, Imane Khelif was the subject of ridicule and accused of being a ‘male’ who remorselessly punched a ‘real woman’, her opponent Angela Carini who is Italian.
However, Khelif is not intersex.
Carini quit less that 50 seconds into the match and transphobes such as renowned writer, JK Rowling who penned the Harry Potter series ran to social media to lament about the fight.
Rowling, Elon Musk and even disgraced YouTuber turned boxer Logan Paul blasted Khelif on X (formerly Twitter), accusing her of being trans in a ‘woman’s sport’ and using the pronouns he/him when referring to her.
“Could any picture sum up our new men’’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered. #Paris2024,” Rowling infamously posted.
Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered. #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/Q5SbKiksXQ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 1, 2024
Khelif has since filed a criminal complaint with the French, citing ‘acts of aggravated cyber harassment,’ with her lawyer saying Rowling and Musk are both mentioned in the lawsuit.
Instead of reflecting and perhaps questioning her life’s choices, Rowling essentially doubling down on X with another post.
"It’s important to highlight that launching a PR campaign and applying layers of thick makeup requires far more time and effort than simply making DNA test results public." -- ✍️@SwipeWright https://t.co/mRECJgNX3X
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 23, 2024
Transphobia is not at all a red herring, but affects thousands of transwomen.
However, it shows how systems of oppression work in tandem to accomplish their goals.
Transphobia stems from white supremacy and colonialism, both of which are based on a tight gender binary (the system in which a society allocates its members into one of two sets of gender roles and gender identities, which assign attributes based on their biological sex).
Meanwhile, gender is a spectrum.
Sazi Jali, a transwoman and founder of TransHope (a non-profit organisation that advocates for the rights of transgender and gender diverse people in the province of KwaZulu-Natal) commented that people use transwomen to make fun of cisgender women, “as if the worst thing you can be is trans).’’
“Transgender individuals are always the butt of the joke. We are easy pickings for those who know that they are protected by society. These ‘jokes’ result in horrible and even life-threatening situations for trans individuals,” she said.
In an academic paper titled: Perceiving the Black female body: Race and gender in police constructions of body weight by Naa Oyo Kwate and Shatema Threadcraft published in the US’ National Center for Biotechnology Information, the authors make clear the thread that weaves together homophobia, misogyny and racism.
“The influence of heterocentrism (a focus on heterosexual/straight issues and ethnocentrism (evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’’s own culture) renders prototypical women as straight and white.
“Individuals at the intersection of subordinate identities are invisible because they are not fully recognised as group members, and because their characteristics and experiences are distorted or discounted in order to fit them into more prototypical models,” they wrote.
They noted a study in which participants (82% White) were shown photographs of black and white men and women and asked to determine the gender of the depicted person. Respondents frequently misidentified black women as men, generating more classification errors than any other category.
“In sum, blackness appeared to call up maleness, and femaleness was most readily associated with whiteness.”
Another jarring instance of racism was shown in the 1904 Summer Olympics which took place in the US where thousands of native peoples across the world were put in human zoos, including two men from South Africa.
“An event known as Anthropology Days, which pitted indigenous people from the human zoo against each other in a series of athletic competitions served as a covert means of gathering anthropometric data to support white supremacist theories,” reported Lady Science.
So, the pitchforks may be aimed at transwomen at the moment and disappointedly, other women are at the vanguard of these witch trials but, the tide will turn.
Once they have eliminated safe places for these trans individuals, cut off their access to healthcare and ostracised them into the shadows, who do you think they will turn to next?
This process is well underway with right-wing governments espousing anti-trans propaganda and advocating for a return to more ‘tradition values’.
This is a clear dog whistle (a subtly aimed political message which is intended for, and can only be understood by, a particular demographic group) for a time where white supremacy was the norm, women were subjugated without autonomy over their bodies, property of their fathers then husbands. Without the right to vote or work.
Black women existing at the intersections of all these oppressive systems did and will have it worse than others. So, solidarity with transwomen and other members of the LGBTQ+ community is the key to resistance.
*Xolile Mtembu is a journalist at IOL
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media or IOL.
xolile.mtembu@iol.co.za
IOL