SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Trans-exclusionary feminists are using the trope of ‘protecting women’ as their main weapon while accusing trans-inclusive feminisms of misogyny. It is a rhetorical figure that we can call ‘the weaponization of accusations of violence’. And we witness it as a strategy cutting across many contexts, for example, blanket accusations of anti-Semitism against anti-Zionists, accusations of Hinduphobia to shut down resistance against Hindutva, and accusations of misogyny and sexual violence against transfeminism or trans-inclusive feminism. In this article, I discuss such accusations of violence together with examples that demonstrate that they often come with an absolute incapacity to conceive of the most basic intersectional analysis. I argue that trans-exclusionary feminism is getting the very paradigms of what misogyny is and what kind of intersectional, transnational feminisms are needed to fight it, completely wrong. With this, anti-trans feminism reveals itself to be inherently anti-feminist. We are currently witnessing a supernational unification of far right, centrist and leftist agents using anti-gender, anti-feminist and transphobic mobilisations, populist affects and strategic disinformation as accelerators for hateful and anti-democratic agendas. Ultimately, this leads to a consolidation of the global shift to the right.