Gender is Misogyny

A transgendered male gives a speech at the UN decrying discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity without a single mention of misogyny. He appropriates the experiences of women, alluding to rape, the burning of women at stakes, even going so far as to co-opt the deaths of Joan of Arc and Teena Brandon, yet he doesn’t spare a moment to say anything at all against the misogyny underlying these atrocities. Why, exactly, are those of us concerned with the submission of female people to male domination to consider the proponents of such an agenda – the redirection of energies away from misogyny – allies?

Misogyny is the basis for all gender-based discrimination, since gender is a tool, the only purpose of which is to mark female human beings visually and psychologically as members of the sex class. This is why males who flout the tenets of gender by adopting facets of femininity are scorned – because males use femininity as a way of more easily targeting female people for sexual, reproductive, and economic oppression. Female people would be oppressed regardless, but gender serves to ease the discernment of femaleness and to make compulsory the socialization of female people into subservience, one aspect of which is heterosexuality. Gender is not an identity; it is the codification of misogynist sex roles. To identify with gender is to identify with male supremacy.