The Representability and Responsibility of Cisgender Queer Men in Women's Studies

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Notes

¹“Cisgender,” synonymous with “non-transgender,” also indicates the privilege that accrues in a transphobic society to persons whose gender assignment at birth and gender identity match. This essay cites work by queer transgender men to develop its arguments, but those arguments are intended to examine queer cisgender men.

²See also Koyama; Nataf; Valentine.

³See also Gluck et al.; A. Smith, “Heteropatriarchy.”

⁴I follow Andrea Smith in using “heteropatriarchy” as a feminist category of analysis to name a power produced by the correspondence of patriarchy and heteronormativity (“Conquest” 23, 178). This usage is compatible with Judith Butler's argument that the correspondence of binary sex with gender depends upon heteronormativity (“the heterosexual matrix”) producing the power relations she calls “gender” (“Gender Trouble” 54). Neither offers a universal or transhistorical account: Butler diagnoses a modern form of gender that A. Smith situates specifically within histories of European conquest and colonial modernity.

⁵This article is part of a larger project documenting histories of queer men's participation in women's studies as a basis for proposing new directions in the field.

⁶Reprinted in Blasius and Phelan.

⁷For another example of such a theorization of alliance work, see Stoltenberg.

⁸The works of Ricardo Bracho, Richard Fung, Qwo-Li Driskill, and Marlon Riggs offer examples, including in commentary on their work (in Bracho's case, by Cherríe Moraga).

⁹One of the best historical models for addressing queer men among men in feminism is the anti-homophobic feminist work of NOMAS—The National Organization for Men Against Sexism. While I respect their work as amenable to my critique, I am less sanguine that the NOMAS model of “pro-feminism” sufficiently breaks from its normatively white roots in socialist feminism, or from the sex/gender binary it echoes that may sideline the perspectives of queer or trans people.