Who Gets To Be a Woman?

Oppositional Sexism, Transmisogyny and the Politics of Gender in South Africa

Abstract

On 9 August 1956, approximately 20,000 women gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the apartheid government’s pass laws. Organised by the Federation of South African Women (FSAW), the march was one of the defining moments in South Africa’s history of women’s political resistance. The women were not simply protesting a particular administrative document, they were challenging a political system that dictated where they could live, move, work and belong. The Women’s Charter adopted by the FSAW in 1954 had already articulated a broader demand: the removal of “all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women” (FSAW, 1954).

I do have to say that the historical specificity of the 1956 march matters. It would be anachronistic to retrospectively describe it as a transgender movement or to suggest that its participants were consciously articulating contemporary concepts of gender identity. They were confronting apartheid, racialised state-sanctioned violence and gendered restrictions in the context of their own time. However, the underlying political principle of the Women’s Charter remains useful for thinking about contemporary gender politics: what happens when institutions, customs, and social conventions determine who is allowed to exist as a legitimate woman? 

This question creates an important point of entry into the experiences of (black) transgender women in contemporary South Africa.

Trans women do not experience gender discrimination simply because they are transgender. They experience a particular interaction between sexism, misogyny and transmisia in which their status as women is questioned, scrutinised and regulated. Julia Serano describes this intersection of systems of oppression as transmisogyny, arguing that transfeminine people experience the devaluation of their femininity by sexism, and the invalidation of their gender identity by the gender binary (Serano, 2007).

However, transmisogyny simply cannot be imported as a Western theoretical framework and applied in a South African context unchanged. The experiences of a young, alternative Black trans woman in Johannesburg, a Black trans woman in ‘the hood’ in Kimberley, rural Eastern Cape, a middle-class trans woman working in Sandton or a white trans woman living in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs will differ vastly. Race, class, geography, language, religion, disability, economic status, and the legacies of colonialism and apartheid all influence how gender is experienced and policed.

Understanding oppositional sexism in South Africa thus requires two things at once: taking gender seriously as a structure of power, while refusing to treat gender as a universal system that operates identically across the world.

Laying Down The Theory

Gender Essentialism, Traditional Sexism and Oppositional Sexism

One of the foundations of contemporary gender policing is gender essentialism: the belief that gender is fixed and the sociological characteristics the two sexes have are innate and immutable. Naledi and I discuss this a lot, on our respective social media platforms and with each other, and we always reach a consensus: that gender essentialism is unproductive and is a pseudoscience. 

Essentialist thinking does not necessarily mean that someone explicitly says, “Biology determines everything.” It can operate much more insidiously. A person might believe that women naturally possess nurturing characteristics, that men naturally possess leadership traits, or that the category “woman” has an immutable biological essence shared by all (cisgender) women.

For trans women, essentialism becomes particularly significant when certain physical characteristics are treated as the definitive requirements for womanhood. This approach, however, can also create problems for cisgender women. Not all women menstruate, become pregnant, have children, or possess the same bodies, nor do they express femininity the same way. A definition of womanhood built around one supposedly universal biological or social experience will always exclude some women. 

Julia Serano distinguishes between traditional sexism and oppositional sexism. Traditional sexism establishes a hierarchy between masculinity and femininity, historically placing the former above the latter. Oppositional sexism, meanwhile, assumes that male and female are rigid, mutually exclusive categories with distinct characteristics. 

Put shortly:

Traditional sexism – masculinity > femininity.

Oppositional sexism – male female.

The two systems can operate together. Traditional sexism tells people that femininity is inferior and less valuable, while oppositional sexism insists that femininity and masculinity must remain clearly stratified. 

This is important because sexism is not only about believing that men are inherently superior to women, but also involves believing men and women are fundamentally different. 

Oppositional sexism therefore affects anyone who crosses or disrupts conventional gender boundaries. Masculine women may be criticised for “failing” to conform to femininity, as can be said with feminine men with masculinity. Transgender people may face particular scrutiny because their existence is diametrically opposed to the assumption that gender categories are naturally fixed. 

For transfemmes and trans women, the consequences can be significantly severe because transition towards femininity can be interpreted as a violation of both systems simultaneously: crossing the boundary between supposedly fixed genders while moving towards a gender category that has been historically devalued – this, in essence, is what lays the foundation for the phenomenon known as “transmisogyny.”

Malevolent Sexism, Benevolent Sexism and Transmisogyny

Sexism is not always openly hostile.

Psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiske developed the theory of ambivalent sexism, distinguishing between hostile (malevolent) and benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske, 1996). It is quite simple really: malevolent sexism involves holding openly contemptuous attitudes towards women, especially women who are perceived as challenging male authority, while benevolent sexism can appear more positive, because women are idealised, praised and protected but within traditional gender roles. 

Examples include the belief that women are “naturally”:

• nurturing;
• morally purer;
• emotionally sensitive;
• suited to motherhood; and
• in need of male protection.

These ideas can sound like praise. However, benevolent sexism can restrict women by assigning them a particular social function. Women are valued not simply as people, but because they are believed to possess particular “feminine” qualities.

This distinction is useful when discussing contemporary transmisogyny.

Trans women are sometimes excluded from womanhood through openly hostile statements. However, exclusion can also occur through apparently positive or protective ideas about women. For example, someone may argue that “real womanhood” is defined by pregnancy, menstruation, motherhood or being raised as a girl.

These experiences are real and significant. The problem arises when they are transformed from experiences that some women have into requirements for being a woman. 

A transgender woman who did not experience childhood as a girl may have a different relationship to socialisation than a cisgender woman (this does not necessarily mean her socialisation is entirely steeped in male privilege – in fact in most cases, this is almost never the case). A transgender woman who cannot become pregnant does not share that reproductive experience. These differences can (and should) be acknowledged without concluding that trans women are therefore outside womanhood.

Benevolent sexism becomes relevant when one particular idealised version of womanhood is treated as universal. In this sense, exclusion does not always begin with hatred, but with the belief that cisgender women possess a unique essence that transgender women cannot access (and consequently, that transgender women cannot be “real” women).

Gender Policing and the South African Transgender Woman

Gender policing refers to the enforcement of social expectations about how people should look, behave or identify. 

It can take place through families, schools, workplaces, churches, healthcare systems, communities, and online spaces. People may be judged for their clothing, voice, body, sexuality, mannerisms or relationships.

For trans women, gender policing often involves intense scrutiny of their femininity itself. 

A trans woman’s appearance may be evaluated as evidence of whether she “really is” a woman. Her body may be scrutinised in ways that a cisgender woman’s body is not. Her childhood, medical history, and mannerisms may become subjects of public debate. This produces a double standard: trans women can be told that femininity is artificial or superficial while simultaneously being expected to demonstrate femininity in order to prove their womanhood. 

A cisgender woman can be masculine without necessarily having her entire identity questioned (side note: I am aware of the masculinisation of cisgender black women that often happens, I am not denying that it happens). A transgender woman displaying the same masculine characteristics may be treated as “evidence” that she was never a woman at all (this accusation is often levelled against me). 

This demonstrates an important feature of transmisogyny: transfemmes and transgender women may be expected to perform femininity more convincingly than cisgender women in order to receive recognition as women. 

South African research reflects these dynamics. Shabalala, Boonzaier and Chirape’s (2023) study of Black trans women’s experiences of gender-based violence found narratives of gender policing, cissexism (systemic discrimination against people whose gender identity is incongruous with the sex assigned at birth – transgender people, i.e., preferential treatment towards people whose gender identity is aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth – cisgender people), punitive violence and a paradoxical combination of hypervisibility and invisibility. The authors argue that these experiences are structured by “a patriarchal matrix of cisgender power.”

The idea of hypervisibility and invisibility is quite useful. Transfemmes and trans women may be highly visible as trans people. Their bodies, identities and femininity may become subjects of intense public discussion. Yet they can simultaneously be invisible within discussions of women, feminism and gender-based violence. They are visible enough to be policed and scrutinised, yet not recognised enough to be included. 

Laying Down The Context

Patriarchy in Africa and the West: the importance of context

Whenever I discuss patriarchy in the South African context, I avoid making the mistake of assuming Africa as patriarchal and primitive and the West as progressive. There is no single African patriarchy, and there is also no single Western patriarchy. Gender systems develop through particular histories.

Something that also prompted me to write this article is Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of patriarchal bargains. She argues that patriarchy should not be treated as a universal system that operates identically everywhere. Instead, different patriarchal arrangements create different “rules of the game”, within which women develop different strategies to secure autonomy, resources and social power, called “patriarchal bargains” (Kandiyoti, 1988). 

This framework is useful when comparing South Africa with the United States, the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. 

Many contemporary Western debates about gender identity developed within specific historical conditions, including liberal individualism, industrialisation, second-wave feminism, gay liberation, the sexual revolution, and the growth of identity-based political movements.

South Africa developed differently. South African gender relations have been shaped by indigenous social systems, colonialism, Christian missionary influence, racial capitalism, migrant labour, apartheid, customary law, and the anti-apartheid struggle. 

Western concepts such as transmisogyny, cisheteronormativity, and gender essentialism, can therefore be useful analytical tools without being treated as universal explanations. This makes the appropriate question not “What does the West say about gender?” but “Which concepts help us understand how gender operates in South Africa?” 

South African feminism should neither import Western gender politics unchanged, devoid of nuance, nor should they reject international theory simply because it originates elsewhere. 

Race, Apartheid and the South African transfeminine experience

South African patriarchy cannot be separated from race. Under colonialism and apartheid, race and gender were intertwined systems of governance. Black women experienced gendered oppression through institutions that also controlled their movement, labour, citizenship and family life.

The 1956 Women’s March itself proves this intersection. The march was not simply about “women’s issues” in the abstract. The Pass laws targeted Black women’s movement within a racialised system of state control. The women who marched understood that their experiences as women could not be separated from apartheid.

The Women’s Charter of 1954 consequently demanded equality while explicitly recognising the diverse racial backgrounds of South Africa women. This history is important because the category “woman” has never been politically neutral in South Africa: Black women, white women, Coloured women, and Indian women were positioned differently within apartheid. Class and geography further shaped those experiences.

Trans women enter this already complex history. A Black trans woman may encounter misogyny and transphobia, but her experiences may also be shaped by anti-Black racism and economic inequality. This is why concepts like “misogynoir” and “transmisogynoir” can be useful when discussing the experiences of Black transfemmes and trans women; they draw attention to the fact that racism and misogyny can interact rather than operate independently.

South African research supports the importance of this intersectional approach. Shabalala, Boonzaier and Chirape (2023) found that apartheid’s legacies of racialised economic marginalisation continue to shape Black trans women’s vulnerability to violence. Their research therefore connects contemporary cissexism to broader histories of racial and economic inequality.

For a Black trans woman, gender cannot always be separated from the social meanings attached to Black womanhood. Race shapes how femininity is perceived. Class shapes access to healthcare (specifically gender-affirming healthcare), education and legal resources. Geography shapes access to support services. Gender identity shapes how institutions respond to the body. These systems do not add together, nor are they exhaustive; they interlock and create a unique experience.

Formal equality and ontological equality

South Africa has some of the strongest constitutional protections for equality in the world. However, formal equality does not always translate into substantive/lived equality. A legal system can recognise people as equal while institutions continue operating according to assumptions that disadvantage particular groups. This is especially relevant to transgender people.

A law may prohibit discrimination, but a hospital may lack staff trained to work respectfully with transgender patients. An organisation may claim to support women while understanding womanhood exclusively through cisgender experience. A bureaucratic system may appear neutral while creating particular obstacles for people whose documents, identities or bodies do not fit expected categories.

The problem is not always hostility.

Sometimes, the problem is cisheteronormativity (the framework that treats everyone as cisgender, heterosexual and as people who conform to traditional gender roles). An institution organised around cisgender assumptions may not consciously intend to exclude trans people, but its procedures may very well be exclusionary. This is why institutional neutrality must be examined critically, because a rule that applies equally to everyone may still affect people unequally.

Transfemmes and trans women can therefore experience a contradiction between formal recognition and everyday reality. They may exist within a constitutional framework committed to equality while still encountering gender policing in healthcare, workplaces, communities and public discourse.

Explaining The Contemporary

Social media and contemporary gender policing

Contemporary discussions about womanhood increasingly take place online. Platforms such as TikTok, X, Facebook, Threads, Instagram and Substack have become important spaces for discussing feminism, gender identity, sexuality and womanhood, which has created important opportunities.

Transgender people can find communities, information, and representation that may be unavailable in their immediate offline environments. They can encounter other trans people, learn from activists, pool resources, and access discussions about gender that were previously geographically limited.

However, social media has also transformed gender policing. A trans woman’s appearance can become the subject of public commentary. A person’s body can be analysed by strangers. A discussion about one’s individual identity can be transformed into a broader debate about the existence and legitimacy of trans people. 

The structure of social media can intensify these conflicts because controversial and emotionally provocative content is widely shared. Online debates about womanhood create an atmosphere in which trans women are repeatedly required to defend their existence.

Importantly, these debates do not occur between cisgender and transgender people only. Cisgender women debate what womanhood means. Transgender women debate femininity, transition and gender (there is a phenomenon that takes place within trans communities, known as “transmedicalism”, which is the ideology that one cannot be transgender unless they medically transition, but that is an entirely different conversation altogether). 

There are disagreements within feminist communities and disagreements within trans communities. The existence of a disagreement is not necessarily a problem; the question is whether disagreement becomes policing. There is a major difference between saying: “My experience of womanhood differs from yours,” and saying: “Your different experience means you cannot be a woman.” The first recognises difference; the second turns difference into exclusion.

Contemporary femininity and benevolent transmisogyny

Contemporary femininity is also a contested space. Women are simultaneously encouraged to embrace femininity and are criticised for being excessively feminine. Beauty culture, social media, and consumerism create new expectations about appearance, while feminist movements continue to challenge the idea that women must look or behave in traditionally feminine ways. 

Trans women navigate this environment under particular scrutiny. If femininity is understood as artificial, trans women are accused of performing womanhood and reducing it to wigs, fashion and makeup. If femininity is understood as natural, they are told that their femininity is inauthentic. This connects back to benevolent sexism.

Idealised ideas about womanhood can appear inclusive while establishing an impossible standard. A trans woman may be told that women possess a special, shared experience that she can never understand. Yet cis women themselves have vastly different relationships to reproduction, sexuality, femininity and childhood.

The problem is not acknowledging these differences, the problem is assuming that there is only one authentic experience of womanhood. Trans women and cis women can share an identity as women while having different experiences of sex, socialisation and embodiment. A feminism capable of holding both ideas at once (intersectional feminism) is more analytically useful: women can share political interests without sharing one universal biography.

Why this matters to South African feminism

South African feminism has a long history of analysing the relationship between gender and other systems of power. The 1956 Women’s March itself illustrated that women’s experiences cannot be understood separately from race and political oppression.

This history provides an important framework for thinking about trans inclusion. The question should not be whether trans women have exactly the same experiences as cis women: they do not, and cis women themselves do not all have the same experiences either. The more important question is whether feminism can recognise shared structures of gendered power while acknowledging difference.

Feminist discussions of gender-based violence have historically prioritised cisgender heterosexual women, often excluding trans people. Including Black trans women’s experiences does not weaken feminist analyses of violence. Instead, it reveals dimensions of gender policing, cissexism, and patriarchal power that may otherwise remain invisible (Shabalala et al., 2023). 

This is why trans inclusion should not be understood merely as an act of generosity. Transgender women can contribute knowledge about how gender itself operates. Their experiences reveal what happens when institutions decide that bodies, identities and social categories must fit predetermined boundaries.

Solutions

Transfeminism and moving beyond gender policing

A transfeminist approach does not require feminism to abandon its existing concerns. It simply asks feminism to expand its analysis. Transfeminism raises questions such as:

• Who gets recognised as a woman?
• Who has the authority to define womanhood?
• Whose experiences are treated as universal?
• Which bodies are considered authentically feminine?
• How do institutions enforce gender categories?
• Who is included in discussions of gender-based violence?
• How do race, class and gender intersect?

These are feminist questions.

Transfeminism therefore does not require treating trans women as a threat to feminism. It can instead recognise that trans women’s experiences provide important insight into the mechanisms through which gender is regulated.

The goal should be to move from gender policing (“Do you have the correct body?”) to gender understanding (“How did society develop this particular definition of womanhood?”).

Beyond Essentialism: Difference, Inclusion and a Contextual Feminism

The goal is not to erase the differences between cisgender and transgender women, but to ensure that the difference does not become a reason to exclude a demographic. This requires abandoning gender essentialism without denying the existence or significance of bodies, and recognising that reproductive experiences, socialisation and embodiment matter without any single experience into a universal definition of womanhood. 

It also means learning from Western gender theory without treating Western frameworks as universally applicable, while developing a South African feminism capable of understanding as it is lived through the intersection of race, class, power, history and institutions. 

Conclusion

In summary, South African feminism should be inclusive, intersectional, and grounded in the country’s history. Recognising differences between women should not justify excluding trans women from feminist solidarity. Rather than treating trans women as a threat, feminism can learn from their experiences to better understand how gender is regulated and weaponised. The goal is not to homogenise womanhood, but to recognise the differences while not using those differences as a reason to be hierarchical, to determine who deserves recognition, dignity and inclusion.