Transnational Transphobias: Feminist and Traditionalist Anti-Gender Affective Orientations

Abstract

Transnational anti-trans actors fall into two camps: traditionally conservative actors who pursue transphobia to extend patriarchy and feminists who pursue transphobia to challenge patriarchy. This article investigates how shared language and practices of anti-trans feminist and traditionalist coalitions enact opposing sex/gender orders. I explain this alliance through grounded theory generated from a critical discourse analysis of my dataset of 1016 anti-trans texts from 175 organizations. I develop my Affective Orientation Threat Structure, which explains the affective governing process of this coalition, and then apply this framework to anti-trans discourses about trans threats to womanhood. I find that anti-trans feminists and traditionalists generate fear via shared threat constructions but frame threat differently in order to mobilize affective energy in service of diverging regulative regimes and sex/gender orders. I argue that the illogics produced by contradictions within this incompatible coalition benefit both camps by maximizing affective disorientation and generating momentum through paradox.