This is section 3 of Down With The Cisness: Betrayal To Manhood is Loyalty to Humanity. See the intro here.

As a conclusion, let me rewind to the words from He-Yin Zhen that I quoted at the start of this text. What she pointed out is that for the most part even progressive cishet men who claim to support women’s liberation, in reality have no intention to give their power up and instead seek selfish gains and “distinction”: This is the fundamental issue at stake for those of us among cishet men who truly wish to take the side of women and other oppressed gendered groups: beyond empty self-serving words and gestures, what does it mean to actually support radical gender liberation?

This isn’t meant as a definitive answer, nor do I wish to give the impression I consider myself better, more “enlightened” than the rest of cishet men. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot for the past year, and once again it’s by listening to/reading some feminists’ rants and discussions on this topic that I began coming to terms with it. I would say before anything else a major epistemic and political decentering is required. There is absolutely no way for us to begin understanding – let alone challenging! (beyond empty rhetoric) – patriarchal social relations without our epistemic voice/authority, our own sociopolitical interests, our complaints and grievances, our feelings and desire, and so on, being fundamentally de-prioritized.

No system of oppression can ever be overcome for good by appealing to the oppressors’ interests and coddling their ego’s, feelings or wishes. Members of an oppressing group – such as settlers in a colonized region, white people in a white supremacist society, parents in a position of power over their kids, and capitalists and landlords dominating the poor dispossessed masses – not only have a lot to lose were their social and structural privileges to be removed/erased, it’s their very identities, wordlviews and aspirations that need to be turned upside down. In the case of patriarchy and cisnesss, the overwhelming majority of cishet men either oppose feminist/LGBTQ+ liberation violently – as we saw in Gamergate among others – or they ask “what’s in it for me?”. For those of us who seriously intend to transcend this dichotomy and genuinely take part in the destruction of the patriarchy as a whole, there is no other way but to embrace our own disempowerment, which starts with a fundamental de-prioritization of our own concerns and demands as a social group. This means feminists don’t have to get our permission or to win us over!

This epistemic and political decentering is indeed the polar opposite of the prevailing reactions to and inherent lies built into the so-called “male loneliness epidemic” which I talked about in the previous section. It’s actually the feelings, fears, suffering, grievances, demands, aspirations, safety, autonomy and epistemic voices of oppressed groups within patriarchy – i.e. cis women, trans and nonbinary/genderqueer people, gays and lesbians, and kids – that matter here, not ours. I will say though, while cishet adult men are the primary oppressors within patriarchy, they’re not the only ones with power over others, namely other adult parents of any gender/sexuality are also in positions of social domination relative to their kids; therefore similarly these adults’ interests are incompatible with child liberation.

By definition, our interests as cishet men are to maintain our epistemic authority, our access to women’s bodies, sexuality, domestic/care/gestational labor, emotional support; as well as the reproduction of both the socio-economic dependence that  keeps women and our kids unable to leave us even if they want to, and the various (political, legal, cultural…) infrastructures that enable us to keep tha power and remain unpunished for our many acts of violence and abuse. To take but one aspect of this and make it more explicit, our interest is to replicate rather than dismantle the male  sexual domination and rape culture that legimitizes it. It pressures women into accepting or submitting to our sexual advances and harassment, providing sex for us as a service (economic-sexual exchange), prioritizing our sexual satisfaction/desires/fantasies over theirs, handling contraception and risking their health/bodies (pregnancy) when we don’t take any responsibility, internalizing sex as a “duty” within monogamous/marital relationships; it threatens them with further trauma and a reversing of victims vs abusers if they denounce or defend themselves against our violations of their consent/boundaries/bodily autonomy; it traps them inside heteronormative and monogamous sexuality when sometimes (often?) they’d be open to and enjoy other things. This is just with regard to sexual domination, but it shows how we actually have a lot to lose, and why most of us would rather defend this horrendous social hierarchy than renounce any of these benefits.

This brings me to the core idea and takeaway of betraying Manhood – which applies to all cishet men first/primarily, but also secondarily to all individuals who adopt/identify with some form of masculinity, which in our current patriarchal society always contains the risk (not inevitability) of falling back into or emulating Manhood.

In addition, the last thing we (masculine people of any gender) should do is think that because we’re on the left and/or sympathetic to feminism, we’re inherently better than other men, or immune from all this shit. Far too many do that, I’m sorry… That’s how you sometimes get a kind of de facto dismissal of radical feminism on the Left or in queer groups/movements. As Dupuis-Déri wrote:

Whether we consider ourselves progressive or conservative, for or against capitalism, heterosexual, bisexual, polyamorous, trans or non-binary, whether we wear skirts, make-up, feminist T-shirts, have tattoos, are activists in an anti-sexist men’s group, or have a library overflowing with feminist books (…), we remain men from a political point of view when we treat women as women, that is, as people at our service, who owe us attention, love, admiration, work, care and sexuality at a lower price or, even better, for free. And all this not because of who we are as individuals, with our qualities and faults, but because we are men. It is first and foremost this political question of power that must guide the compass of the pro-feminist man.

Francis Dupuis-Déri (2023) Les hommes et le féminisme. Faux amis, poseurs ou alliés? Les Paris, Éditions Textuel, p. 138-139. [My translation]

Both to actually support women’s/LGBTQ+/child liberation, and in a sense to truly become (liberated) humans ourselves, we must – to borrow from this post by Alice – embrace our own self-emasculation in the sense of destroying Manhood. Here’s the program:

1. Manhood as a hegemonic form of gender subject cannot exist in the long run. Counter-hegemonic forms of masculinity can only exist at the margins of our current society; and the liberation of all genders is specifically premised on killing Man as a cishet patriarch.
2. This implies not merely a subjective but socio-material process of disempowerment in our daily lives, in relationships (romantic, platonic, you name it), at work, in social/political movements, in intellectual/cultural production, and so on. [More on this below]
3. The solidarity/fraternity between cishet men must itself be shattered, which means that we have to betray our own gender as an oppressive class, breaking apart the patriarchal conspiracy among cishet male relatives, friends, colleagues and strangers.
4. Cis Manhood as the default, ultimate and only autonomous subject must be destroyed: “the thing teenage boys need to hear more than anything else is that it is actually okay if they don’t grow up to be men at all. they don’t have to feel invested in the political interests of men as a class, bc they dont have to BE men. it’s okay if they grow up to be women, or something else :)” [narcissus]

Gender conservatism – as epitomized by the moral panic about teenage boys and young men in the last part, tells us that compulsory heterosexuality and hence cishet men’s social domination, is inevitable and must therefore be accomodated, even by the “Left” and feminist/queer/trans movements. Instead, the dismantling of the social, cultural and political supremacy of cishet men has gone nowhere near far enough!

Side note: I am sorry if this sounds incredibly obvious/basic and repetitive – like what’s being asked is simply for men to stop being predatory brutes and treat others with care and respect -, but the patriarchal “common sense” which most of us cishet men take for granted has to be spelled out and countered explicitly.

There are two processes at play here, one relative to the feminist movement’s goals/strategy, and the other about the necessity for cishet men to betray our own gender. Both are closely connected, but it’s useful to distinguish them. On the former, I think it’s best to quote my friend Beth who really nailed this strategical point (here / here ):

The bottom line is that feminism must lower the costs of refusing manhood and raise the cost of embracing it.

Which will, of course, absolutely fucking suck for trans guys who will face the wrath of cisheteropatriarchy *and* be refused access to women’s emotional labour on a non reciprocal basis which is how cis guys survive the “coldness” they are “forced” into.

It is asking a lot of our trans brothers to refuse even the partial access to the benefits of maleness in patriarchy they might get if they manage to pass and play the role hard enough and accept perpetual faggothood, even as trans women join with cis women against the patriarchy.

But I’m afraid that’s the ask. And it is no different to what we ask of cis men, although asking a trans man to accept some social feminisation is a much much bigger deal. (…)

But I’m not prepared to give up the central insight of gender as a hierarchy and maleness as a dominant role that must be made more difficult and more unpleasant if we want men to abandon it and join with us.

The assumption is that we are not gonna be able to persuade men away from patriarchy. That there is no universal class that can unite against the bourgeoisie or whatever and that most men will act as enemies to the liberation of women as they lose access to our labour.

This is seen as a contradiction that must be sharpened, not as a downside that must be downplayed and softened. The access to and control of women that manhood gives men access to must b destroyed and it must be destroyed by denying that access.

The central strategy in doing this is raising the consequences of rape. The rapist must not prosper. Non rapist men can no longer be allowed to benefit from the violence of the rapist. Supporting rapists must come with a high social cost.

This is me too, this is KYLR, this is survivor led politics, this is safer spaces. A whole constellation of (not always mutually compatible) strategies to raise the cost of rape, to make it an act with serious consequences for the rapist and their supporters.

There are many, *many*, arguments and debates to be had about how this can work – many focussed on the role of the state and carcerality – but the central premise is that rape is a central strategy of patriarchy for keeping women afraid and that fear is a key plank of male power.

This is a strategy that chooses confrontation with men. Men can choose  to be traitors to manhood – become faggots of one kind of another (which  is a social role more than it is a sexuality – in these enlightened  times there are gay men who can escape faggotry lol), but manhood is not  liberatory.

With regard to what us cishet men need to do, l think the unfiltered framing used here – inspired by Beth, Alice and others – is important because it goes in the polar opposite direction as what the patriarchal script tells us since our birth: our assigned duty is to become “real men” – meaning concretely being patriarchs, i.e. oppressors – whereas the actual requirement/necessity in order to support feminist/gender/queer/trans/child liberation is for us to “become faggots of one kind of another”, in Beth’s words (i.e. self-emasculation, in Alice’s words).

Let me be more explicit still:

1. Always respect, listen to and learn from women’s lived experience and their own understanding of patriarchy and (trans)misogyny.
2. Instead of asking them to teach you about their oppression, you can just fucking read and listen to them. They’ve been talking about this for ages!
3. It’s crucial to decenter ourselves epistemically and politically: let them speak, let their struggles and issues and liberatory aspirations be prioritized. They also don’t need our permission or our support!
4. Rather than being defensive, we have to acknowledge that as cis men (especially ones attracted to women) we’re ourselves benefitting from this system, that we’re in that sense part of the problem and therefore legitimate/potential targets of criticism from women in our lives. Let’s learn to listen to it and change rather than being “hysterical”. Indeed, as cis men we should embrace the fact we’re on a constant, long-term process of unlearning!
5. Reproductive labor should be shared more equitably, it’s a fucking low bar but something most cis men still don’t do it. Housework, taking care of kids, elders and relatives/friends, making sure the community doesn’t fall apart, affective/emotional labor, mediating and de-escalating conflicts, and so on, is also our responsibility.
6. Break the patriarchal solidarity among cishet men: confront your male friends and relatives (about their sexism, sexual harassment, and so on), practice “boys watch”, support victims of abuse/harassment/sexism including if that means losing your male friends, never tolerate abuse of kids by male friends or relatives.
7. Women’s, kids’ and other gendered minorities’ bodily and sexual autonomy must be not merely respected but supported. That means as cishet (adult) men we have to pay a lot of attention and care to their consent, safety, health and healthcare needs; and in the case of the adult heterosexual women we’re dating to support their sexual agency (pleasure, desires, boundaries, etc) as well as reproductive health and safety (which is our responsability too).
8. Gender liberation requires caring about supporting trans and queer people, whose autonomy and well-being are under constant assault, largely by cishet men. Let’s do what we can do defend their rights, their healthcare needs, their physical safety, and so on.
9. The education of children cannot keep being grounded in the reproduction and enforcement of compuslory cisness and heterosexuality: if you have kids you should actively work against that, and support them in becoming any kind of human being, of any gender, sex or sexuality.
10. Monogamy should be challenged, but that doesn’t mean self-servingly widening the pool of sexual objects we have access to: on the contrary it should be about shattering male sexual domination and breaking the often authoritarian hold we have over our cis woman partners in the context of the monogamous couple.

On top of the four general principles listed above, a fifth applies to cisness in general: cis and hetero reformism will not do (hari calico (bloomfilters)).  This is something us cis folks are generally reticent to accept – even (most) cishet women hold on to cisnormativity – but “gender liberation cannot start with the premise that cisness must be accomodated first” (narcissus). I already mentioned this in the fourth principle, but that  was specifically about cis manhood because cis men “have way more agency to stop being men than women do to stop being women” (Alice).

However it applies to cisness in general, because “boys growing into men and girls growing into women coercively is itself a grooming process into heterosexuality” (hari calico (bloomfilters)) . This is one of the key insights of transfeminism, which ties radical feminism with trans AND child liberation: it’s absolutely essential to reject cishetero fatalism, and instead emphasize that both for children and adults it’s neither inevitable nor necessary to walk the path set out for them by/within cisness and compulsory heterosexuality.

Here’s another great quote on this from narcissus:

Conservative fixation on trans youth is a product of their fear and rage at the idea of children not being their property, to mold and shape as they see fit and to ensure the reproduction of the existing gendered order, but instead having the self-knowledge to self-mold and let the old order die.

If boys don’t HAVE to become men, if they realize they are not fundamentally different being from girls and women, if they dont feel invested in the politics of masculinist futurity, there is a risk that the next generation of patriarchs never emerges to take the reigns.

They’re threatened by the simple idea that children are not property. Without that premise, patriarchy makes no sense. Reproductive and sexual labor classes make no sense. Trading children to other patriarchs in “marriage contracts” makes no sense. It all falls apart if children are already people.

While women don’t have as much of a choice/agency to betray cisness as cishet men can, and while the short-term priority should obviously be to enable kids to transition if they want to,  ultimately I do agree that the revolutionary meaning of transition goes beyond trans people themselves, and instead applies to everyone. Like Sereneblossom mentioned, we’re all gonna need to transform ourselves and our social relations away from the prescriptions/assignments/injunctions of gender and (comp) heterosexuality that define what cis genders mean/imply/look loke socially in this patriarchal society:

So honestly this is going to sound movie cliche but to me the answer is within all of us as inherent to transition. If your internal sense of sex aligns with a Gender, take the things you like about Gender and make them your own. Weave new context into them. Trans your gender then trans Gender.Then scale that upward or outward. Men and masculine people and women are feminine people can take as much or as little from Gender as they want; the key is to recontexualize it all outside the Social Order, outside the oppressive scripts that the patriarchal order imposes on us.