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A transfeminist, decolonial response to the global anti-gender movement, exploring radical currents within both transfeminism and the current anti-trans turn
Trans lives have become one of the primary battlegrounds of contemporary culture wars. Against the backdrop of the global rise of reactionary movements,Trans Ontopolitics analyzes how vastly different political forces—ranging from neoconservatism to certain strands of radical feminism—converge in framing gender identity as a threat to the family, childhood, and the nation.
Fear and hatred play a central role in this offensive. Through rhetoric masquerading as science and common sense, old prejudices are revived, and trans people are cast as a danger requiring surveillance, correction, or exclusion. This is not merely a dispute over words or identities; what is at stake is who can live with dignity, which bodies deserve protection, and which lives are recognized as valid possibilities.
Challenging the declaration, “we have always been here,” Guerrero Mc Manus pushes back against liberal analyses that ultimately replicate colonial dynamics by failing to understand that certain ways of existing outside cis-normativity may have been radically different historically than what we know today. The Latin American transfeminist perspective, in which the author is deeply rooted, has allowed for the recognition of radically different cultures and also sought to minimize the genocidal violence of the destruction of these ways of life.
In response to these narratives, Trans Ontopolitics offers a transfeminist and decolonial perspective that sheds light on the relationship between the body, power, and violence. It also calls for moving beyond reactions rooted in suspicion and exclusion, urging us instead to rebuild bonds of care, solidarity, and shared struggle. An essential reflection for any project of collective emancipation—and a steadfast defense of freedom and autonomy for all.
Introduction
Part 1: Anti-Gender Movements and Ecosystems
1. Anti-Gender Ecosystems
Anti-gender ecosystems, which arise when the agenda of the anti-gender movement becomes generally accepted
2. What We Talk About When We Talk About the Anti-Gender Movement
The anti-gender movement as a reactionary political current that attacks bodily autonomy
3. The Anti-Gender Movement, Neoconservatism, and Neoliberalism
Addresses the fallacy that anti-gender movements are necessarily always far-right in nature
4. An Affective Reading of the Anti-Gender Movement
How anti-gender movements mobilize emotions such as fear, hatred and disgust, but also love
5. The Gender Culture Wars
how seemingly divergent anti-gender movements work together
6. Ideology, Hermeneutics, and Suspicion
Explores concepts from various dimensions of philosophy
Part 2: Ontological Politics, and Coloniality
7. Ontopolitics
A definition and history of ontopolitics, combining ontology and politics
8. Toward a Historical Ontopolitics of the Trans Body
How ontopolitics plays out in relation to trans people
9. Discourse, Affect, and Materiality in the Construction of Trans Corposubjectivity
How transness has been historically produced through a relationship with cisnormativity
10. Territory, Cartopower, and Coloniality
Introduces a decolonial critique, focusing on the coloniality of knowledge
11. The Transhistoricization of the Cisgender Body
A critique of liberal, assimilationist visions asserting “we have always been here”
12. The Valladolid Debate as an Ontopolitical Controversy
An analysis of a historical debate as to whether the Indigenous people in Latin America were rational human beings
Part 3: Ontopolitical Controversies
13. On the Very Idea of an Ontopolitical Controversy
Applies theoretical tools developed in the first two sections to debates facing trans people today
14. An Ontological History of the Trans Body
Explores debates from the fields of sociology and philosophy around the construction of trans identity
15. The Dissident Body, and Ontopolitical Controversies
The role of networks of activists such as ACT-UP in the stabilization of scientific facts
16. Ontopolitical Controversies, Doppelgangers, and Anti-Gender Ecosystems
Strategies of anti-gender movements in undermining the stability of trans identity
17. Ontopolitical Controversies Today
Looks at ontopolitical controversies regarding trans people that are still playing out
Conclusion: Fragility, Care and Concern
Emphasizes the fragility of our identities as a call to ensure that they be the focus of collective care.