Trans Ontopolitics (How Anti-Gender Politics Reshape Reality)

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.