We have to recognize the dangers of “male-identified” womanhood

by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD

A few weeks ago, I posted on Threads about the ways that male-identified women are harmful to building community. I said this in reference to the numbers of Black women who work tirelessly defending Black men like Chris Brown, Bill Cosby, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and so many others who commit vicious and violent acts against women. Male-identifying women often align themselves with men in ways that harm other women because they seek to gain power from their proximity to men. While there were the usual varied reactions to my post, this time, a very unexpected group of people were upset: white trans women. 

The concern that these women had was that my comment about male-identified women was potentially transphobic. They had only ever heard a term like it used by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and other transphobes who were suggesting that trans women are not “real women.” They read “male-identified” and perceived it as “male-identifying.” 

I empathize with the concern around the term. It is dated and does trigger sensitivities about how we conceptualize womanhood, solidarity, and self-love. There are cultural contexts to Black Feminist linguistics that do not translate easily. Also, I frequently forget that, while white women love to tell the world they are “intersectional feminists”, they rarely do the work and reading that is either intersectional or feminist. 

After blocking a few white women who were dedicated to misunderstanding me, I explained the true origins of the term: with the preeminent Black feminist thinker, bell hooks. When discussing the ways that male-identified women affect community relationships, hooks was noting how cisgender heteronormative women often uphold patriarchy even though it hurts them. Some of those women may even identify as feminists. In our effort to find love for ourselves and our communities, hooks encouraged us to be honest about the role patriarchy plays in our self-identity and interpersonal connections.

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For hooks, like many Black Feminists, this conversation is rooted in power. In her book Communion: The Female Search For Love, hooks writes, “Power feminism is just another scam in which women get to play the patriarchs and pretend that the power we seek and gain liberates us” (xvi). This quest for power is about competition with men who have, too often, wielded power over us. By competing with men, male-identified women diminish the women in their lives, including themselves. hooks reminds us that, by fighting for power, we also undermine the role of love and connection with one another. Platonic intimacy takes a backseat to romantic love, situating the affection and gaze of men as the only source of worth and esteem.

This is what it means to be a male-identified woman. These are women who prioritize men over the needs, lives, and concerns of other women. Rather than acknowledging the unique impacts that patriarchy has on the conditions women face, male-identified women are typically concerned with the empowerment and success of men. 

hooks says, “we used the phrase ‘male-identified woman’ to describe women who did not necessarily like men, though they usually pretended to, but who supported any standpoint men in their lives held, who let their own opinions go to please men” (163). This is an important intervention because it emphasizes the ways that women, including those who center men, are often expected to mask in the face of patriarchy. When confronted with overt misogyny, sexism, and gendered harm, women are typically presumed to remain silent, complicit, and obsequious. 

Many women struggle with the idea that women, too, hold sexist ideas about their own gender. hooks writes, “male-identified women espoused the same negative sexist notions about gender common to any sexist man” (163). This is often reproduced in comments and antagonisms between women that are labeled as “catty” or “messy.” These structural dysfunctions are often reduced to interpersonal conflict, immaturity, or “unhealed behavior.” In reality, women are rarely incentivized to love and support other women.  

When women work hard to find defenses for the brutalities of men like Chris Brown by saying things like, “that was so long ago,” “it was only one person he abused,” or “he made amends, let it go,” they are not only factually misrepresenting the world, they are participating in a broader culture that rewards patriarchy and proximity to powerful men. 

For example, though she has always been a beloved member of the hit girl group, Destiny’s Child, and an iconic artist, actress, and entertainer in her own right, Kelly Rowland has, on multiple occasions, defended Chris Brown. During her acceptance speech on his behalf at the 2022 AMAs, Rowland hushed the boos from the crowd and stated: “I want to tell Chris, thank you so much for making great R&B music and I want to tell him thank you for being an incredible performer,” she continued. “I’ll take this award — bring it to you. I love you. Congratulations. And congratulations to all the nominees in this category.” 

After the awards, when asked about her comments, Rowland doubled down saying, “I believe that grace is very real and we all need a dose of it.”

But, when we make room for grace for abusive men and harm doers, what grace is left for their victims who are nearly always Black women?

In another instance, even after video evidence surfaced of Sean “Diddy” Combs senselessly beating singer Cassie, it wasn’t just men who came to his defense. There were women who, through the lens of patriarchy, found legitimacy in his actions. 

In particular, breaking her typical silence, Diddy’s mom, Janice Combs, put out a statement in December 2025 defending her son after the Netflix documentary “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” was released. Ms. Combs claimed that Diddy never slapped her (in the 90s), as was stated in the docuseries. She continues to maintain that the public has been misled by “lies” meant to damage her son’s reputation. Meanwhile, Ms. Combs never champions the women Diddy assaulted. She’s directly positioning herself and finding respite in patriarchy and abuse.

We saw this when Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion, too. Unfortunately, there have been and will always be women who find respite in the pseudo-protection of patriarchy and misogynoir.

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As I have gotten older, I have come to realize that male-identified women are seldom socialized to love other women because they are rarely taught how to love themselves. It is also bell hooks who teaches us that loving others is near impossible when we struggle to love ourselves. Not only that, love is often relegated to women, to the domain of the unimportant, the frivolous, and the redundant. Love, an experience that so many of us seek out and search for our whole lives, is reduced to nothing unless it centers men and power.

Black Feminist teachings remind us that loving one another is one of the most self-less and gracious acts we can engage in. Forgiveness and repair demand that we love one another deeply, sometimes unconditionally. Real love for one another requires that we abandon the scripts written out for us, the ones that say that men’s lives matter more and that women are only meant for male consumption. 

Women-identified women know better. We know that our lives are fuller and more meaningful when spent with our comrades. We understand that our communities are expansive enough to hold all of us, without competition and without petty rivalry. For those of us who are women-identifying, we refuse the conditional adoration and access offered by patriarchy because we know that it harms us, too.

In movement spaces and public life, this looks like believing women and trusting that we are the experts on our experiences. It centers the lives and struggles of women, especially Black and trans women, because we know who is most vulnerable to harm at the hands of men. Black women, in particular, are killed by men at a 2.5 times higher rate than white women. Approximately 90% of women who are killed by men know their killers. Those of us who identify with other women first know how dangerous it is when we look away from the harms other women face at the hands of men.

Us Black Feminist lovers of women know that our girls, our colegas, our sisters are our lifelines and when it comes down to it, they will save us time and again. It’s time for us to get serious about how dangerous male-identified womanhood is and how it, too often, leaves us all in peril.

Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (@jennmjacksonphd) (they/them) is a queer, androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science. Jackson’s research is in Black Politics with a focus on Black Feminist movements, racial threat and trauma, gender and sexuality, policing, and political behavior. They are the author of BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US (Penguin Random House, 2024) and POLICING BLACKNESS (expected in 2027). Jackson has written peer-reviewed articles at Public Culture, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Social Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. Jackson received their doctoral degree from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2019 where they also received a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies.