When a trans person commits violence, their gender identity is often framed as evidence of the collective threat of transgender people, while the more prevalent pattern of cisgender male-perpetrated violence is attributed to individual factors.
This double standard redirects attention away from masculinity as a driver of violence.
Masculinity refers to the socially produced set of norms that define what being a man requires. In Canada’s settler-colonial culture, these traits include dominance, heterosexual prowess, independence, competitiveness and the suppression of vulnerability. Masculinity is a rules system cis boys encounter early and repeatedly, and that cis men are expected to enact and reinforce.
