book: whipping girl by julia serano
During my break in July, I said I wouldn't read. I partially lied! I did not read any papers, blog posts, or most news articles, and I initially wanted to extend that to books as well. But I ended up ordering and reading some, and one of them was Whipping Girl!
Originally released in 2007 and edited a bit in 2015 and with an afterword from 2023, it is a tad older, but such a foundational work in gender studies.
It's a feminist analysis about how femininity is punished in society, specifically illustrated on the hatred on, and cissexism enacted against, trans women and their representation in media. It discusses common models of thinking about gender (gender essentialism vs. social constructionism) and where they fall short, as well as different kinds of feminism (and why feminism needs to be trans-inclusive) and theories as to why people are trans that do not serve trans people.
It's specifically mentioning trans-objectification (= disregarding trans people as living human beings, reducing them to an unfeeling thing you can speculate over and ask invasive questions, an anomaly to demonize, ridicule, exploit or fetishize), trans-fascimilation (= portraying trans genders as facsimiles of cisgender ones), trans-sexualization (= asserting that trans women transition to attract sexual desire, to attract men, or to become the women they're attracted to; relegating them to a fetish, as merely sex workers, perverts, exotic fucks etc.), trans-interrogation (= obsessively focusing on the reasons why trans people exist, pathologizing them), trans-erasure (= silencing trans voices and preventing them from being visible and coming out, prioritizing cis people's theories and feelings), trans-exclusion (= excluding trans people from events and spaces based on their trans status), and trans-mystification (= turning transition into a taboo, a hidden secret, a scandal instead of a real and mundane thing) as ways trans people, often specifically trans women, are harmed in society.
It also covers the way trans people have been historically (mis)treated and mischaracterized by the medical world without giving them a chance to speak, and the way gender transition has been gatekept by dehumanizing standards like attractiveness, sexual orientation, sterilization, secrecy about the trans status, and more, resulting in only letting a small amount of people transition at all, and only if they were most willing to comply with cis expectations and also had the resources (money, changing jobs, moving away etc.). Any gatekeeping of transition resources is done for the well-being of the cis population, and especially the extremely, extremely small portion of them who could transition and regret it, and is never actually done for the well-being of trans people. This is possible because, despite many people rejecting ideas of attaining social status, occupation, political power etc. via birth right (casteism, for example), cis society has no problem seeing gender as a birth right, something you inherit and cannot gain otherwise, and is otherwise not as legit as theirs.
This further leads to the ridiculous double-standards and unfair judgment trans women are subjected to: Act feminine, and you are seen as a parody, a facsimile of a woman, a costume, or "leading someone on"; act masculine, and it is deemed a sign of a "true male identity", as not even trying, as a joke for media. Pseudofeminists say women can do anything men can and should be strong and unafraid to speak their minds, yet ridicule trans women for behaviors deemed masculine, especially when they speak out about their oppression. They create standards of what makes someone a "real woman", yet reject the same when men do it. Crossdressing is fine for women and is, technically, done on the daily when you're wearing pants - yet a man wearing a skirt is already classified as a mental illness and used to historically focus on men only (Transvestic Disorder (F65.1)).
The book asserts that the mechanisms behind it are traditional sexism (the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity, and the delegitimization of the latter as weak and artificial), and oppositional sexism (the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, and the delegitimization of gender non-conformity). Through effemimania (the word she coins for the societal obsession with transfem expressions of femininity), cissexist society is wielding transmisogyny against trans women. She also partially calls out feminists who have aided the societal view that femininity is artificial and needs to be abolished, which is misogynistic and alienates people who naturally gravitate to, perhaps "perform", femininity.
Other than that, Julia Serano also develops the intrinsic inclinations model in the book as a path between either bioessentialist ideas or the idea that gender is merely a social construct, opting instead to say that there are both biological and social components to why someone is trans. She also covers how cis people take their gender for granted, as it just happened to be congruent and likely never questioned by them or others in their life, and therefore often doubt that one could "feel like" a specific gender, even though they do, too. If this wouldn't be the case, we wouldn't have so many gender-affirming surgeries and treatments for cis people, and many would freely transition to better fit a role in a movie, go undercover, or to succeed in a field dominated by another gender - but they don't.
As an outlook on the future of queer/trans communities and politics, the book explains why identity politics and subversivism in queer/trans spaces are not beneficial; genders outside the gender binary shouldn't be seen as more radical and "good" while binary trans people are seen as "bad" or "reinforcing the gender binary". Alliances are more important than understanding us all as one group, as this has the chance of brushing over different needs and experiences that need to be addressed without being called "divisive".
Overall, I found it very pleasant and engaging to read, and one could tell (in a positive and delightful way) that a lot of the book consisted of separate essays published elsewhere before they were combined. It didn't read to me as a particularly dry "book-writing style", no vibe of "I'll sit down to write a whole book now and talk down to readers in a clinical way", but something that could be published in a series of posts on personal blogs musing on social topics nowadays, which made me wish more bloggers would opt to release their works as different chapters in a book some time, instead of leaving them spread on platforms like Substack. Despite the patchwork, the entire book felt so cohesive, in a great order, and approachable, like a longer blog post, but without losing depth or attention. It felt very satisfying how thoroughly Julia Serano covers and debunks everything and still manages to not lose you, to lead from one thing to another with such ease. It was a cathartic read, with a marker in hand.
I'm surrounded by trans people and have witnessed online trans discourse since I was about 17, but even I found some sections in the book more difficult to understand with the mixing of terms and knowing a different version of the used concepts and definitions; especially in regards to "transsexual" and "transgender". So in some sentences, both words were used interchangeably or one as umbrella term, but in other sections, they described different things. As the work is older, many concepts, words etc. have evolved and changed quite a bit, and some ideas have become very unpopular. I have also never seen anyone online hold on to the idea that there are 'transgender cissexuals' or vice versa, but this is discussed in the book, and some of it might be labeled transmedicalist. I think it helps to discuss some things in there with trans people you know (if they are genuinely interested to, and you're not burdening them).
I don't know if I would give this to anyone that is a complete newbie to the topic for that reason; it's not a "I'm coming out, to understand me, go read this.", especially when some of it is no longer the default in discourse, but it's still something people should have read if they are not entirely new to gender discourse or queer history.
Let me end this post with a quote from the Afterword:
"As I said at the start, I cannot say how this particular anti-trans moral panic will end. But what I do know is this: efforts to eliminate trans people will never succeed, because we are part of natural variation, and we will persist as long as human beings exist. Anti-trans activists may strive to "disappear" us like they did during the twentieth century, but that outcome is no longer possible. Back when I was a trans kid, we were isolated from one another - quarantined, if you will - due to a lack of access to information and reliable ways to communicate with one another. But now we live in a hyperconnected world, and there are countless trans-centered books, artworks, media and organizations that share our perspectives and trans-related resources. Anti-trans activists may attempt to ban books about us from libraries and censor discussions about us in school settings, but they cannot stop us from finding one another online or elsewhere. Now that we know how many of us there are, we will continue to seek out and learn from one another. Trans people have always been resourceful and resilient, and nobody can take that away from us."
Published