Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

This is an important book. Its analysis of the role of misogyny in trans-misogyny was groundbreaking at the time, and it also helped popularize the idea that gendering/misgendering people is an active process on the part of the observer rather than the "passing" paradigm that puts the onus on us and presumes the observer is a passive party. There is some uncomfortably outdated language (repeated uses of "male-bodied" etc being possibly the worst offenders), but I'm not even going to complain about that because I get it. My biggest complaint is something far more big picture.

Every time this book talks about how privileged nonbinary people are in trans spaces I feel like I'm reading an account from a parallel universe. (It also does that show more super annoying thing where it mentions intersex people and gender variant people from other cultures but only to make points about white trans people, despite paying lip service to that being a bad thing when other people do it.)

Look, I'm not even going to get into HALF of this book's bizarre statements about nonbinary and transmasc people (it would get really repetitive), I'm just gonna hit you with a couple passages.

The moment when I decided this had gone beyond something that pinged my radar and into the realm of Something I Was Going To Talk About is a particular passage where in literally the same paragraph the book says "masculine girls can grow up to be lesbians, trans men, or heterosexual women" and "trans women can be bisexual, straight, or lesbian." And just. Wow. Weird how you knew not to call all AMAB people "men" but didn't do the same for AFAB people. There's also a passage that insists that the main point of friction between binary trans people and enbies is that enbies "feel that identifying outside of the male/female binary is superior to, or more enlightened than, identifying within it." Uhhhhhh sure. Enbies bullying binary trans people is a very common and real problem that is definitely happening in real life. Definitely. TOTALLY not usually the reverse. Nailed it.

Also, I was really excited to learn that transmasc people being objectified and misgendered by lesbians is (checks notes) "preferential treatment." Seriously. That's a real thing this book explicitly argues.

I'm inclined to say the book helps more than it hurts, and it's basically impossible to be taken seriously in trans academia if you haven't read it, but wow we can do better. And there are a lot of other arguments that don't hold water or seem to be coming from a very strange place, but I'm not even going to try to catalog every single one of them (it would be pretty unfair since I'm not trying to catalog every single argument I agree with, either). But none of those bother me as much as the fact that every time it mentions enbies or transmasc spectrum people I just find myself bracing myself to be its whipping enby. show less

this is such a fabulous take. honestly even just her introduction to this edition was fantastic enough to warrant the rating and the read.

she dives deep into the idea (or at least this is my main takeaway) that transphobia stems from woman-hating in general and sexism and patriarchy in particular. really really well done. no wonder this is taught in universities and has been such a staple for years. fantastic work, very impressive.

"...the media's and audience's fascination with the feminization of trans women is a byproduct of their sexualization of all women."

"The fact that we perceive two major categories of gender enables us to view women and men as opposites, a premise that is founded on a series of egregiously incorrect show more assumptions. First, in order for the two sexes to be opposites, they must first be mutually exclusive. Therefore, on a societal level, we purposefully ignore the variation that exists in sex characteristics and create the illusion that there is absolutely no overlap between the physical sexes. Second, we ignore the reality that intrinsic inclinations produce a continuous range of possibilities and instead assume that each inclination produces only one of two possible outcomes, mirroring the two sexes. Thus we assume that people can only be attracted to women or men, not both; they can only be feminine or masculine, not both; and they can only identify as female or male, not both. The third assumption we make is to presume that the typical inclination for each sex holds true for all people of that sex. Thus all female-bodied people are assumed to be feminine, to be attracted to men, and to identify as female and vice versa for male-bodied people. The very idea that there are opposite sexes unnecessarily polarizes women and men. It isolates us from one another and exaggerates our differences. It provides a framework for us to project other opposite pairs onto female and male, and femininity and masculinity. Thus we assume that men are aggressive and women are passive; men are tough and women are weak; men are practical and women are emotional; men are big and women are small, and so on. As a culture, we regularly buy into this way of thinking despite the fact that we all encounter countless exceptions that prove these assumptions incorrect: women who are aggressive, tough, practical, and/or big; and men who are passive, weak, emotional, and/or small. This idea of opposites creates expectations for femaleness and femininity and maleness and masculinity that all people are encouraged to meet and simultaneously delegitimizes all behaviors that do not fit these ideals."

"An additional problem with the word 'pass' is that it is typically only used in reference to a transsexual's identified sex, rather than their assigned sex. This gives the impression that transsexuals only begin managing other people's perceptions after we transition. Consider that people will talk about the fact that I now 'pass' as a woman, but nobody ever asked me about how difficult it must have been for me to 'pass' as a man before. Personally, I found it infinitely more difficult and stressful to manage my perceived gender back when people presumed that I was male than I do now, as female. However, once we start thinking in terms of whether a transsexual is being misgendered or appropriately gendered in accordance with their understanding of themselves as opposed to whether they are 'passing' or not in the eyes of others, then we start to gain a more accurate and realistic appreciation for the transsexual experience. In fact, you could say that most transsexuals have the experience of being misgendered throughout their childhoods and sometimes well into their adulthoods. The extent to which this constant misgendering during our formative years shapes our relationship with gender and our own self-perception cannot be underestimated." show less

The author argues that gender is not socially constructed but socially exaggerated -- while there are biological/hormonal elements underlying male/female differences, they are impossibly exaggerated in Western society.

It's a very thought-provoking book, combining her personal experiences with an extensive academic lit review. Not a Trans Issues 101 book, which I appreciate. (Of course, I am already very sold on rejecting the gender binary, so I found it very easy to get into this book.)

Serano also articulates a critique of Eugenides's novel Middlesex that hit right on something that perturbed me about that novel when I read it but was never able to explain to the novel's fans.

There are a few essays that are a bit repetitive, but show more overall this is an excellent read. Academically challenging in the best way. Recommended. show less

More preachy and less exploratory than I’d hoped. Serano draws clear, finite lines around very personal, often subjective and nuanced issues. While raising important points about transmisogyny and gender dynamics, the declarative rather than inquisitive tone made it harder to fully engage. I would have appreciated a more open exploration of the complexities surrounding these topics rather than such pointed convictions. I know a lot of people who need to read and reread the Tran-Sexualization chapter.

Isn't it ironic (and telling) that in our societies where trans issues seem to have completely hijacked the narrative trans individuals themselves are, rarely, if ever, listened to? This attitude, of course, should alert us, not only to our popular ignorance but, also, as to how privileged those of us who are not trans are indeed when it comes to sex and gender identities. Julia Serano's book, here, is therefore an absolute must-read as it brilliantly outlines all the sexist claptraps that have been plaguing us all ever since patriarchal time, and which are still very deeply entrenched (so much so, in fact, that they have been fully embraced even by feminists -go figure). Sadly, though, such disentangling is also its weakness. How show more so?

What it meant to be a man/ woman, and the expectations having come CLANG! CLANG! trailing in behind such expectations in matter of masculinity/ femininity surely were very narrow indeed, even, suffocating and oppressive. The thing, though, is that despite our gung-ho talks about having supposedly reckoned such latent sexism and its consequences we still have a lot to do to tackle it. And indeed, nothing illustrates better such latent sexism still being highly prevalent than our preconceptions and attitudes towards transwomen (as it's mostly transwomen always being targeted in the press and elsewhere...) and including by ciswomen (and their male allies) otherwise identifying as 'feminist'. Why would that be so?

Julia Serano draws a crucial distinction between 'transphobia' (targeting those who differ from the binary 'norm') and 'cis-sexism' (the forcing of us *all* into a binary, stemming from the inability to conceive of any other way of self-labelling -a bit like heterosexuals once expected everybody else to be so, branding as 'perverts' and/ or 'criminals' anyone differing). The difference is crucial, but also striking. According to her indeed, most attitudes that we see against trans (e.g. exclusion, objectification, interrogation, erasure) are not rooted in transphobia, but in cis-sexism. Brilliantly, she then outlines how such cis-sexism is a collateral of the otherwise traditional, oppositional sexism that we are familiar with, showing that the attacks on transwomen especially are but a collateral of misogynist attitudes (what she calls 'transmisogyny').

This is not an easy read. Because our attitudes are still motivated by deeply entrenched prejudices, and because hers is a careful, detailed attempt at disentangling all the claptraps pertaining to gender expectations and dynamics, her unknotting of one issue (cis-sexism), tied up to another (oppositional sexism), itself fastened yet against another (misogyny), and on, and on, makes for a challenging confrontation of our own bias, let alone the zeitgeist at hand (and again: inherited from the patriarchy, yet having been embraced by many feminists). As such, then, it's full of a terminology that can be overwhelming, even, daunting and confusing. Here's the weakness I was referring to earlier on: those who are not willing to confront their prejudicial attitudes, let alone go beyond the simplistic and degrading media scare, will easily dismiss this as being as unclear as what they feel is an unclear way of identifying in the first place. It's their loss.

Sex is complicated. Gender is complicated. While the debate is too often reduced to a caricature 'biological determinism' versus 'social constructivism' (Julia Serano is neither), here's book that rightly demonstrates how intricate and complicated such matters, on the contrary, truly are. It's a tough read, with a lot of seemingly confusing jargon (e.g. transphobia versus cis-sexism; transmisogyny and how it relates to misogyny; oppositional sexism and its feeding even of trans excluding feminism; gender identity versus subconscious sex etc.) yet which has become imperative to master, not least because it puts us all in front of our own bigotries and privileges. Again: a must-read. show less

This is an incredibly grounding book on what it means, from the perspective of the author, to be a transsexual woman in current society, and on what femininity is and how it is defined and treated by others within our society. There is just so much accuracy and truth within her powerful prose that anyone who has the time should be reading this book. This would be an excellent text to introduce to students as well, at least one or two of the essays within. So much of gender is taken for granted and never questioned, but is left out of any educational framework, so that both cis and trans identified persons fall victim to all sorts of mixed and misleading messages from people who don't know any better themselves. Gender and sexuality show more needs to be taken seriously at the public school educational level, and this book demonstrates clearly why that should be so. show less

This book is a revelation! Taking on both oppositional and traditional sexism, Serano uses her experience as a transwoman and a biochemist to show that gender is not a binary, nor should masculine and feminine be considered opposites. Through a series of essays, she calls for the return of the feminine to feminism.

Her points on the way media and society have handled transsexuals (or really any male-born individual showing feminine tendencies) over the years definitely hit home. She attacks the notions that gender is either innate or socialized, which should really be obvious as there are men socialized male who still lean towards the feminine and women socialized female who lean masculine. We as a society have, for no rational reason, show more always placed femininity as something lesser than masculinity. From the trans experience, women attaining to be men are accepted as completely rational while men attaining to be women are derided and told there is something wrong with them, that there is something wrong with wanting to be feminine, being female. Serano looks to the sources of this extreme wrong-thinking and tries to find a way past it. show less