#51 & #52

[extemporally]

Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano.

This was amazing to read and so smart. It made me want to put more work into unlearning the various Gender Issues I have internalised over the years, it made me want to be more thoughtful about including trans* women in the feminist movement, and it basically changed the way I think about gender and femininity.

I think the easiest thing to do would be to make a list of things I enjoyed about this book:

1. She starts easing you into it gently. And even when she's pointing out things rather than developing a Big Theory, her insight shines through:

Once we recognize how media coverage of transsexuals is informed by the different values our society assigns to femaleness and maleness, it becomes obvious that virtually all attempts to sensationalize and deride trans women are built on a foundation of unspoken misogyny. Since most people cannot fathom why someone would give up male privilege and power in order to become a relatively disempowered female, they assume that trans women transition primarily as a way of obtaining the one type of power that women are perceived to have in our society: the ability to express femininity and to attract men.

This is why trans women like myself, who rarely dress in an overly feminine member and/or who are not attracted to men, are such an enigma to so many people. By assuming that my desire to be female is merely some sort of femininity fetish or sexual perversion, they are essentially making the case that women have no worth beyond the extent to which they can be sexualised.

2. The way it's implicitly emphasised all the way through that trans* women narratives do not start and end with transition, just as transition does not start and end with surgery.

3. The way trans* people's experiences are essential to our understanding of gender and gender difference:

While many gender theorists have focused their efforts on attempting to demonstrate that this sort of socialization produces gender differences, it seems to me more accurate to say that in many cases socialization acts to exaggerate biological gender differences that already exist. In other words, it coaxes those of us who are exceptional (e.g., men who cry often or women with high sex drives) to hide or curb those tendencies, rather than simply falling where we may on the spectrum of gender diversity. By attempting to play down or erase the existence of such exceptions, socialization distorts biological gender difference to create the impression that essential differences exist between women and men. Thus, the primary role of socialization is not to produce gender difference de novo, but to create the illusion that female and male are naturally exclusive, "opposite" sexes.

4. The way she describes the physical and emotional changes she went through after transition and the way she's so wicked about it:

Upon hearing my experience, I am sure that some people - particularly those who favor social, rather than biological, explanations of gender difference - will be somewhat disappointed at the predictable nature of my transformation. Some may even assume that I am buying into female stereotypes when I describe myself becoming a more weepy, touchy-feely, flower-adoring, less sexually aggressive person.

5. How she explains then skewers gatekeeper discourse re: the medicalisation of trans* people.

What became lost in gatekeeper discourse regarding transsexuality (especially with regard to incidents of post-transition depression and "transsexual regret") was any distinction between the trans person's gender dissonance (an intrinsic matter) and the emotional stress the transsexual experienced as a result of having to deal with the gender anxiety of the cissexual public (which was an extrinsic matter). Indeed, the blurring of these separate issues was codified with the invention of the psychological term gender dysphoria, which made invisible cissexual gender anxiety by conflating it with the trans person's intrinsic gender dissonance.

6. Also how she's angry with academia. SUCK IT FOUCAULT

7. On traditional sexism:

On an intellectual level, I knew that I would sometimes be dismissed or harassed once I started living as female, but I underestimated just how frustrating and hurtful each one of those instances would be. Words cannot express how condescending and infuriating it feels to have men speak down to me, talk over me, and sometimes even practically put on baby-talk voices when addressing me. Or how intimidating it feels to have strangers make lewd comments about having their way with me as I'm walking alone at night down dark city streets. And while I had numerous run-ins and arguments with strange men back when I was male-bodied, I'd never before experienced the enraged venom in their voices and fury in their faces that I sometimes do now - an extreme wrath that some men seem to reserve specifically for women who they believe threaten their fragile male egos. It became more and more difficult for me to see the point in identifying outside of the male/female binary when I was so regularly being targeted for discrimination and harassment because I was a woman, when I so frequently had to stand up for myself as a woman in order to make sure that other people did not get away with it.

8. Every single aspect of transmisogyny that she covers, because tiring and frequently awful as it is to read, it makes you - it made me - want to know and do more.

9. "That is why I suggest that we turn our energies and attention away from the ways that individuals "do" or "perform" their genders and instead focus on the expectations and assumptions that those individuals project onto everybody else. By focusing on gender entitlement rather than gender performance, we may finally take the next step toward a world where all people can choose their genders and sexualities at will, rather than feeling coerced by others." Essentially. ♥

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson.

Oh my god, probably it was because I was feeling ~emotionally fragile~ at 2 in the morning last night but I finished the last half of the book in those couple of hours and was weeping, the kind of crying where it's not release but you genuinely hurt, but also this book is genuinely hurty and it's so weird, because I read and loved Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, and it gave me lots of feelings but I never thought of it as an explicitly sad book but this was so sad, so sad:

Ria: 'I have counselled so many mothers over the years who are giving up their babies for adoption, and I tell you, Jeanette, they never want to do it. You were wanted - do you understand that?'

No. I have never felt wanted. I am the wrong crib.

'Do you understand that, Jeanette?'

No. And all my life I have repeated patterns of rejection. My success with my books felt like gatecrashing. When critics and the press turned on me, I roared back in rage, and no, I didn't believe the things they said about me or my work, because my writing has always stayed clear and luminous to me, uncontaminated, but I did know that I wasn't wanted.

And I have loved most extravagantly where my love could not be returned in any sane and steady way - the triangles of marriages and complex affiliations. I have failed to love well where I might have done, and I have stayed in relationships too long because I did not want to be a quitter who did not know how to love.

But I did not know how to love. If I could have faced that simple fact about myself, and the likelihood that someone with my story (my stories, both real and invented) would have big problems with love, then, then, what?

Listen, we are human beings. Listen, we are inclined to love. Love is there, but we need to be taught how. We want to stand upright, we want to walk, but someone needs to hold our hand and balance us a bit, and guide us a bit, and scoop us up when we fall.

Or! Or! even the polemicising (if that sounds vaguely derisive, I didn't mean it to, but I can't think of a better word for it) gave me feelings:

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Enough! My ready meal in the oven is nearly cooked, and I have to pack up all my books (the reason I am now reviewing them). JEANETTE WINTERSON, you are amazing and gave me all the feelings and have given me 100% more reasons to think of myself, and think of everyone, as fundamentally damaged, without making me give up all hope for the future.