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Reviews tagging 'Murder'
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton
3 reviews
erebus53's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
This is a dense academic text that.. at times is needlessly ephemeral in its musing on Race and Gender.
It's interesting, but not accessible, though it might be an interesting take for someone who is used to the jargon that this type of writing is steeped in
(can I get a point for every time the author uses the one of the terms - quotidian, temporal, epistemologically, or teleological... no? well the book gets my occasionally awarded accolade for LEGIT LITERATURE - for successfully using the word Palimpsest in a sentence).
It's interesting, but not accessible, though it might be an interesting take for someone who is used to the jargon that this type of writing is steeped in
(can I get a point for every time the author uses the one of the terms - quotidian, temporal, epistemologically, or teleological... no? well the book gets my occasionally awarded accolade for LEGIT LITERATURE - for successfully using the word Palimpsest in a sentence).
This book contains some interesting and sober observations about how cross-dressing is interpreted as disguise, deceit, and (in Antebellum USA) theft.. where self-possession of Black Americans was seen as taking something you shouldn't have, and disruptive to the natural order.
((which actually scares the crap out of me because I know there are still people to this day(!!) who feel that way. °eww°))
I see counterpoint with the idea that in modern trans narratives,
transition is seen as performative gender confirmation.. thus Honesty.
Given that there is often a lot to lose for a person who does not embrace the cis-het binary there is conflict between those who interpret transition as an authentic expression of self, and those who see it as a performative biological lie. (Only one of these value systems hurts anyone... *glare*)
For enslaved persons, disguise was a thing.. it could be used as a physical escape tactic, or as an internal escape in unliveable situations.
In fact I notice in old-timey crime novels, disguise was a thing.. in a way it's just not in modern stories.
Now it's got me thinking about the... anonymity of city life, and digital surveillance...
Also had me thinking about the idea of making powerful people feel safe.. and the act of Drag;
That so long as you are Obviously male _affecting_ Femaleness as an act for the benefit of cis-het audiences then you aren't seen as _as_
{weird, dangerous, subversive, dishonest, tricksy, A Trap, devious}
as someone who is outed while attempting to "pass" as the gender they were not assigned at birth.
I am coming to grips with the vocabulary and jargon of all this.. though.. it seems that they use the term Fungible, in the same way as I would use things like faceless, interchangeable, stereotypical..
seeing a person of a different type as just their race/status/job.
(Now I'm reminded of a quote from an heiress in an Agatha Christie novel who said "nobody looks at a chauffer like they would look at a _person_")
I noticed the use of the the term "Watts Rebellion" which is a powerful reframe of the White narrative of the Race Riots in Los Angeles in 1965 (and if this is new to me I have clearly not been engaging with this sort of academic analysis of systemic oppression as much as I should).
((which actually scares the crap out of me because I know there are still people to this day(!!) who feel that way. °eww°))
I see counterpoint with the idea that in modern trans narratives,
transition is seen as performative gender confirmation.. thus Honesty.
Given that there is often a lot to lose for a person who does not embrace the cis-het binary there is conflict between those who interpret transition as an authentic expression of self, and those who see it as a performative biological lie. (Only one of these value systems hurts anyone... *glare*)
For enslaved persons, disguise was a thing.. it could be used as a physical escape tactic, or as an internal escape in unliveable situations.
In fact I notice in old-timey crime novels, disguise was a thing.. in a way it's just not in modern stories.
Now it's got me thinking about the... anonymity of city life, and digital surveillance...
Also had me thinking about the idea of making powerful people feel safe.. and the act of Drag;
That so long as you are Obviously male _affecting_ Femaleness as an act for the benefit of cis-het audiences then you aren't seen as _as_
{weird, dangerous, subversive, dishonest, tricksy, A Trap, devious}
as someone who is outed while attempting to "pass" as the gender they were not assigned at birth.
I am coming to grips with the vocabulary and jargon of all this.. though.. it seems that they use the term Fungible, in the same way as I would use things like faceless, interchangeable, stereotypical..
seeing a person of a different type as just their race/status/job.
(Now I'm reminded of a quote from an heiress in an Agatha Christie novel who said "nobody looks at a chauffer like they would look at a _person_")
I noticed the use of the the term "Watts Rebellion" which is a powerful reframe of the White narrative of the Race Riots in Los Angeles in 1965 (and if this is new to me I have clearly not been engaging with this sort of academic analysis of systemic oppression as much as I should).
This book also has me thinking about internal personal feelings and beliefs about identity, as opposed to the external perceptions of others about our identity.. and the performative nature of gender.
And the assumptions made about race and gender by those around us.
It's worth mentioning that the CW are a must read is you are likely to be upset by accounts of brutality, injustice and sexual anatomy.
And the assumptions made about race and gender by those around us.
It's worth mentioning that the CW are a must read is you are likely to be upset by accounts of brutality, injustice and sexual anatomy.
• enslaved women used in medical research for the glorification of a surgeon who got statues erected in his memory
• a woman born intersex and assigned male at birth, in USA, who was only allowed gender confirming surgery if it was to her assigned birth gender
• random traffic stop (for driving while Black) outed a trans man as having been "living as a man" for over a decade
This is not a book that most people will want to read without first coming armed with an academic reason for engaging with the discourse, or a mighty fine dictionary/thesaurus. Much of the writing will be difficult to understand for the casual reader. I found it challenging in times to make sense of some things, or to find relevance in things that drew some flimsy links between ideas.
This is not a book that most people will want to read without first coming armed with an academic reason for engaging with the discourse, or a mighty fine dictionary/thesaurus. Much of the writing will be difficult to understand for the casual reader. I found it challenging in times to make sense of some things, or to find relevance in things that drew some flimsy links between ideas.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Racism, Transphobia, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, Medical trauma, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death, Body shaming, Ableism, Murder, Suicide, Outing, Hate crime, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Gun violence, Classism, Blood, and Alcoholism
rorikae's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
'Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity' by C. Riley Snorton is a thoroughly researched book that looks at gender and race, with an eye to the Black trans experience. Snorton does an excellent job of providing background information on the part that gender played in Black people's experiences during slavery and how that has set a precedent for how Black trans people are treated in the United States. They do this through highlighting the specific lived experiences of different individuals throughout history.
This book is very much a historical text. I would definitely recommend gong into this book knowing that it is an academic text and can be quite dense due to use of academic language. I think this would be a good book to read alongside a book that deals with the current lived experiences of Black trans individuals as it provides a lot of important context. If you are interested in the concepts that it tackles I would definitely recommend it. Just go in knowing that it is both a hard and important read that is going to take time to digest and fully process.
This book is very much a historical text. I would definitely recommend gong into this book knowing that it is an academic text and can be quite dense due to use of academic language. I think this would be a good book to read alongside a book that deals with the current lived experiences of Black trans individuals as it provides a lot of important context. If you are interested in the concepts that it tackles I would definitely recommend it. Just go in knowing that it is both a hard and important read that is going to take time to digest and fully process.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Racism, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Grief, Murder, Slavery, Police brutality, Violence, and Hate crime
stevia333k's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
4.0
I didn't really understand this book that well. However, there was a part at around 75% where they were analyzing news reports on trans people & the popularity of those reports alongside era typical transphobia, and that was helpful (especially since I saw a lawyer TikTok talk about the difference between Jorgensen's coverage & today's coverage & it was like boo bitch)
Anyways there's also 2 parts that were helpful too:
1. the racist enslavement origins of gynecology helped explain why that field gets very cissexist & pro-natal & anti-choice (as well as why white women buy into rationalization & conservativism)
2. Discussion of comparing enslavement-to-freedom narratives with gender transition narratives.
The book pointed out why Foucault is unreliable. The book uses language similar to Jacques Donzelot's "The Policing Of Families" that was an awkward contradiction. I will say this book hammered it into my head that enslaved black women were used as wet nurses for white kids. Considering Donzelot's book traces the school to prison pipeline back to regulating wet nurses in the ancien regime, this means the systems have major differences (for example, Donzelot's book really only mentions race once when describing an exceptional defense given for an Algerian kid).
So overall the book was good, though some parts such as the "boys don't cry" movie review felt like literature class reports. This book
Anyways there's also 2 parts that were helpful too:
1. the racist enslavement origins of gynecology helped explain why that field gets very cissexist & pro-natal & anti-choice (as well as why white women buy into rationalization & conservativism)
2. Discussion of comparing enslavement-to-freedom narratives with gender transition narratives.
The book pointed out why Foucault is unreliable. The book uses language similar to Jacques Donzelot's "The Policing Of Families" that was an awkward contradiction. I will say this book hammered it into my head that enslaved black women were used as wet nurses for white kids. Considering Donzelot's book traces the school to prison pipeline back to regulating wet nurses in the ancien regime, this means the systems have major differences (for example, Donzelot's book really only mentions race once when describing an exceptional defense given for an Algerian kid).
So overall the book was good, though some parts such as the "boys don't cry" movie review felt like literature class reports. This book
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Rape, Hate crime, Murder, Colonisation, Deadnaming, Medical trauma, Outing, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Transphobia
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