Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Gay Berlin. L'invenzione tedesca dell'omosessualità by Robert Beachy

2 reviews

babywren's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

2.75

This was so hard to read, oh my God. Not only was this book incredibly dense, but the combo of didactic and unfamiliar language really challenged me. The choice to slap 11 pages of images in the middle of an unrelated chapter was also annoying - just put them in an appendix at the end.

I did appreciate how critical Beachy was of instances of antisemitism, xenophobia, and misogyny, and his comments on the predatory nature of some of the masculinist's (ie Brand's) ideas of ideal male-male relationships (an older man being involved with a much younger male) were gratifying.

My main issues with the content of the book are Beachy's descriptions of trans people. There are so many instances (particularly in Chapter 6) where Beachy misrepresents the experiences of trans people and media, twisting it to fit his "Gay Berlin" narrative. Not only this, but he consistently misgenders trans people and uses outright transphobic language.

Here are some of the problematic bits that stuck out to me:

 - Beachy discusses a movie called "I Don't Want to Be A Man" (1918), which centers around a trans woman and her love interest. Beachy reduces intimate moments between the two as "homosexual encounters".
 - Beachy misgendering a trans woman who has written to Hirschfeld, seeking surgery to replace her testicles with ovaries so she "could become a complete woman". She mentions she "feels more woman than man" and included a photo of herself with her letter to Hirschfeld. Beachy describes this photograph as "a man in drag", and calls her a "cross dresser".
 - Beachy misgendering a trans woman who was one of the first recipients of bottom surgery, and then being dismissive and ultimately lacking compassion for her after she chose to reverse the surgery.
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pastelkerstin's review against another edition

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challenging informative

3.5

There is a lot of interesting info in this, including on Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft which I've been meaning to learn more about for years. But sometimes it can drag a bit and often times I wished there would be more info on LGBT+ people beyond the G. Lesbians, bisexuals and trans people are mentioned but are very clearly not the focus. Partially this makes sense because a lot of history that is mentioned here is known through court cases related to the criminalization of sex between men, so wlw leave less of a paper trail because they weren't criminalized by the law in that way. It's still a bit of a shame though. But an even bigger shame is that the author misgenders every single trans person he mentions. And yes, the word "transgender" didn't exist at the time, but Beachy correctly says that some people who came to the Institute would be considered trans today. He then proceeds to mention several people who clearly experienced gender dysphoria but he uses the wrong pronouns for all of them and calls them man/woman based on their gender assigned at birth. It's the kind of thing that could have easily been fixed if Beachy had bothered to get a sensitivity reader for that chapter. Or if Beachy actually concerned himself with trans issues more. The carelessness here is kind of odd because Beachy clearly loves doing historical research but apparently doing research on how to talk about trans people didn't seem important enough to him. I would have given this 4 stars if it weren't for the bad handling of trans issues.

I'll probably read something that's related to trans issues and actually good next in time for Transgender Awareness Week next. Let's see how it goes.
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