Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

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

5 reviews

cogowno's review

informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexism and Transphobia

zombiezami's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

I have had this book on my TBR for quite a long time. So long, it seems, that quite a bit of this feels outdated. Still, there are some helpful and revelatory points here

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dysphoria, Sexism, Outing, Misogyny, Transphobia, Medical content, and Body shaming

Moderate: Vomit, Violence, Rape, Hate crime, Sexual violence, Death, Homophobia, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Gaslighting, and Murder

Minor: Cursing, Infidelity, Suicide, and Classism

stevia333k's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

5.0

This book filled me in on what cis people were assuming back when I was a kid. It also named a few dynamics I had forgotten about.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Outing, Hate crime, Cultural appropriation, Misogyny, Murder, Lesbophobia, Homophobia, Bullying, Colonisation, Sexism, Medical trauma, Gaslighting, Dysphoria, Classism, Child abuse, Sexual violence, Racism, Body horror, Transphobia, Sexual harassment, Deadnaming, and Body shaming

Moderate: Self harm

wimbleimble's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

This is a really good book. Some of the terminology is a bit outdated (in the sense that many people nowadays probably wouldn't use it to describe themselves as Serano does in the book) but what it signifies is very much still relevant and important. As someone who is in the process of trying to intellectualise a whole slew of things, having recently realised that I am transfeminine, this has been invaluable to me in understanding myself.

I've heard others describe parts of the book (in particular the last chapter) as invalidating of non-binary people, but I would disagree with this reading. Her ultimate conclusion, with regards to rejecting gender entitlement, I think rather speaks to the opposite, and to embracing all varieties of gender variant peoples and listening to their perspectives. I feel what she is instead criticising is valuing any gender identity over another, on the basis of it being subversive. This is admittedly something I have never encountered (though I have observed the opposite), and so it feels like a bit of a non-issue, though my experience is quite limited in this regard, due to my limited time in queer/trans spaces, and also due to the fact that the spaces I do have experiences with are probably vastly different to those that Serano wrote about in 2007.

But yeah, it's a really valuable work, and I'm going to be thinking about a lot of it for a while to come. Perhaps forever, considering my circumstances.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault, Violence, Hate crime, Transphobia, Sexism, Homophobia, and Mental illness

ebmaher's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Julia Serano says she wrote this book for many reasons, but mainly to create the book she would have wanted to read as a young trans woman, and I think that’s really evident throughout. It’s both the books strength — it’s remarkably readable, personal, and incisive — and it’s weakness — Serano even says in the preface to the second edition that she wishes she’d have been able to move beyond her own experience to consider race, class, nationality, etc. create different trans experiences.

Serano is a likable and capable companion throughout. As a former gender studies major, there was much I was familiar with, but I particularly appreciated Serano’s framing of oppositional sexism and her critique of queer culture’s and queer studies’s dismissal of femininity. A useful text for understanding where terfs come from and (on a clear and well-argued level) why they’re so wrong.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Transphobia, Deadnaming, Violence, Sexism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Hate crime, Death, and Biphobia

Pretty much all content warnings are in the context of calling out and explaining discrimination.