A review by kstookley
Trans, Volume 3: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam

2.0

To me, Trans* feels like a primer to a Gender 201 course: touching on media to make the argument that trans identity is different and more complicated than what is presented in current mass media narratives, but never diving into any specifics. It reads more like an outline of an anthology rather than a book in of itself. Of course, it is impossible to argue against Halberstam's premise, and the examples he cites (Halberstam has explicitly said he is pronoun-indifferent) are all relevant to his premise. Halberstam outlines the current liberal construction of transgenderism as an identity-based politic best addressed by surface changes to institutions like bathrooms and then complicates it by re- introducing older transgender scholarship with more radical roots. It is important to note that new understandings of transgenderism are linked to white, thin, androgynous, upper-middle class Gen Z bodies while these older discourses come from groups with much less institutional privilege. In the terms of the very limited scope of his goal, Halberstam is successful. It cannot be denied that transgenderism is more complicated than the current construction. Still, it is a pity he wasn't at least a little more ambitious, applying current counter-narratives to the current Zeitgeist or getting more specific about (de)constructions of gender. I am definitely biased, but I do wish he had at least touched on nonbinary identity. Implying a radical rejection of gender ideology, nonbinary identity often just serves to create a palatable "third gender" of the androgynous female; even as more and more speak out against this definition, mass-media continues to focus on the bodies of people like Asia Dillon over those who are less normatively gendered. This would have been an excellent and very current example of the tension between liberal and radical politics that discourses around trans bodies serve as a vehicle for; as it stands, Halberstam doesn't even mention the word nonbinary. I think of this book-- and much of Halberstam's writing-- as a good source to develop a reading/viewing list of trans media. I walked away from this book primarily curious about the book Testo Junkie and the art piece Ken. To be destroyed. Still, I can't help but be disappointed that Halberstam, who is known for his attempts to bridge high and low media, refuses to acknowledge the current creations and ideas of gender that proliferate amongst the youngest of us all over the internet. In his attempts to bridge the gap between generations of trans people, Halberstam, unfortunately, pits them against each other by refusing much of millennial and gen z radicalism. I hoped for more.