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robinshakespeare 's review for:
Detransition, Baby
by Torrey Peters
Favourite moment: Katrina the cis publisher 'empathising' with trans PR consultant Reese about something that Reese hadn't actually realised yet - that a famous trans author writing a book with the shocking title Tranny may effectively be forcing your transfemme readers to put a giant label on themselves in public ("I mean, how do you think she'd feel, reading it on the tube?") - AND THEN both characters agree that this is VERY selfish of her. (!!!)
Yeah... that's the most filthily meta-meta-ironic thing I've ever read.
This is the first book that's helped me to really understand the experience of trans women - what it feels like to deeply want to be a woman, so much that you would go through the stress of transitioning, and then living as one.
According to an interview in the Guardian, Peters has been criticised by other trans women for "airing trans women's dirty laundry". Presumably that's because it talks about trans sex. The book felt incredibly personal and honest, and I'm glad it was written that way.
I would like to say that it tackles sex and "fetish" in a way that's not fetishized. By this I mean that characters' particular sexuality bleeds into everyday life, and is deeply connected to their personhood. Sex doesn't sit in a separate box, a mysterious impulse that's switched on at sexy time, and then off again. Rather, it pops its head up from below the surface at all sorts of times, and mediates situations that most wouldn't like to consider sexual at all.
Sex isn't a given, natural result of gender, either: Peters treads well-worn paths of trans discourse by showing that sex is negotiated, sometimes in a power struggle, in order to get each character's needs met; it is used to affirm gender identity; sex causes conflicts; and it's threatened by major events in characters' lives. This is true in the real world for all people, cis and trans.
I hope that this book's provocative title propels it into immense popularity with cis people, and helps more people on their way to feeling comfortable with those ideas.
Peters has put me back in touch with the aspects of womanhood that are joyful, and I even felt a bit of gender envy.
Yeah... that's the most filthily meta-meta-ironic thing I've ever read.
This is the first book that's helped me to really understand the experience of trans women - what it feels like to deeply want to be a woman, so much that you would go through the stress of transitioning, and then living as one.
According to an interview in the Guardian, Peters has been criticised by other trans women for "airing trans women's dirty laundry". Presumably that's because it talks about trans sex. The book felt incredibly personal and honest, and I'm glad it was written that way.
I would like to say that it tackles sex and "fetish" in a way that's not fetishized. By this I mean that characters' particular sexuality bleeds into everyday life, and is deeply connected to their personhood. Sex doesn't sit in a separate box, a mysterious impulse that's switched on at sexy time, and then off again. Rather, it pops its head up from below the surface at all sorts of times, and mediates situations that most wouldn't like to consider sexual at all.
Sex isn't a given, natural result of gender, either: Peters treads well-worn paths of trans discourse by showing that sex is negotiated, sometimes in a power struggle, in order to get each character's needs met; it is used to affirm gender identity; sex causes conflicts; and it's threatened by major events in characters' lives. This is true in the real world for all people, cis and trans.
I hope that this book's provocative title propels it into immense popularity with cis people, and helps more people on their way to feeling comfortable with those ideas.
Peters has put me back in touch with the aspects of womanhood that are joyful, and I even felt a bit of gender envy.