A review by demo
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

1.0

Winterson is one of my favourite queer writers but in the end she is a cis woman and I should have been more wary of her decision to write about the experience of being trans. Her use of a trans protagonist is exploitative (see: the sexual assault scene in the pub) and is grounded in ill-informed understandings of gender identity, transness and transition (see: Winterson's reliance on male and female as opposing biological categories, even while she ostensibly subverts the gender binary). Further, Victor's erotic obsession with Ry's transness reeks of objectification and fetishisation but is framed as romantic and loving (see: the book's subtitle of "A love story"), mirroring and revealing Winterson's own sense of entitlement to use trans people for her own purposes. And this is not to mention the ableist and fatphobic sentiments littered throughout. A hard yikes. This ain't it chief.
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