a short essay & video about how we see gender & trans people

Some of you may recall that last August I published an essay entitled Why Does “Transvestigation” Happen? On Gendering, Ungendering, and (Mis)Perceiving Trans People. It uses so-called “transvestigators” and the JK Rowling/Imane Khelif Olympics ordeal as a jumping-off point to ask more general questions about how we see gender, how trans and gender-nonconforming people “short-circuit” this unconscious process, how our perception changes as we become more cognizant of gender & sexual minorities, and why some people seem to get “stuck” in stage where they compulsively misperceive gender and sexual diversity in cis people as “transness.” 

It is one of my favorite essays that I wrote in the last few years. And now it has been turned into a video essay! You can watch it here (or via this link: https://youtu.be/kC6lsvUKEQ0):

The YouTube show notes contain the following "chapters" of the video – you can use the time stamps there to skip ahead to particular sections if you wish: 

0:00 Introduction
2:18 The Two Filing Cabinets Mindset
8:00 Ungendering and “The Look”
17:15 Delusions of “Gaydar” and “Transdar”
23:00 Dismantling the Two Filing Cabinets Mindset (for better or worse)
32:50 Believing Is Seeing
39:40 Other Perceptual Biases (or why trans women, gender non-conforming women, and women of color are especially fucked)
43:53 Conclusion

I also wrote a short companion essay for the video called How Do We See Gender and Trans People? You can read it on Substack at that link or else on Medium – both are no paywall. I thought I'd end this post with the last few paragraphs from the companion essay:

In addition to being intellectually interesting, I believe this issue is one of the most underappreciated obstacles that trans people face. The fact that most cis people naively presume that they see the world “normally” or “correctly” directly leads to them imagining us as “outliers” at best and “abominations” at worse. We can explain gender and sexual diversity to them until we’re blue in the face, but the real problem is they cannot see that diversity even though it’s all around them!

Encouraging the cis majority to dismantle their Two Filing Cabinets mindset in a “good way” (as I put it in the video) has the potential to help them see that there is no such thing as a “normal” or “correct” gender—we are all simply collections of sex characteristics that vary in all sorts of ways.

Dismantling the Two Filing Cabinets mindset can also help trans people, especially those still in the “questioning” phase. I spent years believing that I’d never be able to transition because there appeared to be an immense chasm separating male from female that seemed nearly impossible to transverse. But it turned out that chasm was entirely in my mind. As I explain in the video, as my gender perception shifted—as I began seeing gender and sexual diversity in all its varied forms—I gradually realized that it was possible for me. I had been stuck on the false notion that I could never be a “real” or “normal” girl, until I was finally able to see that there is no such thing as a “normal girl.”

Anyway, whatever your current state of gender perception is, I hope you appreciate the video—and if you do, please “like” it (which will help boost it in YouTube’s algorithm) and share widely!

If you appreciate that I make videos & essays like this freely available online, please consider supporting me on Patreon (for as little as $1/month)!

Trilogy of essays debunking “Rushing Kids into Transition”

Please check out my LATEST ESSAY: What Covid “Lab Leak” and “Rushing Kids into Transition” Have in Common (and more general thoughts about conspiracy theories and negativity bias) (on both Substack & Medium). It is the third piece in an unintended trilogy of sorts, so I figured I’d briefly share my thought process on it.

In 2023, I published one of my most comprehensive essays ever: Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth Is Neither New nor Experimental: A Timeline and Compilation of Studies. In it, I provide a timeline of how the gender-affirmative model came to be, counter the most common misconceptions and talking points against it, and include well over 100 references (including position statements from major health professional organizations) in support of it. In other words, that essay is a science- and logic-based deep-dive into the subject.

But as we all know, some people won’t accept the science on this matter regardless of how many studies are done and how high quality they are. In fact, I’ve increasingly noticed that these opponents routinely fantasize about finding some kind of “smoking gun” (whether it be the “WPATH Files,” Jamie Reed, the Cass report, etc.) that would magically appear and somehow invalidate all the past research showing that gender-affirming care is efficacious, even though that’s not how science works. In other words, they seem to treat the issue like a conspiracy theory—I made this case in my 2024 essay The Cass Review, WPATH Files, and the Perpetual Debate over Gender-Affirming Care.

My latest essay expands upon this. Specifically, I show how a basic cognitive bias known as negativity bias—our tendency to dwell more on negative outcomes than positive or neutral ones, and to presume that negative events must have been caused by something or someone rather than occurring naturally or inexplicably—can explain the behaviors of opponents of gender-affirming care and their relentless belief that kids are being “rushed into transition” despite all evidence to the contrary. I also examine the striking parallels between how “rushing kids into transition” and the Covid “lab leak” theories have spread like wildfire in the mainstream media despite the scientific consensuses against them. You can read it at:

Medium (friend link that circumvents the paywall): https://juliaserano.medium.com/what-covid-lab-leak-and-rushing-kids-into-transition-have-in-common-2eb4e08ee3f4?sk=c866d22b9e29cc428fd73e02abba9881

or Substack (no paywall): https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/what-covid-lab-leak-and-rushing-kids

As always, please share widely and give it lots of claps and likes and such! And if you appreciate that I make essays like this freely available online, please consider supporting me on Patreon (for as little as $1/month)!

regarding Substack and writer-centric boycotts

photo of the CEOs of Meta (Facebook/Instagram),
Amazon, Google (YouTube), & "X",
all of whom "platform Nazis",
prominently supporting Trump
at his 2025 inauguration

Hello and welcome to my blog! If this is your first time here, well, that’s likely because I hardly ever post here these days.

For years, this was where I routinely penned my essays. But by the mid-2010s, readers had tapered off from visiting blogs, even when I would share links to my posts on other platforms. Increasingly, people tended to stick to their preferred social media ecosystems. And for those interested in reading and/or writing articles and essays, Medium was the most popular ecosystem at the time. There, you could follow other writers and they could follow you back. And because so many people had created their own Medium accounts, they were more likely to click on and share your posts and potentially follow you. So naturally, I began publishing my essays there.

I am still on Medium. But gradually, most of those readers and writers have since migrated to Substack, which is why I began cross-posting my essays there a couple years ago. I explained my reasons for doing so in my first Substack post. Later on, amidst a new round of protests against the platform, I penned a 2,500 word essay on the matter, entitled On Being an Artist, Author, and Activist in a World Where All the Major Online Media Platforms Suck. Don’t worry, that link will take you to an archived version of the essay, so you don’t need to actually visit Substack to read it.

In that post, I made a few main points that I will quickly touch on here TL;DR-style:

why do straight people sexualize LGBTQ+ people? (a video & essay)

Last month was the 3rd year anniversary of the release of Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back. And since this is Pride month, I figured I'd share this video of me reading from the “queer chapter” of Sexed Up! The video is called Why Do Straight People Sexualize Queer People? LGBTQ+ Stereotypes, Sexualization & (imagined) “Contagiousness” – please watch & like & subscribe & share widely!

The YouTube show notes contain the following "chapters" of the video – you can use the time stamps there to skip ahead to particular sections if you wish: 

• 0:00 Introduction (defining sexualization & the Predator/Prey mindset)
• 3:07 Queer people are “marked by sex” and stereotyped as “fakes”
• 6:30 Sexualized stereotypes of gay men
• 7:00 Sexualized stereotypes of lesbians
• 8:45 Sexualized stereotypes of asexuals
• 10:10 Sexualized stereotypes of bisexuals
• 13:30 Trans people and the “worst of both worlds” & “sexual deceiver” tropes 
• 16:40 Anti-queer stigma is viewed “contagious”
• 19:15 Recurring claims that LGBTQIA+ & people of color “prey on women & children”
• 23:50 Critiques of “respectability politics” and “contagiousness politics”
• 29:00 Sexualization-centric approaches to queer activism

As if that wasn't enough, I wrote a companion essay entitled The Worst of Both Worlds: How Straight People Sexualize Queer and Trans People that places my Stigma-Contamination model of sexualization (discussed in the book and video) in the context of other feminist perspectives on sexualization. It also shares a different excerpt from the chapter (on how trans & intersex people face "The Worst of Both Worlds") that is not covered in the video. You can read it on Substack (no paywall) at the above link, or via this friend link to Medium.

As always, please share widely and give it lots of claps and likes and such!

Julia for Hire!

So last week, in the hopes of drumming up some more income, I posted “Julia for Hire!” on my Substack and Medium channels. I encourage you to read and share it! Rather than reiterating the entire post, here are the main points:

• As always, if you appreciate my work, you can support me on Patreon (for as little as $1 per month)!
• I routinely speak at colleges, conferences, companies, and Pride events. If your organization is interested in potentially hosting me (in person or virtually), please check out my booking webpage, which includes descriptions of my most frequently requested talks.
• I am open to doing freelance or contractual work (e.g., writing, consulting, editing, reading, research, fact-checking, etc.) in fields or genres that I am knowledgeable about.
• Finally, if you have or know about a part- or full-time job opening that I might be particularly suited for, here’s my CV and here’s my bibliography, feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss!

Once again, here’s the original post, please share widely!