Penises, Privilege, & Purity: a new essay about LGBTQ+ intra-community debates

So my latest Medium essay just dropped! 

It's entitled Penises, Privilege, and Feminist & LGBTQ+ Purity Politics. It's a longer read, but worth it, as it explains many intra-community debates. This includes lesbian stereotypes about bisexual women (such as the myth that we are "perpetually heterosexual privileged"), how those relate to "gender critical"/TERF stereotypes of trans women, plus recent debates between trans male/masculine and trans female/feminine communities. Basically, I show how all these sentiments stem from sexual stigma and our culture's bizarre patriarchal and heteronormative beliefs about sex and penises.

I think this is the best thing I've written since... well, since my latest book Sexed Up, I suppose. In fact, it's the first piece I've written that really builds upon some of the ideas that I introduce and flesh out in the book, including the Predator/Prey mindset and how sexual stigma shapes many popular stereotypes about queer people.

Here is the no paywall link, so you can readily share it with others: https://juliaserano.medium.com/penises-privilege-and-feminist-lgbtq-purity-politics-bafd1f25fe3e?sk=5098f46767404745b65d298b79aa8066

If you're on Twitter, here's a whole thread about it.

And if you like it, please give it lots of "claps" (up to 50, I think) so that other Medium users will see it.

This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters. If you appreciate that I make writings like this available for free online, please consider supporting me there.

new book readings, talks, interviews & debunking pseudoscience

I just published my latest email update, chock-full of new news. you can read it online here: https://mailchi.mp/64d1973d6b99/new-book-readings-talks-interviews-debunking-pseudoscience

and if you want to receive my email updates directly to your inbox, you can sign up here.

It is a fairly long update, so I won't reiterate it all here. But highlights include:

1) links to several recent interviews (in print, podcast, and YouTube forms) with me about my new book Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back – this includes two of the book events I did back in July. These interviews, as well as all the book excerpts, reviews, etc., can also be found on the Sexed Up webpage I just linked to.

2) On September 22nd, in honor of, Bisexual Visibility Day, I will be reading a few bi+ specific passages from Sexed Up at Fabulosa Books (489 Castro St, San Francisco, CA). The event begins at 7pm; masks are recommended but not required. Here is the Facebook invite for the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1091569688453976 – please come out if you can!

3) Just in time for the 2022-23 academic year, I've updated my booking webpage to include a bunch of new presentations, some Sexed Up-themed, others covering trans, bisexual, LGBTQIA+, and feminist issues I often write about. If you are part of a conference or college organization that's looking for speakers, definitely check it out!

4) Debunking anti-trans pseudoscience, in two parts:

First, J. Michael Bailey and his protégé Kevin Hsu recently published a study in Archives of Sexual Behavior that attempts to refute the existence of “autogynephilia in women.” Jaimie Veale and I wrote a response that the journal just published: Autogynephilia Is a Flawed Framework for Understanding Female Embodiment Fantasies: A Response to Bailey and Hsu (2022) [PDF link]. In it, we point out numerous methodological and interpretive flaws with their study—including how their results are incompatible with Blanchard's original taxonomy—and make the case that “autogynephilia” is a flawed framework for considering both trans and cis women's sexual fantasies and desires.

Second, some of you may recall my 2019 Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" post, which is essentially a timeline of all the major events regarding the invention and dissemination of these ideas within anti-trans activism. I just updated the timeline with a newer entries, many of which are recent studies that undermine or outright disprove the basic tenets of these theories. All those new entries can be found in the Post-Publication Note toward the beginning of that post.

So that's what's in the update – please check it out!

6 recent Medium articles!

As some of you may know, I sometimes publish articles on Medium – that link will take you to my Medium page, where you can find all the pieces I've written there. Here, I will share my six most recent Medium articles, spanning back to December of last year. All of the links below are "friend links" that bypass the site's paywall – so feel free to read them all for free! 

For Bisexual Visibility Week, I published Bomb (image to right), which is a chapter from my award-winning book 99 Erics: a Kat Cataclysm faux novel. It humorously defuses many of the assumptions people face upon coming out as bisexual. It also critiques what Kat calls the "stereotype trap," as well as authors who turn their LGBTQIA+ characters' identities into "plot twists." If you enjoy it, many more excerpts from the novel can be found on the official 99 Erics webpage.

Transgender People, Bathrooms, and Sexual Predators: What the Data Say was months in the making. The piece not only compiles numerous research studies showing that transgender people are victims (not perpetrators) in such settings, but it also places these "bathroom panics" in historical context, showing how they evolved directly from Anita-Bryant-1970s-era claims that LGB people are "child molesters" out to "recruit children." The final section debunks more recent outlandish claims that trans people are "grooming" and "sexualizing" children. I wanted to touch on all these themes, not only because they unfairly disparage trans people, but because they are all more generally used to smear marginalized groups who are perceived as "other" in some way, and thus misconstrued as a potential "threat to women and children." 

I don't usually write about TV shows and pop culture, but I did just that in Here’s why some people find the Loki-Sylvie romance unsettling. Hint: the answer (or at least one of the answers) is unconscious transphobia...

I compile many of my writings related to transmisogyny in the piece What Is Transmisogyny? It includes a downloadable link to a brand new academic review article that I wrote on the topic.

The Dregerian Narrative (or why "trans activists" vs. "scientists" framings are lazy, inaccurate, and incendiary) is a new essay describing a very old anti-trans trope.

And finally, Transgender People, “Gay Conversion,” and “Lesbian Extinction”: What the Data Show was my response to the increasingly common anti-trans memes that lesbians are supposedly going "extinct" due to people transitioning, and/or that transitioning constitutes a form of “gay conversion therapy.” As the title suggests, I show that current research data do not support these claims.

That's it for now. If you appreciate the fact that I make these articles available for free, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

Excluded selected as one of the best books of the decade!

I have had a bunch of book-related news of late, some of which I've alluded to or mentioned elsewhere on social media over the last several months. But I figured that it would be helpful to pen a few posts to share all this news in a more comprehensive manner. So here is the first of four posts – the biggest news of all will land next Tuesday...

As you know, the 2010s recently came to an end. And I was excited to see that my 2013 book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive made two different "best of the decade" lists!

The queer women's website Autostraddle included the book in their article: 80 of the Best Queer, Lesbian and Bisexual Books of the Decade (you'll find it in the non-fiction section of the list). Here is what they said about it:

"99 Erics" – an update about my forthcoming novel!

Over the last few years, I have been writing silly, surreal, sex-positive fiction centered on a character named Kat Cataclysm. Back in 2016, I published the chapbook you see here, full of short pieces that were supposedly penned by her. And this fall, my/her debut novel – 99 Erics: a Kat Cataclysm faux novel – will be released!
[Note: it has since been released, read more at the link!]

99 Erics will be published on Switch Hitter Press in October, 2019 early 2020. A description of the book, plus links to excerpts, are below. More info (including cover art) will be made available once it is complete.

If you are a writer or media outlet interested in reviewing 99 Erics, or interviewing me about the book, please contact me, and I'd be happy to get you a review copy as soon as they are available!

In the meantime, here is a brief description...

Kat Cataclysm is an ethically non-monogamous bisexual woman and absurdist short fiction writer. 99 Erics is a humorous account of Kat’s experiences writing a book called 99 Erics, which is about her experiences dating ninety-nine different people named Eric. It is more surreal than slutty. Not that there is anything wrong with slutty.

Introducing Kat Cataclysm (aka, my fiction)

My most recent email update came out a couple weeks ago - you can read it here. (& to get future updates, please sign up for my email list.) In it, I discuss the recent release of some fiction that I have been working on under the name Kat Cataclysm!

Kat Cataclysm serves as a pen name (to create a little bit of separation between my fiction and non-fiction), but she is also a character in her own right: a bisexual absurdist short fiction writer, recovering slam poet, and failed linguist who has a somewhat silly and surreal take on the world.

And the first Kat Cataclysm book (a chapbook, really) is now available! It's called General Surgery & Surgeons General. This modest forty-some page collection offers a potpourri of Kat’s short stories, slam poems, and whimsical musings, which touch upon and/or outright tackle diverse topics such as YA dystopian fiction, photosynthesis, mountain climbing, temporal anomalies, ethical non-monogamy, Santa Claus, Prince’s song lyrics, malapropisms & paraprosdokians, and the trials and travails of the contemporary author. As if that were not enough, the book also premieres several excerpt chapters from the eventual Kat Cataclysm debut novel 99 Erics.

The book can be purchased at either:
CreateSpace, which offers the best royalties for the author.
Amazon.com (in both book & ebook formats), where you can “Look Inside” the book (aka, read excerpts) by clicking on the cover.

Also, while on tour with Sister Spit in March, I recorded live performances of four of the pieces in the chapbook - here are links to those recordings:

• Smells Like Teen Dystopia
• The Sex Which Is Not One
• Mr. Prince
• Poetry Slammed

Happy Bi Visibility Day!

Given that today is the annual Bi Visibility Day, I figured I would mention that I am indeed bisexual. yay for me!

Also, I thought I'd mention that my recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive has a couple chapters about bisexual-umbrella activism, and about my coming out and my experiences as someone who is bisexual. One of these chapters, Bisexuality and Binaries Revisited, can be read (for free!) at the link. Enjoy!

FAAB-mentality

[A revamped version of this essay now appears as a chapter in my third book Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism]

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now, as an explanation and reference for what I’ve been calling FAAB-mentality (described below). I originally wrote and performed this piece for the fourth annual installment of Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue in March 2012.

Post-note 3-8-13: I added a few clarifying notes at the end of the piece. 

Baby Talk

I read blogs. And an unfortunate consequence of reading blogs is that sometimes you stumble upon statements that make you upset. Lately, I’ve been dwelling over one single sentence from a blog post that I read a few months ago. The author was a femme-identified cis woman who described her identity this way:

Bisexuality and Binaries Revisited

[note added 8-1-13: The following piece will be included in my next book, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, which comes out in October, 2013!]

In October, 2010, my essay, “Bisexuality does not reinforce the gender binary,” first appeared on the internet. The main reason why I wrote the piece was to illustrate how the reinforcing trope (i.e., the notion that certain genders, sexualities or identities “reinforce” the gender binary, or heteronormativity, or the patriarchy, or the hegemonic-gender-system-of-your-choice) is selectively doled out in queer and feminist communities in order to police their borders. Since queer communities are dominated by non-feminine, cisgender, and exclusively gay and lesbian folks, these individuals are almost never accused of “reinforcing the gender binary.” In contrast, more marginalized identities (e.g., bisexual, transgender, femme) are routinely subjected to the reinforcing trope. While my “reinforcing” essay received many positive responses, it also garnered some harsh criticism, particularly from within certain segments of transgender and gender variant communities. All of the critiques that I heard or read pretty much ignored my primary point—namely, the underlying forms of sexism that determine who gets accused of “reinforcing” shit and who does not—and instead focused solely on the rote assertion that the word “bisexual” (and, by association, anyone who identifies as bisexual) really does “reinforce the gender binary.”

consider bringing Julia Serano out to your campus!

So a new academic year has begun, and as always, I am looking forward to having the opportunity to speak/perform at various colleges & universities this year!

If you are affiliated with a college - especially if you belong to a trans, LGBTQIA+, and/or feminist-related organization - please consider bringing me out to your campus! And even if you aren't associated with a college yourself, please feel free to forward this onto people that you know who are students, staff, or faculty somewhere.

Seeking quotes from queer women who partner with trans women and/or cis men

As a bisexual femme-identified trans woman, I have long been interested in (and concerned by) how the borders of queer women’s communities are policed - where certain people, actions and ways of being are seen as legitimately queer while others are not.

In my own community, I have found two different recurring complaints along these lines that I wish to chronicle for an essay I am working on: