Transgender is a Pan-Cultural and Trans-Historical Phenomenon

In my writings, I will often say that gender diversity and transgender identities are a “pan-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon.” What I mean by this is that if you consider other cultures, or look back through history, you will find examples of people who we would now (in this time and place) describe as falling under the transgender umbrella. This includes (but is not limited to) people who identified and lived as members of a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, people who belonged to “third gender” categories—an umbrella term sometimes used to describe established gender categories that fall outside of the man/woman binary, which are fairly common in non-Western cultures), plus people who are gender non-conforming in all sorts of other ways.

At the end of this post, I will provide a list of books that describe such examples of gender diversity across cultures and throughout history. Or you could check out the Wikipedia page on this topic.

This evidence strongly suggests that gender diversity occurs naturally, rather than being a product of culture or modernity. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the phenomenon occurs entirely independent of culture—after all, our self-understandings and the labels we use to describe ourselves are most certainly influenced by cultural norms and the language and concepts we have at our disposal. But what I am saying is that there has to be some natural (likely biological) component to this gender diversity. The alternative hypothesis—i.e., that within each of these cultures, there is an entirely unique socially-based “cause” that accounts for this gender diversity—seems utterly preposterous, and is in dire need of being lopped off with Occam’s razor.

Balancing activism, "free speech" & "call-out culture"

Last week, I published an essay called Refusing to Tolerate Intolerance, which makes the case that we must challenge and refuse to tolerate acts that are intended to dehumanize, intimidate, and silence minority/marginalized groups. I also explain why those who claim that we *should* tolerate said acts because of "free speech" 1) are misapplying the concept, 2) do not understand how marginalization actually works, 3) are behaving hypocritically, or 4) some combination thereof.

At the end of the piece, I mentioned that I am currently working on a follow up to that essay: “Hate Speech versus Call-Out Culture.” I have written about “call-out culture” at great length in the past, specifically in my second book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (shown to the right).

To the best of my knowledge, “call-out culture” is a term that originated within intra-activist discourses to describe expressions of activism that seemed misguided or unduly harsh to other activists. Back in the late zeros/aughts and early tens/teens, those of us who discussed this problem recognized that activism was crucial and that some call-outs are indeed necessary, and we were trying to balance that need with the fact that sometimes call-outs (in certain cases and contexts) can do more harm than good. Unfortunately, the phrase has since been appropriated by non-activists as a pejorative to smear any expression of activism that they dislike or disagree with.

Julia Serano on Judith Butler

For starters, my apologies about the eponymous blog-post title—I simply wanted this piece to be readily “findable” for people who do web searches using both our names.

Over the years, I have read and heard numerous reactions to my first two books—Whipping Girl and Excluded—that presume that I have negative or antagonistic views of gender theorist Judith Butler. This is not actually the case. Others have presumed that some of my work is a “misreading” of her theories, when in actuality I have never directly critiqued Butler’s work (only misinterpretations of her work). So to set the record straight, I have penned this blog-post, which will admittedly only be of interest to a small subset of readers.

Regarding "Political Correctness" (my first post on Medium)

Those of you who have read my book Excluded (particularly the last chapter, "Balancing Acts") know that I have long been concerned with the ways in which activist language and strategies are sometimes employed in ways that are counterproductive, or which have the effect of silencing other disenfranchised individuals. My goal in doing this is to foster more robust, thoughtful, and inclusive conversations and communities.

However, in the last year, there has been a rash of mainstream articles about this phenomenon, often framing it under the rubric of "political correctness." For the most part, these are one-sided short-sighted attempts to condemn "language policing" without giving any thought to how we might balance that with the concerns of marginalized groups.

So I have just written a response to one of these recent articles - it's called That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (and it’s not because of “political correctness”). If you click the link (and please do!), you will notice that I have posted it to Medium. I did so because I am hoping that it gets some attention outside of the "activist bubble" - which it will, provided enough people "recommend" and "share" it.

So I encourage you to read it! And if you like it, please "recommend" and "share" it! Thanks! -j.

How Double Standards Work (understanding the unmarked/marked distinction)

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. 

In Excluded, I argue that instead of focusing on only one or a few forms of sexism and marginalization, we should acknowledge that there are myriad double standards out there. And given this, it is crucial for us to more generally recognize and challenge double standards whenever and wherever they occur.

To be honest, I think that we as activists tend not to be very good at doing this—it is a main reason why people who are quite familiar with one particular form of marginalization (typically one that they are personally impacted by) will nevertheless continue to single out and invalidate other groups of people, often using the exact same tactics that they abhor when used against members of their own group. In other words, a failure to recognize and understand how double standards function in a general sense is what enables various forms of exclusion to run rampant within our movements. It is also what enables numerous forms of sexism and marginalization to proliferate in society at large.   

I discuss this issue over the course of Excluded, but I address it head on in Chapter 14: “How Double Standards Work”—it is one of the pieces of writing that I am most proud of.

Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 2: Reconciling Disparate Uses of the Cis/Trans Distinction

[note added November, 2016: This essay now appears as a chapter in my third book Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism]

For the record: this essay is intended to clarify misconceptions about, and to encourage more thoughtful usage of, cis terminology. Anyone who references this piece in their attempts to deny or eliminate use of the term "cis" (and its variants) is clearly misinterpreting or misrepresenting my views.

In the first essay of this two-part series, I discussed how the way in which cis terminology is often used today can sometimes invisibilize certain forms of gender-based oppression, and potentially exclude people who exist at the margins of the transgender umbrella (i.e., people who don’t fit quite so neatly into a cis/trans binary). In this essay, I want to talk about the different ways in which a cis/trans distinction may be employed, as this can greatly shape the nature and ultimate goals of trans activism.

“Decentering the binary” versus “reverse discourse” approaches

One of the more commonly heard complaints about cis terminology is that it supposedly “creates a new binary” (i.e., trans versus cis). I strongly disagree with this argument. After all, people already make a distinction between non-transsexuals and transsexuals, and between gender-conforming and gender-non-conforming individuals. So the cissexual/transsexual and cisgender/transgender binaries already exist in people’s minds. It’s just that now we (trans activists) have explicitly named the unmarked majority as “cis.”

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!

Excluded excerpt of the day: What makes femininity “femme”?

My most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.

So today’s excerpt comes from the Excluded chapter “Reclaiming Femininity.” This chapter of the book started out as my keynote talk for the Femme 2008 Conference. And this final passage of the piece is meant to challenge certain notions about “femme” that sometimes proliferate within queer circles.

If there is one thing that all of us femmes have in common, it is that we all have had to learn to embrace our own feminine expression while simultaneously rejecting other people’s expectations of us. What makes femininity “femme” is not the fact that it is queer, or transgressive, or ironic, or performative, or the complement of butch. No. What makes our femininity “femme” is the fact that we do it for ourselves. It is for that reason that it is so empowering. And that is what makes us so powerful.

As femmes, we can do one of two things with our power: We can celebrate it in secret within our own insular queer communities, pat ourselves on the back for being so much smarter and more subversive than our straight feminine sisters. Or we can share that power with them. We can teach them that there is more than one way to be feminine, and that no style or expression of femininity is necessarily any better than anyone else’s. We can teach them that the only thing fucked up about femininity is the dismissive connotations that other people project onto it. But in order to that, we have to give up the self-comfort of believing that our rendition of femme is more righteous, or more cool, or more subversive than anyone else’s.

I don’t think that my femme expression, or anyone else’s femme expressions, are in and of themselves subversive. But I do believe that the ideas that femmes have been forwarding for decades—about reclaiming femininity, about each person taking the parts of femininity that resonate with them and leaving behind the rest, about being femme for ourselves rather than for other people, about the ways in which feminine expression can be tough and active and bad-ass and so on—these ideas are powerful and transformative.

I think that it’s great to celebrate femme within our own queer communities, but we shouldn’t merely stop there. We need to share with the rest of the world the idea of self-determined and self-empowered feminine expression, and the idea that feminine expression is just as legitimate and powerful as masculine expression. The idea that femininity is inferior and subservient to masculinity intersects with all forms of oppression, and is (I feel) the single most overlooked issue in feminism. We need to change that, not only for those of us who are queer femmes, but for our straight cis sisters who have been disempowered by society’s unrealistic feminine ideals, for our gender-variant and gender-non-conforming siblings who face disdain for defying feminine expectations and/or who are victims of trans-misogyny, and also for our straight cis brothers, who’ve been socialized to avoid femininity like the plague, and whose misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and so on, are driven primarily by their fear of being seen as feminine. While I don’t think that my femme expression is subversive, I do believe that we together as femmes have the power to truly change the world.

More excerpts to come! And you can find out more about the book (including reviews, interviews, and more excerpts) at my Excluded webpage.

[note: If you appreciate this essay and want to see more like it, please check out my Patreon page]

(note: this piece originally appeared in Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies, ed. Anne Enke, Temple University Press, 2012).

Excluded excerpt of the day: Proud to be a trans woman

So my most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.

So today’s excerpt comes from the first full chapter in the book, called “On the Outside Looking In.” It is about my experience at Camp Trans in 2003, back during a time when most queer/trans spaces (including that space) tended to be dominated by trans male/masculine folks and cis queer women (this is still sometimes true today, albeit less so than it used to be). The excerpt is from the very end of the piece, and takes place at the end of an emotional and often tumultuous week (for me personally, at least), and immediately after a Camp Trans performance event in which I performed my spoken word piece Cocky.

And after releasing all of this pent-up tension and frustration, I had one of those rare moments of clarity. It happened just after my performance, when one of my new friends, Lauren, came over to give me a hug. She said, “Your piece made me proud to be a trans woman.” And her words were so moving because I had never heard them spoken before. “Proud to be a trans woman.” And as I looked around the camp at all of the female-assigned queer women and folks on the FTM spectrum, I realized that in some ways I am very different from them—not because of my biology or socialization, but because of the direction of my transition and the perspective it has given me.

I am a transsexual in a dyke community where most women have not had to fight for their right to be recognized as female—it is merely something they’ve taken for granted. And I am a woman in a segment of the trans community dominated by folks on the FTM spectrum who have never experienced the special social stigma that is reserved for feminine transgender expression and for those who transition to female. My experiences as a trans woman have given me a valid and unique understanding of what it means to be both female and feminine—a perspective that many women here at Michigan seem unable or unwilling to comprehend.

At Camp Trans, I learned to be proud that I am a trans woman. And when I describe myself with the word “trans,” it does not necessarily signify that I transgress the gender binary, but that I straddle two identities—transsexual and woman—that others insist are in opposition to each other. And I will continue to work for trans woman–inclusion at Michigan, because this is my dyke community too. And I know that it will not be easy, and plenty of people will try to make me feel like an alien in my own community. But I will take on their prejudices with my own unique perspective because sometimes you see things more clearly when you’ve been made to feel like you are on the outside looking in.

(note: this chapter was originally written to be a spoken word piece, and video excerpts of my performance of it in 2005 (which includes the above passage) can be found here) 

More excerpts to come! And you can find out more about the book (including reviews, interviews, and more excerpts) at my Excluded webpage.

[note: If you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please check out my Patreon page]

Excluded excerpt of the day: New Ways of Speaking

So my most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.

I figured that it would be best to begin with an excerpt (from Chapter 12) that explains what drove me to write the book:

As countless writers and activists have chronicled, and as my own essays in the previous section of this book attest to, exclusion is a recurring problem in feminist and queer movements, organizations, and spaces. Whether unconscious or overt, exclusion always leads to the same end result: Many individuals who wish to participate are left behind, and the few who remain often bask in the misconception that they are part of a unified, righteous movement. To put it another way, exclusion inevitably leads to far smaller movements with far more narrow and distorted agendas.

Those of us who face exclusion within feminism or queer activism will often focus our efforts on challenging the specific isms that we believe are driving our exclusion. In my case, this has led me to spend much of the last decade critiquing cissexism, trans-misogyny, masculine-centrism, and monosexism within the queer and feminist spaces I have participated in. Others have focused their efforts on challenging heterosexism, racism, classism, ableism, ageism, and sizeism within these movements. All of this is important work, to be sure. But honestly, sometimes I feel like we are all playing one giant game of Whac-A-Mole—as soon as we make gains challenging a particular type of exclusion, another type arises or becomes apparent. So while we may make significant inroads in challenging certain isms, as a whole, the phenomenon of exclusion continues unabated.

Bringing an end to the “end of gender”

So next month will be the one-year anniversary of my book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive being released, and I will be celebrating by posting small excerpts of some of my favorite paragraphs and passages from the book on my blog over the course of September.

One of the passages I was planning to quote is very germane to the latest round of TERF debates, so I am posting it today instead.

Radical feminists who are opposed to trans people repeatedly offer this justification: They are trying to bring on the “end of gender” whereas trans people “reinforce gender.” Throughout Excluded, I eviscerate the “reinforcing trope” and how it is arbitrarily used as a tool within activism to exclude minorities/marginalized subpopulations within movements (including lesbians in the early days of radical feminism).

And in the following passage from the book, I point out how ridiculously vague and arbitrary such “end of gender” claims really are.

Regarding “Generation Wars”: some reflections upon reading the recent Jack Halberstam essay

Jack Halberstam recently published an essay called You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma, and it’s been making waves on the activist internets over the last week. It felt like a bit of a “kitchen sink” article to me, in that it discussed a plethora of different matters (including Monty Python, historical debates between second- and third-wave feminisms, current controversies surrounding the word “tranny,” the recent proliferation of trigger warnings, supposed connections between expressions of trauma and neoliberalism, safe spaces, “It Gets Better” campaigns, and concerns about millennials being hypersensitive) and attempted to weave them into one nice neat coherent narrative. This narrative could be summarized as follows:

queer & trans culture and politics circa the 1990’s was strong, progressive, and fun!

whereas queer & trans culture and politics circa the 2010’s is frail, conservative, and a killjoy.

While Halberstam’s essay made a few points that are certainly worthy of further exploration and discussion, it also overreached in a number of ways, especially in its attempts to shoehorn a potpourri of recent events and trends into the aforementioned overarching narrative. Some concerns that I have about the essay have been addressed by others here and here and here and here (sorry, original posting of that response was here) and here. 

What is Holistic Feminism?

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.

Since my first book Whipping Girl came out, people have tended to call me a trans feminist. For those who are unfamiliar with trans feminism, it refers to transgender perspectives on feminism, or feminist perspectives on transgender issues. That definitely describes a lot of my writing and activism, especially during the time that I was writing that book. But in Excluded, I broaden the lens significantly and attempt to articulate how sexism, marginalization, and exclusion work in a more general sense. The term trans feminism seemed too narrow for this endeavor.

Excluded a finalist for Judy Grahn book award!

I got some exciting news this week: The Publishing Triangle announced that my book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive is a finalist for this year's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction! (for the record, it is a bisexual woman and trans woman-inclusive award.)

Some of my readers may be interested to know that Jennifer Finney Boylan's new book about being a trans parent is also a finalist, so it's an honor to be in such prestigious company.

The winner will be announced at their awards ceremony on April 24th, which I will likely sadly miss given that it's on the other side of the country. But it's nice to know my book is up for consideration!

That's all for now... -j.

Julia update March 2014 - Excluded new, upcoming college events, and music!

So last week I sent out my latest email update. It has some new links to book readings of, interviews about, and excerpts from, my still somewhat new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. The update also lists my Spring 2014 college speaking events, and offers breaking news about my music, new & old!

You can check out the update here.

If you want future julia updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list via this link.

enjoy! -j.

What is subversivism?

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.

So the word “subversivism” pops up a couple of times in Excluded, but I first began using the term in my first book Whipping Girl, specifically Chapter 20, “The Future of Queer/Trans Activism.” While the word had previously existed (Merriam-Webster defines it as “the quality or state of being subversive”), I began using it to describe a form of sexism that is quite prevalent within feminist and queer subcultures, albeit absent from straight mainstream society.

Julia update December, 2013 - Excluded excerpts, reviews, Portland & Seattle book readings, more!

So this morning I sent out my monthly(ish) email update, it has info about my Portland & Seattle book readings this week, links to interviews, reviews, excerpts from my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, a World AIDS Day reading I am in, and more!

You can check out the update here:
http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=0e307e411e4a79a0f76d48dd6&id=aeee86439c

If you want future julia updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list here:
http://eepurl.com/CxWWf

enjoy! -j.

Why Myriad Double Standards?

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. 

So in an earlier post, I discussed the concept of myriad double standards that I forward in Excluded. The idea is quite simple: Generally within feminism and queer activism, we have a fixed idea of the system that we are challenging—e.g., the patriarchy, heteronormativity, the gender binary, kyriarchy, and so on. Being fixed models, each of these acknowledges certain forms of sexism and marginalization while overlooking or dismissing others. The forms of sexism and marginalization that are ignored tend to become points of exclusion—for instance, if your concept of “patriarchy” does not include transphobia/cissexism, then your movement will exclude trans people; if your concept of “the gender binary” does not include biphobia/monosexism, then your movement will exclude bisexuals. And so on.

What is gender artifactualism?

This is the one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.

So in Excluded, I introduce the term “gender artifactualism” to describe, “the tendency to conceptualize and depict gender as being primarily or entirely a cultural artifact.”[p.117] Gender artifactualist viewpoints are pervasive within feminist and queer activism, and within the academic fields of Women’s/Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Sociology, certain subfields of Psychology, and in the Humanities more generally.

julia update - Excluded BOOK TOUR starts now, plus excerpts, reviews & interviews

note: this is my monthly email update for October, 2013 - to get these updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list here.

julia update october 2013

in this update:
1) Julia's Excluded book reading tour is afoot!
2) Excluded-related reviews and interviews
3) recent essays