lyrics to "Cisgender" (my latest trans-themed song)

As some of you may know, in addition to being an author, I also write and perform music – originally with my noise-pop band Bitesize, and currently with my solo music project *soft vowel sounds*. Quite a few of my songs are transgender-themed – back in 2014, I chronicled many of these in a blog post entitled Transgender-themed artists, bands, music, songs & anthems.

Just this last December, I debuted a brand new transgender-themed song. Actually, it's a cover of one of the catchiest classic rock hits from the 1970s, albeit with me "trans"-ing the lyrics (for reasons explained in the following live performance video of the song). I've also included the lyrics below, so feel free to sing along if you wish! 

I will be performing "Cisgender" at my next *soft vowel sounds* show on Saturday, April 6th at El Rio in San Francisco, and will likely do it at future shows as well. To keep posted about my upcoming live shows and recordings (including a new album later this year!), I encourage you to sign up for my music email list. Happy listening...

Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"

This post inadvertently grew out of research that I've been doing for another essay, which I will link to once it is published. Basically, while the concept of "social contagion" is quite old, the notion that it somehow causes children and teenagers to adopt transgender identities is rather recent. So I was curious to know where this assertion first arose. To this end, I carried out a series of internet searches, and was surprised (although perhaps I shouldn't have been) to find out that it seems to have originated on the same three websites (4thwavenow.com, transgendertrend.com, and youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org) that Lisa Littman surveyed for her study on the (scientifically unsubstantiated) concept of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). I was also rather stunned to learn that virtually all of this – the founding of two of those three websites, the first ever claims that social contagion causes kids to become transgender, the coining of "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria," and Littman's recruiting parents for her survey – happened within an extremely short period of time (roughly half a year).

After doing a little more detective work, I put together the following timeline detailing the recent history of these concepts and the websites that gave rise to them. This is a lengthy post (for the sake of thoroughness), but there are two main take-home points: First, the notion that "transgender is caused by social contagion" seems to have been invented by a reluctant parent of a trans child in February 2016. It was then reiterated by other parents and posters on these websites, and then was subsequently picked up and parroted by conservative media outlets and gender-disaffirming practitioners as though it were an actual condition rather than mere hearsay. Second, there was a lot of overlap and coordination between these three websites, and eventually with gender-disaffirming practitioners as well, in creating, popularizing, and disseminating these ideas – in other words, this was an activist campaign. There is nothing inherently wrong with activism, as we are all activists to some degree. But what I chronicle here challenges the typical framing (favored by mainstream journalists and pundits) that pits "concerned parents" and "objective scientists" against "biased out-of-control transgender activists." The reality is that both sides have agendas, in that we are both fighting for what we think is best for trans & gender non-conforming (GNC) children. (Although I believe that the existing evidence better supports the gender-affirmative model.)

The timeline is below. But first, two brief preliminary sections (which can be skipped over if you are already intimately familiar with these matters). There will be a brief summary at the end.
[& if you are looking for a "TL;DR" version, some of the major highlights from the timeline are covered in this Twitter thread.]

Note added October 2019: several more entries have since been added to the timeline – they are denoted by an asterisk just before the date. Perhaps the most significant changes are the PLoS One apology and correction of the Littman paper (see entry 3-19-19), a peer-reviewed critique of the Littman paper (see entry 4-22-19), and additional healthcare groups penning position statements refuting the concepts of ROGD and "transgender social contagion" (e.g., entries 8-21-19; 9-12-19; & 9-30-19).

new updates about writings, upcoming shows & talks, etc!

In a previous post, I described my two different email lists: The julia update comes out about 4–6 times a year, and shares all of my latest writings, shows, and creative endeavors. Then I have a music-only update (for my two music projects *soft vowel sounds* & Bitesize) that comes out more frequently, anytime I have a new music show or release. You can sign up for them via those links, if you wish.

I'm telling you this because I just released two new updates: a music one, and a more general julia update — I encourage you to check them out! Here are a few highlights:

• I recently published a new Medium piece: The Superstition that LGBTQ+ People Are “Contagious” — please share and give it lots of "claps"!
• follow up pieces and interviews (plus a meme!) related to last month's Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria essay.
• my first college speaking events of the 2018-19 year are coming up in early October! If you want me to visit your school, please check out my booking webpage.
• two new San Francisco *soft vowel sounds* shows: a free one this Thursday (Sept. 20th) and a Halloween show on October 17th!

Finally, a reminder that I am giving away a free mp3 of one of my songs with each music update – another reason to consider signing up! This month's free song is the Bitesize classic "Yellow Belt" – check out the update if you wanna download it!

a personal statement regarding the ROGD controversy and why you probably won't be hearing from me for the next few days

This summer, in the wake of The Atlantic cover story, plus other similar recent pieces, I made the decision to dedicate most of my writing time over the rest of 2018 to challenging the current backlash against transgender children and the gender-affirming healthcare model. This has meant putting a book that I have been writing about activism (more generally) on hold, which sucks, but I feel the former is a more immediate and pressing matter at this moment in time. Behind the scenes, I have been working on a series of essays along these lines that I hope to roll out over the next 5-to-6 months, so stay tuned. And as always, if you appreciate this work, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

Anyway, one of the essays that I have been working on was about the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria movement. Last week, when I learned the Littman paper had just been formally published (and I was already familiar with this work from the poster-version that appeared last year in the Journal of Adolescent Health), I decided to make it my top priority. And I ended it up publishing it on Medium on August 22nd (you can read it via the previous link).

My purpose in writing the essay was not to "suppress research I disagree with" or to "drag Littman's name in the mud," as some are now accusing. I was simply countering disinformation (i.e., promoted by ROGD advocates online and in recent op-eds) and a skewed research study that has potential far-reaching healthcare and social ramifications (i.e., the Littman paper). I never once resorted to ad hominem attacks in my essay, nor did I call for the paper to be investigated or retracted. I have written about other transgender-related studies and theories in the past - if you were to comb through them all, you would find lots of arguments and criticisms, but not a single instance where I have called for a paper to be investigated or retracted. I have simply participated in these debates. And they are not truly debates if you don't allow people like me to participate in them.

understanding TERF talking points on transition

1. When an insistent, persistent, consistent trans child socially transitions (no medical interventions, completely reversible). TERF response: No, you can't do that! Because 80% desistance!

2. When a trans child goes on puberty blockers (which are safe & the effects completely reversible). TERF response: No, you can't do that! Because children need to experience "natural puberty" in order to fully identify with their "biological sex."

3. When older trans teenagers finally go on hormones and contemplate surgery. TERF response: No, you can't do that! Because that's irreversible. And mutilation!

4. When a trans adult transitions. TERF response: No, you can't do that! Because we don't want any "men" with "penises" in women's spaces. Plus, you haven't been socialized as female, so therefore you can never be a woman! 

There is only one way to square this circle: TERFs don't want trans people to exist, in any capacity. Period. That is the only logic at work here. Any concern that they express toward transgender and trans-questioning children is insincere, as their one and only goal is to make us disappear.

on Jesse Singal, slut-shaming, and calling women "hysterical"

I already told this story once before, in this piece, along with instances where Jesse Singal has purposefully lied about me, whipped up an online mob against me, and treated several other trans women with similar disrespect. I honestly want nothing more than for him to leave me the fuck alone—or at the very least, for him to only discuss my writings and positions, rather than resorting to ad hominem attacks. But he continues to harp about this, and spread lies about me. So here is a brief summary.

1) I regularly write about serious matters regarding transgender health and psychology. Jesse Singal disagrees with me on these matters, particularly with regards to the "80% desistance" statistic.

2) On July 25, 2016, Singal wrote a pro-"80% desistance" article, during which, in the midst of discussing my stance on this matter, he tossed in "as an aside, you should read her Daily Beast article about navigating the dating scene as a trans woman in San Francisco." That article had nothing to do with the topic at hand. And as I detail here, I know for a fact that Singal has read my work on sexualization and how it is an especially effective tool for invalidating trans women (the specific essay he read can be found here[PDF link]). So I presumed that he cited that dating piece in an attempt to purposefully slut-shame me.

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.

Trans health professionals consider gender-reparative therapies to be unethical

This is not a post so much as it is a citation to be referenced in my (and perhaps other people's) future writings on this topic. 

Gender-reparative therapies (sometimes called gender-conversion therapies) typically involve the use of positive and negative reinforcement strategies—e.g., having parents discourage or withhold gender non-conforming expression, toys, play partners, etc., while encouraging gender-normative behaviors—in an attempt to convert transgender or gender non-conforming children into cisgender and gender-normative ones. 

While the practice used to be more common, and while a few researchers (such as Ken Zucker) still advocate for such approaches, the field of trans health as a whole now considers such practices to be both unsuccessful (as it merely coerces children to temporarily hide or repress their gender identities and expressions, which they may assert again at a later age) and unethical (as it often results in a host of negative psychological outcomes, as reviewed in Temple Newhook et al., 2018).

my Jesse Singal story

Many people know of Jesse Singal as a senior/science editor at New York Magazine. Within transgender communities, Singal has garnered a reputation (particularly over the last two years) for repeatedly promoting ideas that are in opposition to, or which flat-out undermine, trans people’s perspectives on issues that impact our lives. He has done this in the form of seemingly serious-minded articles, but also in more flippant or provocative exchanges from his Twitter account (which he recently shut down).

As a trans author and activist who disagrees with many of Singal’s positions, I have gone on the record (in my own articles and Twitter threads) to challenge some of those ideas and his framing of them. But in this post, I want to talk about my personal experiences with Singal, because they are rather out of the ordinary. While I’ve long found these incidents to be frustrating and baffling, I never thought to compile them all in one place before. That changed last Friday, when Katelyn Burns (who is also a trans woman writer) shared her personal exchanges with Singal in this Twitter thread. [btw, Burns was forced to lock her account for reasons explained here, but the thread has since been archived here and here.] While she had far more interactions with him than I’ve had, some of what she recounts very much resonated with my own experiences. So I figured that I’d share my story here (I will explain more about my reasons for doing so at the end of this piece).

Lies about Transgender People and the Vagina Monologues

This is one in a series of essays exposing falsehoods forwarded by feminists who are suspicious of or antagonistic toward transgender people. This series includes Debunking “Trans Women Are Not Women” Arguments and my forthcoming essay Transgender People and “Biological Sex” Myths. If you appreciate this work, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

These days, almost every anti-transgender hit-piece written from a feminist perspective will mention an incident that occurred in 2015, in which Mount Holyoke College canceled a scheduled performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues for not being inclusive of transgender people. By citing this instance out of context, these writers attempt to assert or imply that:

1) all trans people must want to censor The Vagina Monologues.
2) more sinisterly, trans people are trying to stop women from talking about their vaginas.
3) this is yet another example of why feminism and trans activism are inherently incompatible.

However, this framing purposefully ignores two crucial factors.

why my piece won’t be appearing in The Stranger

On Wednesday, June 28th, the Seattle news outlet The Stranger published an article called The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren't. Amongst its numerous flaws, it gave credence to the notion that there is a “social contagion” to become transgender, and that this is a cause behind why some people eventually decide to detransition.

Back in 2016, I detailed both the biased thinking behind, and the potential harm caused by, this notion, in my lengthy and nuanced essay Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates (and in this follow up). Herzog reached out to interview me for her The Stranger article, saying she had read my essay. I was open to it at first, until it became clear to me that she was planning to legitimize that “social contagion” theory in her piece. When Herzog's article came out last week, I penned a blogpost called Stop pitting detransitioners against happily transitioned people, in which I pointed out the skewed framing and several (albeit not all) of the misconceptions that Herzog's article forwarded.

stop pitting detransitoners against happily transitioned people

People have been asking me to respond to The Stranger's recent "The Detransitioners" article, especially because I am quoted in it. So this is a (not so brief) statement to that effect.

A year ago I wrote a long-read essay called Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates - it was my attempt to address the many issues that are usually overlooked or erased in sensationalistic & fear-mongering articles about people who detransition. Between that piece and a shorter follow up post, I felt like I said just about everything I had to say about the subject.

my first patron-requested post on Patreon!

As you may (or may not) know, last year I joined the crowdfunding site Patreon. People who support me there (for as little as $1 per month) can read almost all of the posts, which include behind-the-scenes updates, polls on what I should write about, plus unpublished writings & recordings. People who pledge at higher levels may be eligible for rewards, such as free e-books and/or signed copies of any of my previous books (depending upon the level) - more details can be found here.

At certain pledge levels, I offer the reward of writing a blogpost about any subject of a patron's choosing (within reason). Well, today I published my first ever patron-requested post - it's on the topic of passing and employment post-transition. It's a public post, so even if you're not a supporter, you can read it via the link.

If you appreciate it and/or my writings more generally, please consider supporting me there!

Outspoken is a Lambda Literary Award finalist!

Earlier this week I learned that my latest book, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism, is a Lambda Literary Award finalist in the category of Transgender Nonfiction! It is the first time one of my books has become a Lambda finalist, so I am excited by this news, and extend my congrats to all the other finalists!

For those who haven't seen the book yet, Outspoken compiles 48 of my trans-themed pieces from over the last decade-plus, including many of my early slam poems, essays and manifestos written contemporaneously with Whipping Girl and Excluded (including chapters originally intended for those books), articles challenging DSM diagnoses and the psychopathologization of trans people & gender variance, plus some of my recent writings addressing differences within trans communities and approaches to activism.

Outspoken is available (in paperback & e-book) at Amazon & other online outlets (a complete list can be found here), and bookstores & libraries can purchase it through Ingram. If you belong to, or write for, a media outlet (print, webzine, blog, etc.) and you are interested in reviewing or publishing excerpts from the book, please contact me and I can provide you copies.

In the coming months, I plan to publish blogposts covering each section of the book (including sneak-peaks & excerpts). But in the meantime, here are some Outspoken-related pages you can explore:

• my Outspoken webpage includes reviews of the book, an excerpt of the Introduction, and a look at the Table of Contents.
• I created a free online trans-, gender-, sexuality-, activism-themed glossary for Outspoken.
• watch videos of me performing some of the transgender-themed slam poems that are included in Outspoken (more will be uploaded soon!).
• Outspoken includes two chapters originally intended for Whipping Girl, but which were not included in the final book. One of these was made available to my Patreon supporters (which you can read with a $2 pledge).

Finally, if you have read Outspoken and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review of it on Amazon, Goodreads, and other sites (this really helps with garnering attention for the book).

Thanks for listening! -j.

first Outspoken review! (and future excerpts, reviews, and interviews)

As you may (or may not) know, at the end of 2016, I released my third book, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism. It's a collection of forty-eight chapters spanning the last decade-plus, including my early slam poems and spoken word, essays and manifestos written contemporaneously with my previous books Whipping Girl and Excluded, plus my recent writings addressing differences within trans communities and activism.

I self-published Outspoken (on my own imprint Switch Hitter Press) and (for personal reasons) I haven't been able to do much promotion for the book until now. In the coming weeks, I plan to publish numerous excerpts from the book, and I've already started uploading YouTube videos for some of the slam poems that appear in the book! (More will be released later this week...)

If you are a writer and/or run some sort of zine, podcast, website, etc., and are interested in potentially reviewing the book and/or interviewing me about it, feel free contact me and I can try to get you a copy!

Julia November update: my new book Outspoken is out, plus other stuff!

A few days ago, I sent out my latest email update. The big news in it is that my third book, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism has just been released! It collects forty-eight of my previously unpublished or difficult to access trans-themed writings, including my early slam poems and spoken word, essays and manifestos written contemporaneously with my previous books Whipping Girl & Excluded, plus my recent work addressing differences within trans communities and activism.

Check out the Outspoken webpage to view the book’s Table of Contents, read part of the Introduction & other book excerpts, and explore the online trans/gender glossary that accompanies the book. At the moment, paperback books can be purchased at Amazon, and it will be available at other retailers & for bookstore/library purchasing (through Ingram) very soon (so stay tuned!). E-books can be purchased at/for Amazon/Kindle, Barnes & Noble/Nook, iTunes Books, Kobo, Smashwords, and other outlets.

Another item of interest in the email update is the official release of the Whipping Girl 2nd edition audiobook! It is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, and other outlets.

The update also includes tidbits on my various other projects, plus helpful post-election resources for trans people.

You can read the update in all its glory here.

If you want future Julia updates emailed directly to you, please sign up for my email list.

enjoy! -j.

Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation (a follow up)

If you aren't aware of it already, last week I published an essay called Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates on Medium. It is a long-read, and my thorough response to recent mainstream op-eds and think-pieces coming out either for gender-reparative therapies and/or against gender-affirming approaches to transgender and gender non-conforming children. If you like the piece, be sure to recommend it (by clicking the "heart" logo at the bottom-left of the article) - the more recommends it gets, the more likely it will appear in other Medium readers' feeds!

In addition, German Lopez of Vox.com interviewed me about my Medium piece - you can read that in the article: The debate about transgender children and “detransitioning” is really about transphobia. (note: if you take issue with that title, I didn't write it - see Twitter thread at bottom of this post.)

I received a lot of positive feedback about the piece. And I can tell that it made some waves outside of the trans/LGBTQ+/activism bubble by the numerous vitriolic & blatantly anti-trans responses I have received - sadly, this is par for the course. However, there are two categories of responses I received that addressed aspects of the article that I perhaps could have explained better, so I want to reply to those here.

Activism, Language, and Differences of Opinion (a compilation of essays)

[note: The essays compiled here were written between 2012–2016. My more recent writings on these and related topics are collected in Call-Out Culture, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, and Social Justice Activism: essays and a new lecture.]

Activists of various stripes will often disagree with one another (as well as with the mainstream public) regarding what ideas and strategies are useful and productive, versus which may be self-defeating or destructive. Notably, many of these debates tend to be centered on language—for instance, is the word or phrase in question liberating, or acceptable, or anachronistic, or problematic, or downright derogatory.

While most people who participate in these debates champion a specific cause (e.g., being “for” or “against” a specific activist tactic or terminology), I have become increasingly interested in understanding the underlying standpoints and reasoning that lead people to adopt these disparate positions, and chronicling how rigid one-size-fits-all stances on these matters may erase or exclude the voices of many people who have a stake in the issue.

I have written extensively about this subject in my 2013 book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (the linked-to page includes excerpts from the book). Here, I will compile some of my subsequent essays related to this topic (with links when available). They are organized into the following sections:

The Antioch Review Publishes Transphobic Article; Here's What Happens Next

So this has been a big story on my social media feed today. For those not in the know, here is a summary of what happened:

1) The academic literary magazine The Antioch Review recently published an article called "The Sacred Androgen: The Transgender Debate," by Daniel Harris.

2) Trans people found it to be highly transphobic for a plethora of reasons, which are smartly and succinctly explained in this open letter signed by hundreds of Writers, Editors, and Librarians.  [note added 5-6-16: I originally attributed this open letter to The Seattle Review of Books, but it turns out they were merely boosting the signal]

3) Antioch College (who publishes the journal) released a statement that, while not condoning the article and its sentiments, nevertheless expressed that they "have confidence in the Review’s editor and editorial process."

This is the story so far. But as a longtime trans activist, I'm pretty sure that I know where this is all eventually heading. So here are my predictions, in no particular order:

Moving Beyond the Cisgender Actor/Transgender Character Meme

Earlier this week I published a new piece on Medium entitled Expanding Trans Media Representation: Why Transgender Actors Should Be Cast in Cisgender Roles.

In it, I share my thoughts on how we might broaden discussions of trans representation in the media beyond the now commonplace critiques regarding who is cast to play transgender roles (in those rare instances when a movie or TV show even bothers to include a trans character).

If you like the piece, be sure to recommend it (by clicking the "heart" logo at bottom left) - the more recommends it gets, the more likely it will appear in other Medium readers' feeds. Hope you enjoy!