Whipping Girl

writer, performer and activist Julia Serano's blog! most posts will focus on gender & sexuality; trans, queer & feminist politics; music & performance; and other stuff that interests or concerns me. find out more about my various creative endeavors at juliaserano.com

Monday, March 16, 2015

crowdsourcing for instances where "autogynephilia" is used to sensationalize or invalidate trans identities - please help & share with others!

As many of you may know, over the years I have written a lot about Ray Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia , which wrongly argues that ...

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Nobody reinforces the gender binary & nobody subverts it either (plus some retrospective thoughts about Whipping Girl)

I usually don’t publicly respond to critiques of my writings. People inevitably interpret (or misinterpret) things that I have written in a...

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

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 m...

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Transgender-themed artists, bands, music, songs & anthems

Last week, I encountered quite a number of posts & tweets in which people shared their favorite transgender music artists and trans-them...

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Julia Serano's compendium on cisgender, cissexual, cissexism, cisgenderism, cis privilege, and the cis/trans distinction

When my first book Whipping Girl was published in 2007, it was (to the best of my knowledge) the first print publication to include the ter...

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Julia update November 2014: upcoming events, new writings & music videos!

So earlier today, I sent out my latest email update (btw, you can sign up for my email list here ). It offers links to some of my more rece...

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

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 Fe...

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 1: Who Exactly Does “Cis” Refer To?

[note added January, 2017: This essay now appears as a chapter in my third book Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Fem...

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

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...

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

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 & u...

Monday, September 8, 2014

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, t...

Thursday, September 4, 2014

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...

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

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...

Monday, August 11, 2014

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, a...

Friday, August 8, 2014

Final thoughts on that Michelle Goldberg article, faux journalism, and recognizing bias

So last week I briefly responded to a Michelle Goldberg article that had just appeared in The New Yorker magazine called “What Is a Woma...

Monday, July 28, 2014

two articles (plus thoughts on autogynephilia as the transgender equivalent of slut-shaming)

note added 9-1-14 regarding point #2 in this post : The following week I had a chance to more thoughtfully and extensively reply to that Mic...

Sunday, July 13, 2014

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 be...

Monday, June 2, 2014

On the "activist language merry-go-round," Stephen Pinker's "euphemism treadmill," and "political correctness" more generally

A couple weeks ago, I published a fairly lengthy essay called A Personal History of the “T-word” (and some more general reflections on langu...

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Julia update May 2014 - new music and writings!

So earlier this week I sent out my latest email update . It offers links to some of my more recent writings plus a bit of news about Exclude...

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

a quick guide to media reports about brain studies

When someone in the media says: Researchers at [fill-in-the-blank university/institution] have found that group X's brains are better ...

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About Me

-julia: Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer, speaker, and biologist. She is the author of the recent book "Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive" (Seal Press, 2013). Her first book "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity" (Seal Press, 2007) has been used as teaching materials in gender studies, queer studies, social studies, human sexuality and psychology courses across North America.

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