Look right, I like a lot of things about the foundational 2007 text Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. But if you’ve ever been told to read this book without any qualifiers, I’d like to apologise on behalf of the trans community.
Obviously the concepts of traditional and oppositional sexism, the idea of transmisogyny, Serano’s analysis of media depictions of trans women, and more are all superb and well worthy of praise. However, Serano is a land of contrasts, as AcidSmiley so concisely put it. She’s read both Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein’s works, and writes this extremely salient quote:
We must also stop pretending that there are essential differences between women and men. This begins with the acknowledgement that there are exceptions to every gender rule and stereotype, and this simply stated fact disproves all gender theories that purport that female and male are mutually exclusive categories.
Despite all that, Serano has a perspective that’s utterly mired in exorsexist* binary-only assumptions, with language to match. On own, describing someone taking estrogen as “hormonally female” or her body prior to hormone replacement therapy as “physically male” would be unpleasantly cisnormative, but just that. I respect fully that the intent of this book is to analyse the ins and outs of being trans in the gender binary, and so the text is focused in that direction. When Serano writes goofy shit like “mtf spectrum” though, you wonder if she wouldn’t be better served by thinking a little outside of the two-genders box.
She doesn’t want to, though; Julia Serano circa 2007 (the text has not been meaningfully updated to my knowledge) is a brave warrior going against the grain of non binary domination :citation to defend our poor, repressed binary genders. She’s taking down those woke non-binary moralists from their ivory towers:
There are many different (but often overlapping) forms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety. For example, one of the most frequently discussed forms of gender entitlement is heterosexism, the belief that heterosexuality is the only “natural,” legitimate, or morally acceptable form of sexual desire. Heterosexist gender entitlement ean lead to homophobia, which is an expression of gender anxiety directed against those people who engage in same-sex relationships. Similarly, the gender-entitled belief that all women are (or should be) feminine and men masculine-which some have called cisgenderism-gives rise to transphobia, a gender anxiety that is directed against people who fall outside of those norms. While homophobia and transphobia have both received mainstream attention, thinking in terms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety also allows us to consider less well- known (but just as disparaging) forms of gender and sexual discrimination. For example, many gays and lesbians who believe that all people are “naturally” either homosexual or heterosexual often express biphobia, a gender anxiety directed toward bisexual people because they challenge the presumption that people can only be attracted to one sex or the other. I have also met some people in the transgender community who feel that identifying outside of the male/female binary is superior to, or more enlightened than, identifying within it. Such people often express gender anxiety (binary- phobia?) at people who identify strongly as either female or male.
I would be laughing if I weren’t actually really mad about this classic, foundational transfeminist text featuring tons of brainworms about anyone outside the binary. It’s a punchline, the phrase “binary-phobia” is perfect to sit right next to “heterophobia” or “cisphobia”. It’s right up there alongside white westerners claiming to be victims of racism when someone calls them a cracker, even. It should be plainly self-evident how ridiculous a claim this is. I want to ask Serano circa 2007 to tell me which genders have legal recognition - binary or non-binary ones?
It is truly incredible that a woman can write so sharply about the cultural/societal hedgemony of cis gender and heterosexuality, about how the concept of anything being inherently gendered is antithetical to feminism, and then turn around and write a deeply unserious aside about how non-binary people are apparently smug moralists commiting discrimination against people of binary gender due to the same gender anxiety**–in itself a smart concept about how queer people disrupt assumed gender/sexual normality–that drives cis people to be transphobes!! I am for real left somewhat speechless.
I don’t think Whipping Girl is a book nobody should read, obviously. But I scoured the bearsite to see if anyone had dome criticism of or even qualified their recommendation of Whipping Girl, and I found nothing. Part of me wonders if anyone has made a concerted criticism of this book before, but surely someone has before me. I yap exclusively for your benefit! I wonder if Sexed Up or Excluded are better, but frankly I’m just disappointed and angry. Truly a joke.
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*Exorsexist, I learned today, is discrimination against people outside the gender binary!
**Serano describes gender anxiety as “the act of becoming irrationally upset or being made uncomfortable by the existence of those people who challenge or bring into question one’s gender entitlement.” In turn, she describes gender entitlement being “an arrogant conviction that one’s own beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions regarding gender and sexuality are more valid than those of other people”. She is more or less insinuating that non-binary people are befuddled supremacists who cannot stand… adherence to the gender binary. Cool.
I’m saving this
What up homie
Livin’; at least it’s not a monday lmao
thanos if they were based
Seeing stuff like this and some of the discourse/responses around it reminds me that I should really do an effort-post about baeddelism and all the fucking “tma/tme” brainworms that emerge from this new kind of terf rethoric, a lot of it tends to (badly) quote serano and misuse the concept of transmisogyny. Its already destroyed large parts of transfem tumblr and is doing enormous harm to many transmasc and enby friends.
I’m extremely worried about this shit spreading here, I’m already seeing the milder variants of that rethoric spread.
(For context, a decent primer on the insidious reaction that is baeddelism : https://www.tumblr.com/nothorses/743139329546846208/lets-talk-about-baeddels)
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Linking to my megathread comment RE: terf sources in the baeddel post, for anyone reading this thread: https://hexbear.net/comment/5535857
TL;DR The version of the baeddel post that has the terf source is from two years ago. The version posted by comrade grym is an updated version from this year, which does not have the terf source (unless I missed it somewhere).
I should say I use the term to mean something more than just the small baeddel groups that existed before. The rethoric is still alive and VERY spread out on tumblr, the old baeddel accounts are still around. Baeddelism the small movement might have been a niche overly online thing but the broader rethoric is still here, just more hidden now. Its gotten to the point where on tumblr if I see someone using the terms tme or tma I systematically check their other posts or who they repost, and almost every time I can find this baeddel or tirf stuff underneath. It made me very sad and anxious because you find it in very popular and well known accounts.
Terfs have found a way to remake arbitrary binaries and to use them for splitting the community more and more. Its a poison. You wouldn’t believe the insane harassment and drama that transmasc accounts on tumblr, twitter, etc… already went through.
I honestly think its a contributing factor to why there are less transmasc comrades here, because if you see a place that’s not actively fighting against this rethoric its fair to assume its been spreading there unknowingly.
I think bearsite has less of this than other trans spaces, but it’s still here, I’ve seen trickles of hatred of masculinity, of being male, of men, trans or cis. I won’t deny that it makes me feel, (I can’t speak for all transmasc folks here) sort of like I don’t belong here, I’ve wandered into a space that isn’t intended for me, even though we’re all trans together.
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[CW: Enbyphobia, Transphobia, Racism]
To help you feel far less alone because I seldom feel that this actually gets addressed myself, I will actually 100% agree with you and say that I do feel anxiety around “man-hating” stuff myself, even though I definitely do understand where it’s coming from, and I’ve even engaged in it. It makes me feel anxiety as a transfeminine person, and it doubly makes me feel anxiety as a non-binary person because I feel that non-binary people are even more frequently interpreted as just being a “quirky” version of their assigned sex at birth.
In addition, the fact that I’m black makes this even more of a worry because “man-hating” talk has legitimately been used by white feminists to harm men of color. Since I am a black non-binary person who was assigned male at birth, I can’t expect most feminists to actually care about me because mainstream feminism is extremely liberal, toxic, and non-intersectional.
Not only that, but I’ve had legitimately horrid experiences with scratched liberals who have misgendered me while knowing that I’m transfeminine. It’s a long story, but in doing so, these people literally asserted that me being assigned male at birth means that I have “male privilege,” which fundamentally undermines all of the horrid shit I’ve had to go through, including losing my family and constant joblessness, as a result of being a trans person of color. They also flat-out called me a “male,” and they claimed that this is not misgendering because they fell back on the deeply unserious “male is for sex and man is for gender” shit.
I also feel like, even on Hexbear, too much loose “man hate” can eventually dip into problematic shit, like how we ended up having people express support for 4B until they found out that 4B is chuddy, racist, and transphobic. That was quite an issue. Even if 4B were not racist and transphobic, which no female separatist movement is to be honest because these things are inherent to female separatism, female separatism is an inherently undialectical and unhelpful approach to handling patriarchy, so that is another reason why the support for 4B was a major red flag to me.
People on Hexbear, especially the crackers here, I’d assume, are likely far less cynical than me. When you’re like me, you’re far more bound to frequently have thoughts in the back of your head as to whether or not the support that someone is offering you is performative or not.
Essentialism should always be unequivocally rejected, but even on Hexbear, it’s hard for me to get that vibe unless people flat-out make clear that they are actually rejecting it. In a lot of this discourse about hating men, it’s seldom communicated, as if it should be just assumed and as if “male hate” is never used against transfeminine people.
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I honestly think its a contributing factor to why there are less transmasc comrades here,
I sincerely hope not, love our transmasc comrades, but if so I guess here’s the first active fight against it. Hoping there won’t be too much fighting as I continue to read and slander this book honestly.
Very good that you looked into the original’s sources and the weird terf shit, and yes the new one removes those. Its a weird fucking movement and rethoric and it disguises itself behind terms and concepts, and the whole time terfs and tirfs stir shit up and try to split communities further, its good to tread carefully.
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this is wild wtf. maybe the internet was a mistake… this borders on feeling like some kind of op to mislead and fragment the young queer community. cynical isn’t a strong enough word.
Babe wake up, new cointelpro just dropped!!
To be real though probably 50% of tumblr posts felt like that
lmao. yeah, i was always just a tumblr orbiter never really waded in or even had an account back in the day, but i have developed that impression over the years. you’re gonna find dogshit takes wherever you go online i guess and some site algorithms just reward being really incendiary/“controversial”. think twitter is def like this too.
I actually did have a tumblr account, it is more vicious than reddit or twitter. People are out for blood literally 24/7 on tumblr, that’s actually how I know about this to start with - a random user screaming at me!
I’m honestly convinced its mostly built and spread by terfs and tirfs in the background, its classic terf op, and at the same time they split the trans communities and encourage harassment or transmascs, enbies, intersex, etc… comrades, they also have some other rethoric to try and reach them. They push transmascs away then whisper their terf “you see? They hate you!” Poison in their ears.
What’s a tirf? Haven’t come across the term before, but i’m expecting the worst.
Trans inclusive radical feminism, as in a trans terf, and yes they exist, yes it’s fucked.
they fr reinvented every bad feminist idea fron the last 50 years, but for trans womenive been encountering it / thinking about it lately. would really appreciate an effort post
Please do, I’ll read the hell out of that post. I hadn’t seen it on the bearsite so foolishly I figured it may be safe to post…
Good post!!
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I do agree that Serano’s work is generally mired in exorsexist assumptions, yes, but I don’t actually have that much of an issue with the passage you quote? While the phrase ‘binary phobia’ is obviously absurd, I have myself met people who genuinely believed that being non-binary was somehow superior to or more enlightened than having a binary gender. It might be less common now than it was when I first started transitioning about 8 years ago, but this is absolutely a current of thought that exists within the trans community, largely, in my experience, among TME non-binary people.
I myself used to hold this view, in fact! It was something that was directed at me a lot early in my transition, and I internalized the idea that ‘binary trans women’ (and it was always trans women, nobody ever directed this shit at trans men in my experience) were somehow ‘reinforcing the binary’ and were ultimately obstacles to the cause of ‘gender abolition’. Being a trans woman myself, internalizing this idea did me a lot of harm - it took me 7 years to actually start presenting femininely because of it, because I was so convinced that if I did so, I would be acting in an immoral manner by way of reinforcing the gender binary, and so I forced myself to present in a masculine or neutral manner even though I didn’t actually want that, and even though doing so actively mentally hurt me. Indeed, this sort of thought was likely a large contributor to the 2 years in which I de-transitioned.
The idea Serano describes here, even if her wording is awful, absolutely does exist in the trans community - I would classify it mostly as one of the forms of intracommunity transmisogyny as this sort of thought does seem to be largely directed at ‘binary trans women’ specifically. Obviously as a problem it is not at all comparable in scale to homophobia or transphobia, but it absolutely does exist - to characterize non-binary people as being privileged because of this current of thought is, however, ridiculous, yes. In actuality I would say that this stuff is just a manifestation of transmisogyny, a manifestation of the contextual privilege held by TME people within the trans community.
I have, on very rare occasions, seen the “being binary trans reinforces the oppressive forces of the gender binary” take before, so I don’t entirely doubt what you’re saying. However, at this point and from what I know, I found that internalizing the transmedicalist and truscum brainworms that plague the trans community even more harshly than this fringe you’re concerned about is what prevented me from being myself.
Gender abolitionism gets strawmanned a ton. Yes, there are TERFs who do reactionary co-opting of the concept, but most non-binary/trans people you interact with who believe in gender abolitionism are not trying to demonize those who identify with being a binary trans person.
I am transfeminine myself, so this may differ from what you have to say about “TME non-binary people,” but I find that the transmedicalist brainworms that harmed me so damn much and led me down the harshest path of internalized transphobia, as I was already facing a shitton of other kinds of discrimination and hardship, were practically evenly perpetuated by both truscummy trans men and trans women.
My problem has never been with those of binary identities; it has been with those who need to cling onto some sense of hierarchical domination, so they place enbies beneath them as a way to feel like they’re not the same brand of the “lowest of the low” in society. Enbies are even much less understood than binary trans people, so there are definitely more enbies being harmed by this kind of stuff than one would be harmed by the supposed inverse “enby supremacy” ideology you’re hinting at here.
Most people, even a lot of trans people, have not freed themselves of their binarist brainworms. The amount of times I’d chat with a trans person online who cannot anonymously pick up on my assigned sex and have them ask, “Are you MTF or FTM?” not even including NB as a possibility in this question (that they don’t even need to ask in the first place) is astronomical. Most cis people and a not so insignificant amount of binary trans people see non-binary people as an afterthought to performatively support in the back of their heads, and those who never learn how to stop the support from being performative will still have those enbyphobic brainworms that are kept alive in both trans spaces and the wider society until they get proper insight and theory into how being trans, binary or non-binary, all undermines the patriarchal, cisheteronormative system in the exact same way.
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There is a difference between the intention of the rhetoric when a TERF makes a statement along these lines and when a person who identifies as a non-binary gender abolitionist makes a statement along these lines. If you’re conflating the two, this response is redundant, as this entire discussion hinges on concerns about the latter specifically.
Regardless, it’s not acceptable to say that being binary trans is wrong, but that doesn’t mean that these two groups are arguing for that position from the exact same angle.
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She also isn’t saying it about typical TERFs because TERFs are not the ones who typically fit this archetype of being “non-binary supremacists” who have a very targeted hateboner for binary trans people specifically.
This is a highly fringe idea for anyone in the trans/non-binary community to have. The inverse, which is normalizing binarism and enbyphobia, happens way more often actually. Neither of them are fine, but me saying this is analogous to me condemning both racial essentialist black supremacism and racial essentialist white supremacism.
It’s the latter of the two that proves itself to be a more material issue that tends to genuinely cause damage to people, whereas the former is just a fringe that is rooted in toxic ideas of scientific racism but is a very rare kind of thought that doesn’t manifest into things like oppressing white people.
thank you for saying this. enbyphobia is far more prevalent these days so obviously the critique is valid… anecdotal, but I’ve seen some slightly older trans folks who came up during this time act the most virulently enbyphobic online. (especially talking shit about neos etc.) it’s the reason I had to leave the trueanon discord lol
Fully agree, and i’m also dead certain that no TERF who acts less openly transphobic towards nonbinary people would ever do this in good faith, this always comes from a point of secretly misgendering nonbinary people as a queerer version of their AGAB. No cis woman who offers “AFAB only” housing does so because she respects the gender identity of a transmasc nonbinary person, she will always do this because she sees them as nothing but a confused butch.
And the quoted passage absolutely does not refer to these TERFs, it expressly reads "I have also met some people in the transgender community who feel that identifying outside of the male/female binary is superior to, or more enlightened than, identifying within it. " (emphasis mine)
have myself met people who genuinely believed that being non-binary was somehow superior to or more enlightened than having a binary gender.
Can I ask, sincerely and genuinely, why you care?Sorry I can see now. So more pointedly, why Serano was so very miffed about just such an encounter that she felt it right to enshrine her being mad in a book? She doesn’t seem to be in your position.largely, in my experience, among TME non-binary people.
Wowee, didn’t take long for this to come out…
internalized the idea that ‘binary trans women’ (and it was always trans women, nobody ever directed this shit at trans men in my experience) were somehow ‘reinforcing the binary’ and were ultimately obstacles to the cause of ‘gender abolition’.
I’m sorry you had that experience. Anyone who has used non-binary identities in this way is a reactionary hiding behind Gender Accelerationist language as a fig leaf. Neither the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto nor the 2016 revision of Gender Outlaw support this viewpoint. See also, the “you can still be a baker” passage of the Gender Accelerationst Manifesto.
In actuality I would say that this stuff is just a manifestation of transmisogyny,
Right, I agree. It sounds unsurprisingly like reductive so-called “gender abolitionist” terfs who want to abolish gender by reducing it to assigned sex. One wonders if these people are wreckers, or indeed why “TME people” are being singled out for it.
I would say that the reason I care is fairly simple? The existence of this current of thought and it’s advocacy by the individuals I mentioned did me significant psychological harm. It is only natural that I would care given that is the case.
And yes the similarity to TERF ideology is obvious, and I am aware that the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto does not advocate for this - I don’t think the people in question were wreckers however, they had quite open public histories of having been trans for years. And I am not trying to ‘single out’ TME people - I am genuinely just describing what I saw in my experience using the most precise terms available to me, given I characterize the current of thought we are discussing as being a manifestation of transmisogyny, I thought it would be relevant to mention in this instance, that is all.
Yes, I edited that line in my reply, mistake on my part.
given I characterize the current of thought we are discussing as being a manifestation of transmisogyny, I thought it would be relevant to mention in this instance, that is all.
Terfs are also “transmisogyny exempt” strictly speaking. I tend to agree with a post I saw earlier today on the subject:
Quote
Honestly, (trans)misogynistic transmascs are a pain in the ass, but in the end they’re just incel ideologues or liberal chauvinists like any other masc person with problematic views, and the reason is largely the same, they latch onto male privilege to lord it over women. As people navigating a masc-aligned gender role, they intuitively get how to center yourself in conversations, how to silence women and how to be a petty, power-grabbing piece of shit in general, because our society provides ample role models, material and ideological incentives and culturally ingrained leeway for that. It has to to maintain patriarchal property and power relations. Trans men are men and sometimes, some of them are men in the worst ways possible, it comes with the territory when you live in a society that enables male violence in all kinds of ways.
The main difference is that they are people i run into in supposed safer spaces, but it never sat well with me to give them their own trans-specific label, i honestly don’t think these dinguses deserve it. They’re just misogynist swine like all the other misogynist swine. And i wouldn’t say that all transmasculine people are united by a shared lived experience of not experiencing what i go through, trans experiences are a bit too diverse for that. I get a feeling that there’s a neo-binarist essentialism to the TME and TMA labels, and i do not use them when calling out (trans)misogyny. I do that a lot, i had to do that with somebody in a trans space just yesterday, but i did not need to call dem TME for that. If i needed an expression for that person, i would go with transmisogynist, joyless pile of spite and insecurity, that seems more fitting than TME.
I simply disagree on that matter, then. I find TMA/TME to be very useful terms, especially when one is talking about structural transmisogyny within the trans community itself. Indeed, I find that the TMA/TME terminology’s very existence has been helpful in causing a lot more discussion about intracommunity transmisogyny, which is an issue that in the past in my experience has not been discussed at all.
In this case, I used it pretty much because I find it more concise than what the post you are quoting suggests.
They aren’t bad terms in concept, the concept of transmisogyny as Serano lays it out is pretty cool. I’ve seen the terms used as nouns too many times, though.
What makes misogyny from a trans man different from misogyny from a cis man or woman? (Aside that our comrades should be doing better, which is universal)
It’s not in any way fundamentally different - that is why TME as a term includes not just trans men, but also cis men and cis women, that is part of the point of the term.
The only manner in which it is different is that transmisogynist (or just str8 up misogynist, although this seems somewhat less common in my experience) trans men are afforded something of a shield from criticism by way of their transness. They can assert that trans women and trans men are functionally the ‘same’, that they are equally victimized in all contexts, and use that to dismiss any accusations of transmisogyny they may face because of their behavior as ‘infighting’ - pointing to the shared enemy of the cisheteropatriarchy as a way of deflecting their own problems.
This is most effective when it comes to more subtle forms of transmisogyny that may be somewhat unconscious - tendencies to talk over trans women, a quickness to cancel and ostracize them, an expectation that trans women ought to not be too ‘forceful’, even perhaps the common retort to trans women’s complaints of intracommunity transmisogyny I have seen of ‘why are we infighting we should be kissing and making out instead’, shit like that.
I have NEVER seen “TME” used for anybody cis, as you denoted it’s most useful for intercommunity things right?
are afforded something of a shield from criticism by way of their transness
You can tell, because of how vicious anti-TME “discourse” has been online… and sure trans men just use their identity and trans unity as a shield to hide their misogyny behind…
I mean again I can’t discount this, particularly here because I am not wherever you’ve presumably seen this, but my point about singling out transmasc comrades was basically dead accurate.
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Oh, and I guess to answer your edit - I have no idea why Serano was so miffed about that. I am not her, and cannot say, although it is obvious that she has some degree of exorsexist brainworms regardless of what her experiences may or may not have been.
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Wow, she really owned all those pernicious enbies… I think this framing is silly. You don’t need “binary-phobia” to rightfully bully terfs appropriating gender abolition to cover for their essentialism.
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yeah, placing it in a list alongside homophobia, transphobia and biphobia is patently ridiculous
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i mean, if this is true, this is the kind of thing i’d do too because i’m an amateur writer, but this is a supposed academic work (if only in retrospect, as i now see from that blog post you mentioned) and we need to hold ourselves and the people that recommend her to a higher standard, i think you agree largely tho from your other posts
edit: and i just want to add that IMO the point of this post was to critique a specific thing in a book that is considered a pillar of the community and make it clear that it is not perfect, and in fact, may be losing relevance in specific ways and be supplanted by newer material. i just want to say i appreciate the blog thing, but no one should have to read a blog post for an academic work before they can criticize the work
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Cool if she is secretly not enbyphobic if I read blog posts and other books, but this book is swung like a hammer at people, trans and cis otherwise. It is fertile ground for bad ideas. I also haven’t seen a sincere expression of solidarity with NB people from her, but regardless this book requires critique if we are to throw it around so easily.
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They kept enbies at Michigan Womyn’s to keep the trans women out. They were binary-phobic. This makes a ton of sense for sure.
I have never seen a non-binary person in the year of our lord and savior Karl Marx 2024 do any of the things Julia Serano mentions here.
Yes, almost as if it’s literally just terfs and not real, but Serano continues to forward a book that basically takes being wrong by Michigan Womyn’s and puts all people outside the binary on blast. To begin with this famed and beloved theory should not require a giant “WELL ACTUALLY” note, but if it does it should be included with the text. What is the value of this now? I really dig how the throughline seems to be equating nonbinary people with terfs.
I’m slightly disappointed to wake up to 800 angry replies in my inbox. I have sincerely liked your posting. It’s worthy to note again that Serano is ardently against altering the book in the least.
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Well Serano is talking about people outside the gender binary, so if that’s not what you meant than it’s more or less irrelevant to a discussion of this “binary-phobia” thing, unless you mean that she herself was uncritically conflating terfs and enbies. I’m sure she wouldn’t…
i care a lot about this writer. your criticisms are valid but
So, what’s the problem? I have not read the entire thing yet but the “subversivism” reminds me too much of Sheila Jeffreys talking about who’s allowed to do transgression. Wow… the genders that are subversive are creating their own… system of oppression? for the binary ones? bullying them?
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What, as in the bi vs pan debates from ages ago??
uses weird terf academics to validate their identity instead of proper queer theory,
I dismiss this as a nonserious assertion and type of person that doesn’t exist. Terf brainworms will either turn you into a terf or get rooted out. Regardless, this is an extremely goofy reason to target all people outside the gender binary
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I don’t truly recall everything about the worst struggle session on sexuality, but I remember a big part of it was the idea that bisexuality was “transphobic” which is a very unserious wrecker idea.
looks at the body text
So there is this woman, who uses painfully cisnormative language in her whole book, and the only mention of anyone outside the binary is to accuse them of having “gender anxiety” and doing “binary phobia”. If Serano was that mad about losing arguments or whatever online, (or irl but holy shit) (I have heard tell she got called out and was displeased) she could deal with it better.
I’m talking about really old gender theorists who simultaneously made theories of gender constructivism and then used them to do transphobia.
That’s a terf, no two ways about it. Gender theorist who does transphobia is a terf.
Radical feminists in the 1960’s accused lesbians of being “too attached to sex roles” and of “reinforcing the sex class system.” So how did lesbians respond? Well, they claimed that “woman-loving women” were actually more radical because they undermined the hetero-patriarchy. So now lesbians are superior to heterosexual women, how revolutionary!
Wow… The ingroup in society (straight people) bullied the outgroup a bit (lesbians) so now we have to bully that outgroup again for being a lil silly. Yeah, uh is this like how “black supremacy” is bad? Not very serious.
i disagree that lesbians asserting that they’re oppressed due to subverting the patriarchal norms is an example of subversivism. but that goes back to Serano just kind of being problematic sometimes too
Yeah no kidding, borderline indefensible.
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I am sincerely curious since this concept is more or less a spectre to me.
spoiler from ch 20
Have you got to the part where Julia just says non-binary people are creating their own binary?
It is sadly ironic that people who claim to be gender-fucking in the name of “shattering the gender binary,” and who criticize people whose identities fail to adequately challenge our societal notions of femaleness and maleness, cannot see that they have just created a new gender binary, one in which subversive genders are “good” and conservative genders are “bad.”
Don’t get how someone who seems to think a lot about things these could write something like that unironically…
You are telling me two things:
one, that every possible worst-case assumption I could have made about this book is true and more,
two, this fucking shitass jokebook has been paraded around and used to bully cishets withput criticism on this site? for years?
I’ve certainly got the idea that it might be a bit… uhh… “dated?”… from some people’s comments about it on here, so I don’t think its totally without criticism. But idr details.
But given the reputation, perhaps others felt like me about it, thinking maybe we’re the ones missing something given the praise it gets.
It has many praiseworthy elements I would agree, but this is basically like, the worst possible characterisation of the text is the actual truth. Blegh.
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It’s wrong. It’s not real, it’s a joke bit that conflates sex-sessentialist terf rhetoric with non-binary people and invents an “anti-white racism” for it, and is deeply unserious. This conclusion has been reached a few times in this thread already.
E: hope this comment doesn’t read as brusque
I stopped at chapter 17, jeez good thing… all non-assigned-at-birth genders are subversive, right? Wasn’t that the point of the section of the GAM about trans people being revolutionary even if they are binary-identified?
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I think it would be more comparable to getting mad about some bi people insisting everyone is bi, saying they bully you for being a lesbian throughout your book and while giving no almost no attention to bi erasure.
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i don’t see your issue with this other than the wording, i mean this is a dumb “gotcha” sort of way to put it but the sentiment is genuinely correct.
The gotcha wording is why I said I don’t get how someone could seriously write it if they’ve thought about it at all. Its about as insightful as the “you live in the society, yet you want it to change” meme that I can only believe people would say if they either have not thought about it at all OR are arguing in bad faith. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Julia that I wouldn’t give to a random internet stranger who said that and nothing else to suggest otherwise, but its still embarrassing and given the binarist bent of the language throughout the book (probably because that was the language in vogue at the time), it hardly seems like NBs and anti-binary sentiment was really as big a of a thing as portrayed (or Julia intentionally chose to use such language despite widespread alternatives without even mentioning them).
I don’t disagree with the idea that people should present how they want and not restrict themselves based on avoiding to be too conformist. OTOH, people should question if they want certain things to conform or because they genuinely want to. I get this book is written about a specific time and place that I was not part of (early 2000s California trans scene IIRC), but it doesn’t seem to describe anything I’ve actually seen at scale from trans people (maybe because this book was successful? Maybe just because of my limited exposure to such groups) But I still feel [citation needed] applies and without that I still feel like I should lump it in with the conservative stories about how they went to a coffee shop in a place like San Francisco and got beat up for being a cishet white male and no other reason. If it is just a story about a niche scene from 20 years ago, the book should still be given qualifiers about such when recommending it today.
You see this kind of thing in a very less fringe way in weird “wearing makeup is always self-enslavement actually” type takes from non-intersectional feminists.
I don’t think it never happens, but it seems most popular among TERFs. “Feminists” were separately called out and cited in the book.
I can’t help but wonder if she’s mistaking her disproportionate negative feelings towards a couple of “subversive for the sake of subversiveness” types for a more widespread nature of it. Like on the ace meme subreddit, you would regularly see people complaining about too much “sex-favorable” and too much “sex-negative” content, often on the same day. And both would seriously believe that the other experience had some extreme disproportionate influence when like 90% of the jokes were just garlic bread, dragons, spACE, and invading Denmark and had nothing to do with sex in any way; yet, I still essentially took a side despite thinking the whole argument was silly, so I’m not gonna hold it against Julia for responding to that sentiment even if it wasn’t as dominant as she seemed to portray it (I finished the book and I don’t read - I still think its a good read).
As a transfem enby, I do sometimes encounter a frustrating reification of a kind of gender binary in enby spaces.
But uh… Yeah not like this.
I feel like this was more relevant 20 years ago, when the lines of conflict were very different. There was plenty of lit I could at the time really did put forth the notion that the binary was an antiquated concept that needed to go, and that transgressing the boundary was how you broke the gender hegemony. Some people ran with this and accused binary trans people of more-or-less playing at respectability politics by attempting to appeal to mainstream sensibilities.
These days, that position is downright archaic. At the time, nonbinary people and non-passing trans people were in the same boat in terms of general acceptance, so there wasnt quite the privilege gap that there is today, and as a result, I feel like this wasn’t “kicking down” the same as it would be today.
It definitely shpuld be removed or revised though. This is an academic book, and it warrants updates that keep it in tune with the times
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There was plenty of lit I could at the time really did put forth the notion that the binary was an antiquated concept that needed to go, and that transgressing the boundary was how you broke the gender hegemony.
Like what? I like Gender Outlaw, I don’t recall Bornstein saying anything about The Binary Must Go. In fact the sort of take Serano describes sounds much closer to second-wave terfs discarding femininity as the entire problem.
At the time, nonbinary people and non-passing trans people were in the same boat in terms of general acceptance, so there wasnt quite the privilege gap that there is today, and as a result, I feel like this wasn’t “kicking down” the same as it would be today.
So did binary trans people gain privilege? Idk about this one…
When i look at things like legal gender recognition and medical gatekeeping, there have always been structural forms of discrimination specifically targeting nonbinary trans people. I wouldn’t be able to get gender affirming care covered if my insurance knew i’m nonbinary, it’s flat-out excluded from the guidelines for trans healthcare in Germany. Distinguishing between “valid” binary trans people and “not valid” nonbinary people only stopped in the ICD-11 diagnostic manual, that’s the latest edition that isn’t even implemented everywhere yet. On a legal level, there’s a total of only 18 countrys worldwide that legally recognize genders other than M and F. You can’t even enter the transit area in Dubai airport when your passport has anything other than Male or Female in it. That just happens to be the main transit hub for intercontinental flights from Europe to East Asia, Australia and Oceania. I know nonbinary people who have not yet changed their gender marker or have gone for a binary gender because of things like this. I am extremely careful which doctors i disclose to that i’m nonbinary, and usually avoid it entirely. This fortunately is easy for me because woman is an appropriate term to describe my gender (it’s just not the only one), because i use she / her pronouns exclusively and because i’m fem presenting and my gender nonconformity is not immediately visible, so i’d say i’m “binary passing” to the casual gatekeeper. But i’m in community with a lot of people put under serious distress by these things, and i’m not even getting into the whole transmedicalism thing that makes many trans communities unsafe for us or how societal attitudes differ between trans people who fit into a binarist mold somehow and trans people who visibly flaunt gender conformity.
So binary trans people actually have a lot of privilege over nonbinary ones. Some of this I knew, I only thought it was silly that, as that first comment said, this wouldn’t have qualified as “punching down” twenty years ago.
Some of this is actually startling to me though, like aside from medical gatekeeping I had no idea they’d evolved things like that in Dubai. It occurs to me suddenly that I’ve never told any medical person, state worker or whatever else that I am nonbinary and don’t really plan to.
Now that i think about it, the only people in trans healthcare i’ve outed myself to are my speech therapist, and my psychotherapist, and with the latter i only did that after i got the referral for bottom surgery that was the sole reason i saw her in the first place (fun Germany fact, our healthcare system mandates at least half a year of psychotherapy to access any gender affirming surgeries, the wait lists for trans and especially nonbinary inclusive therapists tend to be a lot longer than that, and transphobia outside of these specialists is frequently so bad i know several people who’d need therapy to recover from the trauma they got during the therapy that was forced on them to access HRT, laser and surgeries). I mean, my psychologist was extremely fine with me finding out i do not fit into the binary and immediately asked if she / her still applies or if there’s any neopronouns i’d want her to use for me instead, and i had expected that reaction because she’s always been supportive and up to date on trans issues, but being put in a situation where you are dependent on your therapist’s goodwill to fix a dysphoria trigger just puts you on edge regardless of what a nice person she is.
I’ve known a few german trans people in the distant past, saddened to see this hasn’t changed. Also
A binary trans person can be legally recognized as their proper gender, but nonbinary people mostly can’t.
Yes this is true, but I don’t think binary people gained this privilege over nonbinary people suddenly within the last 20 years. This was punching down in 2007 as well.
A non passable trans person had a steep hill to climb to get a fresh letter in 2004
And indeed they still do, no? Not that informed consent clinics and stuff haven’t become more prominent, but gatekeeping largely still exists. What Serano says was punching down in 2007 as well, regardless. I think I’ve lost track of what you’re saying.
I would argue that gatekeeping has changed a great deal in the past 20 years. It still exists but has diminished by a great degree
You really think so? I like your optimism, but things like the NHS, the psych shit AcidSmiley mentions, users here being denied diagnoses or hrt due to being autistic tell me that it isn’t that good. I think informed consent and planned parenthood are the best antidotes, and those are probably recent developments?
The entire quoted paragraph before the last two sentences would have been a perfect leadup to call out transmedicalism, an ideology which absolutely shows both gender entitlement and gender anxiety in spades. Even with the context other users have provided itt, even assuming that Serano has had actual run-ins with hostile nonbinary people and even generously assuming these people actually called her out for binary transness and not for something else, providing this example for gender anxiety within trans communities instead of identifying truscum ideology as the prevalent example for this is at the very least completely missing the mark and at worst a severe act of projecting her own gender anxiety on others.
That does not mean i am calling Serano out for being a dyed-in-the-wool transmedicalist, nothing indicates to me that she is. But the time she transitioned in means that she has spent her formative years in trans communities in an environment that only just began challenging ideas that had long been taken for granted, such as a deeply negative view of transness that was centered on suffering and pathologization, harsh passing dictates and a strong binary- and heteronormativity. That does by not mean one should not engage with texts from that chapter of trans history, but it does mean that they should be read with an awareness of such undercurrents.
Good summary of the issue, thank you. I guess the whole point of my posting this is “they should be read with an awareness of such undercurrents”. Never once seen criticism of this book (other than what bestmiaou just linked) and instead seen it thrown at people totally uncritically. It’s kind of worrying to me that hexbear has been recommending a book that contains stuff like the quoted passage (as well as “inventing a new binary haha!!!”) at clueless cis people, even.
GOOD post never read the book the worst thing I’ve heard about it is that it’s “somewhat dated” but some of this stuff is real bad and I’m glad you took the time to write up some critique! you’re so right as usual
edit i think i understand the context fairly well, but the framing is asinine even for the time and worthy of critique, of course Serano is someone i am willing to give some leeway to but this does read as enbyphobic and should be revised. i think ash has done a good job of that critique here.
I was appalled to see absolutely no critique or discussion of this anywhere on the bearsite. Thank you!
glad you took the time to do some! your effortposts are always good, encourage you to keep doing them! sorry that you got some angry replies but i think you prompted some good discussion too, always nice to see that outside of the mega especially.
I appreciate it, sincerely
I am trying to keep a lid on it but it’s infuriating to see like ten threads of the same “no it is about this secret thing that doesn’t exist promise, please ignore all the language and the entire statement” thing…I hope this will lead to more good discussion.
yeah i have to agree there was some hand wavey dismissal of how poorly (even offensively) the text comes across going on. Serano isn’t above criticism…
Do you remember the bit in Nevada where it talks about how Serano has a bunch of fans online that will come to you if you criticise her? I assumed that was a bit written by a grumpy trans lady. Not a big fan.
yeah, lol. there are definitely these like pillars of the community that some folks act like are above critique or like, constantly misinterpret good faith critique as trying to “cancel” the author or whatever. tiresome and non dialectical!
A little unserious, even. Although I will admit, I’m now compelled to delete my copies of Sexed Up and Excluded. The author herself seems unwilling to admit “yea I posted cringe” which is a huge L.
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I will defend a writer uncritically because she validated my feelings
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I have also met some people in the transgender community who feel that identifying outside of the male/female binary is superior to, or more enlightened than, identifying within it. Such people often express gender anxiety (binary- phobia?) at people who identify strongly as either female or male.
Am I the only person who read these two sentences and heard this man’s voice?
Yes… only you…
https://hexbear.net/comment/4794499
You and I actually had a short back and forth about this issue with the book a few months ago.
To be completely honest I’m still very conflicted about the entire chapter regarding subversivism.
I really feel it was a mistake for her to not at least revise this chapter to give it the cultural context it needs.
Actually thinking about it, “subversivism” reminds me almost one for one of a famous Sheila Jeffreys terf quote about “men always being privileged to do transgression” and such. Does seem that going against the status quo is very upsetting to some people.
Serano seems resistant to revising the book literally at all though, “major themes just as vital and relevant today”. Decide if “binary-phobia” is included.
Big-ish post.
Honestly good though, I was about to read this book, and with where I am in my gender questioning it would have just added to my confusion. I’m new to all of this stuff and it’s quite heavy (for my brain at least), so it’s good to be able to look over discussions of concepts. Same goes for theory discussion in the mega, it’s great for learning but it fries my brain eventually.
It is a good post and a good critique
I can still recommend reading it, at the very least parts of it. We need a Community Edition that cuts useless bullshit or something. Just tread carefully, and keep in mind that the author has quite an affection for cisnormative expressions of the gender binary, it seems.
Also thank you, I am gonna frame every order-of-lenin I get lol
I can speak for myself quite easily. I do not feel “gender anxiety” at people who identify strongly as either binary female or binary male. Unless the definition of “gender anxiety” includes being upset to be compared to a transphobe for not “picking a side.”
I don’t begrudge any trans people their binary identities if that makes them happy. I want everyone to read the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto because nothing else truly satisfied me as an explanation and resolution for the contradictions regarding gender, and I hope that it will help people to find true happiness and freedom by stepping outside societal gender expectations and setting themselves free from expectations, even if that’s just internally.
When I originally read (most of) this text, I read it before the GAM, so I didn’t know much about nb identities - I skipped over stuff like this because I didn’t understand it. But looking back now I kind of agree with you - I’m not happy to be at the butt-end of the joke and I think this is crass in something presenting itself as “theory,” especially knowing that allegedly she did read Bornstein and Feinberg.
[CW: Ramblings About Enbyphobia, Especially From Other Trans People]
I second this comment. This is pretty much my exact mood.
The Gender Accelerationist Manifesto is an incredible read for shaving off these kinds of
Having ignorance about non-binary identities and hearing people spout reactionary bullshit like stating that non-binary identity is a “white thing” or the belief that non-binary people are “cis people who pretend to be trans” literally left me so perplexed for too long. My gender dysphoria felt so damn real, and most trans people I interacted with were the Reddit kind of libs who would frequently prove themselves to be at least some degree of racist and/or enbyphobic.
I was always thinking, “I can’t be non-binary because I have dysphoria, but identifying as a trans woman just doesn’t feel right at all. Identifying as a cis man definitely doesn’t feel right either.”
These myths that try to shove non-binary people into this particular archetype, which is the very essence of enbyphobia, left me feeling like I didn’t follow enough of the “non-binary rules” to be enby. I could’ve saved myself a lot of hardship in that department if it weren’t for the binarist, cisheteronormative brainworms that still sometimes plague the trans community.
I don’t have an inherent begrudging of people who identify as binary either, but at this point, interacting with a lot of them is getting to feel the same way I do when interacting with white people or cishet people. It’s like I just have to assume they’re going to have some problematic tendencies and express them in either an implicit or explicit way at some time or another.
People call non-binary people “confused” all of the time, but I never felt like I stopped being confused about my gender until I finally and truly acknowledged that I must shove the binary away from my life.
spoiler
I wish I had more to say but I really appreciate your response, thank you for sharing!
This really does seem like a type of person Serano made up, like this is joke material for most people. I somehow doubt anyone seriously thinks that binary genders are inferior, and even if they do Serano should shut the fuck up. Your stupid binary genders have legal recognition, for fucks sake.
You do get to thinkin’ that forcing people to read the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto at gunpoint would solve a lot of problems
Near as I can tell Whipping Girl is bereft of that sort of analysis. It utterly flouts Feinberg and Bornstein, lol.deleted by creator
Hey Eel, would you be willing to find some writing from some of these asshole terf-adjacent people who claim non-binary gender for subversive reasons? I believe you (and Serano) that they existed, but I still find it hard to actually grasp, for the simple reason that I’ve never seen a terf claim anything other than the most vulgar kind of cis identity. (They don’t say it like that, of course, they say “I’m a woman because I was born female” or some such nonsense.)
So I’d be really interested to read some writing from one of these jerks, because I do have a hard time grasping how we could get from cynically claiming to be subversively non-binary to the kind of sex essentialism we see today. And I have no idea what to Google to find such writing!
But, I also don’t want to force you to spend time reading transphobic bullshit just to satisfy my curiosity, so please feel free to tell me to fuck off and find it myself, that’s a very fair response!
Terfs are not non-binary.
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teleport to 20 years ago and talk to terfs for an hour
What terfs could be saying this and be “binary-phobic” as she describes then?
This really does seem like a type of person Serano made up, like this is joke material for most people. I somehow doubt anyone seriously thinks that binary genders are inferior, and even if they do Serano should shut the fuck up.
i don’t doubt that she met somebody like that, but she should shut up regardless. it’s a vey sophomoric attitude to have like how one might think bi people or poly people are better than mono or mono people in a fit of missing the trees for the forest.
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yes. irrelevant and lacking perspective but you can probably find a few.
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i would say this is an extremely generous reading of the text bordering on misrepresentation. “people in the trans community… express gender anxiety”. it’s being put in the same category as the other things on the page. she does appear to be talking about nonbinary people. i don’t have that much trouble believing she is secretly better than this but it is an enbyphobic portion of the text and her refusal to revise it makes it doubly objectionable.
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sorry, terfs were pro-nonbinary?
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It smells like so very much nasty “THE MARGINALISED PERSON ATTACKED ME, A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETAL INGROUP!!!” not in love with it.
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110 comments
57 upbears
What’s happened here?!
Guess I’ll spend the next while reading everyone’s takes carefully and shutting my goddamn mouth
Still less comments than the Skyrim thread which is kinda sad.
That was a wild time, someone even posted it to Reddit iirc
Yeah it was an objectively terrible thing to do, even if the replies from seething ledditors were funny. Hope the karma was worth it.
Yea, that was fucked, I agree. Still, you were 100% correct there, I’ll back Skyrim bashing any day.
I hate the numbers 1 and 0 because other numbers exist
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I always try to post hard
