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.
–
*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 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.
Yea this kind of shit is what makes me really hesitant when people drop “misandry isn’t real” type takes, even if I’ve hypocritically dipped my toes into it before. Not to mention how trans women who spread this stuff are literally hurting themselves- I can’t be the only transfemme person on earth who finds people being against men as a Gender really stressful, right? I realize when I take that stuff seriously that it’s genuinely harder to take myself seriously, it makes transness feel like an attempt to “escape manhood”, whereas if I don’t think it’s something people need to “escape”, I can be more relaxed and see the actual reasons I have to transition and identify as transfemme
I do want to add that, because of course, these “baeddel” (not going to give them the courtesy of double checking spelling) people have appropriated real issues caused by high profile people and it makes me concerned because people might be drawn to repeat those out of understandable spite for these ghouls. It doesn’t help that the “baeddal” movement is in itself a repeat of these issues (Buck Angel and his squad being weird against trans-femme people, weird transmasc-“inclusive” (actually appropriating and tokenizing) TERF rhetoric) even while they cite them as examples of their ideology.
I did not point out those examples to attempt to “both-sides” the subject. Quite the opposite. I think both instances of intra-transphobia come from the same place, a place which allows the Baeddalist “movement” (hate ideology) to spread much quicker than the other examples I have: gender essentialism.
It all comes down to this idea that not only does gender predetermine everything else about someone’s life and beliefs. While it may seem like I’m advocating for a response to some sort of “reverse sexism”, I don’t think gender essentialism comes from “evil man hating feminists”. It is an inherently misogynistic inclination- You will notice the opinions taken by both “baeddalites” and the people I mentioned assume a simplistic moral duality of “always evil men” and “always good women”, based on this idea that women are inherently weak and harmless. Then you get people like Buck Angel implicitly misgendering himself as the “innocent assigned sex” so he can get clout, something I doubt any trans person in general would do without the worst of brainworms, such as himself. “Baeddalism” has probably spread a lot because it’s fundamentally easier for its proponents to subscribe to without misgendering themselves, and so it’s a perfect storm of unhinged social-scabs shitting on trans-masc people because their flawed ideological position allows them to spread this hate in complete comfort.
In short, the “reverse red pill” of assuming all men are inherently evil and its consequences
. Yes, it makes sense to be scared of a group of people who may have harmed you. And I know many women have been harmed by men. But the lack of revolutionary imagination- The belief that there simply cannot be a man who does not want to hurt people, or that it is impossible to change the systems around us to stop producing evil people- Is unforgivable. It’s 50% of the population, and the fact many of them do bad things is a result of the ghoul-factory that is patriarchy+capitalism.
Oh and it’s of course pretty absurd to assume the same factory would somehow immediately adapt itself to make trans men evil too. Bad people are made from bad social spaces, not bad genes or identities. And most trans-masc people are in good social spaces, very queer ones (see the adage about trans men always hosting queer groups in person), so it seems reasonable to assume trans-masculine people are actually actively good on average. But of course nobody who has internalized gender essentialism can reach that conclusion.
Sorry if this was a bigger comment than is reasonable for a discussion about people who probably don’t deserve this much attention, but I want to make sure you feel validated here, it pisses me off
when people are made to feel they’re bad because of these overarching social ideologies that are actually directly oppressing them. If any of the things I mentioned or said made you feel worse please tell me off or just comment on it, it is not my intention and I embrace all my trans masc comrades
[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.