Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
Publisher: Seal Press
Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1580056229
ISBN 13: 978-1580056229
Serano's well-honed arguments stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender. In this provocative manifesto, she exposes how deep-rooted the cultural belief is that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive, and how this feminine” weakness exists only to attract and appease male desire.
In addition to debunking popular misconceptions about transsexuality, Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activists must work to embrace and empower femininityin all of its wondrous forms.
Review
“It's official: Whipping Girl is a 21st century feminist classic. It's also a gift to a culture (still) struggling to face its own misogyny. Serano's writing is clear, gracious, and incredibly illuminating.”
—Jennifer Baumgardner
"Serano's thinking continues to challenge and delight—Whipping Girl is a foundational text that will prove to be timeless.”
—Jessica Valenti
"Having only just come out as Transgender, I was taken by a friend to a bookstore and told to buy Whipping Girl immediately. As I read, the revelation dawned on me that experiencing my gender could be full of self-empowerment and liberation as opposed to the fear and shame I had already spent a lifetime living with. Not only was this book a light in the dark for someone jumping head-first into transition, it also served as an essential tool to pass on to family and friends to help them to better understand what it means to be Trans. I'm forever thankful for this book and its author.”
—Laura Jane Grace
“Serano takes to task those who categorize “femininity” as artificial rather than a natural gender expression. Her convincing analysis and personal revelations challenge us to recognize our own sexist notions.”
—Ms. Magazine
"Julia Serano offers a perspective sorely needed, but up until now rarely heard." —Bitch Magazine
"An absorbing and essential achievement in both theory and biography.” —Washington City Paper
"Whipping Girl critiques media depictions of trans people, dismantles science's longtime characterization of transsexuality as pathology, and offers a whip-smart vision of a world that celebrates sexual difference.” —AlterNet
"Julia Serano is a careful and astute critic of the ways that trans women have been stereotyped and dismissed in popular culture, feminism, and psychology, and she repeatedly surprised me with her razor-sharp observations of the pervasive hatred of trans women and all differently gendered people. This is an important text for gender studies classes, as well as for therapists, journalists, and anybody who'd like to keep updated as a sex radical.”
—Patrick Califia, author of Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism
"Julia Serano is the wise, acerbic brain at the center of the transgender movement. The original edition of Whipping Girl forever connected trans theory to feminism and queer studies; this new edition updates that work as well as providing a compelling new preface that reflects the movement's enormous progress as well as the progress that remains to be made. Julia Serano is more than a brilliant writer and theorist; she's also a tremendously compassionate, humane woman whose work has enlarged the lives of all her readers. Urgent, contentious, generous, and brilliant.”
—Jennifer Finney Boylan, Author of She's Not There, and Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University
"Julia Serano did not invent transfeminism, but she's done more to promote its ideas and demonstrate its necessity than any other writer. Her analysis of the misogyny at the root of transphobia is vital. This book should be taught in every introduction to gender and women's studies class in the country—read it, teach it, learn from it, and act on it."
—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History and Director, University of Arizona Institute for LGBT Studies
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Praise for the first edition:
"Seminal." —Variety
About the Author
Julia Serano is a highly regarded writer and thinker on the subjects of gender, feminism, and LGBTQ issues. She is best known for her 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, which garnered rave reviews-The Advocate placed it on their list of "Best Non-Fiction Transgender Books," and readers of Ms. Magazine ranked it #16 on their list of the "100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time." Julia's writings have also appeared in numerous anthologies; in feminist, queer, and progressive magazines and websites (including Bitch Magazine, Out, AlterNet.org, Ms. Magazine blog, and Feministing.com); and are regularly used as teaching materials in gender studies, queer studies, psychology, and human sexuality courses in colleges across North America.
Julia's background as a writer, performer, activist, and biologist (she has a PhD in biochemistry from Columbia University) makes her a unique voice on the subjects of gender and sexism. She has the rare gift of being able to present complex ideas from feminism and gender/queer theory, and to interweave them with her personal experiences as a bisexual trans woman, in a clear, compelling, and entertaining manner.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Similarly, when I was writing this book, I saw myself as an outsider who was rallying against the powers that be in the hope that people would start to take trans women’s concerns seriously. But now, a decade later, Whipping Girl is often used as teaching materials in classrooms, and it is sometimes deemed to be an “authoritative” text about trans people. Knowing this now, I fear that the frequent forefronting of my own personal experiences, and the specific focus on transsexuals and trans female/feminine people may give some readers a skewed view of gender-variant communities and issues. For example, Whipping Girl does not provide similar in-depth discussions about the issues and experiences of intersex people, non-binary-identified and two-spirit people, trans male/masculine-spectrum people, straight-identified trans people, trans people of color and other cultures, and so on. Additionally, increasing numbers of trans children are socially transitioning prior to adulthood (which was still rare back when I was writing this book), and their perspectives will no doubt differ significantly from trans people (such as myself) who have not had that experience. So I encourage readers to view Whipping Girl, not as “the definitive book” about trans people and issues, but rather as one trans perspective among many, all of which should be explored in greater detail.
While I believe that it is important to recognize and accommodate the many differences that exist among gender variant people, I also think that it is vital that we try to understand and work together with one another rather than view ourselves as opposing factions, or as existing at differing hierarchical positions. I feel the need to stress this because, in the years since Whipping Girl was published, transgender activism has increasingly moved away from the broad goals of “shattering the gender binary” and eliminating all gender norms (which would benefit all of us), and more toward an identity politics approach focused primarily on the concerns of trans people. And unfortunately, “trans people” is increasingly used in a manner that is synonymous with “transsexuals-only.” And the cis/trans distinction—which I forwarded here primarily to talk about double standards in how people’s genders are perceived, interpreted, and treated—is now sometimes used to promote a unilateral “cis people are the oppressors, and trans people the oppressed, end of story” narrative. I have discussed the many problems that I see with these trends in my 2014 two-part essay series “Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited.”18
Cissexism and trans-misogyny are pervasive problems in our society, and we most certainly should be focusing on them. But we should also recognize that they are both offshoots of much larger systemic forces—oppositional and traditional sexism—that to varying degrees impact everybody. And oppositional and traditional sexism are but two among a multitude of different forms of marginalization, and we should be working together to end all of them. Throughout Part 2 of my second book Excluded, I offer numerous strategies that I believe can help us challenge all forms of sexism and marginalization without erasing or ignoring any specific group’s experiences and issues in the process.
What follows is the book as it was originally written, albeit with a few small clarifying changes and corrections. After much deliberation, I have decided not to change any of the trans-related terminology that I used in the first edition, for the following reasons. In recent years, I have written extensively about a phenomenon that I call the Activist Language Merry-Go-Round—briefly stated, because trans people are highly stigmatized and face undue scrutiny in our culture, all of the language associated with us will also eventually face similar stigma and scrutiny.19 So even if I did try to update the original language, whatever supposedly new and fresh terms I might choose today in 2015 would probably be viewed as outdated or problematic (for some reason or another) within a few short years. Besides, all of the trans-related terms that I routinely use here (aside from words like “effemimania” or “subconscious sex,” which I coined in the process of writing this book) have long histories of being used in a positive or neutral manner, despite recent or occasional objections to the contrary. For readers who have questions or concerns regarding my use of language and/or specific terms, I have probably addressed them in one of my many transgender terminology follow-up pieces.20
Finally, on a personal note: When I was first working on this project, I remember explicitly thinking to myself that I was trying to write the book that I wish that I had had as a teenager or young adult—one that would help me make sense of both my inexplicable feelings that I should be female rather than male, as well as the conflicting societal messages that were constantly telling me “boys are better than girls” and “women are only good for one thing.” Given this, I am immensely grateful to have heard from many trans women and trans feminine people in subsequent years that Whipping Girl was that book for them. And quite honestly, I am astounded (in the best possible sense) that a book whose primary goal was explaining and empowering trans female/feminine perspectives has found praise and appreciation from so many readers who have not had that experience themselves.