Most readers will be familiar with the description of a transsexual woman as a “woman trapped in a man’s body.” In Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Feminism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Julia Serano suggests this turn of phrase is a reductivist cliché aimed at making transsexuality easily understood by a non-trans public, then proceeds to methodically debunk every myth, stereotype and sensationalist portrayal of trans women with extraordinary detail, patience and wit.
She offers her own experiences of the gender spectrum as a male cross-dresser, a bi-gender queer boy while transitioning from male to female and finally, as a trans woman. Each one of Serano’s sharp observations is an antidote for the hollow portrayals of transsexuality and trans women forwarded by the media, academia, medical establishment and even from within feminist and queer communities.
The experiences she recounts are shocking. During a question-and-answer session following a reading of a piece about the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, Serano was asked whether she had electrolysis done on her face. She experienced a flood of misogyny when she began to transition from male to female, and near strangers asked insatiable questions about sex reassignment surgery and the status of her genitals.
To this she asks: “What drives… otherwise well-meaning people to want to know about the physical aspects of my transition so badly that they are willing to disregard common courtesy and discretion?”
Much of the book’s first section, “Trans/Gender Theory,” forces the cissexual (non-transgender) reader to question their own interest in what is arguably the most mainstream depiction of the transsexual experience: transitioning from one sex to the other. She takes aim at several movies, television shows and documentaries that appropriate and distort the experiences of being transsexual into dramatic stories that are created primarily for heterosexual and cissexual audiences to gawk over. The ways that transsexuals are depicted “frame transsexuality in terms of non-trans people’s assumptions and interests,” she says. The media almost exclusively focuses on trans women who get “sex change operations” complete with dramatic before and after pictures, makeup sessions, hyper-feminine styling and, of course, the big reveals. Serano counters that “many of these depictions are sensationalizing, sexualizing and/or outright hostile,” and proves with her own experiences and research that the perspectives of the trans people onscreen are almost always overlooked by these types of narratives. “Transitioning from one sex to another is not simply an interesting anecdote; it is a gruelling, tumultuous experience that turns a person’s life upside down, that often causes people to lose their family, friends and jobs.” Not to mention the fact that trans people struggle to access medical care and the very procedures that are so fetishized on television — despite the fact that millions of North Americans get non-essential plastic surgery to enhance their breasts, faces and genitals every year.
Her insights shed light on how misogyny and transphobia (sometimes called trans-misogyny) impact the lives of both gender-variant people and non-trans people. She suggests that the consistently degrading treatment of trans women should be read as an indicator for the level of sexism and gender-based discrimination that still exists in our culture. Still, many feminists refuse to acknowledge the common goals of feminism and trans activism, instead focusing on their differences. In one infamous example, the Michigan Womyn’s Festival has enforced their policy of excluding trans women for more than 30 years. Serano puts forward productive ideas and challenges to community organizations with trans-exclusionist policies and takes aim at the queer and feminist communities (not to mention society at large) for our failures to value femininity and feminine gender expressions.
She’s daringly skeptical of the well-tread positions that all gender is artificial, based on an individual’s socialization, and that whether we’re conscious of it or not, that gender expression is essentially a “performance.” There’s no doubt here that Serano is informed by her career as a biologist, and her ideas about how our experience of gender blends biology and socialization is a smart, middle-of-the-road argument that reconciles this often heated debate for a trans context. Her bold new ways of thinking about gender are valuable from every perspective — for trans and queer activists, gender studies aficionados, community service providers, as well as those who are simply interested in developing more well-rounded ideas about gender and femininity.
In addition to her newly published Whipping Girl, Serano maintains a sizable presence on the Internet and in her local performance art and spoken word communities. More of her writing as well as resources for trans people and their allies can be found at www.switchhitter.net and www.juliaserano.com.
