WEBVTT - Whipping Girl, The Book That Changed Everything ft. Dr. Julia Serano 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.920 Al Zone Media. 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:07.400 Welcome to dick It app and here, a podcast about 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:09.960 things falling apart and putting it back together again. I'm 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:15.320 Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison, and it is my singular 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.400 honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, doctor Julia Serrano. 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.560 She is the author of many books, including Excluded, Making 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.240 Feminists and queer Movements More Inclusive, Sex Stop, How Society 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.560 Sexualizes Us and how we can fight back, Outspoken, a 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:34.120 Decade of transgender activism and Transfeminism, and most famously, Whipping Girl, 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.320 a new edition of which is coming out in March. 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:38.000 Doctor Serrano, Welcome to the show. 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:40.680 Hi, thanks for having me. 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.320 I'm really really I'm really happy you can join us. 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:51.160 So okay. Whipping Girl, I think is really the one 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.840 of quietly the most influential books of the twenty first century, 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.800 to the extent that in kind of classic trans woman fashion, 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:00.560 I don't think I don't think people realized that the 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:04.280 ideas that it introduced have an origin. So for people 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.160 who haven't read the book, and you should, this book 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.680 is great. I guarantee you have seen its influence. If 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:12.760 you've ever heard someone like who's not trans referred to 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.920 as sis, like, that's that's from this book. The concept 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:20.600 of misgendering is also from this book. The word trans 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:26.040 misogyny like also from this book. And this I think 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:31.080 gets at something from the twenty fifteen second edition preface 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.479 that you wrote, which is something I've been wondering about, 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.880 is what is it like to sort of experience writing 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:40.319 a book and have it just like ripple across society 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:40.600 like this. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:42.560 Yeah, it's uh. 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.000 I was very much hoping, and you know, as I 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:47.920 was writing it, I was hoping that I thought that 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.320 it would resonate with a lot of trans female and 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:56.080 transfeminine people, and I hope trans communities more generally, and 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:58.400 the book. This is something that a lot of times 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:00.880 people who pick up the book now, like the twenty 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:04.840 twenties don't necessarily realize, is that nobody was reading anything 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:11.200 about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ plus communities, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.600 and so I was basically just speaking to those groups, 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.799 and I thought it would resonate with some people. But yeah, 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.320 definitely it kind of went out into the world and 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:24.640 did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't necessarily expecting. 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.880 And I'm very glad that the book has kind of 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.400 touched a lot of people's lives and changed, you know, 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:37.600 kind of societal understanding and quote unquote discourses about trans people. 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.079 So yeah, it must be kind of bizarre, like being 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.640 twenty years ago writing about you know, caniche term like 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.800 sis and now the richest man in the world thinks 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:51.919 it's like the most evil word. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.360 Yeah, it's quite bizarre, and I do want to definitely 0:02:57.480 --> 0:02:58.960 kind of clear this up, but I kind of make 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.720 this clear in the preface. So I didn't invet like 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.080 sis versus trans like a that's like a prefix that 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:09.040 has existed a long time. And I've since seen other 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.680 people like point out, oh, this person was using it 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:18.360 in nineteen ninety something, or some German writer like coined 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.880 cis vestism or something like back a million years ago. 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.160 So what I will say is that when I when 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:25.240 I put out the book, I was. 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.000 Inspired by Emi Koyama, who was and is an awesome 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:33.600 activist intersex activists who's written a lot of really influential 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:38.080 trans related essays over the years, And it was from 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.920 her blog post that was the first time I saw 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.400 sis and trans and the idea of cis sexism. And 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:46.480 at the time it was while I was writing the book, 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.240 and it really I was like, oh my god, this 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.480 is kind of the overall idea. I was talking about 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:55.360 all these different facets of basically double standards between trans 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.120 and non trans people, and so I kind of grabbed 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:00.840 on to it, and I was really worried about it 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.200 actually because nobody, almost nobody was using those terms. It 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.800 was very niche at the time, and so the book 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.440 popularized that language. And so now it is kind of 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:16.640 funny every once in a while seeing yes overreactions by 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.880 SIS people to the idea of of SIS being a 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.280 slur or whatever. So yeah, and so yeah, so that's 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.479 definitely something that is kind of is the one thing 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:28.960 I one thing I did coin in the book that 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.440 has kind of also taken a life on its own 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.360 is trans misogyny. So that is something that kind of 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:38.359 originated with this book and particularly a chap book that 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.599 I wrote in two thousand and five that some of those. 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:43.440 Essays became chapters of the book. 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:45.719 And yeah, and so there are other ideas that kind 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:47.920 of are out there, Like I think it was one 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.080 of the first. I think it was the first book 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:52.920 to talk about like the idea of SIS privilege. I 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.039 misgendering is an idea was out there, but I kind 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.600 of dove into it a little bit deeper. So yeah, 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:01.560 so they're definitely things I was doing at the time 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:05.960 that I didn't know whether they'd be to abstract or 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.280 how they'd be taken up, and so, yes, it's been 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:08.960 very interesting. 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.080 Yeah, I wanted to talk about misgendering a bit because 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.599 I think it's become this word that just means not 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:20.000 saying someone's pronouns correctly, and I think that's, at the 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:25.320 very best, like an incredibly reductionist and simplified version of 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.160 the analysis that you were presenting. So I guess I 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:30.560 have two questions here. One can you briefly sort of 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.080 talk about what you were trying to get at when 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.760 you sort of did your analysis of the process of gendering? 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.520 And two, what do you think about the way that 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.240 it's kind of become flattened into this I don't know, 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.960 kind of weirdly narrow thing in modern discourse. 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:52.839 Sure, and a lot of the misgendering definitely dovetails with 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.039 the idea of passing, and a lot of my kind 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.040 of diving into it in a particular way I came 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:02.279 from critiques that I had other trans people had as well, 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.039 but I kind of you know, put them together in 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.520 a particularly in the Dismantling I think it's dismantling Sexual 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:12.200 Privileged chapter where I kind of go through all these 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.719 steps that lead to miss gendering, because I think people 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.720 talk about trans people passing and also the people will 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.679 talk about other marginalized groups passing is whatever dominant majority group. 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:28.280 The term obviously had long been used with regards to 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.560 people of color passing as white and in kind of 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:36.240 white racist you know, us and other societies. So it's 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:38.680 an old term, and a big problem with it is 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.200 that it makes it sound like we're doing something active, 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.400 that trans people are actively trying to deceive other people, 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:50.760 with huge scare quotes around the word deceive. And I 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.159 really wanted to highlight to people that actually all of 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:59.640 us very unconsciously and very compulsively gender every single person 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.720 we meet, or at least that's how we're socialized to be, 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:05.520 and you know, you can work towards getting, you know, 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:10.440 overcoming that, but I wanted to really highlight the fact 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:13.720 that we see people, we automatically gender them, and that 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:19.080 puts people who do not quite who your presumptions are 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.400 wrong about it puts us in difficult situations. 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:24.000 It's a double bind. 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.400 Where do you reveal what you supposedly really are or 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.480 do you just allow people to read you that way? 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.440 And it works out very differently, for instance, between trans 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.400 and say cis gay people, because when cis gay people 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.040 talk about passing is straight. Their passing is something that 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:45.840 they know that they are not. Whereas for a lot 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:47.880 of trans people, if people read me as a woman 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.280 and I understand myself to be a woman, there's it's 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:54.560 a very different dynamic because it's not like I'm not 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.800 hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm really passing 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:03.000 as is I'm passing assist and people are assuming I'm 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.720 this gender when the trans is the thing that I 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.280 might need to or feel like I need to clear up, 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.640 or other people might put pressure on me to either 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:19.200 tell them that I'm trans or be accused of deceiving them. 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.960 So that's a little bit of kind of how I 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.000 was approaching it when I started working on that idea 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:28.600 and really stressing the idea of you can't understand miss 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.840 gendering unless you understand that we make assumptions all the time. 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:37.920 We gender people very actively, and you know, so trans 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:42.080 people are often just reacting to that and dealing with 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:42.880 that double bind. 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.760 Yeah, and this is something that I think is interestingly 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:52.720 discussed in the book about like kind of this this 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.319 issue with some of the sort of prevailing gender theories 0:08:56.360 --> 0:09:00.439 which thought of which think about sort of like Naitian 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.360 gender is pure performance. But you know, and this is 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:06.000 I think, like the argument that you were making that 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:08.920 I think is really interesting is that something that I 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.640 think is is very obvious to trans people is that 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.520 so much of gender is how people perceive you and 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:17.320 how you know and stuff that like you don't have 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.480 any control over. It's how people sort of gender you. 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:24.760 It's how people like construct a gender around you in 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:26.960 ways that you don't really have control over. 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:32.120 M Yeah, and that was a big thing. So in 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.440 kind of I was writing the book in the mid 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:40.920 two thousands, and so the nineteen nineties is when Judith 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.600 Butler publishes Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.760 performance are all genders drag, Yeah, but that is but 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.800 that those are like slogans or sound bites that other 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.839 people took from their book, right, and they were very 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.199 popular at the time. There's also there's a famous sociological 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.720 article about doing gender, and so people were very focused 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:09.880 on the way in which we create gender by doing 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.960 it particular ways, and a lot of the slogans within 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:18.040 trans communities were sort of like, oh, well, you know, 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.559 I just have to do my gender differently, like more transgressively, 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.600 and that will like tear down all of gender. And 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.080 I felt that there was you know, that is an 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:31.360 aspect of things, and most of us, whether trans or cists, 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:36.520 most of us have had the experience of maybe trying to. 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:38.280 Perform our genders in a particular way in. 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.120 Order to like, you know, not you know, in order 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:44.880 in order to get by in the world, in order 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.240 to not be harassed by other people. 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:49.480 So we've all had that experience. 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.720 So while that's true, there's the other partner of that dance, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:58.520 and that's perception, and we're all perceiving people very actively, 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.080 and we're like projecting our ideas and meanings onto them. 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:04.480 And I felt like that was being under discussed at 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.920 the time, and that was not only a huge part 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.280 of Whipping Girl, but that's become a part of a 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.040 lot of my other books, like including my most recent book, 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.000 Sextup how society sexualizes us. 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:18.920 And how we can fight back. 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.280 One way that I would describe that book is it's 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.720 talking about sex and sexuality not from what people do, 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:31.800 but from how we perceive and interpret sex and sexuality, 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.800 because there are a lot of unconscious ideas, often really 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.079 horrible ideas, really hierarchical ideas that are kind of built 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.880 into the way we view the world. And interrogating that 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.160 and so, yeah, that was a very big part of 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:48.000 both Whopen Girl and then my writings since then. 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:51.840 Yeah, and I think I think that is something where 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.480 things have gotten better in terms of in terms of 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.440 how we think about gender, which I don't know, like 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.280 things aren't perfect, but it definitely it definitely improved things 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:06.199 a lot. Agreed, we're going to take an ad break 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:21.959 and when we come back, we're talking trans misogyny. We're back. Yeah. 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.800 So another thing I wanted to sort of talk about 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.920 was I think, in like exactly the opposite process that 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:33.440 happened to misgendering, trans misogyny has become a lot more 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:40.120 expansive than your original sort of kind of narrow conception 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.320 of it. And I think this has been changing a lot, 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.680 especially in the last about half decade or so. So 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:48.480 I was wondering what you think about the way that 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:50.480 this concept has kind of taken on a life of 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.040 its own in recent years and what it's been doing since. 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:55.360 Yeah. 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.200 So I feel like trans misogyny that there are a 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:04.240 lot of different dialogues and discourses about it coming, like 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.360 people coming from different perspectives with it, and some people 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.319 feeling like the word is doing things that I never 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:14.120 suggested it was doing. 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:15.400 It's kind of. 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:17.320 Hard to know like where to actually come in on this, 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:21.720 but for me, when I was first writing about it, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.840 I was first just noticing that a lot of the 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.640 quote unquote transphobia that I was facing when people know 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.640 as a trans woman was actually a lot of it 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.600 was just misogyny, and a lot of it targeted like 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:41.400 kind of my femininity rather than my transness, And so 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.520 I wanted to write about that, and kind of the 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:49.400 way that I framed it in the book was, which 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:51.600 I think is a really useful kind of model for 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.600 thinking about it, is that there most of the types 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.920 of sexism that feminists have described over the many years 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.000 fall into two sort of camps, one of them being 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.520 oppositional sexism, which is the idea that men and women 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:10.280 are kind of perfectly opposite, mutually exclusive sexes that have 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:14.200 different interests and attributes and desires, and so a lot 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.560 of transphobia and homophobia are kind of like built into 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:21.080 this idea that men and women are completely distinct. And 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.400 then the other one is traditional sexism, which is the 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:28.080 idea that femalists and femininity are less legitimate than malness 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:34.080 and masculinity. And a lot of CIS feminists have kind 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.240 of viewed all of that as just sexism, right, But 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:39.800 when you break it down like that, it makes it 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:41.920 clear that the double bind that a lot of feminists 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:45.600 have talked about is actually kind of these two different 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:51.440 forms of sexism. So if a CIS woman acts appropriately femininely, 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.520 so appropriate with scare quotes. If a SIST woman acts femininely, 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:00.560 she'll be seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.320 femininity is dismissed in our culture, So that's the way 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.560 that she'll be delegitimized. Whereas if she acts in ways 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.280 that are coded as masculine, and if she acts assertive 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.880 or aggressive, then people will malign her for being kind 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.800 of a barrant or deviant, right, And so oppositional sexism 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.640 helps keep traditional sexism in place because you can say 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:28.040 that malness and masculinity or superior. But that only works 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.360 if you can also make a clear distinction between you know, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.760 those people and people are female and feminine, and so 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.320 I think this plays out differently. And I want to 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:41.080 be really clear about this, because some people have interpreted 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.480 trans misogyny to mean that trans mail and trans masculine 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.040 people don't experience misogyny, which is something I have never said. 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:53.400 And obviously the fact that oppositional sexism is a form 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:58.400 of sexism, and obviously trans maild transmasculine people experience that. 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:00.480 But also depending upon on how. 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.800 You're viewed by other people, I feel like the same 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.840 double pind that affects this woman affects transmeild. 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:08.800 Trans masculine people differently. 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.360 Where there's this tendency, like in a lot of anti 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:18.760 trans discourses to dismiss trans masculine, especially transmasculine youth as 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.600 being merely girls quote unquote who are like you know, 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:27.800 misled or seduced by gender ideology, right, And there's a 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:32.680 lot of real anti feminine and anti misogynistic ideas in there. 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:37.320 In addition to the fact that it misgenders transmeild trans 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:41.720 masculine people. And then if trans maild trans masculine people, 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:48.800 when they experience transphobia, there's often you know, like they're 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.160 seen as deviant for kind of breaking that role, but 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:59.000 often the malness or their masculinity themselves are not, you know, 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.760 denigrated in the same way, because being male, being masculine 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.240 are seen as good in our culture. It's just that 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.160 if you trans male, trans masculine, it's like, well, you're 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:11.639 quote unquote just a woman, so you can't do it. 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.040 So I think it plays out in this very complex 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:17.320 way for a lot of trans mail trans masculine people, 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:23.960 I think for trans female and transfeminine people, because our 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.720 crossing of oppositional sexism also involves us kind of moving 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:32.439 towards the female towards the feminine, that there's kind of 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.720 those two forces intersect in a way so that it's 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.080 like exacerbated. And some of the ways I talk about 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.399 this in whomen Girl is that, well, we live in 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.520 a world where masculinity is seen as natural and femininity 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.359 is seen as artificial, and since trans people are also 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.200 seen as artificial compared to this gender people, a lot 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:56.560 of times we're viewed as doubly artificial. Furthermore, the idea 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:01.040 that like women are seen as sex objects, men aren't 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:06.280 seen as sex objects. Often are transitions or gender transgressions 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.439 towards a female towards a feminine are presumed to be 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.360 driven by sexual motives that can play out in all 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.320 sorts of ways. Whether this is the idea that we're 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:19.159 like hypersexual or promiscuous, or that we want to be 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.320 sexualized by other people, or you can see it a 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:26.359 lot with the kind of the transgender predator is often 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.240 coded as like a man who either has some kind 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:34.679 of fetish or perversion or is just literally deceiving people 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.160 to get into women's restrooms to do something horrific. 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:40.720 So those are some of the ways that it plays out. 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:42.480 I feel that. 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.160 Sometimes people view it in a cut or dried way 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:51.040 that either they'll assume that trans misogyny means that transnal, 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.320 trans massacuine people don't experience misogyny, which again is not 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.560 what that's about. Or sometimes people will try to make 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:03.359 really clear distinctions. There's kind of language like trans misogyny 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:09.160 affected versus trans misogyny exempt. Are the terms yeah, TME 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.480 and TMA, which are not terms I've used and which 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:14.879 or that I didn't coin them. 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:15.920 They're not in the book. 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.640 And I think that when I first saw that language, 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.399 and I've seen people use it in a way that 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.399 appreciates the fact that some people are non binary, so 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.720 it's a non identity based way. Sometimes this can play 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.879 out in a really cut or dried sort of manner 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:40.399 that you know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended this 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:42.399 way or not, it can make it seem that, like, 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.000 you know, just boiling down a really complex experience, people's 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:50.520 complex experiences with different types of sexism into some people 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.879 are privileged and some people are marginalized, which I think 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:59.000 is a more general problem that happens kind of throughout 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:01.119 all social justice movement. 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.800 So yeah, and trans people are not alien to having 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.600 complex experiences be boiled down to three and four letter acronyms. 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.520 So yeah, I mean I. 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.760 Did this in Twitter form, so it was like a thread, 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.120 so like now, people can't access threads unless you. 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.080 Have an account with Twitter. And it's from a couple 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:26.600 of years ago. 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:28.679 But one of the things that I talked about was 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.280 I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.160 sis and trans is kind of a useful. Those are 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:39.040 useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between CIS and trans, 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.000 and sometimes they can be used in a way to 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:45.760 talk about different double standards, like CIS people are treated 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:47.439 one way, TRANS people are treated another. 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.000 But sometimes it can be used in like a sort. 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.600 Of reverse discourse way, where it's like, you know, SIS 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.159 people of all the privilege, TRANS people of none of 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.199 the privilege, and it can be used to kind of 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:03.480 create this strict dichotomy that ends up excluding and invisibilizing 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.679 some people's experiences. And I feel the same thing is 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.720 happening with TME and TMA. So I don't think that 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:13.360 those terms need to necessarily be like, I don't think 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.840 there's anything bad about those terms per se in and 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.879 of themselves, but I think sometimes they can be used 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:24.920 in ways. And part of why I reference this this 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.000 SYS and trans essay that I wrote many years ago. 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.480 It appears in my book Outspoken. I forget the complete 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:35.680 title right now, which is but the reason why I 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.840 bring that up is so sometimes what happens is that 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:45.440 when people learn about sexism CIS, people might be like, oh, 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.399 I face the sexism right if I'm a woman and 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.359 I don't shave my legs, I'm facing s sexism, and 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.879 so then trans people say, yeah, but it kind of 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:57.680 plays out differently for us, And so sometimes in order 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:01.160 to stop people from kind of making those claims, which 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.440 I think it is true that you know, a woman 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:06.879 not shaving their legs, or if a man decides to 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:09.480 put on a dress one day, regardless of whether they're 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:13.480 sis or trans, they could experience says sexism or transphobia, 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:17.680 but it plays out differently for people who are actually members 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:20.480 of that marginalized group. And so then the marginalized group 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.359 makes the distinction even sharper, and it just kind of 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:29.800 becomes this escalating situation where the language and kind of 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.879 battles over it become even more intense. In a recent piece, 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:36.159 one of the most recent pieces, if you go to 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:39.520 like my medium site where my essays usually are now 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:45.159 is it talks about the trans mass versus trans discourse 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:48.560 in terms of what I call the cultural feminist doom loop, 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:52.960 where the doom loop refers to kind of these ideas 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.960 where everyone like both sides are trying to talk about 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.040 the reason why their experiences are legit, and then that 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.280 seems as though the other sides are not legitimate, and 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:07.680 then that kind of cascades in a way that ends 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:11.160 up not being very productive but takes up a lot 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:13.720 of energy on. 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:15.320 Places like Twitter. 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:19.120 Yeah, I think. I think that's something We've still seen 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:25.439 about one trillion times variety of toxic ways. But what 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:27.920 isn't toxic is the new third edition of Whipping Girl 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:30.080 coming out in March with you can ask your local 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:33.960 bookstore to pre order now and Yeah, join us tomorrow 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.439 for our discussion with doctor Serrano of the Anatomy of 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.439 Moral Panics. This is when it could happen here. Trans 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:41.359 people are great. 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:48.639 It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:51.560 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:54.720 polzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:57.920