WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: Whipping Girl, The Book That Changed Everything ft. Dr. Julia Serano 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.600 Also media. Welcome to dick It app and here, a 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.520 podcast about things falling apart and putting it back together again. 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:14.440 I'm Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison, and it is my 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.400 singular 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 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:34.080 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 --> 0:01:34.520 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 --> 0:01:42.520 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 --> 0:02:00.560 people who pick up the book now and like the 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.400 twenty twenties don't necessarily realize, is that nobody was reading 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:11.200 anything about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ plus communities, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.120 and so I was basically just speaking to those groups, and. 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:16.840 I thought it would resonate with some people. 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.959 But yeah, definitely it kind of went out into the 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.960 world and did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.119 necessarily expecting. And I'm very glad that the book has 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.640 kind of touched a lot of people's lives and changed, 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:36.600 you know, kind of societal understanding and quote unquote discourses 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:37.600 about trans people. 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.079 So yeah, it must be kind of bizarre, like being 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.399 twenty years ago writing about you know, a niche term 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.160 like sis and now the richest man in the world 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:51.880 thinks it's like the most evil word. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.400 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 --> 0:03:05.040 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 --> 0:03:26.760 I put out the book, I was inspired by Emi Koyama, 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:32.040 who was and is an awesome activist intersex activists who's 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.040 written a lot of really influential trans related essays over 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:39.920 the years, And it was from her blog post that 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:41.880 was the first time I saw sis and trans and 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.240 the idea of cis sexism. And at the time it 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:47.480 was while I was writing the book, and it really 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:49.840 I was like, oh my god, this is kind of 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.440 the overall idea. I was talking about all these different 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.360 facets of basically double standards between trans and non trans people, 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:59.720 and so I kind of grabbed onto it, and I 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.120 was really worried about it actually because nobody, almost nobody 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.560 was using those terms. It was very niche at the time, 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.280 and so the book popularized that language. And so now 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:11.840 it is kind of funny every once in a while 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:18.000 seeing yes overreactions by SIS people to the idea of 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:22.520 of SIS being a slur or whatever. So yeah, and 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.800 so yeah, so that's definitely something that is kind of 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.400 is the one thing I one thing I did coin 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.800 in the book that has kind of also taken a 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.479 life on its own is trans misogyny. So that is 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.719 something that kind of originated with this book and particularly 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.280 a chap book that I wrote in two thousand and 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.440 five that some of those 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 --> 0:04:47.880 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 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.560 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 0:05:08.360 --> 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 --> 0:05:25.280 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 --> 0:06:09.560 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 0:06:15.720 --> 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 0:06:28.400 --> 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 0:06:50.839 --> 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, 0:07:05.680 --> 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 --> 0:07:23.000 wrong about it puts us in difficult situations. It's a 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:27.640 double bind where do you reveal what you supposedly really 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:31.000 are or do you just allow people to read you 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.440 that way? And it works out very differently, for instance, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.840 between trans and say CIS gay people, because when cis 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.360 gay people talk about passing as straight. Their passing is 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.560 something that they know that they are not. Whereas for 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:47.520 a lot of trans people, if people read me as 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.400 a woman and I understand myself to be a woman, 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.200 there's it's a very different dynamic because it's not like 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.200 I'm not hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.080 really passing as is I'm passing assist and people are 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.160 assuming I'm this gender when the trans is the thing 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.600 that I might need to or feel like I need 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.280 to clear up, or other people might put pressure on 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:17.840 me to either tell them that I'm trans or be 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:21.080 accused of deceiving them. So that's a little bit of 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.600 kind of how I was approaching it when I started 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.280 working on that idea and really stressing the idea of 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.520 you can't understand miss gendering unless you understand that we 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.000 make assumptions all the time. We gender people very actively, 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.839 and you know, so trans people are often just reacting 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:42.880 to that and dealing with 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 --> 0:09:04.320 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. 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:33.160 Yeah, and that was a big thing. So in kind 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.239 of I was writing the book in the mid two thousands, 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:41.960 and so the nineteen nineties is when Judith Butler publishes 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:46.200 Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders performance are 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.280 all genders drag, Yeah, but that is but that those 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.400 are like slogans or sound bites that other people took 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.400 from their book, right, and they were very popular at 0:09:55.440 --> 0:10:01.000 the time. There's also there's a famous sociological article about 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.080 doing gender, and so people were very focused on the 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:10.960 way in which we create gender by doing it particular ways, 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:15.319 and a lot of the slogans within trans communities were 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.640 sort of like, oh, well, you know, I just have 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.960 to do my gender differently, like more transgressively, and that 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.040 will like tear down all of gender. And I felt 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.000 that there was you know, that is an aspect of things, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.760 and most of us, whether trans or cists, most of 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.520 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 --> 0:10:49.479 So we've all had that experience. 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.680 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 sext Up 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 --> 0:11:38.960 horrible ideas, really hierarchical ideas. 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:41.120 That are kind of built into the way we view 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:41.600 the world. 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.400 And interrogating that and so, yeah, that was a very 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.439 big part of both Women Girl and then my writings 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:48.000 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 --> 0:12:10.640 and when we come back, we're talking trans misogyny. 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:21.080 We're back. 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.440 Yeah. So another thing I wanted to sort of talk 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.800 about was I think, in like exactly the opposite process 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:33.160 that happened to misgendering, trans misogyny has become a lot 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:38.800 more expansive than your original sort of kind of narrow 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.120 conception of it. And I think this has been changing 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.600 a lot, especially in the last about half decade or so, 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.400 So I was wondering what you think about the way 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.400 that this concept has kind of taken on a life 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.319 of its own in recent years and what it's been 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:54.040 doing since. 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:55.320 Yeah. 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.200 So I feel like trans misogyny, that there are a 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:04.200 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 --> 0:13:15.760 suggested it was doing. It's kind of hard to know 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.040 like where to actually come in on this, but for me, 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.679 when I was first writing about it, I was first 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:26.280 just noticing that a lot of the quote unquote transphobia 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.199 that I was facing when people know as a trans 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:31.600 woman was actually a lot of it was just misogyny, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.720 and a lot of it targeted like kind of my 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:41.920 femininity rather than my transness, And so I wanted to 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.240 write about that, and kind of the way that I 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.760 framed it in the book was, which I think is 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.839 a really useful kind of model for thinking about it, 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.320 is that there most of the types of sexism that 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.960 feminists have described over the many years fall into two 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:03.560 sort of camps, one of them being oppositional sexism, which is. 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.480 The idea that men and women are kind. 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:11.280 Of perfectly opposite, mutually exclusive sexes that have different interests 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.079 and attributes and desires, and so a lot of transphobia 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.280 and homophobia are kind of like built into this idea 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.320 that men and women are completely distinct. And then the 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.600 other one is traditional sexism, which is the idea that 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.880 femalis and femininity are less legitimate than malness and masculinity. 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:34.960 And a lot of CIS feminists have kind of viewed 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.560 all of that as just sexism, right, But when you 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.200 break it down like that, it makes it clear that 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.320 the double bind that a lot of feminists have talked 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.520 about is actually kind of these two different forms of sexism. 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:52.240 So if a CIS woman acts appropriately femininely, so appropriate 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.040 with scare quotes. If a SIS woman acts femininely, she'll 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:01.240 be seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because femininity 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.440 is dismissed in our culture, So that's the way that 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:05.720 she'll be delegitimized. 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:06.720 Whereas if she. 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.360 Acts in ways that are coded as masculine, and if 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:14.720 she acts assertive or aggressive, then people will malign her 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.320 for being kind of a barrant or deviant, right, and 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:22.560 so oppositional sexism helps keep traditional sexism in place because 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.760 you can say that malness and masculinity are superior, But 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.520 that only works if you can also make a clear 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:33.360 distinction between you know, those people and people are female 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.280 and feminine, and so I think this plays out differently. 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:40.040 And I want to be really clear about this because 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.400 some people have interpreted trans misogyny to mean that trans 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.840 mail and trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, which is 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.120 something I have never said. And obviously the fact that 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:56.640 oppositional sexism is a form of sexism, and obviously trans 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.120 maild transmasculine people experience that. But also depending upon on 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.520 how you're viewed by other people, I feel like the 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.560 same double pind that affects this woman affects transmeild trans 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.720 masculine people differently. Where there's this tendency, like in a 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:17.320 lot of anti trans discourses to dismiss trans masculine, especially 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:21.520 transmasculine youth as being merely girls quote unquote, who are 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:26.720 like you know, misled or seduced by gender ideology, right, 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.960 And there's a lot of real anti feminine and anti 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.200 misogynistic ideas in there. In addition to the fact that 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:40.720 it misgenders, transmeild, transmasculine people. And then if trans maild 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:47.960 trans masculine people, when they experience transphobia, there's often you know, 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.480 like they're seen as deviant for kind of breaking that role, 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:58.120 but often the malness or their masculinity themselves are not, 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.760 you know, denigrated in the same way, because being male, 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.800 being masculine are seen as good in our culture. It's 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.960 just that if you trans male, trans masculine, it's like, well, 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:11.640 you're 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 --> 0:18:00.600 that like women are seen as sex objects where men 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:05.440 aren't seen as sex objects, often are transitions or gender 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:09.280 transgressions towards a female towards a feminine are presumed to 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:12.159 be driven by sexual motives that can play out in 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.040 all sorts of ways. Whether this is the idea that 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.960 we're like hyper sexual or promiscuous, or that we want 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.160 to be sexualized by other people, or you can see 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.320 it a lot with the kind of the transgender predator 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.840 is often coded as like a man who either has 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.520 some kind of fetish or perversion or is just literally 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:38.160 deceiving people 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 --> 0:18:45.520 I feel that sometimes people view it in a cut 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:49.440 or dried way that either they'll assume that trans misogyny 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.480 means that transnal, trans massacine people don't experience misogyny, which 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.879 again is not what that's about. Or sometimes people will 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:01.400 try to make really clear distinctions. There's kind of language 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:07.560 like trans misogyny affected versus trans misogyny exempt. Are the 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.480 terms yeah, TME and TMA, which are not terms I've 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.879 used and which 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 --> 0:19:20.600 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 --> 0:19:32.560 out in a really cut or dried sort of. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:33.720 Manner that. 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.640 You know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended this way 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:43.320 or not, it can make it seem that, like, you know, 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:48.000 just boiling down a really complex experience, people's complex experiences 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.639 with different types of sexism into some people are privileged 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:55.159 and some people are marginalized, which I think is a 0:19:55.160 --> 0:20:00.320 more general problem that happens kind of throughout all social 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:01.160 justice movements. 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:05.800 So yeah, and trans people are not alien to having 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.600 complex experiences be boiled down to three and four letter. 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:10.600 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 --> 0:20:26.120 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 --> 0:20:31.240 I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:33.800 sis and trans is kind. 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:34.520 Of a useful. 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.159 Those are useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:42.040 CIS and trans, and sometimes they can be used in 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.080 a way to talk about different double standards, like CIS 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.439 people are treated one way, TRANS people are treated another. 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:49.640 But sometimes it can be used in like a. 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:53.239 Sort of reverse discourse way, where it's like, you know, 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.040 SIS people of all the privilege, TRANS people of none 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:58.080 of the privilege, and it can be used to kind 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:02.719 of create this strict dichotomy that ends up excluding and 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.480 invisibilizing some people's experiences. And I feel the same thing 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.440 is happening with TME and TMA. So I don't think 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:13.160 that those terms need to necessarily be like, I don't 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.719 think there's anything bad about those terms per se in 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.399 and of themselves, but I think sometimes they can be 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:24.880 used in ways. And part of why I reference this 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:28.000 this SYS and trans essay that I wrote many years ago. 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:30.080 It appears in my book Outspoken. 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:35.040 I forget the complete title right now, which is but 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.040 the reason why I bring that up is so sometimes 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:44.560 what happens is that when people learn about sexism CIS, 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.840 people might be like, oh, I face the sexism right 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.439 if I'm a woman and I don't shave my legs, 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:52.920 I'm facing s sexism, and so then trans people say, yeah, 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.960 but it kind of plays out differently for us, And 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.320 so sometimes in order to stop people from kind of 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:04.000 those claims, which I think it is true that you know, 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.400 a woman not shaving their legs, or if a man 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.080 decides to put on a dress one day, regardless of 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:09.800 whether they're sis. 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:11.840 Or trans, they could experience. 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:16.439 Says sexism or transphobia, But it plays out differently for 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:19.040 people who are actually members of that marginalized group. And 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.160 so then the marginalized group makes the distinction even sharper, 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:28.280 and it just kind of becomes this escalating situation where 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.480 the language and kind of battles over it become even 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:35.000 more intense. In a recent piece, one of the most 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.920 recent pieces, if you go to like my medium site 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.280 where my essays usually are now is it talks about 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:46.280 the trans mass versus trans discourse in terms of what 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.360 I call the cultural feminist doom loop, where the doom 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:55.720 loop refers to kind of these ideas where everyone like 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.600 both sides are trying to talk about the reason why 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:01.920 their experiences are legit, and then that seems as though 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:04.960 the other sides are not legitimate and then that kind 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:08.359 of cascades in a way that ends up not being 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:13.760 very productive but takes up a lot 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 --> 0:23:27.880 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 has when it could Happen Here, trans 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:41.359