WHIPPING GIRL: A TRANSSEXUAL WOMAN ON SEXISM AND THE SCAPEGOATING OF FEMININITY

By Julia Serano

Seal Press 280 pages

$15.95

There are two main types of transgender books, Julia Serano says in the introduction to Whipping Girl. One is the memoir of transition, ending in surgery, and the other is the radical gender-trashing manifesto, in the style of Kate Bornstein. But that may be changing.

The past year has seen more mold-breaking work by trans authors than ever before, from the anthology Self-Organizing Men, edited by Jay Sennett, and Max Wolf Valerio's The Testosterone Files to Alicia E. Goranson's Supervillainz. Now Serano is making a bid for another subgenre with Whipping Girl: the sharp-tongued blend of personal essay and political analysis. And April saw the publication of Aaron Raz Link's What Becomes You, the mutant offspring of the transgender autobiography, featuring strange observations, loopy introspection, and the occasional venture into manifesto — plus a tender 80-page coda by the author's mother. (Full disclosure: I'm the publisher of Other magazine, which excerpted both of these books before publication.)

Serano's Whipping Girl is a compelling critique of the pervasive misogyny that dogs trans women everywhere. Using the term trans-misogyny to describe the phenomenon, Serano argues that people don't dis transsexual women because they think we're "really" men but because of a loathing of femaleness and the feminine. Thus the media portrayals that showcase the "artificiality" of our female appearances and fixate on "before" and "after" photos — not to mention Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, acting like Star Trek's Data in heavy, smeary makeup.

At the same time, queer gatekeepers and feminist pundits downplay femininity as artificial, in contrast to the straightforwardness of masculinity. Meanwhile, Raz Link's What Becomes You takes the transgender memoir to places it's never gone before.

The book follows the author's tortuous process of understanding and then realizing his male identity, but it's also an examination of conformity in general, a tour through a world of oddballs, geeks, and outcasts.

Raz Link dubs these folks the "am-nots," as opposed to the "have-nots," and he shows, over and over, how reality is "whatever the person who's bigger than you says is true." The book also demonstrates, in excruciating detail, what it's like to be completely fucked with by the medical establishment. It's something the term gatekeeper doesn't really convey — the extent to which someone in a lab coat can make you dance.

At one point, with a surgery date less than a month away, a psychiatrist tries to deny Raz Link the letter he needs because he hasn't been binding his breasts — even though they're too large to bind without ruining his chances for a good reconstruction. Much of Raz Link's portion of What Becomes You deals with his attempts to explain his gender transition to his feminist mother. In the final dozen chapters, though, his mother takes over, writing about her own struggle with losing a daughter (as well as the physical changes that come from her bout with cancer). It's jarring — and moving as hell.

Both of these titles offer hope that transgender books can become more unexpected, and maybe also more authentic. They burst open a kind of straitjacket that has constrained not just the stories trans people have told but also the underlying realities we could recognize. Let's just hope we're ready to learn from them. (Charlie Anders)

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San Fransico Bay Chronicle Online 

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Julia Serano's incredibly original text - equal parts essay, memoir, manifesto, study in etymology and critique of mass media - examines how our culture's disdain for femininity directly informs our view of trans women.

Serano's background as a biologist, performer and transsexual activist makes Whipping Girl insightful, in-depth and multi-faceted. It combines the readability of a memoir, the humorous sass of the best spoken word rant and a thorough, even-handed analysis of biology versus socialization not found in most gender studies books.

Most anti-trans sentiment Serano has had to deal with as a transsexual woman, she says, is probably better described as "trans-misogyny." She summarizes the myriad ways feminists and gay activists refuse to practise what they preach. For example, some feminists who rally against the objectification of women's bodies see no reason not to ask invasive personal questions about trans people's bodies.

At the heart of these offences is what Serano terms cissexism, the belief that transsexuals' gender identities are less authentic and "normal" than non-transsexuals – or cissexuals.

She takes to task prominent gender theorists like Judith Butler as well as the genderqueer movement bent on destroying the binary gender system, which ends up pitting gender-conforming and non-gender-conforming people against each other.

While offering critical insights or discussing painful personal memories, Serano never condescends or engages in "more oppressed than thou" rhetoric.

The book culminates in a call for alliances, leaving the reader with the hope that matters among the very divided queer, genderqueer, transsexual and feminist communities could really get better.

Rarely do I believe hyperbolic back-cover blurbs claiming "We desperately need this book." But this one's absolutely accurate.

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Girl talk