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778 reviews
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano
4.25
Hasn't fully broken free from bioessentialism, but still a very important book. In response to her claim that there is a biological component of gender, I would say that femininity and masculinity are both a random collection of characteristics that were artificially divided between the sexes, even though every human possesses these characteristics. For example, no one is naturally "submissive" or "dominant". Everyone has the potential to be both dominant and submissive, and they do so in different instances. The gender binary is not the only binary that should be shattered; all binaries should be shattered because all binaries are linguistically constructed to simplify life for low-effort human thought. No one can be defined by any word. Aggressiveness is not a personality quality, it is only a state of being, and all states of being are constantly in flux. Her mistake was in thinking that the solution to the debate between gender essentialists, gender constructionists, and deconstructionists was to find common ground intersecting them all. A much stronger approach would have been to start over with new premises: Humans are dynamic creatures and identity is a choice no matter what identity you choose. Cissexuality is as much an identity as transsexuality, and these choices are made by individuals for their own reasons. Many choose cissexuality because it's easier, others choose transsexuality or the nonbinary spectrum because it is more authentic to their personal preferences. Some cis people are authentically choosing their gender as well, but it is in no way correlative to anything biological. As Serano herself said, biologists have never found any proof that genetics or hormones cause any identifiable personality characteristics, and nor will they, it's only a theory that any such programming exists. Gender is like astrology or personality typology, in that it assigns a set of characteristics common among all humans to one sex and an opposite set to the other sex. There is no scientific basis for it, it is a circular system that feeds itself. The concept of gender creates gender not by brainwashing each sex into conforming to behaviors unnatural to them, but by tricking each sex that a certain set of characteristics is not natural to them. The reason why "masculine" men and "feminine" women exist is more of a negative chipping away at traits while emphasizing others to make up for the resulting gaps and create a false equilibrium, leading people to blind themselves to the pieces of themselves that are missing. The key here is not the tendency towards masculine traits by men and feminine traits by women, but the refusal to display any traits that are characteristically associated with the opposite sex for fear of repercussions.
This isn't an argument against Julia Serano, only an amendment to clarify her position, and hopefully she would agree with me that this is an improvement upon her own ideas. My guess is that just like any artist or philosopher who knows their work is unfinished but can't figure out what's missing, she probably patched it up as best as she could by conceding slightly to the gender essentialists, since the gender constructionists and deconstructionists failed to acknowledge the authenticity of transsexuality. But there are ways to acknowledge the authenticity of transsexuality without conceding anything at all to the essentialists. There is nothing wrong or inauthentic about making a choice. Authenticity itself is inconceivable without choice, because authenticity is all about aligning your choices with who you are. And who you are is not a "product" of anything, because everyone is an agent of free will who learns to navigate reality in different ways. Although it can be done, it's hard to go through life completely ignoring your body and your sociocultural environment, so most people take significant influence from both although neither actually control who anyone becomes. One reason why free will is not acknowledged in the subject of gender is because it is poorly understood and the leading voices are religious conservatives who condemn LGBTQ+ individuals by saying they chose to be that way. You don't just wake up one day and choose to be gay or trans, we all know that. But even if you could somehow make that choice, there would be nothing wrong about making such a choice. There are very valid political reasons why someone would say that no one has a choice in who they are, but only because of contemporary politics, where lying bigots are in charge of everything and must be dealt with in a certain way. In the long-term, however, we have to admit that free will is a major part of our lives that doesn't deserve to be ignored and dismissed as it's been by contemporary philosophers and scientists. The existence of free will is not a threat to LGBTQ+ unless you believe that it is inherently evil to be LGBTQ+, which it is not. To be absolutely clear, I am not saying that it is a choice to be LGBTQ+ at all, in the same way as we do not choose to be tall, short, rich, or poor. What someone becomes is entirely up to chance and it's not very predictable. But chance itself is really just a complex combination of minor elements that go unnoticed and unpredictably leads something to its destination. It would be very hard to predict the outcome of a die roll, but if somehow you possessed enough knowledge to accurately calculate how the laws of physics will affect the dice the moment it leaves someone's hand, you could theoretically predict it, only there are so many elements involved that it would be a gargantuan task requiring enormous brainpower beyond any human ability. But that would still be easier than predicting your own sexuality when you are an infant experiencing the formative sensations and experiences that help to build their future sexuality. Instead of straightforwardly saying that gender and sexuality is caused by x, y, or z, the honest response would be to say that there are so many factors involved in the development of gender and sexuality that pinning it down to any one, two, or three elements is reductionism to the point of misunderstanding it altogether. To even say that one thing was a major influence on your gender or sexuality is a flat out lie, even if you believe it to be true. It may be the point of revelation where it broke into your own consciousness, but that takes credit away from the many years worth of infinitesimally small thoughts, feelings, experiences, and sense-perceptions that occurred several times per second and are truly responsible for who you are today. Regardless of who you are and how old you are, you have already built a solid foundation of how you interact with the outside world that would be extraordinarily difficult to unlearn, because it would require you to live more than your entire lifetime over again. That is the part of you that many people mistake for being "biological". It is neither socially constructed nor biological, it is simply the product of time, going through life without a breadcrumb trail to go back on, no ability to edit the fundamental ways in which you've come to interact with the world around you. So we adapt the way we can. If your way of maneuvering through life is best realized through being a woman, then be a woman. There's no reason to torture yourself by living according to an archaic gender role when you find it limiting and it's not natural to your way of life. If none of the available genders work for you, create your own gender. If that doesn't work, abandon gender altogether and transcend the illusion of category. I hope that one day soon, gender will become a thing of the past and the entire world becomes fully androgynous and humans are no longer required to conform to rigid social expectations of any kind.
This isn't an argument against Julia Serano, only an amendment to clarify her position, and hopefully she would agree with me that this is an improvement upon her own ideas. My guess is that just like any artist or philosopher who knows their work is unfinished but can't figure out what's missing, she probably patched it up as best as she could by conceding slightly to the gender essentialists, since the gender constructionists and deconstructionists failed to acknowledge the authenticity of transsexuality. But there are ways to acknowledge the authenticity of transsexuality without conceding anything at all to the essentialists. There is nothing wrong or inauthentic about making a choice. Authenticity itself is inconceivable without choice, because authenticity is all about aligning your choices with who you are. And who you are is not a "product" of anything, because everyone is an agent of free will who learns to navigate reality in different ways. Although it can be done, it's hard to go through life completely ignoring your body and your sociocultural environment, so most people take significant influence from both although neither actually control who anyone becomes. One reason why free will is not acknowledged in the subject of gender is because it is poorly understood and the leading voices are religious conservatives who condemn LGBTQ+ individuals by saying they chose to be that way. You don't just wake up one day and choose to be gay or trans, we all know that. But even if you could somehow make that choice, there would be nothing wrong about making such a choice. There are very valid political reasons why someone would say that no one has a choice in who they are, but only because of contemporary politics, where lying bigots are in charge of everything and must be dealt with in a certain way. In the long-term, however, we have to admit that free will is a major part of our lives that doesn't deserve to be ignored and dismissed as it's been by contemporary philosophers and scientists. The existence of free will is not a threat to LGBTQ+ unless you believe that it is inherently evil to be LGBTQ+, which it is not. To be absolutely clear, I am not saying that it is a choice to be LGBTQ+ at all, in the same way as we do not choose to be tall, short, rich, or poor. What someone becomes is entirely up to chance and it's not very predictable. But chance itself is really just a complex combination of minor elements that go unnoticed and unpredictably leads something to its destination. It would be very hard to predict the outcome of a die roll, but if somehow you possessed enough knowledge to accurately calculate how the laws of physics will affect the dice the moment it leaves someone's hand, you could theoretically predict it, only there are so many elements involved that it would be a gargantuan task requiring enormous brainpower beyond any human ability. But that would still be easier than predicting your own sexuality when you are an infant experiencing the formative sensations and experiences that help to build their future sexuality. Instead of straightforwardly saying that gender and sexuality is caused by x, y, or z, the honest response would be to say that there are so many factors involved in the development of gender and sexuality that pinning it down to any one, two, or three elements is reductionism to the point of misunderstanding it altogether. To even say that one thing was a major influence on your gender or sexuality is a flat out lie, even if you believe it to be true. It may be the point of revelation where it broke into your own consciousness, but that takes credit away from the many years worth of infinitesimally small thoughts, feelings, experiences, and sense-perceptions that occurred several times per second and are truly responsible for who you are today. Regardless of who you are and how old you are, you have already built a solid foundation of how you interact with the outside world that would be extraordinarily difficult to unlearn, because it would require you to live more than your entire lifetime over again. That is the part of you that many people mistake for being "biological". It is neither socially constructed nor biological, it is simply the product of time, going through life without a breadcrumb trail to go back on, no ability to edit the fundamental ways in which you've come to interact with the world around you. So we adapt the way we can. If your way of maneuvering through life is best realized through being a woman, then be a woman. There's no reason to torture yourself by living according to an archaic gender role when you find it limiting and it's not natural to your way of life. If none of the available genders work for you, create your own gender. If that doesn't work, abandon gender altogether and transcend the illusion of category. I hope that one day soon, gender will become a thing of the past and the entire world becomes fully androgynous and humans are no longer required to conform to rigid social expectations of any kind.
Juliette by Marquis de Sade
3.75
An accurate description of the American Dream and a glimpse into the lives of the very rich.
Everyone takes this way too seriously and talks about how this is how people must really be unconsciously, but no one talks about how this was a rebellious text written by a man who rightfully hates everything about Western civilization and Christianity. There was nothing unconscious here, he very much intended to infuriate the average reader of his time. Reading it today, it's a very funny book.
Everyone takes this way too seriously and talks about how this is how people must really be unconsciously, but no one talks about how this was a rebellious text written by a man who rightfully hates everything about Western civilization and Christianity. There was nothing unconscious here, he very much intended to infuriate the average reader of his time. Reading it today, it's a very funny book.
Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue by Marquis de Sade
3.25
Moral of the story is don't trust anyone with a good reputation, since the whole point of having a good reputation is to enable you to get away with doing bad things.
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction by Michel Foucault
2.75
Foucault has a bad habit of assuming that human history began in the European Middle Ages, and also of writing aimlessly without knowing what he's trying to prove.