Results matching “julia serano”

I was inspired by Miriam's great Personal Is Political post, Is that a boy or a girl?, to share some of my experiences of getting to watch others deal with gender through my body. I've talked before about my experience of street harassment as a trans person. This happens so often I barely notice anymore - friends I'm walking with will point out something I totally tuned out. But some street gender moments stand out as giving me a revealing glimpse of other people's gender process. In this post I want to talk about two recent experiences that have stuck in my mind.

I'm a clinic escort at the local Planned Parenthood. Sharing a sidewalk with antis who pray at and harass anyone trying to enter or leave the clinic is easily the most surreal experience of my life. My second week escorting was particularly odd for me personally. Dick, our main anti, had tried without success to engage me and another new escort in conversation the week before (a standard tactic to try to find escort's weak points so antis can get us riled up). I was a bit more femme presenting my second time escorting, and I guess Dick didn't recognize me. I was a little bit late and other escorts were already out on the sidewalk wearing big orange A shirts that say "Pro-Choice Clinic Escort." as I walked toward the path to the clinic I could see Dick eyeing me, confused (usually he jumps at the chance to preach at someone as soon as he sees them walking toward the clinic). I could see the internal debate raging as I turned the corner and started heading for the door. Finally, a few steps down the path, Dick jumps into action, running after me and shouting about how I don't have to let them take my baby, how I have other options. I responded with a simple, "I'm an escort Dick," and went inside.

It's a few weeks later and I'm still reeling from what I got to witness there. I got to watch a Catholic fundamentalist ant-choicer (and the most overtly racist person I have ever encountered in real life, but that's another post) have a gender moment! Dick's decision to pursue me as a potential womb-haver was particularly interesting. Male is usually the default assumption when we are confused about someone's gender. Dick's reaction shows a shift of assumptions in a situation where he is targeting women and trying to antagonize as many as possible. Better to be wrong and assume I'm with child than be wrong and assume I'm not.

Story number two:

I was walking toward the Metro (D.C. public transportation) escalators on my way to work, past a guy standing there eating a bag of chips. As I passed him the guy said, "Hey, how you doing." Apparently too tired to recognize an obvious cat call I responded, "Good, how are you?" I guess my morning voice threw him off. "Wait, I thought you were a girl, ma'am." I thought for a second that maybe he'd said "man," but no, definitely "ma'am." As I headed down the escalator he shouted after me: "What are you ma'am? Hey, I'm talking to you ma'am!"

I suppose I could take the guy's words literally. Maybe he was confused and couldn't tell if I was a girl or too much woman for him to handle (<3 Britney). Somehow, though, I don't think that's what was going on.

I was momentarily scared he would follow me. Straight cis men's sexuality is a major source of their self-perceived power. Heterosexuality puts them at the top of the gender hierarchy not just in terms of who they are but also who and how they fuck. Being betrayed by their own desire can throw them off, and those with power know they need to maintain it however possible. In this case I was lucky enough to just be shouted at, to have the blame put on me verbally. Allen Ray Andrade admitted to this same line of thinking and even tried to use it as a defense for the murder of Angie Zapata (trigger warning). For me this one incident can be a funny story. Angie wasn't so lucky.

There are a bunch of presumptuous questions that transgender people get asked all the time by folks with no business asking about our personal lives. Many of them are based on acceptance of the compulsory gender binary and the belief that the gender we were assigned at birth is our "real" gender. Asking such questions without permission packs the dehumanizing and othering assumption that transgender folk have a responsibility to educate cisgender folk. Being in the position to be educated about someone else's identity is a form of privilege, as those with the most power are not asked to explain their life experience since it has been posited as the norm.

Getting asked inappropriate questions framed in a way that completely erases one's identity over and over again can get incredibly exhausting and frustrating. That's why I absolutely love the below video, "2 Hot Transsexuals Finally Give Some Answers!" Charles and Red respond to a number of these questions in a hilarious way that reveals the problematic assumptions that go into asking them in the first place. My personal favorite answers are to the question "Are you a man or a woman?" but it's all fantastic.

This isn't meant to imply that cis folks shouldn't try to learn more about trans issues, but there's a difference between learning about a group's experience and concerns and asking about an individual's personal life. There are limits to what's appropriate - being trans doesn't mean we don't have boundaries.There's a better way to go about educating yourself without making members of the community you're trying to understand feel like crap in the process.

"Who's your pronoun!"

h/t to love-and-organizing at Amplify.

GLAAD has released their third annual Network Responsibility Index, a review of LGBT representation on television. I found this report particularly interesting as I'm a pop culture addict who constantly finds myself consuming deeply problematic media that seldom represents my community.

Some key findings:

• HBO led all networks with 58.5 (42%) of the network's 140 total programming hours featuring LGBT representation. This is an increase of 16% over the previous season. Of HBO's 14 original series, 10 included LGBT content and of the four that did not, three were sports news programming.

• For the third year in a row, ABC led the broadcast networks in LGBT-inclusive content. Of its 1,146.5 total hours of primetime programming, 269.5 hours (24%) included LGBT impressions and 9% were transgender-inclusive, making ABC the most fair, accurate and inclusive of the five broadcast networks.

• For the first time since GLAAD began this analysis, the network rankings changed and Fox rose to third place with 82.5 (11%) LGBT-inclusive hours, out of 782.5 total primetime programming hours. This is an increase from last year's analysis, in which Fox's LGBT content was tallied at 4% and received a "failing" grade. However, Fox also aired some problematic LGBT programming.

• CBS saw the greatest decline among the broadcast networks this year, dropping to last place with 60 hours (5%) of LGBT-inclusive content, out of 1,148 total hours of primetime programming.

• Of the 10 cable networks evaluated, Showtime was the only network to receive a Good rating, airing 20.5 (26%) LGBT-inclusive hours, out of 77.5 total hours of primetime programming.

• TNT had the biggest increase among all networks. In last year's NRI, TNT received a Failing grade for airing a single hour (1%) of content. This year, TNT rose 18%, airing 13 LGBT inclusive hours (19%) out of its 69 total hours of original programming.

• TBS only offered a half hour (1%) and A&E aired two hours (1%) of LGBT-inclusive programming out of 39.5 and 166.5 total hours of original primetime programming, respectively. This resulted in the networks tying for the lowest ranking and score among the 10 cable networks evaluated.

Some of my thoughts, with a few minor spoilers from this past year of TV:

At Broadcasting and Cable, they are reporting that:

The working logline for the potential drama series being used internally at HBO is that it "follows the life of Calliope Stephanides and the epic family history that may hold the answer to her complicated sexual identity."

This one scares me a bit. I read the book a few years ago, and while I love his writing the plot is offensive in a couple of ways. Basically ishis main character is intersex. (Not sure what that terms means? Go here).

We need more attention paid to intersex folks and their lives. The book was an Oprah's Book Club selection. But instead of doing a thoughtful representation of an intersex person, Eugenides uses Calliope's intersex status as a way to add drama to the plot. My main problem (besides some weird language he uses to talk about Calliope) is that he implies that the reason Calliope is intersex is because of incest between Calliope's grandparents (that's the "epic family history") that the quote above references.

Trying to tie being intersex with something like incest is offensive for a few reasons. One, it once again emphasizes the idea that this is some huge abnormality that only happens when something goes really wrong, like a brother and sister having children. Actually, it's a pretty common occurrence and 1 in 2000 babies born could be classified as intersex. It also sensationalizes Calliope's story, and the lives of all intersex people.

I'm not the first to criticize the way Eugenides dealt with this is his book, a number of other activists and authors already have. But I'm pretty sure, from reading that logline, that HBO will fall into the same traps.

Via Isak

A new study shows that when girls do worse than boys at math, the likely culprit is culture.

Amanda gets her hands on an anti-choice manual - read it, if you can stomach it.

Ann and Dana bring you the third installation of "Ask a Feminist." This time it's door-opening protocol...

Emily at RH Reality Check calls out "pro-lifers" who abet in terrorizing abortion providers.

Saletan at Slate hits a new low with this headline: Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

New research explores Twitter and gender

Julia Serano announces a show she'll be participating in at the 2009 National Queer Arts Festival: Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue.

via Bird of Paradox comes the depressing news that a Memphis resident named Kelvin Denton was recently shot for "misrepresenting gender." (FIVE trans women have been shot in Memphis since 2006.) Cara notes that it's not yet clear whether the victim is transgender or not. But the alleged assailant has apparently made clear that confusion about Denton's gender prompted him to pull the trigger -- the all-too-common "trans panic" defense. Writes Helen at Bird of Paradox,

Mr Taylor told police he carried out the attack because he felt he had been "misled" about Ms Denton's gender - surely a clear indication that that Mr Taylor will be trying to use the trans panic defense to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. However, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition have urged Shelby County authorities to "prosecute Taylor aggressively and not permit the use of the trans-panic defense".

Denton is in critical condition.

Right now, California is the only state that has a law that specifically addresses "panic" defenses -- the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act.

Take action: If you live in Tennessee, please contact your state legislators and ask them to add gender identity/expression to "make it easier for state and local authorities to track and prosecute hate crimes against all LGBT Tennesseans."

This is also an appropriate moment for all of us to contact our senators about the importance of including gender identity and expression in the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). It's looking like ENDA will be introduced in the next several weeks, so now is the time to express your support for gender-identity protections. (Some basic sample language is here.) Helen at en|Gender has more.

UPDATE: Thanks to mfemme in comments for pointing out that Memphis recently passed an anti-discrimination resolution, and noting:

I was *hoping* that passing this legislation a couple days ago would be a step forward for Memphis... passing the anti-discrimination act: which is a big win for LGBT people in Memphis who are forced to stay in the closet for fear of being fired.

But obviously, when LGBT (particularly transgender and genderqueer) folks who are living in a city where they are fearful for THEIR LIVES, what good does it do to say at least we can't get fired for being LGBT? srsly wtf Memphis. the atmosphere there is really hostile towards LGBT people...legislation can only do so much. it's a step, but just not enough to change the mindset citywide.

More information:
Julia Serano: There's Something About "Deception"
States with trans-inclusive hate crimes laws
Banning the "Trans Panic Defense"
What Does "Justice For Angie" Mean?

By Julia Serano

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been called the "bible of mental illness" because it lists and defines all of the "official" psychiatric diagnoses according to the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM is in the early stages of undergoing its 5th major revision; each previous revision has seen the total number of mental disorders recognized (some might say invented) by the APA greatly increase. Last year, trans activists were particularly concerned to learn that Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard had been named to play critical lead roles in determining the language of the DSM sections focusing on gender and sexuality, especially given that these researchers are well known for forwarding theories and therapies that are especially pathologizing and stigmatizing to gender-variant people.

Blanchard has recently presented some of his suggestions to revise the "Paraphilia" section of the DSM. In the past, this section has generally received little attention from feminists, as it has been primarily limited to several sexual crimes (e.g., pedophilia, frotteurism and exhibitionism) and a handful of other generally consensual but unnecessarily stigmatized sexual acts (such as fetishism and BDSM) that are considered "atypical" by sex researchers. However, there are two aspects of the proposed Paraphilia section revision that should be of great concern to feminists, as well as anyone else who is interested in gender and sexual equality.

Expanding "Paraphilia"

First, Blanchard is proposing a significant expansion of the DSM's definition of "paraphilia" to include:

"any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners."

The first concern here is the term "phenotypically normal" (meaning "normal" with regards to observable anatomical or behavioral traits). Thus, according to this definition, attraction to any person deemed by sex researchers to be "abnormal" or "atypical" could conceivably be diagnosed as paraphilic. So, do you happen to be attracted to, or in a relationship with, someone who is differently-abled or differently-sized? Or someone who is gender-variant in some way? Well congratulations, you may now be diagnosed with a paraphilia!

Seriously.

I'm happy to be able to share the video from my session at WAM 2009: In/Out of Focus: Gender, Non-conformity and the Media.

I unfortunately don't have a transcript and the live twitter feed from the session (the tag was #wam09gnc) seems to have expired. My apologies to folks who are not able to listen to the video. Here are a few links to a few liveblogs from the session:

Susan Mernit
Kerri Kanelos
Jill at Feministe
Anna J. Cooke
Chicks Rock Blog
Mikhaela Reid drew this cartoon in response to the panel

I was really excited to be part of this conversation with Jack Aponte (of Angry Brown Butch and Feministe), Julia Serano and Kate Bovitch. Our hope was to focus on the issues of gender non-conformity within feminist spaces like WAM, feminist blogs and feminist media. I think we got a really interesting conversation going.

I've been reflecting a lot on this panel lately, since there has been conversation (and criticism) about how discussions about trans issues go down on feminist blogs, in particular ours. I think what it reiterates for me is how important these conversations about gender and gender non-conformity are to feminism and how difficult they are to have, particularly online.

At the WAM panel we never had issues with people asking questions that were offensive, or off-topic, or derailing in the way people talk about our comment threads. Maybe that's because the panel was a self-selecting group of people, or because people with those kinds of comments/questions didn't feel comfortable asking them in such a public way.

I've made some mistakes in how I've begun these conversations at Feministing, particularly on the Focus on the Family post. I appreciate those who called out these mistakes in a constructive way. I'm definitely learning from those moments and I'm committed to continuing this dialogue, both on and offline.

The criticisms about comments at Feministing are well heard, and, as I've said before, we're hoping to revisit and revise our comment policy at our upcoming retreat at the end of May.

For those of you who have time to watch some of the video (the session was an hour and a half) or check out the liveblogging, I recommend it. Again, sorry about the lack of transcript!

UPDATE: Some other videos from the WAM conference are available here as well.

So there has been a heated dialogue this past week, partially in response to the comment thread on my post about Focus on the Family last week. Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia wrote an initial response to it, voz responded to the larger issue of how trans women's issues are treated at Feministing and Feministe, and Cara responded at Feministe yesterday.

I've been doing a lot of listening, and hearing, and reading. I have a lot of thoughts brewing about all of these threads.

There are two discussions I think need to come from this. One is a discussion about comment moderation and Feministing. It's a discussion we as bloggers often engage in, and one that crops up all of the time, as each of us find strategies for how to manage comment threads.

Moderating comments is probably the part of this work that I feel least adept at. I do agree that moderating is a part of our role as bloggers. It's a conversation that we plan on continuing at Feministing, and writing more about as a group. This is a group blog, and while we each moderate our own threads, we do have a collective comment policy. So more to come on that.

The other conversation is around gender identity related writing and activism. This is a conversation I am highly invested in, which is why I really appreciated reading Queen Emily's thoughts about the comment conversation and my original post. I'm invested in it because I'm a feminist, because I identify as genderqueer, because I have a strong agenda around gender. I have all sorts of thoughts and ideas about how feminism needs to evolve it's beliefs and interaction with the gender binary--including what trans inclusion looks like. At the WAM conference this year, Julia Serano, Jack Aponte, Kate Bovitch and I were on a panel to discuss these issues. I hope to post the video soon, but these are conversations I'm engaging in elsewhere as well.

These two conversations need to continue and I plan on further engaging. Unfortunately because of how life works, particularly my life where I have other responsibilities outside of this blog, I can't engage in that dialogue with all of you tonight, or tomorrow, or in the next few days. To acknowledge the fact that much of the criticims of the original thread revolved the comment moderation, I'm going to turn comments off on this post.

I'm going to be back on Monday, with more thoughts about this. I'll post a new thread then, with comments open.

Sitting in an all-star panel at WAM 09 called In/Out of Focus, Broadening a Feminist Lens: Gender, Non-Conformity and the Media including our very own Miriam, Julia Serano, Jack Aponte and Kate Bovitch. It is excellent. They are discussing the different ways that gender variance intersects with feminism, femininity and the idea of woman and its relationship to identity based movement building. Also, what is the role of gender variance in media production and best practices on how to write about trans, gender non-conforming and gender variant community. Follow the discussion on twitter here. I am not even capturing the half of it, this panel is amazing.

So Samhita and I will be holding it down for the Feministing Crew this year at the Women Action and the Media Conference.

If you're gonna be there be sure to come say hi and check out two Feministing events. The first, I'm speaking on a panel that I am super psyched about. Jack from Angry Brown Butch and Feministe, Julia Serano (amazing author, performer and activist) and activist extraordinaire Kate Bovitch and I will be speaking on a panel called In/Out of Focus: Gender, Non-conformity and the Media on Saturday morning at 11am. I'm honored to be on a panel with these awesome people and I think it will be a great conversation about gender non-conformity and feminism.

Also on Saturday Samhita and I will also organize a Feministing caucus, you can come chat and meet other Feministing readers. Look for info at the WAM registration area.

Hope to see you all in Boston!

Check out the rest of the line-up for Yes Means Yes' blog tour after the jump!

God, I love Julia Serano.

Via Womanist Musings. Transcript after the jump.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, an anthology I co-edited with the Jaclyn Friedman, is out.

I'm incredibly proud of the book, which I think is really made by its amazing contributors: writers, bloggers and activists like Julia Serano, Latoya Peterson, Jill Filipovic, Tiloma Jayasinghe, Coco Fusco, Kate Harding, and Feministing's own Miriam Zoila Perez and Samhita Mukhopadhyay. (Among many awesome others.)

In addition to the great essays, I'm also really excited about the way we formatted the anthology. Because so many of the topics covered are related and intersect in various ways, we didn't want to group certain essays together in a traditional linear fashion. So we took a cue from blogging and tagging and gave each piece multiple themes.

So after reading Latoya Peterson's essay, "The Not-Rape Epidemic," if you want to read something else about youth sexuality, you'll be directed to essays from Heather Corrina ("An Immodest Proposal") and Hanne Blank ("The Process-Oriented Virgin"). But if you want to follow up on another theme Peterson writes about - the role of government in policing female sexuality, for example - you can skip to a different essay instead.

This way, the reader can create the narrative they want to - Jaclyn and I started calling it a "choose your own adventure" anthology! (Check out the preview on Google Books if you'd like to see what I mean.)

So please consider buying (or borrowing from the library or a friend!) Yes Means Yes - a book I hope will add to the discourse surrounding rape culture, a book I hope will spark positive action.

Related: If you want to follow some of our contributors and the ongoing conversation started in book, you can check out the Yes Means Yes blog, or come to one of the upcoming book events!

The fall issue of Ms. magazine should be hitting newsstands this week, and I've got an article in it about period-suppressing birth-control pills like Lybrel and Seasonique. (Timely, in light of the approval of a new low-dose version.)

Also, Veronica of Viva La Feminista reviews Yes Means Yes, the anthology edited by Jessica and Jaclyn Friedman that features essays by our own Samhita and Miriam, as well as Jill, Cara, Kate Harding, Latoya, Julia Serano, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and a roster of other awesome writers.

The issue also features an expose of crisis-pregnancy centers, a piece on innovative programs for mothers in prison (shout-out to the awesome Beth Schwartzapfel, who reported it), and short fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Unfortunately, articles aren't posted online, so check it out in your local bookstore. Or subscribe here.

Note: In our recent Feministing retreat, we decided that some back and forth dialogue between editors would be a cool thing, so every once in a while you may see a post title with "re:" in it - that's how you'll know it's us doing some good old fashioned feminist debating.

Miriam, I'm so happy that you posted this amazing video of An Open Letter to Alix Olson. I thought it was just incredible and I really appreciated your take on MichFest.

I have to say, though, that it really bothers me when MichFest is framed as a feminist "controversy" rather than straight up discrimination. This isn't a controversy - it's deliberate exclusion and it's shameful.

I also find the "Oh, but we're not doing genital checks"(!) just as offensive as a stated and enforced womyn-born-womyn policy. There doesn't have to be a written policy on the website for the discrimination to still be there. If MichFest wants to do the right thing, they'll be proactive and have a statement denouncing their womyn-born-womyn policy and stop hiding behind their silence on the issue.

I personally think the festival should be open to people who identify as women (or womyn), and if there are issues with safety or harrassment (which seems to be a fear) then they should be dealt with directly, not via discriminatory policies.

I totally agree, though I wanted to just point one thing out. I find the "safety" issue really uncompelling - as did Carasande in comments. Not only because it's not just penises* that rape women, but also because it uses rhetoric of the Right. As thebeatles11 noted on the Community blog, the latest anti-trans campaign (tellingly called "Not in My Shower") cites the fear that women will be assaulted as the reasoning behind their discrimination. Feminists shouldn't resort to the language (or actions!) of fear and discrimination - we're better than that!

You mentioned Julia Serano--who I think is probably the most brilliant feminist writing today--and I think that no one talks about trans woman exclusion better than she does. So I thought it fitting to end my post (though hopefully not the discussion!) with her words:

*Because the fear here does seem to be about penises, rather than "men."

My fellow Missouri Feminist Mafia™ member, the incomparable Katie Spencer, gave me a heads up about this awesome conference. More info below from the organizers... --Ann

What: Femme2008 Conference: The Architecture of Femme!
Who: Femme Collective, along with speakers Dorothy Allison, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Julia Serano
When: August 15-17, 2008
Where: Chicago Wyndham O'Hare
How: Register online! Registration is still open, and is $95. You can get all the conference details at www.femmecollective.org.

Guest post by Charlotte Albrecht, Femme Mafia Twin Cities

For months now, I have been looking forward to attending Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme this August in Chicago. It has been just a few years since I started to claim a femme identity and only in the last year that I began to find community and connect with other femme-identified and femme-supportive people. As a mixed race light-skinned femme who grew up steeped in middle class white American culture, my models for femininity were clear and, like many other girls, I learned to examine all the ways that I deviated from this norm. When I started to acknowledge my desire for female-bodied people to myself and to those around me, I found myself wanting to be visible to those I desired. This desire coupled with my longstanding understanding of myself as "not feminine enough" added up to a gender presentation that was not true to myself. It wasn't until a few years later when I met femmes of my age who encouraged me to embrace whatever feminine parts of me there were, that I ceased apologizing for dressing up and accessorizing, and, more importantly, started to think critically about the relationship between my own femininity and my sexual desire.

Contributed by Julia Serano

I had about seven different conflicting thoughts/emotions upon viewing this video:

1) Oh my god, I *cannot* believe that companies are actually using personal endorsements from transgender-spectrum people to help sell their products to non-trans women. How groundbreaking!

2) And at the same time, how disturbing! I think I am experiencing the same queasy feeling right now that old-school gay/queer rights activists most certainly felt when beer companies first began offering to sponsor pride parades and queer events.

3) Great, just what we need: more fodder for feminists who insist that those of us on the trans feminine spectrum are all merely “parodies� and “caricatures� of women and that we propagate sexist stereotypes.

4) Haven’t I written about depictions like this one before?

5) As a transsexual woman, I can’t help but notice how dependent this ad is on the concept of “drag�—that is, the fact that the subject in the video identifies as a boy and that their feminine gender expression is depicted as a “performance� or an “impersonation.� The commercial would have an entirely different meaning (and would evoke a very different emotional reaction) if it featured a trans woman who fully and unapologetically identified as female. For this reason, this video will likely annoy a lot of transsexuals because it forwards the “trans = fake� trope that is too often used to marginalize us.

6) Memo to Phillips: The “Like all men he’s not great with pain� line isn’t funny. Making fun of men is just as sexist as making fun of women. And besides, when your commercial consists of nothing but stereotypically hyper-feminine imagery, you can’t make up for it all at the end with one, apparently ironic, pseudo-feminist dis on men.

7) And one more thing: I hope the makers of Secret deodorant sue you for essentially stealing their “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman� campaign.

Thanks to Jessica for the link.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist.

Back in August 2007, I posted a critique of a NY Times article regarding what has come to be known in the transgender community as the “Bailey controversy.� Briefly, in 2003, psychologist J. Michael Bailey published a book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism, that forwarded three of the most commonly repeated sexualizing stereotypes of trans women: that we are either gay men who transition to female in order to attract straight men, fetishists who transition in order to fulfill some kind of bizarre sex fantasy, and/or that we are “especially well suited to prostitution.� The book was not only extremely trans-misogynistic, but it was marketed to a largely trans-ignorant lay audience as “science.� A broad consensus of trans activists, allies and advocates found the book to be unapologetically pathologizing, sensationalizing, stigmatizing, and a distortion of both trans women’s experiences and the scientific literature. The resulting backlash against the book was fierce and (as with any backlash) had its ugly moments. But it was also empowering in many ways as it represented the first time that the transgender community en masse stood up and forcibly challenged a theory forwarded by members of the psychological/gatekeeper establishment who hold institutional power over us.

The NY Times article, however, didn’t concern itself with the psychiatric sexualization of trans women. Instead, it portrayed Bailey as a “scientist under siege� who was unfairly attacked by transsexual activists who tried to “ruin� him. This flip-flop of a premise—depicting Bailey as though he was the “minority� who was oppressed at the hands of “powerful transsexual women�—came directly from an article written by Alice Dreger which is slated to be published in the sexology journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (ASB) later this year. ASB is also including 23 “peer commentaries� on her article from people on both sides of the debate. A list of the accepted commentaries has recently been released (the one that especially caught my eye was the sure-to-be-patronizing contribution from sexologist Richard Green entitled “Lighten Up, Ladies�).

And so should you.