Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity Paperback – March 8, 2016

Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl details the author’s perspectives on gender. Serano describes her journey from awkward teenage boy, through crossdresser, and through her transition to a transgender woman. She discusses what gender means to her personally and her experiences in society. She discusses gender roles, myths about trans people, and the role of trans people in the feminist movement.WHY THIS BOOK?Transgender lives are political. 2016 saw the passage of North Carolina’s HB2, the “bathroom bill”; 2017 started with 5 more states proposing similar legislature. These bills say that individuals born with male genitalia endanger people in the women’s restroom. I never believed that, but discussions of trans people made me realize how little I knew. With Whipping Girl, I sought the transgender story.THE GOODWhipping Girl is a fabulous book. I read Whipping Girl because I wanted to better understand life as a trans person, but it makes so many great points about gender for the rest of us. Part of the strength of Serano’s narrative is the fact that she has lived on both sides of our gender divide. Sometimes the success of Jewish entertainers has been attributed to their ability to be both insiders and outsiders; perhaps transgender women like Serano have an analogous experience with womanhood.I can’t possibly cover all the things I liked about this book. It’s the rare book that makes me consider my own life differently.Serano asserts the societal belief: most believe that men and women are equal, but many do not believe that masculinity and femininity are equal. We consider masculinity strong, natural, and unpretentious. Because masculine and feminine are opposites, we believe femininity to be weak, artificial, and pretentious. It’s a restatement of familiar arguments; masculine women are penalized for failing to fit the model of a woman, and feminine women are penalized for being feminine. I realized that I hold some of these beliefs. I have congratulated myself for rarely wearing make-up; I have sneered at female friends that dress up. I heard these messages growing up a lot. They are rooted in seeing femininity as a failing.Serano describes how these societal beliefs complicate gender transition. She describes how mtf transgender people are viewed with suspicion. If masculinity is superior, someone who “trades down” voluntarily must have suspicious motivations. She describes how media shows many more mtf people than ftm. I hadn’t noticed, but it is true. Many of the roles with mtf people show them either as succubi seeking to entrap and damage men or as pitiful, funny failures. She cites a bunch of examples that I don’t know. My media experiences are with Orange is the New Black and Transparent. Hopefully that’s a sign of progress in the decade since this book’s publication.Serano discusses nature versus nurture. Some believe that men are born masculine and women are born feminine (and thus, gender is nature). Some believe that we only exhibit gendered behaviors due to societal influences (and thus, gender is nurture). Serano argues that women are more likely to be feminine and men more likely to be masculine, but with a distribution of traits. In her model, gender expression is like height; on average, men are taller than women, but many individual women are taller than many individual men. Women, on average, gravitate towards stereotypically feminine behaviors like chattiness, but many individual men are more naturally chatty than many women. Femininity feels natural to most women, and masculinity feels natural to most men, but not all.Serano talks about the process of seeing herself as transgender. Since childhood, she had experienced feelings that she was a girl. She calls it gender dissonance. She experimented with a lot of different gender expressions, eventually leading her to the trans identity. When she started taking hormones, that felt right. She describes it as her brain believing her body to be female. We don’t fully understand the relationship between brain and body, but to me, this seems similar to the so called “sixth sense” of proprioception, the awareness of one’s body in space.Serano also discusses the horrifying history of transgender people and medicine. It’s full of icky stuff like doctors rating their patients’ attractiveness, and seeing society’s comfort, rather than their patient’s, as the most important outcome of transition. Trans people were forced to leave home and assume a new life to make others comfortable, meaning that they were forced to leave their families and support networks. Today’s bathroom bills fall into that history of putting society’s discomfort above the health of an individual.THE BADThe book is a decade old. Although mine is a 2016 second edition, the guts haven’t changed much. Whipping Girl is still super informative, but a decade changes much. For example, DSM V was published in 2013; it’s treatment of transgender issues vary substantially from the DSM IV discussed in the book.The second half of the book discusses trans theory and feminist theory. Some other reviews of the book suggest that she is unfair to the feminist movement; I have no idea. Still, the first part had a real immediacy that the second part didn’t. It probably would be well-suited to the classroom, but didn’t add much for me as a reader just wanting to understand a different perspective better.OVERALLWhipping Girl is an essential read if you want to understand trans people better. It’s also a great dissection of gender in society. I came away from the book wishing that people could be more supportive of one another. Trans people aren’t bathroom predators, they’re people in a tough spot. We are obsessed with men being men and women being women, and we mostly don’t even notice. Trans people challenge that obsession, and we see that some people would rather punish others than question their assumptions.

If gender truly were a construct, why does it seem to matter so much? Even if it is a construct, the impacts of it being forced into society are not something that can be erased. This argument is important, but it should be used with care.As someone who was once trans and strongly identifies with the LGBTQIA+ community, I need to raise a concern about the fact that we can’t just jump to the argument that gender is arbitrary when faced with questions about why trans women or men can’t simply be a subset of women or men, instead of grouping and identifying with cis women.I feel that denying the fact that you are trans diminishes the experience. Yes, people can attach shame to it within society, but you cannot change that fact. Being a trans woman or a trans man doesn’t make you any less of a woman or a man, it just means you have the experience of being trans.I’m not at all against transgender individuals. I fully support identifying however you choose to.However, I do think that this whole “trans women are women” instead of “trans women are trans women” argument is shooting itself in the foot.The word "trans" is not dirty unless you make it so. Being trans does not make you lesser. Don’t you want to be accepted and validated exactly as you are, rather than hiding behind what you cannot be (cis), polarizing part of the feminist community, and demonizing them? (I’m not including the feminists who believe trans women shouldn’t exist, but rather the ones who have genuine concerns about trans women identifying under the same label as them.) Use "trans" and "cis"—we created those defining terms for a reason. Don’t just create them and then not use them. It makes women feel like their cis experiences are being erased. It doesn’t detract from the experience of trans women whatsoever, but it also doesn’t help the trans cause. Trans women are a subgroup of women, just like cis women. No more, no less. The same applies to trans men. This does not make them any less valid.I bring this up because the argument this author makes is used to justify the argument that "trans women are women." Yes, they are part of the umbrella of women, but you can’t use the argument that gender is arbitrary to justify deleting your trans identity in order to blend in with women (the binary you just claimed was arbitrary).

This author has put forth an amazingly well thought out feminist perspective that I deeply respect. This is a persuasively good book on how transphobia and sexism are intimately tied together. Any person who believes all people should receive equal treatment regardless of sex or gender will appreciate the mighty contribution of this book. This book addresses both cis-sexism and trans exclusionary feminist beliefs.I find myself able to agree with only about half of the book, and I find myself not angered when I don't agree. The author presents some of the material as her perspective and differentiates well between that and the well researched aspects of the book. Where I take issue is usually in the biology part of her arguments, and since she is a biologist it might just be me who is mistaken.There was one area that pissed me off. The author spends time talking about 3rd gender and gender queer and making the case that transsexuals are not sell-out conformists to sexism- which I whole heatedly agree with... 3rd gender, trans* or cis are all equally valid states of existence. And then the author says: overall the gender binary works and is satisfactory. EXCUSE ME? The gender binary works FOR YOU. It does not work for a huge portion of people and your overlooking them, dismissing their valid desires to be recognized and the discrimination they face from lack of recognition and sexism is somewhat reminiscent of the claim that transsexuals are conformist sell-outs. Check your bias there... the gender binary does not "work" for a great number of people.Considering that I have a problem with 1 paragraph and the rest of book is amazing and non-offensive I gave it 5 stars. Everyone should read it. EVERYONE