Julia Serano's Blog, page 10
December 10, 2015
Michelle Goldberg's relentless anti-trans bias
People are asking me to respond to the latest Michelle Goldberg article, wherein she paints transgender activism as this horrible activist movement that oppresses both feminists and its own transgender constituents.
I don't have the time or energy to fully respond to this particular piece at the moment. But I do want to remind/alert people that Goldberg has a strong & persistent anti-trans bias that has been articulated by me here, and has been chronicled by the Columbia Journalism Review, Bitch Magazine, Autostraddle, Bilerico, and New Statesman.
Trans people (like every minority or majority group) don't agree with each other on every issue. There are more than one or two or five or twenty or more (many more!) trans perspectives on our collective experiences and activism. We, like all communities, often disagree with one another. To reduce this down to a strict dichotomy, and to pit certain trans people against other trans people (and to play up those differences to entice unaware cisgender audiences and dismiss transgender activism) is the worst kind of dumbed-down salacious journalism.
I am fine with people having opinions. If you have a strong opinion, state it! And own it! That way people will be able to know where you stand. Passionately make your case and show all sides of the story - convince us why your stance is the most reasoned position. If you do this, I will respect you. I may not agree with you, but I will respect you. So long as you do not resort to lies and/or ad hominem attacks.
While I respect (albeit disagree with) TERFs who hold theories/positions different from my own, I abhor charlatan's who pretend to dispassionately/objectively chronicle such debates, while clearly (to those aware of said issues) promoting one side or the other.
At this point in time, there are two people who seem most driven to repeatedly denounce transgender activism under the guise of supposedly objective journalism. One is Alice Dreger. The other is Michelle Goldberg. Both pretend to be objective, while purposefully promoting heavily slanted agendas. Both create false dichotomies & straw men, when in reality trans perspectives are vast & diverse.
I don't have the time or energy to fully respond to this particular piece at the moment. But I do want to remind/alert people that Goldberg has a strong & persistent anti-trans bias that has been articulated by me here, and has been chronicled by the Columbia Journalism Review, Bitch Magazine, Autostraddle, Bilerico, and New Statesman.
Trans people (like every minority or majority group) don't agree with each other on every issue. There are more than one or two or five or twenty or more (many more!) trans perspectives on our collective experiences and activism. We, like all communities, often disagree with one another. To reduce this down to a strict dichotomy, and to pit certain trans people against other trans people (and to play up those differences to entice unaware cisgender audiences and dismiss transgender activism) is the worst kind of dumbed-down salacious journalism.
I am fine with people having opinions. If you have a strong opinion, state it! And own it! That way people will be able to know where you stand. Passionately make your case and show all sides of the story - convince us why your stance is the most reasoned position. If you do this, I will respect you. I may not agree with you, but I will respect you. So long as you do not resort to lies and/or ad hominem attacks.
While I respect (albeit disagree with) TERFs who hold theories/positions different from my own, I abhor charlatan's who pretend to dispassionately/objectively chronicle such debates, while clearly (to those aware of said issues) promoting one side or the other.
At this point in time, there are two people who seem most driven to repeatedly denounce transgender activism under the guise of supposedly objective journalism. One is Alice Dreger. The other is Michelle Goldberg. Both pretend to be objective, while purposefully promoting heavily slanted agendas. Both create false dichotomies & straw men, when in reality trans perspectives are vast & diverse.
November 16, 2015
Critiquing the "Political Correctness Run Amok" Meme (yet again)
For those of you who may have missed it, last week I wrote another article critiquing the recent and increasing trend of anti-"political correctness" articles. [My previous critiques include That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (and it’s not because of “political correctness”) from August, plus Noah Berlatsky's interview with me on the subject back in February.]
Anyway, the new piece is called How to Write a “Political Correctness Run Amok” Article. It is both a critique of these articles' one-sidedness and the many important issues they typically ignore. It was also more specifically a response to a Katha Pollitt recent piece "Feminism Needs More Thinkers Who Aren’t Right 100 Percent of the Time" (her op-ed about the Germaine Greer/Cardiff University controversy), which I felt had similar shortcomings.
The original piece (link above) appeared on Medium -- the way that it works is that the more "hearts" it gets (icon at bottom), the more likely it will appear on other people's Medium feeds. So please "heart" it if you like it!
The piece was subsequently picked up by Salon - so you can read it there by clicking that link.
I also wrote a follow-up piece addressing many of the questions and concerns that some readers on Medium raised.
Finally, I encourage folks to check out Noah Berlatsky's article about how coverage of the Germaine Greer "no platform" debates typically failed to include any trans voices - both myself and Katherine Cross are interviewed in Noah's piece.
Enjoy!
Anyway, the new piece is called How to Write a “Political Correctness Run Amok” Article. It is both a critique of these articles' one-sidedness and the many important issues they typically ignore. It was also more specifically a response to a Katha Pollitt recent piece "Feminism Needs More Thinkers Who Aren’t Right 100 Percent of the Time" (her op-ed about the Germaine Greer/Cardiff University controversy), which I felt had similar shortcomings.
The original piece (link above) appeared on Medium -- the way that it works is that the more "hearts" it gets (icon at bottom), the more likely it will appear on other people's Medium feeds. So please "heart" it if you like it!
The piece was subsequently picked up by Salon - so you can read it there by clicking that link.
I also wrote a follow-up piece addressing many of the questions and concerns that some readers on Medium raised.
Finally, I encourage folks to check out Noah Berlatsky's article about how coverage of the Germaine Greer "no platform" debates typically failed to include any trans voices - both myself and Katherine Cross are interviewed in Noah's piece.
Enjoy!
September 11, 2015
Julia Serano on Judith Butler
For starters, my apologies about the eponymous blog-post title—I simply wanted this piece to be readily “findable” for people who do web searches using both our names.
Over the years, I have read and heard numerous reactions to my first two books—Whipping Girl and Excluded—that presume that I have negative or antagonistic views of gender theorist Judith Butler. This is not actually the case. Others have presumed that some of my work is a “misreading” of her theories, when in actuality I have never directly critiqued Butler’s work (only misinterpretations of her work). So to set the record straight, I have penned this blog-post, which will admittedly only be of interest to a small subset of readers.Let me say from the start, I am by no means a “Butler scholar.” She is an influential figure in feminism and queer theory, especially back when I was first becoming aware of, and interested in, these fields in the early ’00s. I have read a few of her books (specifically Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and Undoing Gender) as well as numerous other essays she has written, interviews she has given, and reviews of her work authored by other people. Her writings are thoughtful and provocative, and have challenged me to think about gender in new and different ways.
Occasionally, Butler has made claims that I have taken issue with, or that overlook or downplay certain matters that I feel are important. (But I could say the same about most other feminist/gender/queer theorists that I have read, and they would likely say the same about me!) For instance, Butler (like most feminist theorists) tends to relegate gender entirely to the realm of the social. In my writings (especially Excluded, Chapter 13), I have discussed in great detail why ignoring or denying any possible biological influence on gender is shortsighted and potentially detrimental (as I explain here).
Perhaps as a result of this social-only approach, Butler made a few claims in her first two books (Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter) that appeared to invisiblize transsexual perspectives and lived experiences. While I have never directly critiqued this aspect of Butler’s work, in Whipping Girl I do reference Viviane Namaste’s book Invisible Lives and Jay Prosser’s book Second Skins, both of which discuss this tendency with regards to Butler’s first two books, as well as with feminist and queer theory more generally. To be clear, while I think that Namaste and Prosser both make important points, the shortcomings they describe in Butler’s work do not appear to have arisen out of any sort of anti-transsexual attitude or agenda. Indeed, in Butler’s subsequent writings (e.g., her book Undoing Gender) and interviews (e.g., this recent interview with Cristan Williams), she has made it clear that she considers transsexual identities and experiences to be legitimate, and is concerned with the real-life tangible obstacles and issues that trans people face.
While I have no strong objections to Butler’s work, I have been on a mission to destroy two memes that are often (incorrectly) associated with her—namely, the notions that “all gender is drag” and “all gender is performance.” In Whipping Girl(Chapter 19), this is how I framed this matter:
While [queer theory and post-structuralist] feminism differs from [identity-politics-focused/cultural] feminism in many ways, it shares its predecessor’s tendency to artificialize gender expression. This is often accomplished via gender performativity, a concept developed by Judith Butler to describe the way in which built-in expectations about maleness and femaleness, straightness and queerness, are constantly imposed on all of us. Butler uses the term “performativity” to highlight how feminine and masculine norms must constantly be cited. She uses the example of the child who becomes “girled” by others at birth: She is given a female name, referred to with female pronouns, given girl toys, and will, throughout her life, have her “girlness” cited by others in society. Butler argues that this sort of reiteration “produces” gender, making it appear “natural.” However, many other [queer theorists and post-structuralist] feminists have interpreted Butler’s writings to mean that one’s gender is merely a “performance.” According to this latter view, if gender itself is merely a “performance,” then one can challenge sexism by simply “performing” one’s gender in ways that call the binary gender system into question; the most often cited example of this is a drag queen whose “performance” supposedly reveals the way in which femaleness and femininity are merely a “performance.”
So in other words, Butler’s theory of gender performativity—which most certainly has merit, even if it is does not explain all aspects of gender—is completely different from the notion that “all gender is performance”—which is not only inaccurate and trite, but also at odds with what Butler actually claimed.
In “Performance Piece” (written in 2007, and which later became Chapter 11 of Excluded), I deliver a harsh critique of these then-popular slogans “all gender is drag” and “all gender is performance,” and go onto show how they are often used to undermine the identities and perspectives of transsexuals, as well as other gender and sexual minorities. Even though I do not cite Butler at all in the text, I added the following clarifying information in the first endnote to that chapter:
The notion that “all gender is performance” or “all gender is drag” is frequently attributed to Judith Butler, and specifically to her book Gender Trouble (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity(New York: Routledge, 1999). However,on numerous occasions, Butler has argued that these catch phrases are gross misinterpretations of what she was actually trying to say (see Gender Trouble, xxii–xxiv; Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”(New York: Routledge, 1993), 125–126; “Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler,” Radical Philosophy, Vol. 67, Summer 1994, 32–39; see also Sara Salih, Judith Butler (London: Routledge, 2002), 62–71.
Despite adding this information, some people have nevertheless viewed this chapter as an indictment or misreading of Butler’s theory of gender performativity, even though (if you actually read the endnotes) it most clearly is not.
Finally, the impression that my writings exist in opposition to Butler’s also likely stems from “On the Outside Looking In”—a spoken word piece that I wrote in 2005 for a National Queer Arts Festival show called Transforming Community, and which subsequently became Chapter 2 of Excluded. The piece describes my experience at Camp Trans in 2003, and in it I excerpt a poem that Carolyn Connelly performed at that event—it was an awesome and moving rant in which she called out all sorts of LGBTQ folks for misunderstanding or invalidating her identity and experiences as a trans dyke. Here is that passage:
Fuck the lesbians who think I’m straight, I can’t be femme/I’m not a girl/Fuck the gay men who out me at Pride every fucking year/Call me fabulous/Tell me to work it/And they’re really girls too/Fuck the transsexual women who think I’m too butch /Cause of my short spiked hair/Cause I drink beer or I’m a dyke . . . Fuck the genderqueer bois and grrrls/Who think they speak for me/Or dis me cause I support the gender binary . . . Fuck Post Modernism/Fuck Gender Studies/Fuck Judith Butler/Fuck theory that isn’t by and for and speaks to real people . . .
I included that last stanza in the excerpt because it really resonated with me at the time. There is a long history of feminist and queer folks citing academic theories of various sorts in order to undermine transsexuals, and trans women in particular (as I chronicle in both my books)—sadly, this includes misattributions and misinterpretations of Butler. While I cannot speak on Connelly’s behalf, it seemed to me that the singling out of Butler in this passage was not an indictment of her work per se (as she was never anti-transsexual or anti-trans woman, unlike many other notable feminist theorists of the time), but rather because her work (and misinterpretations thereof) were ubiquitous and frequently cited during that time period (the early ’00s) and in those settings. Back then and there, “Judith Butler” (like “Post Modernism” or “Gender Studies”) was often invoked in these instances, not in reference to a specific person or theory, but rather as some abstract authority that could be wielded as justification for invalidating another person.
Over ten years ago when I was writing “On the Outside Looking In,” I was basically just a local slam poet whose trans dyke identity was often dismissed by people in my community who would (incorrectly) cite Butler’s work—that is what I was reacting to at the time, and why I included that excerpt in my piece. Nowadays, as an author of two books that are taken seriously in certain academic settings, I can see how people might misinterpret that passage as “one gender theorist calling out another gender theorist,” which was most certainly not how it was intended. The piece explicitly begins with the date “August 2003,” which I hoped would alert readers to the fact that this was “me” speaking over a decade ago in a very different environment, and not the “me” right now in this place and time. Perhaps I should have clarified this with an endnote, but as we have already established, some people do not read the endnotes . . .
Given the subject of this post, I would be remiss if I did not share the following anecdote. In 2005, before the show Transforming Community took place, we (the cast) work-shopped our pieces with one another. After my initial reading of “On the Outside Looking In,” one of the cast members expressed their concern about the line “Fuck Judith Butler” in the aforementioned excerpt. They imagined how horrified they would feel if they went to a show and someone said a similar thing about them from the stage. I responded that the quote is not intended to convey animosity toward Butler personally, but rather frustration over how trans identities were often invisibilized or invalidated via citations of academic authorities. Plus, I added, it’s not like Judith Butler is actually going to come to our show! All of us laughed.
Then in the fall of 2005, we were asked to do a reprise of the show at the San Francisco Public Library. All the cast members (including me) performed our pieces. At the end of each Transforming Community show, we always did a Q&A with the audience. So after the last piece, as I started to get up from my seat for the Q&A, I heard a voice say, “I enjoyed your piece.” I said, “Thank you,” as I looked up. The person looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite place the face. Until she said, “And by the way, I’m Judith Butler.” And she smiled. It was a sincere smile, not a snarky I-got-you smile. Then she walked away before I could say anything else.
I sent her an email after the fact letting her know (as I have detailed here) that I appreciated her work, and that my beef was with how other people misused her words and theories in order to invalidate others. She sent me a nice reply in which she mentioned (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she had learned to separate “Judith Butler”—the entity that people discussed and deliberated (sometimes using profanity from a library stage!)—from the flesh and blood person that she experienced herself to be.
That last bit always stuck with me, as it is something that I have had to learn myself in the years since Whipping Girl was published. These days, I sometimes come across people who accidentally (and sometimes purposefully) misinterpret what I was trying to say, or who will use my work in ways that I never intended. And I have certainly read and overheard my fair share of ‘Fuck Julia Serano’s. In any case, the only thing I can do is try to articulate my thoughts and intentions better in the future, and whenever possible, clarify my positions in my subsequent writings. Hopefully, this piece has done the latter with regards to this particular matter.
Over the years, I have read and heard numerous reactions to my first two books—Whipping Girl and Excluded—that presume that I have negative or antagonistic views of gender theorist Judith Butler. This is not actually the case. Others have presumed that some of my work is a “misreading” of her theories, when in actuality I have never directly critiqued Butler’s work (only misinterpretations of her work). So to set the record straight, I have penned this blog-post, which will admittedly only be of interest to a small subset of readers.Let me say from the start, I am by no means a “Butler scholar.” She is an influential figure in feminism and queer theory, especially back when I was first becoming aware of, and interested in, these fields in the early ’00s. I have read a few of her books (specifically Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and Undoing Gender) as well as numerous other essays she has written, interviews she has given, and reviews of her work authored by other people. Her writings are thoughtful and provocative, and have challenged me to think about gender in new and different ways.
Occasionally, Butler has made claims that I have taken issue with, or that overlook or downplay certain matters that I feel are important. (But I could say the same about most other feminist/gender/queer theorists that I have read, and they would likely say the same about me!) For instance, Butler (like most feminist theorists) tends to relegate gender entirely to the realm of the social. In my writings (especially Excluded, Chapter 13), I have discussed in great detail why ignoring or denying any possible biological influence on gender is shortsighted and potentially detrimental (as I explain here).
Perhaps as a result of this social-only approach, Butler made a few claims in her first two books (Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter) that appeared to invisiblize transsexual perspectives and lived experiences. While I have never directly critiqued this aspect of Butler’s work, in Whipping Girl I do reference Viviane Namaste’s book Invisible Lives and Jay Prosser’s book Second Skins, both of which discuss this tendency with regards to Butler’s first two books, as well as with feminist and queer theory more generally. To be clear, while I think that Namaste and Prosser both make important points, the shortcomings they describe in Butler’s work do not appear to have arisen out of any sort of anti-transsexual attitude or agenda. Indeed, in Butler’s subsequent writings (e.g., her book Undoing Gender) and interviews (e.g., this recent interview with Cristan Williams), she has made it clear that she considers transsexual identities and experiences to be legitimate, and is concerned with the real-life tangible obstacles and issues that trans people face.
While I have no strong objections to Butler’s work, I have been on a mission to destroy two memes that are often (incorrectly) associated with her—namely, the notions that “all gender is drag” and “all gender is performance.” In Whipping Girl(Chapter 19), this is how I framed this matter:
While [queer theory and post-structuralist] feminism differs from [identity-politics-focused/cultural] feminism in many ways, it shares its predecessor’s tendency to artificialize gender expression. This is often accomplished via gender performativity, a concept developed by Judith Butler to describe the way in which built-in expectations about maleness and femaleness, straightness and queerness, are constantly imposed on all of us. Butler uses the term “performativity” to highlight how feminine and masculine norms must constantly be cited. She uses the example of the child who becomes “girled” by others at birth: She is given a female name, referred to with female pronouns, given girl toys, and will, throughout her life, have her “girlness” cited by others in society. Butler argues that this sort of reiteration “produces” gender, making it appear “natural.” However, many other [queer theorists and post-structuralist] feminists have interpreted Butler’s writings to mean that one’s gender is merely a “performance.” According to this latter view, if gender itself is merely a “performance,” then one can challenge sexism by simply “performing” one’s gender in ways that call the binary gender system into question; the most often cited example of this is a drag queen whose “performance” supposedly reveals the way in which femaleness and femininity are merely a “performance.”
So in other words, Butler’s theory of gender performativity—which most certainly has merit, even if it is does not explain all aspects of gender—is completely different from the notion that “all gender is performance”—which is not only inaccurate and trite, but also at odds with what Butler actually claimed.
In “Performance Piece” (written in 2007, and which later became Chapter 11 of Excluded), I deliver a harsh critique of these then-popular slogans “all gender is drag” and “all gender is performance,” and go onto show how they are often used to undermine the identities and perspectives of transsexuals, as well as other gender and sexual minorities. Even though I do not cite Butler at all in the text, I added the following clarifying information in the first endnote to that chapter:
The notion that “all gender is performance” or “all gender is drag” is frequently attributed to Judith Butler, and specifically to her book Gender Trouble (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity(New York: Routledge, 1999). However,on numerous occasions, Butler has argued that these catch phrases are gross misinterpretations of what she was actually trying to say (see Gender Trouble, xxii–xxiv; Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”(New York: Routledge, 1993), 125–126; “Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler,” Radical Philosophy, Vol. 67, Summer 1994, 32–39; see also Sara Salih, Judith Butler (London: Routledge, 2002), 62–71.
Despite adding this information, some people have nevertheless viewed this chapter as an indictment or misreading of Butler’s theory of gender performativity, even though (if you actually read the endnotes) it most clearly is not.
Finally, the impression that my writings exist in opposition to Butler’s also likely stems from “On the Outside Looking In”—a spoken word piece that I wrote in 2005 for a National Queer Arts Festival show called Transforming Community, and which subsequently became Chapter 2 of Excluded. The piece describes my experience at Camp Trans in 2003, and in it I excerpt a poem that Carolyn Connelly performed at that event—it was an awesome and moving rant in which she called out all sorts of LGBTQ folks for misunderstanding or invalidating her identity and experiences as a trans dyke. Here is that passage:
Fuck the lesbians who think I’m straight, I can’t be femme/I’m not a girl/Fuck the gay men who out me at Pride every fucking year/Call me fabulous/Tell me to work it/And they’re really girls too/Fuck the transsexual women who think I’m too butch /Cause of my short spiked hair/Cause I drink beer or I’m a dyke . . . Fuck the genderqueer bois and grrrls/Who think they speak for me/Or dis me cause I support the gender binary . . . Fuck Post Modernism/Fuck Gender Studies/Fuck Judith Butler/Fuck theory that isn’t by and for and speaks to real people . . .
I included that last stanza in the excerpt because it really resonated with me at the time. There is a long history of feminist and queer folks citing academic theories of various sorts in order to undermine transsexuals, and trans women in particular (as I chronicle in both my books)—sadly, this includes misattributions and misinterpretations of Butler. While I cannot speak on Connelly’s behalf, it seemed to me that the singling out of Butler in this passage was not an indictment of her work per se (as she was never anti-transsexual or anti-trans woman, unlike many other notable feminist theorists of the time), but rather because her work (and misinterpretations thereof) were ubiquitous and frequently cited during that time period (the early ’00s) and in those settings. Back then and there, “Judith Butler” (like “Post Modernism” or “Gender Studies”) was often invoked in these instances, not in reference to a specific person or theory, but rather as some abstract authority that could be wielded as justification for invalidating another person.
Over ten years ago when I was writing “On the Outside Looking In,” I was basically just a local slam poet whose trans dyke identity was often dismissed by people in my community who would (incorrectly) cite Butler’s work—that is what I was reacting to at the time, and why I included that excerpt in my piece. Nowadays, as an author of two books that are taken seriously in certain academic settings, I can see how people might misinterpret that passage as “one gender theorist calling out another gender theorist,” which was most certainly not how it was intended. The piece explicitly begins with the date “August 2003,” which I hoped would alert readers to the fact that this was “me” speaking over a decade ago in a very different environment, and not the “me” right now in this place and time. Perhaps I should have clarified this with an endnote, but as we have already established, some people do not read the endnotes . . .
Given the subject of this post, I would be remiss if I did not share the following anecdote. In 2005, before the show Transforming Community took place, we (the cast) work-shopped our pieces with one another. After my initial reading of “On the Outside Looking In,” one of the cast members expressed their concern about the line “Fuck Judith Butler” in the aforementioned excerpt. They imagined how horrified they would feel if they went to a show and someone said a similar thing about them from the stage. I responded that the quote is not intended to convey animosity toward Butler personally, but rather frustration over how trans identities were often invisibilized or invalidated via citations of academic authorities. Plus, I added, it’s not like Judith Butler is actually going to come to our show! All of us laughed.
Then in the fall of 2005, we were asked to do a reprise of the show at the San Francisco Public Library. All the cast members (including me) performed our pieces. At the end of each Transforming Community show, we always did a Q&A with the audience. So after the last piece, as I started to get up from my seat for the Q&A, I heard a voice say, “I enjoyed your piece.” I said, “Thank you,” as I looked up. The person looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite place the face. Until she said, “And by the way, I’m Judith Butler.” And she smiled. It was a sincere smile, not a snarky I-got-you smile. Then she walked away before I could say anything else.
I sent her an email after the fact letting her know (as I have detailed here) that I appreciated her work, and that my beef was with how other people misused her words and theories in order to invalidate others. She sent me a nice reply in which she mentioned (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she had learned to separate “Judith Butler”—the entity that people discussed and deliberated (sometimes using profanity from a library stage!)—from the flesh and blood person that she experienced herself to be.
That last bit always stuck with me, as it is something that I have had to learn myself in the years since Whipping Girl was published. These days, I sometimes come across people who accidentally (and sometimes purposefully) misinterpret what I was trying to say, or who will use my work in ways that I never intended. And I have certainly read and overheard my fair share of ‘Fuck Julia Serano’s. In any case, the only thing I can do is try to articulate my thoughts and intentions better in the future, and whenever possible, clarify my positions in my subsequent writings. Hopefully, this piece has done the latter with regards to this particular matter.
September 2, 2015
consider bringing Julia Serano out to your college campus!
So a new academic year has begun, and as always, I am looking forward to having the opportunity to speak/perform at various colleges & universities this year!
If you are affiliated with a college - especially if you belong to a trans, LGBTQIA+, women's and/or feminist-related organization - please consider bringing me out to your campus. And even if you aren't associated with a college yourself, feel free to forward this onto people that you know who are students or staff elsewhere.
For those interested parties, I have a recently updated "booking" webpage (http://www.juliaserano.com/booking.html) containing pertinent information, including short descriptions of some of my most frequently requested talks.
a PDF version of this booking info can be downloaded at this link: http://www.juliaserano.com/av/bookingJulia.pdf
Best wishes, -julia
If you are affiliated with a college - especially if you belong to a trans, LGBTQIA+, women's and/or feminist-related organization - please consider bringing me out to your campus. And even if you aren't associated with a college yourself, feel free to forward this onto people that you know who are students or staff elsewhere.
For those interested parties, I have a recently updated "booking" webpage (http://www.juliaserano.com/booking.html) containing pertinent information, including short descriptions of some of my most frequently requested talks.
a PDF version of this booking info can be downloaded at this link: http://www.juliaserano.com/av/bookingJulia.pdf
Best wishes, -julia
August 27, 2015
Regarding Trans* and Transgenderism
Last year, in the second half of my piece A Personal History of the “T-word” (and some more general reflections on language and activism), I described what I call the activist language merry-go-round. Here’s how it works: Because trans people are highly stigmatized and face undue scrutiny in our culture, all of the language associated with us will face similar stigma and scrutiny. At some point, every single trans-related term will be called out as “problematic” for some reason or another—e.g., its origin, history, aesthetic quality (or lack thereof), literal meaning, alternate definitions, potential misinterpretations or connotations, or occasional exclusionary or defamatory usage. And supposedly more liberatory or inclusive alternative terms will gain favor. But over time, these new terms will eventually be challenged too. Because the crux of the problem is not the words themselves, but rather the negative or narrow views of trans people that ultimately influence how these words are viewed and used by others.
So rather than constantly trying to eliminate certain words and inventing new replacement terms, I argue that we would be best off challenging the narrow or negative views of trans people that sometimes latch themselves onto trans terminology. That is a brief synopsis of the activist language merry-go-round; I encourage you to read the linked-to essay above, as I make my case far more thoughtfully and thoroughly there than I have in these two paragraphs.
The reason why I am bringing this up now is because I want to share some of my personal thoughts regarding the terms trans* and transgenderism, both of which have come under activist-language-merry-go-round scrutiny lately.
Trans*
Since the 1990’s, the words “transgender” and “trans” have been the most often used broad umbrella terms to refer to people who defy societal norms with regards to gender. But on many occasions over the years, some people have objected to them. For instance, I’ve heard some transsexuals object to “transgender” because it was previously favored by Virginia Prince to distinguish herself from transsexuals (even though that is not how most people use the word today). And some non-binary folks have told me that they don't like “trans” because they feel it is too closely associated with transsexuals who identify within the binary (e.g., when it is used in the phrases “trans woman” or “trans men”).
In attempts to be inclusive of people who dislike these labels for one reason or another, trans activists (including myself) sometimes turn to alternate umbrella terms, the most common ones being “gender non-conforming” and “gender variant.” But of course there have been complaints about these terms as well (e.g., too clunky, too vague, seems to favor some identities over others, objections to being called “variant” or “non-conforming”). Again, it’s not that any of these terms are inherently better or worse than others—they can all be used in a respectful and inclusive manner. It’s just that there is no perfect word: Every term will have its detractors, and so long as trans people are stigmatized in our culture, some people will use these terms in disparaging or exclusionary ways.
Over the last few years, trans* has become the new umbrella term du jour. The way it was told to me, the asterisk is intended to serve the same “wild card” function that it does in search engines—thus, trans* would include trans, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and so on. While I had seen the term used on a few occasions in the past, starting around 2013 (and seemingly out of the blue), it was practically everywhere: in articles and trans-themed glossaries, in the names of organizations and events, and so on. Being interested in trans terminology, I was curious as to how this came to be. Perhaps there was some blog-post or manifesto out there that galvanized the community to start using the word? I never did find out, in part, because doing searches for trans* is complicated by the fact that search engines view the asterisk as a wild card!
While I have no problems with the term trans*, I did dislike some of the dynamics that accompanied it during its rise in popularity. Specifically, I’m talking about a phenomenon that I’ve seen play out before in other marginalized communities, and I’ve come to call it word-sabotage (to contrast it with word-elimination). Here is what I mean: When activists say “don’t use the word tranny,” or “it’s transgender, not transgendered,” that is an explicit word-elimination campaign, one that directly states that the word in question (e.g., tranny, transgendered) is bad and should not be used. Word-sabotage is indirect, as it insinuates that certain terms are suspect or problematic on the basis that they are supposedly not as liberatory or inclusive as the term being championed. I have encountered this on many occasions within BMNOPPQ communities, were some people prefer to call themselves pansexual, or multisexual, or polysexual, rather than bisexual. And this is totally fine—people are free to self-identify however they like. However, sometimes people will claim that they have chosen their preferred label because it is supposedly more liberatory or inclusive than bisexual. This latter case is an example of word-sabotage, because now people who identify as bisexual and who use that term in an inclusive manner (such as me) are now presumed to be conservative and exclusionary.
On a number of occasions, I saw this sort of word-sabotage come into play with the popularization of trans*: Because many people viewed the asterisk as imparting broad inclusion, suddenly the use of the terms transgender and trans sans asterisk—which I have used in a broad inclusive manner for well over a decade—would sometimes be questioned, or might be interpreted as promoting exclusion.
It is rather surreal to have the language you have long used as part of your activism shift in meaning or connotation so quickly. But the activist language merry-go-round keeps on spinning, so of course the inevitable happened: People started critiquing trans*.
The first such complaint that I heard was from a trans woman who felt that the asterisk seemed to suggest that being trans is illegitimate—the example she offered was how asterisks are used in sports statistics to imply that a particular record is not legitimate for some reason. I suppose that somebody somewhere out there has probably complained about how asterisks are often used for footnotes, thereby insinuating that trans people are merely footnotes rather than part of the main text! I am joking a bit here, but these sorts of literal interpretations of words are often invoked in word-elimination attempts (e.g., “I don’t like the word ‘transsexual’ because it has the word ‘sexual’ in it”). In general, people don’t read words literally—they get their meanings from how they are used in everyday conversation. However, when it’s a term associated with a marginalized group, then people will tend to pick it apart in this manner, and in countless other ways.
In the last few months, I have become aware of a new claim: Trans* is apparently trans-misogynistic. I am not sure where this originated, but it seems to have garnered steam (a recent google search using “asterisk” and “transmisogyny” revealed numerous pages of results to this effect). According to a recent post by Tobi Hill-Meyer (that I encourage you to check out), she summarizes the current arguments being made against trans* this way: “that female assigned genderqueers popularized it as a way to prioritize their issues at the expense of trans women.” But she then goes on to talk about many previous incarnations of the trans* in “2010, 2007, 2003, and 1998” when it was forwarded by trans women to circumvent “transsexual vs. transgender” infighting that was occurring in those settings at that time. The last paragraph of her post really resonated with me:
I'm not really invested in whether or not people use [trans*]. I don't feel it's important enough to fight over. But seeing the way people talk about it now makes me sad that the trans community seems to have a historical memory permanently limited to only 2-4 years back.
The word trans* is not inherently inclusive or trans-misogynistic. Rather, like all words, it gets its meaning from the way in which people use it. And it may be utilized towards positive or negative ends. Just because some people may use it in an exclusionary way doesn’t mean that the word itself disparaging or exclusionary.
Transgenderism
The word transgenderism has been around for as long as I have been aware of transgender activism. It appeared in the titles of explicitly trans activist books such as Patrick Califia’s 1997 book Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, and the 2003 anthology Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others. It appears in Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw, Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation, and countless other trans activist books, including Whipping Girl—most notably in the chapter “Coming to Terms with Transgenderism and Transsexuality.”
In all of these cases, the word “transgenderism” was used in a neutral manner to denote one of two things: the phenomenon of transgender people (our existence and our experiences), or the state of being transgender (e.g., I might talk about my own transgenderism). It is very common in English to use the suffixes “-ity” and “-ism” to create nouns that describe a phenomenon or state of being—for example, I might talk about my curiosity or intellectualism. So transsexuality and transgenderism are linguistically akin to those examples, and to me talking about my bisexuality, or discussing the subject of lesbianism more generally.
Prior to the last two years, I would (on rare occasions) hear complaints that transgenderism sounded like jargon or was too academic. Admittedly, it is not an “everyday conversation” word, but it does sometimes come in handy when one is writing about gender variant people and experiences (e.g., transgenderism throughout history, or people’s differing experiences with transgenderism). I have heard people presume that transgenderism has its origins in psychiatric/sexology discourses, the implication being that this would automatically make the word problematic. While I haven’t been able to confirm its first usage, I have doubts that this is necessarily the case. “Transgender” itself was a community term (not a psychiatric/sexology one), so it seems likely that the first usage of “transgenderism” would come from within the community, or at least from someone who was aware of and respectful toward trans perspectives. But even if it did originate in psychiatric/sexology discourses, this (in and of itself) wouldn’t disqualify its usage, as many other terms that trans people use all the time (e.g., transsexual, FTM/MTF, dysphoria, SRS) had similar origins. Indeed, the first known usage of cis terminology occurred in a 1914 German sexology article—I certainly do not think that we should stop using it for that reason.
So anyway, transgenderism has a long history of being used in a nonjudgmental and neutral manner, often by trans people themselves. But then, in the last couple years, some TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists) have purposefully misappropriated it in a way that confuses the state of being transgender with a potentially dangerous political ideology. This tactic is most obvious in Sheila Jeffreys’ 2014 book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. And it was repeated in last year’s Michelle Goldberg “faux journalism” article “What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.” Both of these subtitles compare apples to oranges—transgenderism is a naturally occurring phenomenon, not a political ideology—and both subtitles would have been more accurate had they pitted trans-exclusionary radical feminism against transgender activism (which is an actual ongoing political/ideological debate). This incorrect usage seems to purposefully capitalize on the fact that transgenderism is not an everyday word (so it will strike trans-unaware readers as somewhat alien) and seems intended to invoke certain oppressive ideologies (e.g., sexism, racism, fascism, and others) that also just so happen to end with the suffix “-ism.”
Jeffreys’ and Goldberg’s subtitles most certainly should be critiqued for insinuating that the existence of transgender people and the state of being transgender (i.e., transgenderism) is merely an oppressive political ideology. But sadly, it is so much easier to destroy words than to save them. So unsurprisingly I suppose, in the wake of Jeffreys’ book and Goldberg’s article, a word-elimination campaign against transgenderism began to pick up speed.
The most common complaint in this campaign against transgenderism centers on statements like “transgender people are not an ‘ism’.” But as I said earlier, “isms” aren’t always ideologies—many of them (e.g., magnetism, metabolism, hypothyroidism, lesbianism, transgenderism) are simply naturally occurring phenomena. Plus, not all ideological “isms” are bad or dangerous—for instance, I personally think that feminism (as a whole) is a positive and beneficial thing. If the subtitle to Jeffreys’ book was “A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgender Activism” (as would be more appropriate), would we be calling for a ban of the phrase “transgender activism” because it implies that transgender people are associated with an "ism"?
The other meme I’ve heard on multiple occasions in this recent word-elimination campaign is that trans people have never accepted or have always rejected the term transgenderism. Such statements are utterly ahistorical: As I’ve detailed above, the word has been used by trans activists (including myself) in a nonjudgmental and neutral manner for over two decades. What is new is that the term is now being misused by TERFs. And even if you do not personally like the word transgenderism (which is absolutely your right), you can probably recognize that it would be an extremely counterproductive strategy to surrender trans-related words to our enemies (whether they be TERFs, conservative political forces, etc.) as soon as they start misappropriating them. To take another example: Jeffreys and others misuse and abuse the word transgender in all sorts of ways (e.g., “transgendering,” “transgenders”), so does that mean that we should eliminate that word as well? And what would the ramifications of that be?
An alternative to sabotaging and eliminating words
I didn’t write this essay to tell others what words they should or should not use. And I am fine with trans-related language gradually evolving over time. But I do wish that we (transgender/trans/trans* folks) would think more about the long-term ramifications before engaging in word-sabotage (e.g., trans* is the most inclusive, so therefore trans san asterisk is exclusionary) and word-elimination (e.g., transgenderism is a slur, and trans* is inherently trans-misogynistic, so therefore we should all stop using these words). As I have shown, such arguments are arbitrary and ahistorical, as words are often used by different people in different ways, and may take on positive, negative, or neutral connotations depending on the context.
But more importantly, the people who use trans-related terminology the most (by far!) are other transgender/trans/trans* folks. And whether intentional or not, attempts to undermine some specific trans-related term will have the effect of undermining those transgender/trans/trans* individuals who use that term in their activism and/or to describe their experiences.
It is really easy to condemn a word: to take offense when people say it, to tell others it is disparaging or exclusionary, and that they should not use it. But it is not the only path (or even the best path) moving forward. Perhaps instead, we could try saving words, by calling out the negative or narrow assumptions that sometimes latch themselves onto trans-related language. When someone uses a trans-related term in a disparaging or exclusionary way, perhaps we should challenge the misappropriation of that term, rather than surrendering or undermining the word itself. It is not the words themselves, but the negative assumptions and sentiments behind the words that are the problem—so perhaps they should be our primary target.
So rather than constantly trying to eliminate certain words and inventing new replacement terms, I argue that we would be best off challenging the narrow or negative views of trans people that sometimes latch themselves onto trans terminology. That is a brief synopsis of the activist language merry-go-round; I encourage you to read the linked-to essay above, as I make my case far more thoughtfully and thoroughly there than I have in these two paragraphs.
The reason why I am bringing this up now is because I want to share some of my personal thoughts regarding the terms trans* and transgenderism, both of which have come under activist-language-merry-go-round scrutiny lately.
Trans*
Since the 1990’s, the words “transgender” and “trans” have been the most often used broad umbrella terms to refer to people who defy societal norms with regards to gender. But on many occasions over the years, some people have objected to them. For instance, I’ve heard some transsexuals object to “transgender” because it was previously favored by Virginia Prince to distinguish herself from transsexuals (even though that is not how most people use the word today). And some non-binary folks have told me that they don't like “trans” because they feel it is too closely associated with transsexuals who identify within the binary (e.g., when it is used in the phrases “trans woman” or “trans men”).
In attempts to be inclusive of people who dislike these labels for one reason or another, trans activists (including myself) sometimes turn to alternate umbrella terms, the most common ones being “gender non-conforming” and “gender variant.” But of course there have been complaints about these terms as well (e.g., too clunky, too vague, seems to favor some identities over others, objections to being called “variant” or “non-conforming”). Again, it’s not that any of these terms are inherently better or worse than others—they can all be used in a respectful and inclusive manner. It’s just that there is no perfect word: Every term will have its detractors, and so long as trans people are stigmatized in our culture, some people will use these terms in disparaging or exclusionary ways.
Over the last few years, trans* has become the new umbrella term du jour. The way it was told to me, the asterisk is intended to serve the same “wild card” function that it does in search engines—thus, trans* would include trans, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and so on. While I had seen the term used on a few occasions in the past, starting around 2013 (and seemingly out of the blue), it was practically everywhere: in articles and trans-themed glossaries, in the names of organizations and events, and so on. Being interested in trans terminology, I was curious as to how this came to be. Perhaps there was some blog-post or manifesto out there that galvanized the community to start using the word? I never did find out, in part, because doing searches for trans* is complicated by the fact that search engines view the asterisk as a wild card!
While I have no problems with the term trans*, I did dislike some of the dynamics that accompanied it during its rise in popularity. Specifically, I’m talking about a phenomenon that I’ve seen play out before in other marginalized communities, and I’ve come to call it word-sabotage (to contrast it with word-elimination). Here is what I mean: When activists say “don’t use the word tranny,” or “it’s transgender, not transgendered,” that is an explicit word-elimination campaign, one that directly states that the word in question (e.g., tranny, transgendered) is bad and should not be used. Word-sabotage is indirect, as it insinuates that certain terms are suspect or problematic on the basis that they are supposedly not as liberatory or inclusive as the term being championed. I have encountered this on many occasions within BMNOPPQ communities, were some people prefer to call themselves pansexual, or multisexual, or polysexual, rather than bisexual. And this is totally fine—people are free to self-identify however they like. However, sometimes people will claim that they have chosen their preferred label because it is supposedly more liberatory or inclusive than bisexual. This latter case is an example of word-sabotage, because now people who identify as bisexual and who use that term in an inclusive manner (such as me) are now presumed to be conservative and exclusionary.
On a number of occasions, I saw this sort of word-sabotage come into play with the popularization of trans*: Because many people viewed the asterisk as imparting broad inclusion, suddenly the use of the terms transgender and trans sans asterisk—which I have used in a broad inclusive manner for well over a decade—would sometimes be questioned, or might be interpreted as promoting exclusion.
It is rather surreal to have the language you have long used as part of your activism shift in meaning or connotation so quickly. But the activist language merry-go-round keeps on spinning, so of course the inevitable happened: People started critiquing trans*.
The first such complaint that I heard was from a trans woman who felt that the asterisk seemed to suggest that being trans is illegitimate—the example she offered was how asterisks are used in sports statistics to imply that a particular record is not legitimate for some reason. I suppose that somebody somewhere out there has probably complained about how asterisks are often used for footnotes, thereby insinuating that trans people are merely footnotes rather than part of the main text! I am joking a bit here, but these sorts of literal interpretations of words are often invoked in word-elimination attempts (e.g., “I don’t like the word ‘transsexual’ because it has the word ‘sexual’ in it”). In general, people don’t read words literally—they get their meanings from how they are used in everyday conversation. However, when it’s a term associated with a marginalized group, then people will tend to pick it apart in this manner, and in countless other ways.
In the last few months, I have become aware of a new claim: Trans* is apparently trans-misogynistic. I am not sure where this originated, but it seems to have garnered steam (a recent google search using “asterisk” and “transmisogyny” revealed numerous pages of results to this effect). According to a recent post by Tobi Hill-Meyer (that I encourage you to check out), she summarizes the current arguments being made against trans* this way: “that female assigned genderqueers popularized it as a way to prioritize their issues at the expense of trans women.” But she then goes on to talk about many previous incarnations of the trans* in “2010, 2007, 2003, and 1998” when it was forwarded by trans women to circumvent “transsexual vs. transgender” infighting that was occurring in those settings at that time. The last paragraph of her post really resonated with me:
I'm not really invested in whether or not people use [trans*]. I don't feel it's important enough to fight over. But seeing the way people talk about it now makes me sad that the trans community seems to have a historical memory permanently limited to only 2-4 years back.
The word trans* is not inherently inclusive or trans-misogynistic. Rather, like all words, it gets its meaning from the way in which people use it. And it may be utilized towards positive or negative ends. Just because some people may use it in an exclusionary way doesn’t mean that the word itself disparaging or exclusionary.
Transgenderism
The word transgenderism has been around for as long as I have been aware of transgender activism. It appeared in the titles of explicitly trans activist books such as Patrick Califia’s 1997 book Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, and the 2003 anthology Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others. It appears in Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw, Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation, and countless other trans activist books, including Whipping Girl—most notably in the chapter “Coming to Terms with Transgenderism and Transsexuality.”
In all of these cases, the word “transgenderism” was used in a neutral manner to denote one of two things: the phenomenon of transgender people (our existence and our experiences), or the state of being transgender (e.g., I might talk about my own transgenderism). It is very common in English to use the suffixes “-ity” and “-ism” to create nouns that describe a phenomenon or state of being—for example, I might talk about my curiosity or intellectualism. So transsexuality and transgenderism are linguistically akin to those examples, and to me talking about my bisexuality, or discussing the subject of lesbianism more generally.
Prior to the last two years, I would (on rare occasions) hear complaints that transgenderism sounded like jargon or was too academic. Admittedly, it is not an “everyday conversation” word, but it does sometimes come in handy when one is writing about gender variant people and experiences (e.g., transgenderism throughout history, or people’s differing experiences with transgenderism). I have heard people presume that transgenderism has its origins in psychiatric/sexology discourses, the implication being that this would automatically make the word problematic. While I haven’t been able to confirm its first usage, I have doubts that this is necessarily the case. “Transgender” itself was a community term (not a psychiatric/sexology one), so it seems likely that the first usage of “transgenderism” would come from within the community, or at least from someone who was aware of and respectful toward trans perspectives. But even if it did originate in psychiatric/sexology discourses, this (in and of itself) wouldn’t disqualify its usage, as many other terms that trans people use all the time (e.g., transsexual, FTM/MTF, dysphoria, SRS) had similar origins. Indeed, the first known usage of cis terminology occurred in a 1914 German sexology article—I certainly do not think that we should stop using it for that reason.
So anyway, transgenderism has a long history of being used in a nonjudgmental and neutral manner, often by trans people themselves. But then, in the last couple years, some TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists) have purposefully misappropriated it in a way that confuses the state of being transgender with a potentially dangerous political ideology. This tactic is most obvious in Sheila Jeffreys’ 2014 book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. And it was repeated in last year’s Michelle Goldberg “faux journalism” article “What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.” Both of these subtitles compare apples to oranges—transgenderism is a naturally occurring phenomenon, not a political ideology—and both subtitles would have been more accurate had they pitted trans-exclusionary radical feminism against transgender activism (which is an actual ongoing political/ideological debate). This incorrect usage seems to purposefully capitalize on the fact that transgenderism is not an everyday word (so it will strike trans-unaware readers as somewhat alien) and seems intended to invoke certain oppressive ideologies (e.g., sexism, racism, fascism, and others) that also just so happen to end with the suffix “-ism.”
Jeffreys’ and Goldberg’s subtitles most certainly should be critiqued for insinuating that the existence of transgender people and the state of being transgender (i.e., transgenderism) is merely an oppressive political ideology. But sadly, it is so much easier to destroy words than to save them. So unsurprisingly I suppose, in the wake of Jeffreys’ book and Goldberg’s article, a word-elimination campaign against transgenderism began to pick up speed.
The most common complaint in this campaign against transgenderism centers on statements like “transgender people are not an ‘ism’.” But as I said earlier, “isms” aren’t always ideologies—many of them (e.g., magnetism, metabolism, hypothyroidism, lesbianism, transgenderism) are simply naturally occurring phenomena. Plus, not all ideological “isms” are bad or dangerous—for instance, I personally think that feminism (as a whole) is a positive and beneficial thing. If the subtitle to Jeffreys’ book was “A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgender Activism” (as would be more appropriate), would we be calling for a ban of the phrase “transgender activism” because it implies that transgender people are associated with an "ism"?
The other meme I’ve heard on multiple occasions in this recent word-elimination campaign is that trans people have never accepted or have always rejected the term transgenderism. Such statements are utterly ahistorical: As I’ve detailed above, the word has been used by trans activists (including myself) in a nonjudgmental and neutral manner for over two decades. What is new is that the term is now being misused by TERFs. And even if you do not personally like the word transgenderism (which is absolutely your right), you can probably recognize that it would be an extremely counterproductive strategy to surrender trans-related words to our enemies (whether they be TERFs, conservative political forces, etc.) as soon as they start misappropriating them. To take another example: Jeffreys and others misuse and abuse the word transgender in all sorts of ways (e.g., “transgendering,” “transgenders”), so does that mean that we should eliminate that word as well? And what would the ramifications of that be?
An alternative to sabotaging and eliminating words
I didn’t write this essay to tell others what words they should or should not use. And I am fine with trans-related language gradually evolving over time. But I do wish that we (transgender/trans/trans* folks) would think more about the long-term ramifications before engaging in word-sabotage (e.g., trans* is the most inclusive, so therefore trans san asterisk is exclusionary) and word-elimination (e.g., transgenderism is a slur, and trans* is inherently trans-misogynistic, so therefore we should all stop using these words). As I have shown, such arguments are arbitrary and ahistorical, as words are often used by different people in different ways, and may take on positive, negative, or neutral connotations depending on the context.
But more importantly, the people who use trans-related terminology the most (by far!) are other transgender/trans/trans* folks. And whether intentional or not, attempts to undermine some specific trans-related term will have the effect of undermining those transgender/trans/trans* individuals who use that term in their activism and/or to describe their experiences.
It is really easy to condemn a word: to take offense when people say it, to tell others it is disparaging or exclusionary, and that they should not use it. But it is not the only path (or even the best path) moving forward. Perhaps instead, we could try saving words, by calling out the negative or narrow assumptions that sometimes latch themselves onto trans-related language. When someone uses a trans-related term in a disparaging or exclusionary way, perhaps we should challenge the misappropriation of that term, rather than surrendering or undermining the word itself. It is not the words themselves, but the negative assumptions and sentiments behind the words that are the problem—so perhaps they should be our primary target.
August 18, 2015
Regarding "Political Correctness" (my first post on Medium)
Those of you who have read my book Excluded (particularly the last chapter, "Balancing Acts") know that I have long been concerned with the ways in which activist language and strategies are sometimes employed in ways that are counterproductive, or which have the effect of silencing other disenfranchised individuals. My goal in doing this is to foster more robust, thoughtful, and inclusive conversations and communities.
However, in the last year, there has been a rash of mainstream articles about this phenomenon, often framing it under the rubric of "political correctness." For the most part, these are one-sided short-sighted attempts to condemn "language policing" without giving any thought to how we might balance that with the concerns of marginalized groups.
So I have just written a response to one of these recent articles - it's called That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (and it’s not because of “political correctness”). If you click the link (and please do!), you will notice that I have posted it to Medium. I did so because I am hoping that it gets some attention outside of the "activist bubble" - which it will, provided enough people "recommend" and "share" it.
So I encourage you to read it! And if you like it, please "recommend" and "share" it! Thanks! -j.
However, in the last year, there has been a rash of mainstream articles about this phenomenon, often framing it under the rubric of "political correctness." For the most part, these are one-sided short-sighted attempts to condemn "language policing" without giving any thought to how we might balance that with the concerns of marginalized groups.
So I have just written a response to one of these recent articles - it's called That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (and it’s not because of “political correctness”). If you click the link (and please do!), you will notice that I have posted it to Medium. I did so because I am hoping that it gets some attention outside of the "activist bubble" - which it will, provided enough people "recommend" and "share" it.
So I encourage you to read it! And if you like it, please "recommend" and "share" it! Thanks! -j.
July 13, 2015
The real "autogynephilia deniers"
I highly encourage readers to excerpt, cross-post, and/or share this post, especially with individuals; science, gender & sexuality blogs; and news outlets who claim or infer that autogynephilia theory is still scientifically valid. Because it's not. Period.
A little over a week ago, James Cantor (a sexologist who works at CAMH) published the following provocative tweet:
Of course, the trope of "autogynephilia deniers" has existed for about as long as the theory itself has.
Ray Blanchard first proposed the theory of autogynephilia in the late 1980's - it asserts that there are two fundamentally different types of trans women, and that only one of these groups (the so-called "autogynephiles") not only experience sexual arousal or fantasies involving the “thought or image of oneself as a woman" (what, for clarity's sake, I will call female/feminine embodiment fantasies or FEFs), but that FEFs are the cause of any gender dysphoria & desire to transition that those individuals experience.
But the problem is that in *every single one* of Blanchard's research studies on the matter, he found a significant number of subjects who defied his two-subtype model and his assumption of causality (i.e., that FEFs are the supposed cause of transsexuality in those who experience them). Rather than question his model, Blanchard dismissed these many exceptions by accusing those research subjects of "misreporting" their experiences; other proponents of autogynephilia theory have subsequently followed suit. As I explained in my article The Case Against Autogynephilia:
Notably, it is always those transsexuals who are constructed as “autogynephiles” that are accused of either lying about their sexual orientation, or of supposedly denying their experiences with cross-gender arousal [i.e., FEFs]; in contrast, the reports of those who neatly fit the “androphile” archetype are never questioned . . . This double standard is not only illogical . . . but it is tantamount to hand-picking which evidence counts and which does not based upon how well it conforms to the model . . . If proponents of autogynephilia insist that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, then autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory’s two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true.
I don't doubt that *some* trans women who have experienced FEFs deny those experiences. Given the way that autogynephilia theory has been repeatedly used to slut-shame trans women, dismiss our identities, and/or to depict us as "sexually deviant men" (as described in detail at the end of this article), I completely understand why some trans women would be reluctant to discuss their relationship to this subject matter.
But what people like Cantor and others who invoke this notion of "autogynephilia deniers" consistently refuse to address is the *countless* trans women who acknowledge the existence of FEFs (in their own lives and/or others), yet reject Blanchard's autogynephilia theory.
And frankly, all the science is on our side, not theirs.
Who is doing the denying here?
To believe that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory is correct, you need to either 1) transport yourself back in time to around 2005, when the only scientific literature on this topic had been published by Ray Blanchard and his two biggest fans Anne Lawrence & J. Michael Bailey, or 2) purposefully ignore all of the scientific/sexology literature that has been published since.
Since James Cantor seems not to be up to speed on the *actual* scientific literature on this matter, here is a little reading list that I've prepared for him and anyone else who denies the fact that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory has been thoroughly disproven:
--The Case Against Autogynephilia (by Julia Serano, 2010) & Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique (by Charles Moser, 2010)
These are both review articles published in peer-reviewed journals (a whopping five years ago!) summarizing the many flaws inherent in Blanchard's theory and the overwhelming evidence against it. A few of the research studies cited in those article are listed individually below.
--Sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals (by Veale et al., 2008)
This was the first study testing autogynephilia theory that was conducted on a non-clinical population of trans women, as well as the first that actually used a control group of non-transsexual women. Their results contradict Blanchard's theory in a number of ways, most notably in that their "autogynephilic" and "nonautogynephilic" groups did not segregate along lines of sexual orientation (which had been a foundational premise of Blanchard's theory) and that many of their non-transsexual female controls were "autogynephilic" (demonstrating that FEFs are not a transgender-specific phenomenon).
--Autogynephilia in women (by Charles Moser, 2009)
Moser administered a survey (almost identical to the one Blanchard used) to non-transsexual women and found that: "By the common definition of ever having erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman, 93% of the respondents would be classified as autogynephilic. Using a more rigorous definition of 'frequent' arousal to multiple items, 28% would be classified as autogynephilic."
--A further assessment of Blanchard’s typology of homosexual versus non-homosexual or autogynephilic gender dysphoria (by Nuttbrock et al., 2011)
This study examined the frequency of FEFs in a non-clinical sample of 571 MtF transgender individuals living in New York City - this sample is far more diverse with regard to age and ethnicity than any previous study. As with Veale et al. (2008), they found many exceptions to Blanchard's two-subtype model. Notably, they also found that the incidence of FEFs were significantly higher in Whites compared with non-Whites, and in older subjects compared with younger subjects, suggesting that other cultural factors (independent of sexual orientation) lead to this phenomenon. The reduced levels of FEFs in younger subjects led the authors to suggest that FEFs (i.e., what Blanchard calls "autogynephilia") “may be a historically fading phenomenon.”
--When Selves Have Sex: What the Phenomenology of Trans Sexuality Can Teach About Sexual Orientation (by Talia Mae Bettcher, 2013)
This is a more theoretical paper (rather than a research study), but it elegantly explains how the popular conceptualization of sexual orientation as strictly "attraction to" other people has essentially erased the importance of our own bodies in our erotic thoughts and sexual fantasies & experiences. Bettcher instead forwards a theory of "erotic structuralism" that is far more consistent with real-life sexual experiences and all the available science on this particular subject than Blanchard's theory.
--Evidence Against a Typology: A Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals (by Jaimie Veale, 2014)
This study demonstrates that trans women's sexualities (including sexual orientation and experiences with FEFs) are dimensional (i.e., they fall on a continuum) rather than categorical (i.e., falling into distinct categories), thus further disproving Blanchard's two-subtype taxonomy.
--Reconceptualizing “Autogynephilia” as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) (by Julia Serano, 2015)
This is the only article listed here that has not appeared in a peer-reviewed science/sexology journal. But I included it because it summarizes my multifactorial model (originally forwarded in my 2007 book Whipping Girl) to explain the existence of FEFs (i.e., what others call "autogynephilia") and why this phenomenon occurs more frequently or intensely in certain populations but not others. Unlike Blanchard's theory, this multifactorial model is consistent with *all* the available evidence on this subject.
So that is the evidence against Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia. And if Cantor or anyone else wants to assert that the theory remains valid - or that it is even still up for consideration! - they must actually address this significant body of research and reasoning.
And if they do not, then they are the ones who are in denial.
Indeed, today in 2015, the phrase "autogynephilia deniers" more appropriately describes those who continue to latch onto autogynephilia theory despite the overwhelming theoretical & scientific evidence against it. People like Anne Lawrence, who writes angry Letters to the Editor any time a research paper challenging Blanchard's theory is published (see here and here and here - quite honestly, there may be more that I have missed). Or people like Alice Dreger, who just released a 2015 pop-science book discussing autogynephilia theory in depth (circa 2005) without discussing or addressing *any* of the post-2005 research & reviews on the subject.
They are the real "autogynephilia deniers," not us.
Or to put it in the form of a catchy tweet (à la James Cantor):
What the real "autogynephilia deniers" are denying (besides the scientific evidence)
The real "autogynephilia deniers" not only ignore all of the post-2005 research on the subject, but they also repeatedly ignore the many ways in which (the now disproven) autogynephilia theory has been, and continues to be, used as a tool to dismiss and degrade trans women and others on the trans female/feminine spectrum. A few examples:
--Religious fundamentalists opposed to the existence of trans people invoking the theory to undermine trans folks (e.g., here and here).
--Trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) opposed to the existence of trans people invoking autogynephilia, despite how patriarchal & heteronormative Blanchard's theory is (e.g., Sheila Jeffreys's books Gender Hurts & Beauty and Misogyny, plus numerous TERF websites that I refuse to link to).
--Here is the IRS using autogynephilia as an excuse to deny a trans person's right to deduct legitimate medical expenses on their tax filings.
--I also personally know trans women who were denied trans-related healthcare because they were deemed by therapists to be merely "autogynephiles" rather than "real transsexuals" - unfortunately, I don't have easily linkable/non-doxxing materials for these instances. But they happen. And if you don't think so, it's probably because you don't know many trans women personally.
--Here is Rolling Stone Magazine invoking autogynephilia for no reason other than to sensationalize and delegitimize Lana Wachowski.
--Here is my response to The New Yorker magazine invoking autogynephilia for no reason other than to delegitimize me and other trans activists.
--Hey, while were at it, let's speculate and sensationalize Caitlyn Jenner's (entirely presumed) sexual history here.
I explain why "autogynephilia" is such an effective tool to dehumanize trans women in my essay Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations (especially the second half of it). For those who'd rather not read an essay-length explanation, here is the take-home point: Reducing a person to their sexual bodies or behaviors sexualizes them. And in our culture, sexualizing someone (i.e., reducing them to their sexuality, rather than seeing them as a whole person) is one of the most effective ways of invalidating a person.
It is one thing to discuss people's sexual fantasies or behaviors in an abstract or generalized manner. It is a completely different thing to define and stereotype specific people based upon their (actual or presumed) sexual behaviors. My favorite analogy (from The Case Against Autogynephlia) to demonstrate this point:
Many [nontransgender] women have rape fantasies. It is one thing to respectfully attempt to explore and understand such fantasies. It is an entirely different thing to insist that there are two subtypes of women — those who have rape fantasies and those who do not; to use the label “autoraptophiles” when describing women who have such fantasies and to insist that they are primarily motivated by their desire to be raped; to include “autoraptophilia” as a modifier in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; and to encourage the lay public to actively distinguish between those women who are “autoraptophiles” and those who are not. Such actions would undoubtedly have a severe, negative impact on women (who are already routinely sexualized and marginalized in our culture). Yet, proponents of autogynephilia have argued that transsexual women should be viewed and treated in an analogous manner.
James Cantor is an out gay man, so perhaps he might appreciate the following (purposefully satirical) analogy: When you get right down to it, there are two fundamentally distinct types of gay men - those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being sexually on top (apicalphiles) and those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being on the bottom (basalphiles). Anyone who says that gay men's identities are more complex than this, or that their sexualities fall more on a continuum, are clearly basalphiles in denial. And since I have a PhD in *science* (even though I don't put it in my Twitter handle à la @JamesCantorPhD), what I'm saying must be undeniably true. And as a scientist, I think we should talk more about gay men's identities in terms of their apicalphilia or basalphilia. Because you can't really understand gay men unless you know what sexual positions they strive for in their fantasies & in their bedrooms. And if you think that information about gay men's sexual histories and proclivities is a personal matter and not a public one, well then, you have clearly established yourself as a basalphile-denier.
So to summarize
James Cantor's tweet dismissing "autogynephile-deniers" targets either one of two classes of people:
1) those of us who believe in the existence of FEFs, but reject Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia because the scientific evidence does not support it. Because the science *doesn't* support it.
or
2) trans women who are disinclined to discuss the details of their sexual histories or proclivities with the general public because they are aware of how those details will likely be used against them. These people fall under the general umbrella of human beings (whether men or women, straight or queer, cisgender or transgender) who strongly feel that their sexual fantasies & sex lives ARE NONE OF ANYONE ELSE'S GODDAMN BUSINESS!!!
If James Cantor intended to target group 1, then he is blatantly promoting pseudoscience.
And if James Cantor intended to target group 2, then perhaps we should instead focus on Cantor's basalphilic tendencies. Because the public really should know about how he is so relentlessly driven by all those erotic thoughts and images of himself as being anally penetrated by more aggressive apicalphilic gay men. In fact, it seems quite clear that Cantor's predilections to dismiss trans women's experiences stem from the "narcissistic rage" that many basalphiles experience. And of course, basalphiles' obsessive need to sexualize other people likely originates with the "fact" (in the minds of some people who have PhDs) that they are quite clearly not nearly as attractive as their apicalphile counterparts. Because, you know, science. Truth . . .
*Note: I will not be publishing *any* comments for this piece. Not a single one. So please don't even bother. Thanks. -julia
A little over a week ago, James Cantor (a sexologist who works at CAMH) published the following provocative tweet:
Autogynephile-deniers are the anti-vaxxer's of sexology.— James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD) July 4, 2015
Of course, the trope of "autogynephilia deniers" has existed for about as long as the theory itself has.
Ray Blanchard first proposed the theory of autogynephilia in the late 1980's - it asserts that there are two fundamentally different types of trans women, and that only one of these groups (the so-called "autogynephiles") not only experience sexual arousal or fantasies involving the “thought or image of oneself as a woman" (what, for clarity's sake, I will call female/feminine embodiment fantasies or FEFs), but that FEFs are the cause of any gender dysphoria & desire to transition that those individuals experience.
But the problem is that in *every single one* of Blanchard's research studies on the matter, he found a significant number of subjects who defied his two-subtype model and his assumption of causality (i.e., that FEFs are the supposed cause of transsexuality in those who experience them). Rather than question his model, Blanchard dismissed these many exceptions by accusing those research subjects of "misreporting" their experiences; other proponents of autogynephilia theory have subsequently followed suit. As I explained in my article The Case Against Autogynephilia:
Notably, it is always those transsexuals who are constructed as “autogynephiles” that are accused of either lying about their sexual orientation, or of supposedly denying their experiences with cross-gender arousal [i.e., FEFs]; in contrast, the reports of those who neatly fit the “androphile” archetype are never questioned . . . This double standard is not only illogical . . . but it is tantamount to hand-picking which evidence counts and which does not based upon how well it conforms to the model . . . If proponents of autogynephilia insist that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, then autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory’s two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true.
I don't doubt that *some* trans women who have experienced FEFs deny those experiences. Given the way that autogynephilia theory has been repeatedly used to slut-shame trans women, dismiss our identities, and/or to depict us as "sexually deviant men" (as described in detail at the end of this article), I completely understand why some trans women would be reluctant to discuss their relationship to this subject matter.
But what people like Cantor and others who invoke this notion of "autogynephilia deniers" consistently refuse to address is the *countless* trans women who acknowledge the existence of FEFs (in their own lives and/or others), yet reject Blanchard's autogynephilia theory.
And frankly, all the science is on our side, not theirs.
Who is doing the denying here?
To believe that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory is correct, you need to either 1) transport yourself back in time to around 2005, when the only scientific literature on this topic had been published by Ray Blanchard and his two biggest fans Anne Lawrence & J. Michael Bailey, or 2) purposefully ignore all of the scientific/sexology literature that has been published since.
Since James Cantor seems not to be up to speed on the *actual* scientific literature on this matter, here is a little reading list that I've prepared for him and anyone else who denies the fact that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory has been thoroughly disproven:
--The Case Against Autogynephilia (by Julia Serano, 2010) & Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique (by Charles Moser, 2010)
These are both review articles published in peer-reviewed journals (a whopping five years ago!) summarizing the many flaws inherent in Blanchard's theory and the overwhelming evidence against it. A few of the research studies cited in those article are listed individually below.
--Sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals (by Veale et al., 2008)
This was the first study testing autogynephilia theory that was conducted on a non-clinical population of trans women, as well as the first that actually used a control group of non-transsexual women. Their results contradict Blanchard's theory in a number of ways, most notably in that their "autogynephilic" and "nonautogynephilic" groups did not segregate along lines of sexual orientation (which had been a foundational premise of Blanchard's theory) and that many of their non-transsexual female controls were "autogynephilic" (demonstrating that FEFs are not a transgender-specific phenomenon).
--Autogynephilia in women (by Charles Moser, 2009)
Moser administered a survey (almost identical to the one Blanchard used) to non-transsexual women and found that: "By the common definition of ever having erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman, 93% of the respondents would be classified as autogynephilic. Using a more rigorous definition of 'frequent' arousal to multiple items, 28% would be classified as autogynephilic."
--A further assessment of Blanchard’s typology of homosexual versus non-homosexual or autogynephilic gender dysphoria (by Nuttbrock et al., 2011)
This study examined the frequency of FEFs in a non-clinical sample of 571 MtF transgender individuals living in New York City - this sample is far more diverse with regard to age and ethnicity than any previous study. As with Veale et al. (2008), they found many exceptions to Blanchard's two-subtype model. Notably, they also found that the incidence of FEFs were significantly higher in Whites compared with non-Whites, and in older subjects compared with younger subjects, suggesting that other cultural factors (independent of sexual orientation) lead to this phenomenon. The reduced levels of FEFs in younger subjects led the authors to suggest that FEFs (i.e., what Blanchard calls "autogynephilia") “may be a historically fading phenomenon.”
--When Selves Have Sex: What the Phenomenology of Trans Sexuality Can Teach About Sexual Orientation (by Talia Mae Bettcher, 2013)
This is a more theoretical paper (rather than a research study), but it elegantly explains how the popular conceptualization of sexual orientation as strictly "attraction to" other people has essentially erased the importance of our own bodies in our erotic thoughts and sexual fantasies & experiences. Bettcher instead forwards a theory of "erotic structuralism" that is far more consistent with real-life sexual experiences and all the available science on this particular subject than Blanchard's theory.
--Evidence Against a Typology: A Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals (by Jaimie Veale, 2014)
This study demonstrates that trans women's sexualities (including sexual orientation and experiences with FEFs) are dimensional (i.e., they fall on a continuum) rather than categorical (i.e., falling into distinct categories), thus further disproving Blanchard's two-subtype taxonomy.
--Reconceptualizing “Autogynephilia” as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) (by Julia Serano, 2015)
This is the only article listed here that has not appeared in a peer-reviewed science/sexology journal. But I included it because it summarizes my multifactorial model (originally forwarded in my 2007 book Whipping Girl) to explain the existence of FEFs (i.e., what others call "autogynephilia") and why this phenomenon occurs more frequently or intensely in certain populations but not others. Unlike Blanchard's theory, this multifactorial model is consistent with *all* the available evidence on this subject.
So that is the evidence against Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia. And if Cantor or anyone else wants to assert that the theory remains valid - or that it is even still up for consideration! - they must actually address this significant body of research and reasoning.
And if they do not, then they are the ones who are in denial.
Indeed, today in 2015, the phrase "autogynephilia deniers" more appropriately describes those who continue to latch onto autogynephilia theory despite the overwhelming theoretical & scientific evidence against it. People like Anne Lawrence, who writes angry Letters to the Editor any time a research paper challenging Blanchard's theory is published (see here and here and here - quite honestly, there may be more that I have missed). Or people like Alice Dreger, who just released a 2015 pop-science book discussing autogynephilia theory in depth (circa 2005) without discussing or addressing *any* of the post-2005 research & reviews on the subject.
They are the real "autogynephilia deniers," not us.
Or to put it in the form of a catchy tweet (à la James Cantor):
@JamesCantorPhD Autogynephilia is the phlogiston of sexology. @AliceDreger— sister viviphilia (@Viviphilia) July 10, 2015
What the real "autogynephilia deniers" are denying (besides the scientific evidence)
The real "autogynephilia deniers" not only ignore all of the post-2005 research on the subject, but they also repeatedly ignore the many ways in which (the now disproven) autogynephilia theory has been, and continues to be, used as a tool to dismiss and degrade trans women and others on the trans female/feminine spectrum. A few examples:
--Religious fundamentalists opposed to the existence of trans people invoking the theory to undermine trans folks (e.g., here and here).
--Trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) opposed to the existence of trans people invoking autogynephilia, despite how patriarchal & heteronormative Blanchard's theory is (e.g., Sheila Jeffreys's books Gender Hurts & Beauty and Misogyny, plus numerous TERF websites that I refuse to link to).
--Here is the IRS using autogynephilia as an excuse to deny a trans person's right to deduct legitimate medical expenses on their tax filings.
--I also personally know trans women who were denied trans-related healthcare because they were deemed by therapists to be merely "autogynephiles" rather than "real transsexuals" - unfortunately, I don't have easily linkable/non-doxxing materials for these instances. But they happen. And if you don't think so, it's probably because you don't know many trans women personally.
--Here is Rolling Stone Magazine invoking autogynephilia for no reason other than to sensationalize and delegitimize Lana Wachowski.
--Here is my response to The New Yorker magazine invoking autogynephilia for no reason other than to delegitimize me and other trans activists.
--Hey, while were at it, let's speculate and sensationalize Caitlyn Jenner's (entirely presumed) sexual history here.
I explain why "autogynephilia" is such an effective tool to dehumanize trans women in my essay Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations (especially the second half of it). For those who'd rather not read an essay-length explanation, here is the take-home point: Reducing a person to their sexual bodies or behaviors sexualizes them. And in our culture, sexualizing someone (i.e., reducing them to their sexuality, rather than seeing them as a whole person) is one of the most effective ways of invalidating a person.
It is one thing to discuss people's sexual fantasies or behaviors in an abstract or generalized manner. It is a completely different thing to define and stereotype specific people based upon their (actual or presumed) sexual behaviors. My favorite analogy (from The Case Against Autogynephlia) to demonstrate this point:
Many [nontransgender] women have rape fantasies. It is one thing to respectfully attempt to explore and understand such fantasies. It is an entirely different thing to insist that there are two subtypes of women — those who have rape fantasies and those who do not; to use the label “autoraptophiles” when describing women who have such fantasies and to insist that they are primarily motivated by their desire to be raped; to include “autoraptophilia” as a modifier in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; and to encourage the lay public to actively distinguish between those women who are “autoraptophiles” and those who are not. Such actions would undoubtedly have a severe, negative impact on women (who are already routinely sexualized and marginalized in our culture). Yet, proponents of autogynephilia have argued that transsexual women should be viewed and treated in an analogous manner.
James Cantor is an out gay man, so perhaps he might appreciate the following (purposefully satirical) analogy: When you get right down to it, there are two fundamentally distinct types of gay men - those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being sexually on top (apicalphiles) and those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being on the bottom (basalphiles). Anyone who says that gay men's identities are more complex than this, or that their sexualities fall more on a continuum, are clearly basalphiles in denial. And since I have a PhD in *science* (even though I don't put it in my Twitter handle à la @JamesCantorPhD), what I'm saying must be undeniably true. And as a scientist, I think we should talk more about gay men's identities in terms of their apicalphilia or basalphilia. Because you can't really understand gay men unless you know what sexual positions they strive for in their fantasies & in their bedrooms. And if you think that information about gay men's sexual histories and proclivities is a personal matter and not a public one, well then, you have clearly established yourself as a basalphile-denier.
So to summarize
James Cantor's tweet dismissing "autogynephile-deniers" targets either one of two classes of people:
1) those of us who believe in the existence of FEFs, but reject Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia because the scientific evidence does not support it. Because the science *doesn't* support it.
or
2) trans women who are disinclined to discuss the details of their sexual histories or proclivities with the general public because they are aware of how those details will likely be used against them. These people fall under the general umbrella of human beings (whether men or women, straight or queer, cisgender or transgender) who strongly feel that their sexual fantasies & sex lives ARE NONE OF ANYONE ELSE'S GODDAMN BUSINESS!!!
If James Cantor intended to target group 1, then he is blatantly promoting pseudoscience.
And if James Cantor intended to target group 2, then perhaps we should instead focus on Cantor's basalphilic tendencies. Because the public really should know about how he is so relentlessly driven by all those erotic thoughts and images of himself as being anally penetrated by more aggressive apicalphilic gay men. In fact, it seems quite clear that Cantor's predilections to dismiss trans women's experiences stem from the "narcissistic rage" that many basalphiles experience. And of course, basalphiles' obsessive need to sexualize other people likely originates with the "fact" (in the minds of some people who have PhDs) that they are quite clearly not nearly as attractive as their apicalphile counterparts. Because, you know, science. Truth . . .
@ZJemptv The truth.— James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD) July 10, 2015#BasalphilesInDenial #ObviouslySatire
*Note: I will not be publishing *any* comments for this piece. Not a single one. So please don't even bother. Thanks. -julia
July 6, 2015
Cisgender and dictionary definitions
This is happened two weeks ago, so some of you may have already heard the news. But for those who didn't, cisgender was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
I first started using cisgender and cissexual almost ten years ago, while I was working on Whipping Girl. At the time, few people (even within trans communities) were aware of these words, so it has been amazing to see them garner acceptance over time, even within certain mainstream settings.
It has also been interesting to watch these terms (and the ways people use them) evolve and diverge over time. For those who are interested, last year I wrote two essays on this very subject: Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 1: Who Exactly Does “Cis” Refer To? and Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 2: Reconciling Disparate Uses of the Cis/Trans Distinction. Both essays explain the usefulness of these concepts, while also addressing some of the negative aspects or unintended consequences of cis terminology.
Both posts are significantly longer than a dictionary entry. But sometimes words are more complicated than a straightforward definition would have you believe.
I first started using cisgender and cissexual almost ten years ago, while I was working on Whipping Girl. At the time, few people (even within trans communities) were aware of these words, so it has been amazing to see them garner acceptance over time, even within certain mainstream settings.
It has also been interesting to watch these terms (and the ways people use them) evolve and diverge over time. For those who are interested, last year I wrote two essays on this very subject: Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 1: Who Exactly Does “Cis” Refer To? and Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited - Part 2: Reconciling Disparate Uses of the Cis/Trans Distinction. Both essays explain the usefulness of these concepts, while also addressing some of the negative aspects or unintended consequences of cis terminology.
Both posts are significantly longer than a dictionary entry. But sometimes words are more complicated than a straightforward definition would have you believe.
June 11, 2015
"What Makes/Is a Woman" and the false "feminists vs transgender activists" binary
Last weekend, The New York Times published an opinion piece by Elinor Burkett called "What Makes a Woman?" If the title looks eerily familiar, it's probably because of Michelle Goldberg's "What Is a Woman?" article that appeared in The New Yorker last year. And they have more than their titles in common: They both perpetuate an absolutely *false* "feminists vs transgender activists" binary, and portray trans people (and especially trans women) as undermining feminism.
I've had many people ask me to write a response to it, but I've been too busy. Besides, I basically debunked each and every one of the assumptions Burkett makes in my book Whipping Girl. If you don't have time to read the book, here is a short piece I wrote for Ms. Magazine debunking the trans-activism-vs-feminism binary.
But lo and behold, today I will get to respond to Burkett's piece on HuffPost Live at 4pm EST! I am told that my interview will likely be in the 4:05-4:15 range - here is the link for the show if you want to watch: http://huff.lv/1Gkjp54.
I will try to post a permanent link for the segment after the show...
I've had many people ask me to write a response to it, but I've been too busy. Besides, I basically debunked each and every one of the assumptions Burkett makes in my book Whipping Girl. If you don't have time to read the book, here is a short piece I wrote for Ms. Magazine debunking the trans-activism-vs-feminism binary.
But lo and behold, today I will get to respond to Burkett's piece on HuffPost Live at 4pm EST! I am told that my interview will likely be in the 4:05-4:15 range - here is the link for the show if you want to watch: http://huff.lv/1Gkjp54.
I will try to post a permanent link for the segment after the show...
May 26, 2015
Reconceptualizing “Autogynephilia” as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs)
Note: please feel free to share and/or reference this article. If you require a "proper" citation (e.g., for an academic article) for Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs), you can reference Julia M. Serano, “The Case Against Autogynephilia,” International Journal of Transgenderism 12, no. 3 (2010), 176-187.
In 2010, two review articles appeared in the peer-review literature: My article The Case Against Autogynephilia was published in The International Journal of Transgenderism, and Charles Moser's article Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique appeared in the Journal of Homosexuality. Both of our papers presented numerous lines of evidence that disprove the main underpinnings of autogynephilia theory, namely, the assertions that trans female/feminine-spectrum people can be readily divided into two clear-cut categories based upon sexual orientation and the presence or absence of “autogynephilia,” and that “autogynephilia” is the primary underlying cause of gender dysphoria and desire to transition in trans women who experience it. (Note: subsequent analyses by Talia Bettcher and Jaimie Veale have further demonstrated that autogynephilia theory is incorrect.)
Where our papers differ is that, while Moser continues to use the term “autogynephilia” to refer to sexual fantasies and patterns of arousal in which the “thought or image of oneself as a woman” plays a contributing role, I instead argue that we should no longer use this term for the following reasons:There is a several-decade-long history in which “autogynephilia” has been described in the scientific/psychiatric literature as both a sexual orientation and a cause of gender dysphoria and transsexuality. Since neither appears to be the case, it would be misleading to continue using the term in this manner.There is a similarly long history of “autogynephilia” being described as a “male”-specific phenomenon and a paraphilia—these notions are interrelated, as (according to psychiatric dogma) paraphilias are extremely rare or nonexistent in women.[1] However, recent studies have shown that many cisgender women (up to 93%) have experienced “erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman.” Therefore, we should no longer use a term that is so closely associated with paraphilias and “erotic anomalies” (as Blanchard calls them) to describe what appears to be a relatively common (and non-pathological) form of sexual thought or fantasy experienced by many female/feminine-identified people.“Autogynephilia” (as defined in the scientific/psychiatric literature) conceptualizes trans women as “sexually-deviant men,” and thus is unnecessarily stigmatizing and invalidating of trans identities. For this very reason, the concept of “autogynephilia” has been increasingly appropriated by lay people who forward anti-transgender ideologies and political agendas.[2]
For these reasons, in my review I argued that we should replace the misleading and stigmatizing label “autogynephilia” with the more comprehensive (and less pathologizing) term Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) .
Here is the rationale for this nomenclature: I refer to them as “fantasies,” because that is what they are: a type of sexual/erotic thought or fantasy. It is widely acknowledged (in both sexology and society) that sexual fantasies vary greatly in the population, and if two people just so happen to have a similar fantasy, it does not necessarily mean that they share the same underlying “condition” or are a similar “type” of person.[3] (In contrast, Blanchard argued that there are two distinct types or categories of trans female/feminine people—“autogynephilic” and “androphilic”—distinguished by the presence or absence of the paraphilic condition “autogynephilia.”)
The word “embodiment” references the well-accepted notion in philosophy and cognitive studies that our thoughts, perceptions, and desires do not happen in a vacuum—they occur within, and are shaped by, our bodies. As I pointed out in my book Whipping Girl (pp. 268-269), most of our sexual fantasies involve (at least) two bodies: our own body, and the body of the person we are attracted to (for a more rigorous exploration of this, see Talia Bettcher’s excellent article When Selves Have Sex). In fantasies centered on sexual attraction, most of the attention or emphasis may be placed on our imagined partner’s body and behaviors, but our own bodies and behaviors are nevertheless often present (e.g., we may imagine them doing something to our body, or our body doing something to theirs). In “embodiment fantasies,” more (or perhaps in some cases, all) of the attention and emphasis is instead shifted toward our own (real or imagined) bodies and behaviors.
Finally, the “female/feminine” in FEFs refers to the fact that aspects of our own (real or imagined) female body and/or feminine gender expression play a central erotic role in the fantasy (although other erotic components, such as our imagined partner, may also exist in the fantasy).
For similar reasons, I favor the term Male/Masculine Embodiment Fantasies (MEFs) over the psychopathologizing term “autoandrophilia.”[4] While MEFs do exist, they seem to be less common than FEFs. In Chapters 14 and 17 of my book Whipping Girl, and in my essay Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations, I have laid out a compelling case that the relative prevalence of FEFs is foundationally rooted in, and typically viewed through the lens of, our cultural tendency to sexualize and objectify femaleness and femininity. This explains why many people (of diverse sexual orientations and anatomies) who are (or wish to be) female and/or feminine report having experienced such fantasies or erotic thoughts either occasionally or often. It also explains why male- and/or masculine-identified people—whose real or imagined bodies no doubt play some role in their sexual fantasies (e.g., they might imagine other people doing things totheir penis and/or themselves doing things withtheir penis)—do not typically view their bodies as central to their fantasies, as we are all culturally conditioned to view male/masculine bodies as the subjects (rather than the objects) of sexual desire.
In the aforementioned Whipping Girl chapters and in The Case Against Autogynephilia, I further argued that at least two other additional factors are likely to contribute to the observed trends in the prevalence and demographics of FEFs and MEFs. First, while neither of these phenomena is transgender-specific, they do seem to be more common (or commonly reported) in pre- and non-transition transgender-spectrum people. It makes perfect sense that someone who has not yet attained their imagined or identified sexed body, or who are unable to safely share their desired gender expression or presentation with the world, would focus more attention on those elements in their fantasies than people who can take those aspects of themselves for granted. Indeed, this would help to explain the well-documented dramatic decrease in intensity and frequency of FEFs reported by many trans women once they socially and physically transition.[5]
Second, one might expect that the intensity or frequency FEFs would be more pronounced in individuals who are sexually attracted to femaleness/femininity more generally (e.g., in their partners); an analogous correlation might be expected between MEFs and attraction to maleness/masculinity in others. This would explain the increased levels of FEFs reported in lesbian and bisexual trans women compared to heterosexual trans women (as reported in many previous studies), and numerous lines of anecdotal evidence indicating that MEFs are not uncommon in gay trans men, and in female-assigned people who identify as “girlfags.”[6] Similarly, numerous cis femme-identified queer women have told me (in informal conversations) that they regularly experience FEFs. While more formal investigations would be necessary to confirm this anecdotal evidence, the notion that attraction to femaleness/femininity and experiencing FEFs (or attraction to maleness/masculinity and experiencing MEFs) may be correlated to some degree seems reasonable and helps explain previously reported patterns of FEFs in trans female/feminine-spectrum people.
So that is a brief introduction to my multifactorial model to explain the phenomenon formerly known as “autogynephilia” (note: other potential factors that may facilitate the development of, or amplify, FEFs can be found in Whipping Girl, pp. 253-276 and 283-313). This model allows for a variety of outcomes, as each of the previously described potential factors simply increases the likelihood of (but does not strictly determine) the presence of FEFs or MEFs within any given individual. Like all sexual fantasies, FEFs and MEFs are not a permanent condition—they may appear, disappear, reappear, intensify, de-intensify, evolve, or vary for unknown or inexplicable reasons. And unlike Blanchard’s theory, the existence of FEFs and MEFs does not contradict or deny the known diversity in transgender identities, trajectories, and sexualities.
Notes:
1. American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV-TR, 568. While the accuracy of this claim may be debatable, the crucial point here is that this notion (that paraphilias are male-specific) is what allowed Blanchard to portray “autogynephilia” as a paraphilia in the first place: In his 1989 paper in which he first introduces the concept (Blanchard, “The Classification and Labeling of Nonhomosexual Gender Dysphorias”), Blanchard considers the presence of “autogynephilia” in many trans women, and the supposed lack of its counterpart in trans men, to be evidence that it must be a paraphilic impulse (under his presumption that trans women are “men” and trans men are “women”). In stark contrast, recent findings (e.g., Charles Moser, “Autogynephilia in Women”) indicate that what Blanchard calls “autogynephilia” is a more general sexual phenomenon that may be associated with female/feminine-identified people (both cis and trans), rather than being a trans-specific paraphilia.
2. For example, Dale O’Leary, “Legalizing deception: Why “gender identity” should not be added to antidiscrimination legislation,” Catholic Exchange (June 25, 2009) [currently online at http://www.donotlink.com/fakj] and Sheila Jeffrey's recent book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism, which I discuss in the middle of this essay (which, not coincidentally, describes how a journalist who was determined to make transgender activists look bad tried to portray me as "autogynephilic").
3. Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning, “Sexual fantasy” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995), 469–496; Emily Dubberley, Garden of Desires: The Evolution of Women's Sexual Fantasies (London, UK: Black Lace, 2013).
4. “Autoandrophilia” seems to have first appeared in the sexological literature in a singular case study of a cisgender gay man; see Anne A. Lawrence, “Anatomic autoandrophilia in an adult male,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, no. 6 (2009), 1050-1056. For less pathologizing examples, see Tracie O’Keefe, “Autogynephilia and Autoandrophilia in Non-Sex and Gender Dysphoric Persons,” Paper presented at the World Association for Sexual Health conference, Sydney, April, 2007; Jack Molay, “Autoandrophilia, on women who fantasise about having a man's body,” Crossdreamers, February 13, 2010.
5. See Serano, “The Case Against Autogynephilia,” and references therein.
6. For evidence of MEFs in gay trans men, see the Discussion section of Matthias K. Auer, Johannes Fuss, Nina Höhne, Günter K. Stalla, Caroline Sievers, “Transgender Transitioning and Change of Self-Reported Sexual Orientation,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 10 (2014), e110016. “Girlfag” is a term (mostly used in online communities) to describe androphilic (i.e., attracted to men) female-assigned individuals who identify with gay men, gay male culture, and/or fantasize about being gay men having sex with other men—for instance, see Ili, “‘I am something that does not exist!’ (On queer schwulwomen, girlfags and guydykes),” and numerous other posts listed in Jack Molay, “A Reader’s Guide to the Crossdreaming and Autogynephilia Blog,” January 1, 2008.
In 2010, two review articles appeared in the peer-review literature: My article The Case Against Autogynephilia was published in The International Journal of Transgenderism, and Charles Moser's article Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique appeared in the Journal of Homosexuality. Both of our papers presented numerous lines of evidence that disprove the main underpinnings of autogynephilia theory, namely, the assertions that trans female/feminine-spectrum people can be readily divided into two clear-cut categories based upon sexual orientation and the presence or absence of “autogynephilia,” and that “autogynephilia” is the primary underlying cause of gender dysphoria and desire to transition in trans women who experience it. (Note: subsequent analyses by Talia Bettcher and Jaimie Veale have further demonstrated that autogynephilia theory is incorrect.)
Where our papers differ is that, while Moser continues to use the term “autogynephilia” to refer to sexual fantasies and patterns of arousal in which the “thought or image of oneself as a woman” plays a contributing role, I instead argue that we should no longer use this term for the following reasons:There is a several-decade-long history in which “autogynephilia” has been described in the scientific/psychiatric literature as both a sexual orientation and a cause of gender dysphoria and transsexuality. Since neither appears to be the case, it would be misleading to continue using the term in this manner.There is a similarly long history of “autogynephilia” being described as a “male”-specific phenomenon and a paraphilia—these notions are interrelated, as (according to psychiatric dogma) paraphilias are extremely rare or nonexistent in women.[1] However, recent studies have shown that many cisgender women (up to 93%) have experienced “erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman.” Therefore, we should no longer use a term that is so closely associated with paraphilias and “erotic anomalies” (as Blanchard calls them) to describe what appears to be a relatively common (and non-pathological) form of sexual thought or fantasy experienced by many female/feminine-identified people.“Autogynephilia” (as defined in the scientific/psychiatric literature) conceptualizes trans women as “sexually-deviant men,” and thus is unnecessarily stigmatizing and invalidating of trans identities. For this very reason, the concept of “autogynephilia” has been increasingly appropriated by lay people who forward anti-transgender ideologies and political agendas.[2]
For these reasons, in my review I argued that we should replace the misleading and stigmatizing label “autogynephilia” with the more comprehensive (and less pathologizing) term Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) .
Here is the rationale for this nomenclature: I refer to them as “fantasies,” because that is what they are: a type of sexual/erotic thought or fantasy. It is widely acknowledged (in both sexology and society) that sexual fantasies vary greatly in the population, and if two people just so happen to have a similar fantasy, it does not necessarily mean that they share the same underlying “condition” or are a similar “type” of person.[3] (In contrast, Blanchard argued that there are two distinct types or categories of trans female/feminine people—“autogynephilic” and “androphilic”—distinguished by the presence or absence of the paraphilic condition “autogynephilia.”)
The word “embodiment” references the well-accepted notion in philosophy and cognitive studies that our thoughts, perceptions, and desires do not happen in a vacuum—they occur within, and are shaped by, our bodies. As I pointed out in my book Whipping Girl (pp. 268-269), most of our sexual fantasies involve (at least) two bodies: our own body, and the body of the person we are attracted to (for a more rigorous exploration of this, see Talia Bettcher’s excellent article When Selves Have Sex). In fantasies centered on sexual attraction, most of the attention or emphasis may be placed on our imagined partner’s body and behaviors, but our own bodies and behaviors are nevertheless often present (e.g., we may imagine them doing something to our body, or our body doing something to theirs). In “embodiment fantasies,” more (or perhaps in some cases, all) of the attention and emphasis is instead shifted toward our own (real or imagined) bodies and behaviors.
Finally, the “female/feminine” in FEFs refers to the fact that aspects of our own (real or imagined) female body and/or feminine gender expression play a central erotic role in the fantasy (although other erotic components, such as our imagined partner, may also exist in the fantasy).
For similar reasons, I favor the term Male/Masculine Embodiment Fantasies (MEFs) over the psychopathologizing term “autoandrophilia.”[4] While MEFs do exist, they seem to be less common than FEFs. In Chapters 14 and 17 of my book Whipping Girl, and in my essay Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations, I have laid out a compelling case that the relative prevalence of FEFs is foundationally rooted in, and typically viewed through the lens of, our cultural tendency to sexualize and objectify femaleness and femininity. This explains why many people (of diverse sexual orientations and anatomies) who are (or wish to be) female and/or feminine report having experienced such fantasies or erotic thoughts either occasionally or often. It also explains why male- and/or masculine-identified people—whose real or imagined bodies no doubt play some role in their sexual fantasies (e.g., they might imagine other people doing things totheir penis and/or themselves doing things withtheir penis)—do not typically view their bodies as central to their fantasies, as we are all culturally conditioned to view male/masculine bodies as the subjects (rather than the objects) of sexual desire.
In the aforementioned Whipping Girl chapters and in The Case Against Autogynephilia, I further argued that at least two other additional factors are likely to contribute to the observed trends in the prevalence and demographics of FEFs and MEFs. First, while neither of these phenomena is transgender-specific, they do seem to be more common (or commonly reported) in pre- and non-transition transgender-spectrum people. It makes perfect sense that someone who has not yet attained their imagined or identified sexed body, or who are unable to safely share their desired gender expression or presentation with the world, would focus more attention on those elements in their fantasies than people who can take those aspects of themselves for granted. Indeed, this would help to explain the well-documented dramatic decrease in intensity and frequency of FEFs reported by many trans women once they socially and physically transition.[5]
Second, one might expect that the intensity or frequency FEFs would be more pronounced in individuals who are sexually attracted to femaleness/femininity more generally (e.g., in their partners); an analogous correlation might be expected between MEFs and attraction to maleness/masculinity in others. This would explain the increased levels of FEFs reported in lesbian and bisexual trans women compared to heterosexual trans women (as reported in many previous studies), and numerous lines of anecdotal evidence indicating that MEFs are not uncommon in gay trans men, and in female-assigned people who identify as “girlfags.”[6] Similarly, numerous cis femme-identified queer women have told me (in informal conversations) that they regularly experience FEFs. While more formal investigations would be necessary to confirm this anecdotal evidence, the notion that attraction to femaleness/femininity and experiencing FEFs (or attraction to maleness/masculinity and experiencing MEFs) may be correlated to some degree seems reasonable and helps explain previously reported patterns of FEFs in trans female/feminine-spectrum people.
So that is a brief introduction to my multifactorial model to explain the phenomenon formerly known as “autogynephilia” (note: other potential factors that may facilitate the development of, or amplify, FEFs can be found in Whipping Girl, pp. 253-276 and 283-313). This model allows for a variety of outcomes, as each of the previously described potential factors simply increases the likelihood of (but does not strictly determine) the presence of FEFs or MEFs within any given individual. Like all sexual fantasies, FEFs and MEFs are not a permanent condition—they may appear, disappear, reappear, intensify, de-intensify, evolve, or vary for unknown or inexplicable reasons. And unlike Blanchard’s theory, the existence of FEFs and MEFs does not contradict or deny the known diversity in transgender identities, trajectories, and sexualities.
Notes:
1. American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV-TR, 568. While the accuracy of this claim may be debatable, the crucial point here is that this notion (that paraphilias are male-specific) is what allowed Blanchard to portray “autogynephilia” as a paraphilia in the first place: In his 1989 paper in which he first introduces the concept (Blanchard, “The Classification and Labeling of Nonhomosexual Gender Dysphorias”), Blanchard considers the presence of “autogynephilia” in many trans women, and the supposed lack of its counterpart in trans men, to be evidence that it must be a paraphilic impulse (under his presumption that trans women are “men” and trans men are “women”). In stark contrast, recent findings (e.g., Charles Moser, “Autogynephilia in Women”) indicate that what Blanchard calls “autogynephilia” is a more general sexual phenomenon that may be associated with female/feminine-identified people (both cis and trans), rather than being a trans-specific paraphilia.
2. For example, Dale O’Leary, “Legalizing deception: Why “gender identity” should not be added to antidiscrimination legislation,” Catholic Exchange (June 25, 2009) [currently online at http://www.donotlink.com/fakj] and Sheila Jeffrey's recent book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism, which I discuss in the middle of this essay (which, not coincidentally, describes how a journalist who was determined to make transgender activists look bad tried to portray me as "autogynephilic").
3. Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning, “Sexual fantasy” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995), 469–496; Emily Dubberley, Garden of Desires: The Evolution of Women's Sexual Fantasies (London, UK: Black Lace, 2013).
4. “Autoandrophilia” seems to have first appeared in the sexological literature in a singular case study of a cisgender gay man; see Anne A. Lawrence, “Anatomic autoandrophilia in an adult male,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, no. 6 (2009), 1050-1056. For less pathologizing examples, see Tracie O’Keefe, “Autogynephilia and Autoandrophilia in Non-Sex and Gender Dysphoric Persons,” Paper presented at the World Association for Sexual Health conference, Sydney, April, 2007; Jack Molay, “Autoandrophilia, on women who fantasise about having a man's body,” Crossdreamers, February 13, 2010.
5. See Serano, “The Case Against Autogynephilia,” and references therein.
6. For evidence of MEFs in gay trans men, see the Discussion section of Matthias K. Auer, Johannes Fuss, Nina Höhne, Günter K. Stalla, Caroline Sievers, “Transgender Transitioning and Change of Self-Reported Sexual Orientation,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 10 (2014), e110016. “Girlfag” is a term (mostly used in online communities) to describe androphilic (i.e., attracted to men) female-assigned individuals who identify with gay men, gay male culture, and/or fantasize about being gay men having sex with other men—for instance, see Ili, “‘I am something that does not exist!’ (On queer schwulwomen, girlfags and guydykes),” and numerous other posts listed in Jack Molay, “A Reader’s Guide to the Crossdreaming and Autogynephilia Blog,” January 1, 2008.
