Julia Serano's Blog, page 13

Julia update May 2014 - new music and writings!

So earlier this week I sent out my latest email update. It offers links to some of my more recent writings plus a bit of news about Excluded .

But the update mostly discusses my new solo music project *soft vowel sounds* and my first record (a four-song EP) under that moniker called Ray versus Macbeth and the Music Box, part one. The record includes the eponymous song "Ray," a contemporary parody of The Kinks' song "Lola." To listen to the record and/or find out how you can download it for free (for a limited time), simply check out the email update!

If you want future julia updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list here.

And if you want future updates for upcoming *soft vowel sounds* shows & music, you can sign up for the *soft vowel sounds* email list here.

enjoy! -j.

a quick guide to media reports about brain studies

When someone in the media says:

Researchers at [fill-in-the-blank university/institution] have found that group X's brains are better at [fill-in-the-blank specific task] than group Y's.

This is what they really mean:

In the study, group X's results formed a bell curve. And group Y's results also formed a bell curve. And those bell curves largely overlapped - in other words, the groups were more similar than different. However, if you ignore those bell curves and simply look at the average result for each group, then those average numbers differ somewhat. And that is *so much* easier & more fascinating to report, so that is all we're going to tell you about the study!

That is pretty much everything you need to know about media and pop science reporting on brain studies...

On People, Polarization, Panopticons, and #ComplexFeelingsAboutActivism

I suppose that this is the third installment of a blog-post trilogy that I have unexpectedly written, and which (in different ways) touch on overlapping subjects and sentiments. For those interested, here is the first post and here is the second post...
Over the last month or two, I have had numerous conversations amongst trans woman friends, and quite a few inquiries from other trans-identified and trans-aware folks, about the rather high profile “kerfuffle” (as the excellent Roz Kaveney referred to it in a recent tweet) that has taken place within trans female/feminine spectrum circles recently. I rather vaguely allude to the situation in my recent blogpost a few thoughts on drag, trans women, and subversivism. Other folks have written about it, but my personal favorite synopsis thus far is Jen Richards's recent piece. As with any kerfuffle, I wouldn't be surprised if the principal actors at the center of this story disagree with certain aspects of this particular review. But Richards explores many of the issues regarding community, difference, and consensus (or the lack thereof) that have been on my mind lately. The thing that I appreciate most about the piece is that Richards puts herself into the shoes of others, not to be presumptive or to replace their viewpoints with her own, but rather to try to understand where they are coming from. It was a refreshing change of pace from the this-camp-is-evil/oppressive/censoring/humorless/hurtful versus this-camp-is-righteous/oppressed/human/less-pretentious/more-like-you-dear-readers dichotomy that has formed the backbone of most descriptions of this kerfuffle thus far.

The thing is, seeing things from other people’s perspectives can often make being an activist rather dicey and difficult to navigate.
For instance, with regards to this recent kerfuffle: I understand why RuPaul (who has been using the “T-word,” as drag performers historically have, long before many of us became involved in trans and queer communities) would be reluctant to give up that self-identity label, even if I find several aspects of his TV show to be problematic and consider his response to recent controversies to be rather flippant. I understand why trans folks who were never a part of the historical period that gave rise to RuPaul would be appalled by his continuing use of the “T-word.” I understand why trans women (whether it be Parker Molloy, Calpernia Addams, or others) might have differing opinions about RuPaul, or drag, or Jared Leto, even if I don’t necessarily agree with them on that particular issue(s). I understand why both Molloy and Addams probably felt misunderstood and invalidated by what the other was saying about them, even if I disagree with some of the things each of them said. I understand why Andrea James would want to support her friend Addams (who she probably felt was being unfairly characterized), even if I disagree with much of what she said in her “take down” piece of Molloy. I understand why people started hashtagging #istandwithparker, and why Zinnia Jones started the petition, and why many trans women signed it, even though I felt that some of the arguments being made by folks in that camp were virtually identical to the ones Addams and James were making: both sides were supposedly “conservative” and “assimilationist” and “homophobic/heteronormative” and “abusing their public platforms” and “on the wrong side of history.”
The whole thing reminded me of that scene from the movie V for Vendetta with the dominoes: one thing causing another to happen, each person unknowingly playing a small role in what was becoming a far bigger story. The end result, of course, was entrenched polarization within the community. And as it was all unfolding, I felt like all I could do was watch. Because I knew that if I tried to intervene or add my voice in any way, I would simply get sucked up into the story.
Molloy and I follow each other on Twitter (as activists sometimes do). A couple weeks ago, I was tweeting about baseball (as I sometimes do), and she and a few other folks chimed in, and we had a harmless conversation about how bad our favorite teams have historically been. As this was happening, it suddenly struck me that others might perceive the exchange as being a tacit endorsement: that I must be on “her side” of the debate, even though we were merely discussing baseball. It made me extremely self-conscious. A few days later, in an online piece about the kerfuffle, it was mentioned that Molloy liked sports, and I wondered if the writer knew this because they had seen our Twitter exchange. After all, social media (especially in activist circles) is one giant panopticon: We are all watching one another all of the time.
Last week, on my Twitter notifications, I saw that James tweeted something about buying my book Excluded. Often, when people tweet something about liking my books, or buying my books, I will re-tweet them (as you do), but I knew that if I did that in this case, I would become part of the story: I would be perceived as “siding” with James. And since that is the unpopular side of the debate (at least within trans women’s circles), the ramifications could be dire. Perhaps my name might even be added to the petition against James and Addams: I would become one of the older elitist white trans women with a platform who are oppressing the younger generation of elitist white trans women with a platform.
People who are unfamiliar with this situation might expect that I am wildly exaggerating here, but I don’t believe that I am. A few weeks back, on the Internets, I saw one trans activist seemingly calling out another trans activist for the fact that they follow musician Amanda Palmer on Twitter. Why, pray tell? Well, from what I could gather, it seems that Palmer positively mentioned James’s article somewhere on the social medias. I would imagine that Palmer has no idea who James is, nor understands any of the details of this kerfuffle. I would imagine that Palmer simply liked the fact that James critiqued (to put it politely) “hashtag actvism.” I would imagine that someone with as high of a public profile as Palmer has probably felt unfairly attacked on social media before, and perhaps this is why she liked James’s piece. I don’t know, this is admittedly all just speculation on my part. The main point is that Palmer (probably unknowingly) “took a side” in the kerfuffle. And now, every trans activist who owns a Dresden Dolls album or enjoys Neil Gaiman novels is potentially suspect.
I abhor this “picking a side” mentality, where if you have ever enjoyed a RuPaul performance, or think Jared Leto is a good actor, or if you want to nominate Jayne County for this year’s Godwin’s Law award, then others will automatically assume that you belong to a particular camp, and that you must hold certain views that are commonly associated with that camp. I don’t like being constantly placed into situations where I have to be either for or against Molloy, Addams, or James, and if I choose the “wrong side,” then I will be ostracized. I think that all three women have done some positive things for our community, while at the same time, all three have said or done things at times that I disagree with. Frankly, there are *no* trans women who I agree with 100% of the time on all matters, so I resent feeling forced into “take sides” with some trans women against other trans women, as that denies the complexity of people and situations.  
I have complicated thoughts and feelings about many people and many things. So I resent how kerfuffles amongst activists (and there have been too many to count) always seems to result in polarization and over-simplified, cut-and-dried positions.
I believe that putting myself into other people’s shoes to trying to understand where they are coming from is a crucial part of my activism. So I resent how polarized activist positions attempt to coerce me into *not* identifying with, nor relating to, nor trying to better understand, certain people.
I resent how polarized activist positions try to compel me to see people as monsters and demons rather than as complex and fallible human beings.
As I alluded to above, this kerfuffle has touched on what has become a hot topic of late in activist circles (not to mention the media at large), namely, “hashtag activism.” Many people have critiqued the phenomenon (including James), and I think many of those arguments are quite silly. Basically, it’s just another way of getting one’s opinions out there, no different really than starting a petition, or writing a blog or Facebook post that you hope others will share. While I am not against the phenomenon, I almost never participate in hashtag campaigns when they do occur. I hadn’t really thought much about why that is until the recent #istandwithparker campaign. In that case, it became clear to me that I felt like I was being compelled to “take a side” in a debate that I felt ambivalently about. Not every hashtag campaign falls into the category of being for or against people, but a lot of them do. Even when campaigns don’t explicitly mention people, they are still often *about* people: If you’re involved in that particular activist circle, then you know who wrote the blogpost or article or tweet that made another activist you know upset and which led them to start the hashtag campaign. Like I said, social media-based activism is a panopticon—we are all watching one another. We see who is tweeting with the hashtag and who is not, and sometimes (albeit not always) these tweets express allegiances to people and against other people. We watch our Twitter feeds—or in other cases, we notice who signed which petition, or who commented on which blogpost—and we start imagining people as being on one side or another.  
I can get behind ideas like #transphobiasucks and #stopsexism and so forth. But if I know that that hashtag is intended to imply that I am “with this person” and “against that person,” then I generally don’t want any part of it. This is especially true when I know that both parties are activists, or members of the same marginalized group, who simply have differing opinions about some matter.  
That is why I put the hashtag #ComplexFeelingsAboutActivism in the title of this post. I don’t necessarily expect people to use it, and I certainly do not expect it to “trend.” But I do think that it is potentially productive to get the word out that it is OK for us to have complicated or ambivalent feelings about an issue, or about our fellow activists, sometimes. It is OK for us to agree with another activist about some matters but not others. It is OK for us to see both sides of an issue. It is OK for us to be critical of an individual’s actions without tearing them down as people.

As I say in the last chapter of Excluded, we should stop constantly framing activist kerfuffles in terms of “righteous activist”/“evil oppressor” or “infallible activist”/“ignorant oppressor” dichotomies. We are all trying to change the world for the better. We all make mistakes. We all hurt people. We are all still learning. All of us are right some of the time and wrong other times. And in many cases (as much as we may hate to admit it), there simply isn’t a clear right or wrong, just differences in opinion. #ComplexFeelingsAboutActivism

a few thoughts on drag, trans women, and subversivism

For decades (and still to this day), radical feminists have argued that drag is an inherently conservative phenomenon in that it reinforces the patriarchy. Twenty years ago, queer theorists retorted that drag was inherently subversive, in that it deconstructed binary notions of gender. Interestingly, what both of these very different feminist camps shared was a belief that transsexuality was inherently conservative, assimilationist, and reinforced the gender system.

I just thought that this was worth pointing out in the wake of arguments that have been playing out on the Internets lately between some trans women who suggest that trans women who don't appreciate drag are conservative and assimilationist, and other trans women who suggest that drag (and the trans women who appreciate it) is conservative and assimilationist. I am not linking to any pieces here, as this post is not intended to be a "call out" of individuals. Rather, I feel the need to point out the subversivist nature of these arguments, and how they happen over and over again in feminist, queer, and progressive circles.

In Excluded chapter 12 ("The Perversion of 'The Personal Is Political'"), I show how subversivist arguments have been used to dismiss transsexuals for decades. I also point out how entirely arbitrary these sorts of claims are. Radical feminists in the 1960's accused lesbians of being "too attached to sex roles" and of "reinforcing the sex class system." So how did lesbians respond? Well, they claimed that "woman-loving women" were actually more radical because they undermined the hetero-patriarchy. So now lesbians are superior to heterosexual women, how revolutionary!

Find me someone who thinks bisexuals reinforce the gender binary, and I'll find you someone who thinks bisexuality/pansexuality is more radical than monosexuality.

Find me someone who thinks that drag is more conservative than transsexuality, and I'll find you someone who believes the exact opposite.

Do you know what all these positions have in common?

1) they are all hierarchies
2) they all condemn an entire group of people based upon some shared gender or sexual trait

Drag is not inherently conservative, or subversive, or assimilationist, or liberating. It is simply an expression of gender. People who do drag are different from one another, and they gravitate to drag for different reasons. Some drag performers are cis gay men, while others are eventual trans women. Some drag queens present masculinely when they are not performing, while others present femininely 24/7 and face cissexism and misogyny on a regular basis. Some people do drag to explore or experiment with their own gender, others to challenge societal binary gender norms, and still others may do it to mock other marginalized groups (e.g., women or transsexuals).

If you don't like the language Ru Paul uses, or you find a video that Alaska Thunderfuck makes to be offense, then by all means *critique those individuals and acts*. But once we start making blanket claims about drag and the people who gravitate toward it (e.g., that they are inherently assimilationist, or misogynistic, or trans-misogynistic) then we are condemning a whole slew of people, many of whom have done us no wrong.

Finally, the recent rifts among trans women with regard to drag seems to have veered into separating-from-the-transgender-umbrella (or purging-drag-from-the-umbrella) territory, so I figured that I should point out my earlier piece A “Transsexual Versus Transgender” Intervention. It was written with regards to HBS-type separatism a few years ago, but some of the points I make are still relevant in this case - especially the section where I point out that transsexual is an umbrella too:

We are a disparate group of individuals who share one thing in common: We all identify and live as members of the sex other than the one we were assigned at birth. Other than that, we differ in almost every way. Some of us are conservative while others of us are liberal. Some of us are middle- or upper-class while others of us are poor. Some of us are white while others of us are people of color. Some of us are straight while others of us are queer. Some of us are vanilla while others of us are kinky. Some of us are out as transsexual while others of us are stealth. Some of us are able to “pass” or “blend in” as cissexual while others of us are not. Some of us are very feminine, or very masculine, while others of us are less conventional in our gender expression. Like the population as a whole, transsexuals are highly diverse, and we should respect that diversity within our own community.

To add to that passage: Some trans women appreciate drag, while others do not. Let's please stop pretending that there is one single consensus among trans women regarding drag, Ru Paul, the "T-word," and other issues. We can disagree with one another without resorting to good-versus-bad, righteous-versus-oppressive, subversive-versus-conservative hierarchies.

update on debunking psychiatric theories/diagnoses on trans people

So I *finally* got around to updating my webpage Debunking Psychological Diagnoses and Theories about Transsexual and Transgender People today. It includes PDF links to my article The Case Against Autogynephilia, a recently published article on the DSM expansion of Transvestic Disorder, and two still-somewhat-newish pieces about how the "Fetish Concept" hurts both trans folks and our partners.

You can check out the updated page here: http://www.juliaserano.com/TSetiology.html

What is Holistic Feminism?

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.

Since my first book Whipping Girl came out, people have tended to call me a trans feminist. For those who are unfamiliar with trans feminism, it refers to transgender perspectives on feminism, or feminist perspectives on transgender issues. That definitely describes a lot of my writing and activism, especially during the time that I was writing that book. But in Excluded, I broaden the lens significantly and attempt to articulate how sexism, marginalization, and exclusion work in a more general sense. The term trans feminism seemed too narrow for this endeavor.


Furthermore, trans feminism tends to be centered on transgender perspectives—and for good reason, given that such perspectives had been overlooked or misconstrued in previous formulations of feminism. But the new approach that I forward in Excluded intentionally avoids being centered on any particular identity or perspective. So calling it “trans feminism” wouldn’t be appropriate.

The idea of calling this approach “holistic feminism” grew out of a line from a spoken word piece that I wrote in 2007 (just after I finished writing Whipping Girl) called Performance Piece—that piece has since become a chapter in Excluded. In that piece, I respond to the often-cited feminist slogans “all gender is drag” and “all gender is performance” this way:

Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender is that, let’s recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It’s an amalgamation of bodies, identities and life experiences, of subconscious urges, sensations and behaviors, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let’s start describing it as a holistic experience. [Excluded, p.107]

In Excluded (specifically Chapter 13, “Homogenizing Versus Holistic Views of Gender and Sexuality”), I flesh out this idea further, making the case that shared biology, biological variation, shared culture, and individual experience all come together in an unfathomably complex manner to create both the trends as well as the diversity in gender and sexuality that we see all around us. Why is this important? Well, past feminists and queer/LGBTQIA+ activists have explained why the idea that we are all biologically determined to be gendered or sexual in particular ways is both incorrect and can result in sexism and marginalization. But frankly, the same is also true of the strict nurture side of the nature-versus-nurture debate (as I address in more depth in my recent post What is gender artifactualism? I also discuss this in a radio interview I did for the Pacifica radio program Against the Grain).

So the “holistic” in Holistic Feminism refers, in part, to the way in which it transcends the traditional nature-versus-nurture debate, and recognizes that people are fundamentally heterogeneous with regard to sex, gender, sexuality, and other traits. But “holistic” also refers to other aspects of this approach:

...this approach recognizes that each of us has a rather specific (and therefore, limited) view of gender and sexuality, and sexism and marginalization—a perspective largely shaped by our own life experiences and how we are socially situated. Therefore, the only way that we can thoroughly understand these complex phenomena is through a multiplicity of different perspectives. [Excluded, p.6-7]

The notion that we all have different experiences with sexism and marginalization, and that feminism should be inclusive of our differing perspectives, comes straight out of intersectionality. But the holistic approach that I forward emphasizes several ideas that are sometimes overlooked in discussions about intersectionality.

The first is that we differ from one another not only with regards to the forms of oppression we face, but also with regards to our biology, bodies, personalities, predilections, and experiences. Thus, two people who are marginalized in the exact same way may nevertheless express very different desires and/or react very differently to their situations. I believe that this is crucial to keep in mind, as many activist movements have fallen into the trap of expecting all of its members to respond to their oppression in a uniform manner—e.g., claims that all women must avoid femininity, or all LGBTQIA+ people must come out of the closet and be visibly queer. Holistic Feminism recognizes that such approaches are futile and only lead to the exclusion of many people from the movement.

A second and related idea is that activist movements (even those that recognize intersectionality) tend to develop “fixed perspectives” that formally acknowledge certain identities, perspectives, and forms of sexism and marginalization, while overlooking or dismissing others. For instance, when feminists talk about fighting “the patriarchy,” or when trans activists talk about “shattering the gender binary,” those constructs only address a limited number of double standards. Fixed perspectives tend to portray the world in black-and-white, cut-and-dried terms, where specific expressions of gender or sexuality are deemed to be right or wrong, moral or immoral, natural or unnatural, attractive or unattractive, taken for granted or problematic. In this way, activist movements sporting fixed perspectives are just as rooted in hierarchies and double standards, and often just as invested in policing people’s genders and sexualities, as mainstream culture is.

Holistic feminism counters such notions by recognizing that expressions of gender and sexuality have no inherent fixed meanings on their own. Rather, we (the perceivers) consciously or unconsciously project various meanings and connotations onto them. Therefore, rather than policing how people “do” their genders and sexualities, we should instead challenge all forms of gender entitlement—when people nonconsensually project their personally-held assumptions, expectations, stereotypes, and value judgments onto other people’s genders and sexualities. After all, that is where sexism originates—at the level of perceiving, interpreting, and judging other people’s bodies and behaviors.

[For the record, I first forwarded this idea of gender entitlement in Whipping Girl—see pages  89-93, 112-113, 165-170, 226-227, 337-338, 359-362—but I more thoroughly explain the concept in Excluded, particularly in the Chapter 18, “Challenging Gender Entitlement.”]

Holistic Feminism attempts to move beyond the fixed approaches of the past, in part, by challenging gender entitlement and acknowledging that people are fundamentally heterogeneous. But it also does this by challenging myriad double standards, rather than taking the fixed approach of focusing on one or a few specific forms of sexism or marginalization.

How can one challenge all double standards, even ones we are not currently unaware of? Well, I argue that we can do this if we work to understand how double standards operate and how they are employed in order to invalidate people. If we learn to recognize the telltale signs of double standards and invalidations, it may allow us to notice and challenge instances of marginalization even if we are unaware of the particular “ism” that is driving it. In Chapter 20, “Recognizing Invalidations,” I describe this as a “bottom-up” approach that is meant to complement the current “top-down” strategies (i.e., centered on understanding the specifics of each individual ism) that predominate in current feminist, queer activist, and social justice movements.

In the final chapter of the book, “Balancing Acts,” I make it clear that Holistic Feminism’s bottom-up approach is not intended to challenge the usefulness of traditional top-down strategies:

This approach is not meant to replace all feminist and queer theories and analyses that came before it. Rather, it is meant to serve as a corrective: it contemplates myriad double standards whereas other feminisms have focused more on specific isms or monolithic gender systems; it highlights the many commonalities that exist between how different double standards are enforced and function whereas other feminisms have focused more on the very unique histories and consequences associated with each individual ism; it stresses individual differences in how we each experience sex, gender, sexuality, sexism, and marginalization, whereas other feminisms have tended to frame these matters solely in terms of collective categories and shared experiences of oppression. [Excluded, p.281-282]

When I give presentations on this holistic approach, I often make the following analogy: One can think of myriad double standards like stars in the sky, each star representing some kind of double standard. For every star (i.e., double standard) that we can see clearly, there are countless others that we cannot perceive from our vantage point. Top-down approaches centered on specific isms are akin to trying to teach people to recognize specific constellations. It is about pattern recognition and noticing how certain double standards are related to one another (e.g., learning all the specific invalidating assumptions, stereotypes, and double-binds faced by a particular marginalized group). Important information may be conveyed, but it tends to be fairly self-contained and not obviously applicable to other marginalized groups. Just as learning how to detect The Big Dipper doesn’t provide us any insight into how to recognize Orion, learning how to recognize traditional sexism tends not to offer us any insight into how to detect instances of heterosexism, or cissexism, or monosexism, or racism, or ableism—and of course, the same holds true for each of these (and other) isms too.

In keeping with this analogy, the holistic approach that I forward is much like teaching people how to notice stars rather than to pick out individual constellations. It teaches us how to recognize double standards whenever and wherever they occur, even if we are unfamiliar with whatever specific ism(s) (or lack thereof) may be driving it. Admittedly, this view (on its own) is incomplete, as some relevant information may be missed. But in other ways, it is more thorough. As I said, I believe that using both top-down and bottom-up approaches in concert together offers us the best chance of challenging all forms of sexism and marginalization, as well as eradicating exclusion within our movements.

Excluded a finalist for Judy Grahn book award!

I got some exciting news this week: The Publishing Triangle announced that my book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive is a finalist for this year's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction! (for the record, it is a bisexual woman and trans woman-inclusive award.)

Some of my readers may be interested to know that Jennifer Finney Boylan's new book about being a trans parent is also a finalist, so it's an honor to be in such prestigious company.

The winner will be announced at their awards ceremony on April 24th, which I will likely sadly miss given that it's on the other side of the country. But it's nice to know my book is up for consideration!

That's all for now... -j.

Julia update March 2014 - Excluded new, upcoming college events, and music!

So last week I sent out my latest email update. It has some new links to book readings of, interviews about, and excerpts from, my still somewhat new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. The update also lists my Spring 2014 college speaking events, and offers breaking news about my music, new & old!

You can check out the update here.

If you want future julia updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list via this link.

enjoy! -j.

Why is "douche" an acceptable slur?

This last night, I was on the Twitters. And as I scrolled down my feed, about two-thirds of the tweets sported the hashtag #palpabledouchery.

Almost all of the tweets were directed at either Woody Allen (because of his denials of Dylan Farrow's claims of sexual abuse) or Stephen King (from their content, it seems as though he tweeted something in support or defense of Allen, although I am not 100% sure, as I did not seek out King's original tweets/comments).

Anyway, this post is not in anyway meant to critique the critiques of Allen or King. What Allen is accused of is sickening. And people who reflexively defend him play into a longstanding dynamic where survivors of sexual abuse are shamed and put on trial while their perpetrators remain above the fray.

No, this post is not about the Allen/Farrow/King news story or controversy. This post is about the hashtag: #palpabledouchery.


The use of the word "douche" as a slur has existed decades now. I very clearly remember the first time I heard it. I was probably about fourteen at the time, playing video/arcade games with boys from my neighborhood. I forget exactly what happened, but in the context of the game, I did something, and my video-game-opponent responded, "you douchebag!" I was unfamiliar with the term, so I asked, "What's a douchebag?" He laughed, mocking of my naievity. And our mutual friends laughed along until I continued to assert my naievity/curiousity: "No seriously, what is a douchebag?" My acquaintance didn't know what it meant either, so my friends began to laugh at him for pretending to know more than he actually he did.

But despite all of our collective naievity, we all knew *why* the word "douchebag" was funny, why it was a slur. It had something to do with girls.

Fast forward to now. Feminism has made many important inroads. If a person makes blatantly anti-female remarks, they will be branded as a sexist. But if they engage in derogatory commentary about things associated with women, or things associated with femininity, then they will often be let off the hook.

Even before this whole #palpabledouchery meme took off, I was startled to find how many self-described feminists I know who would hurl the word "douche" as a slur. When I questioned them about this, they almost always responded with a rote reply, something to the effect of "Well, douching is a fucked up patriarchal practice that is unhealthy for women to engage in."

Well, first off, some women may medically need to douche. Personally, as a post-op trans woman, I need to douche on a semi-regular basis (I cannot speak for other trans women, or trans men, or other gender-variant folks, but that is my experience).

But of course, this isn't a trans thing. If only trans people douched, such products surely wouldn't be given so much counterspace in pharmacies and supermarkets. The fact that these products are so ubiquitous means that someone is buying them. And presumably the vast majority of people who douche are cis women.

And this brings us back to the whole "women shouldn't douche" or "douching is bad for vaginas" arguments that are invariably invoked to justify using the word douche as a slur. Like I said, all vaginas are different. I know douching can be useful for some trans women, so perhaps there are some instances where it is legitimately necessary for other people to douche. But even if douching turns out to *always* bad for cis women, it nevertheless remains a practice that is *associated* with women. And the negative force the word has as an insult clearly comes from this association. As with other misogynistic slurs (e.g., bitch, slut, pussy, sissy), it shames the person in question by feminizing them, by associating them with the lowly status that femaleness/femininity have in our male/masculine-centric society. Regardless of what you think of the practice of douching, the word douche (as a slur) has misogynistic overtones.

As I said, feel free to critique Allen and King and whoever as you see fit. All I ask is that you think for a minute about whether accusing them of "douchery" is the best way to go about it.

(*note: the next to last paragraph was edited for clarity on 2-4-13)

What is subversivism?

This is one in a series of blog posts in which I discuss some of the concepts and terminology that I forward in my writings, including my new book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.
So the word “subversivism” pops up a couple of times in Excluded, but I first began using the term in my first book Whipping Girl, specifically Chapter 20, “The Future of Queer/Trans Activism.” While the word had previously existed (Merriam-Websterdefines it as “the quality or state of being subversive”), I began using it to describe a form of sexism that is quite prevalent within feminist and queer subcultures, albeit absent from straight mainstream society. In Whipping Girl, I describe it this way:
Subversivism is the practice of extolling certain gender and sexual expressions and identities simply because they are unconventional or nonconforming. In the parlance of subversivism, these atypical genders and sexualities are “good” because they “transgress” or “subvert” oppressive binary gender norms. The justification for the practice of subversivism has evolved out of a particular reading (although some would call it a misreading) of the work of various influential queer theorists over the last decade and a half. To briefly summarize this popularized account: All forms of sexism arise from the binary gender system. Since this binary gender system is everywhere—in our thoughts, language, traditions, behaviors, etc.—the only way we can overturn it is to actively undermine the system from within. Thus, in order to challenge sexism, people must “perform” their genders in ways that bend, break, and blur all of the imaginary distinctions that exist between male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, and so on, presumably leading to a systemwide binary meltdown. [p.346]
There is nothing inherently wrong with celebrating and praising supposedly “subversive” and “transgressive” expressions of gender and sexuality (although the assumption that such activities undermine the gender binary, or patriarchy, or what have you, seem rather dubious to me for reasons that I discuss throughout the second half of Excluded). However, in practice, subversivism usually winds up creating a new sexist double standard:
On the surface, subversivism gives the appearance of accommodating a seemingly infinite array of genders and sexualities, but this is not quite the case. Subversivism does have very specific boundaries; it has an “other.” By glorifying identities and expressions that appear to subvert or blur gender binaries, subversivism automatically creates a reciprocal category of people whose gender and sexual identities and expressions are by default inherently conservative, even “hegemonic,” because they are seen as reinforcing or naturalizing the binary gender system.
Subversivism doesn’t merely target the heterosexual gender-conforming majority. In Excluded, I discuss how transsexuals (see Chapter 12), femmes (see Chapter 6), and bisexuals (see Chapter 9), in addition to other gender and sexual minorities, regularly face accusations of “reinforcing patriarchy/heternormativity/the gender binary,” or of “not being queer/feminist enough” because of their appearance, dress, or partner preference. Indeed, subversivism is a common tactic that is used to marginalize and exclude these groups (and others) within these movements.
Anyway, to continue:
To me, the most surreal part of this whole transgressing-versus-reinforcing-gender-norms dialogue in the queer/trans community (and in many gender studies classrooms and books) is the unacknowledged hypocrisy of it all. It is sadly ironic that people who claim to be gender-fucking in the name of “shattering the gender binary,” and who criticize people whose identities fail to adequately challenge our societal notions of femaleness and maleness, cannot see that they have just created a new gender binary, one in which subversive genders are “good” and conservative genders are “bad.” In a sense, this new gender binary isn’t even all that new. It is merely the original oppositional sexist binary flipped upside down. So now, gender-nonconforming folks are on top and gender-normative people are on the bottom—how revolutionary!
Does subversivism truly constitute a form of sexism?
I define sexism as any type of double standard (e.g., an assumption, expectation, stereotype, or value judgment) based on a person’s sex, gender, or sexuality. In Excluded, I make the case that there are myriad double standards—some which are pervasive, and others which are more temporary or fleeting; some of which exist in mainstream society, and others which exist in specific settings or subcultures; some of which we are aware of, and others which we are oblivious to. And I make the case that, as activists, we should work to challenge all double standards, rather than ignoring some and reversing others.
Thus, while subversivism may not be prevalent in mainstream society, we should be concerned by it and we should work to eliminate it.
I have had a couple people challenge me on this. Their argument went something like this: People who are subversivist within feminist and queer settings constitute an oppressed group, and as such, they do not have the institutionalized power with which to oppress other people within their communities. I find such views to be quite short-sighted, as they ignore the very real material benefits that come from being considered a legitimate member of a community or movement.
Take people who fall under the bisexual umbrella as an example. Such people are often not fully accepted within queer movements and communities, in part, due to subversivist attitudes that malign bisexuality as inherently conservative and heteronormative. As I point out in Excluded:
This lack of community has had a devastating effect on [bisexual] folks. For instance, even though we outnumber exclusively homosexual people, we have poorer health outcomes and higher poverty rates than gays and lesbians, and we are generally not acknowledged or served by LGBTQIA+ organizations, even the ones that have “B” in the name.[Excluded, p. 85. In a footnote, I cite references for this: San Francisco Human Rights Commission, “Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations”; Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution , pp. 59-93; Massachusetts Department of Public Health, “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Persons in Massachusetts”]
Similarly, as I discuss in Whipping Girl, within many feminist and queer women’s settings, the embrace of trans male/masculine folks and reluctance to accept trans female/feminine folks is largely driven by subversivism, in that the former are seen as “bold,” “rebellious,” and “dangerous,” whereas the latter are dismissed as “timid,” “conventional,” and “safe.” I can tell you first-hand that not having a community or movement that accepts you—whether it’s due to blatant monosexism or trans-misogyny, or occurs indirectly via subversivism—has a very real impact on one’s life and ability to survive in a world where we are already marginalized by mainstream society to begin with.
You don’t use the term subversivism that often in Excluded. Why not?
When I first used the term in Whipping Girl, I used it to describe how subversivist attitudes play out in contemporary queer/trans spaces, wherein trans male/masculine identities are viewed as more subversive than trans female/feminine ones, and where gender-blurring identities and expressions (e.g., drag, genderqueer) are viewed as more subversive than binary ones (e.g., transsexual women and men).
However, different activist movements and communities may deem different identities and expressions to be more (or less) subversive than others. So for instances, trans-exclusive radical feminists tend to view drag performers, genderqueers, transsexuals, and other transgender spectrum identities as equally conservative (as we all supposedly “reinforce patriarchal gender roles” in their eyes). Such feminists also tend to view BDSM and porn as inherently conservative, whereas in more sex-positive/sex-radical circles those same expressions may be celebrated as subversive and liberating.

So subversivism doesn’t function in the same way that we are used to thinking about “isms,” as it does not target a specific group of people. Rather, subversivism is perhaps better thought of as a mindset that often arises within activist movements, and which provides a convenient excuse for either perpetuating hierarchies that already exist within society, or to create newfangled hierarchies within that specific movement. Given this, I thought that it would be more fruitful to highlight the arbitrary nature of these subversivist hierarchies more generally—I do this in multiple chapters of Excluded, especially Chapter 12, ‘The Perversion of “The Personal Is Political”’ and Chapter 16, “Fixed Versus Holistic Perspectives.”