Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present)

American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present

by J. Jack Halberstam

In the last decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially. However, with this increased visibility has come not just power, but regulation, both in favor of and against trans people. What was once regarded as an unusual or even unfortunate disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and political recognition. What happened in the last few decades to prompt such an extensive rethinking of our understanding of gendered embodiment? How did a stigmatized identity become so central to U.S. and European articulations of self? And how have people responded to the new definitions and understanding of sex and the gendered body? In  Trans*, Jack Halberstam explores these recent shifts in the meaning of the gendered body and representation, and explores the possibilities of a nongendered, gender-optional, or gender-queer future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Transgender, Theory, Gender, Feminism

178 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2017

About the author

Jack Halberstam (born December 15, 1961), also known as Judith Halberstam, is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature, as well as serving as the Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. He is a gender and queer theorist and author.

Halberstam, who accepts masculine and feminine pronouns, as well as the name "Judith," with regard to his gender identity, focuses on the topic of tomboys and female masculinity for his writings. His 1998 Female Masculinity book discusses a common by-product of gender binarism, termed "the bathroom problem" with outlining the dangerous and awkward dilemma of a perceived gender deviant's justification of presence in a gender-policed zone, such as a public bathroom, and the identity implications of "passing" therein.

Jack is a popular speaker and gives lectures in the United States and internationally on queer failure, sex and media, subcultures, visual culture, gender variance, popular film and animation. Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book on fascism and (homo)sexuality.

Reviews

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not for novices. I hate-read the first half of this book and absolutely loved the second half. Why did I continue after the first few chapters gave me pause? Curiosity, mostly. A few years ago, Halberstam got into a very public fight with younger trans activists over a word that is currently considered offensive and I was sure that the debate would be answered in this book. It was, and I found some of the answers here to be compelling but not necessarily... well... helpful when it comes to how we all work out what the intersections of gender and sexuality mean today.

There's plenty in this book that may give the reader pause especially when it comes to transgender activism in the age of Trump. Halberstam has a patented forcefully playful approach when it comes to analyzing feminism and gender theory and has used that register ever since I first encountered his work when I took one of his seminars in 2003. And if that... well... breezy and flippant approach gets extended to issues that are very much up for debate in the public arena, it's clear that what Halberstam offers here is not necessarily the kind of trans theory that is going to help activists or people who are seeking to work our whether or not they are trans. This book is also not so helpful when it comes to bridging the divide between academic theorizations and the kinds of ideas that work on the ground. And I suppose that it's appropriate that this book resists manichean divides as much as it does, but I'm not sure that it's going to make the kind of important academic interventions that it aspires to make given that fact.

So yeah, I have some ambivalence about what Halberstam offers in the overall arc of this book, especially given its unapologetic trans-masculinist perspective and the persistent use of the asterisk throughout. With that in mind, the last half of this book offers stunning moments of brilliance and cogent ideas that will help me in my own thinking.

[Caleb Lail · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover says a “quick and quirky account of gender variability,” but that’s pretty misleading. Aside from one page-ish anecdotes about the author’s own experiences, most of it is thickly researched, clinical, and often cyclical. I read the same few phrases quite a bunch and, despite the fact that I’d hoped to learn a good bit more about Transgenderism, it turns out that I knew most of it just from being a decent human being and listening to my transgender friends.
And also, Halberstam really promotes the concept of “Trans*” (with the asterisk) and I mean REALLY promotes it. Like, did Jack make it up? I wasn’t familiar with it before, but the author was trying to push it like it was gospel truth.
I dunno. There are probably better accounts and books that don’t just quote movies.
I do appreciate it widening my scope of film I probably wouldn’t have been able to find without direct mentions. So thanks.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Main takeaways / what I want to remember:

• Not everybody has the luxury to express gender variance
There are infinite ways of being trans* (hence the asterix)

• Within a name and a pronoun can lie many selves and genders (they being the most evident example)
Gender is relational, you have no gender alone on a deserted island
The fight over pronouns is void if not accompanied by a critique of the structures giving rise to a conflict over signifiers and signified

• visibility and recognition -> acceptance -> power -> regulation

• the book analyses the representations that influence conditions under which the trans* body becomes legible, recognizable, and even lovable or desirable
Yet also critical of the fact that many transgender characters are still played by cisgender actors who have benefited from the binary of normative vs non normative genders (Jack’s words)

• “Violence can take the form of gentle coercion into the category of belonging; or it can operate through inclusion rather than exclusion, or through silence rather than hate speech”

• Trans* bodies are not merely pushing for spaces that recognize them and grant them rights but also (and most importantly?) their existence condemns the caging of bodies in the first place and questions the organisation (and hierarchy) of bodies

• “I have argued that the representation of transgenderism depends on a repudiation of the veracity of the visual (passing), an embrace of the haptic (unknowing), and a narrative framework of continual transition (becoming)”

• there is some conflict between queer and trans theory
Cis and trans women cocreate femininities but there is resistance from some trans people to see gender as performative because it suggests trans identities are not real (criticism directed at Butler)
Those critiques actually come from an essentialist view of gender and dismiss the transitivity and flexibility of gender (will need to study p120-125 in greater depth)

• Best quote ever that underlines how revolutionary transgenderism is (that I do not have the audacity to rephrase): “As part of the first wave of books on queer temporality, mine laid out the implications of a model of queerness that is not simply about what kinds of bodies have sex with what kinds of bodies, but about different life narratives, alternative ways of being in relation to others, and new practices of occupying space. For example, I proposed that we might privilege friendship networks over extended families when assessing the structures of intimacy that sustain queer lives, and we might also think about transgenderism in particular as not simply a contrapuntal relationship between bodily form and content but as an altered relation to seeing and being seen. Transgenderism, in other words, has never been simply a new identity among many others competing for space under the rainbow umbrella. Rather, it constitutes radically new knowledge about the experience of being in a body and can be the basis for very different ways of seeing the world.”

• The future is not male nor female but transgender

• the book is an invitation to see the trans bodies as a set of Lego pieces that can be assembled, deassembled, in perpetual construction / transition, influencing the architecture they embody and inhabit

• Concluding quote that is just WOW: « trans* bodies represent the art of becoming, the necessity of imagining, and the fleshy insistence of transitivity »

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I only read half-way through this book. It reads like a doctoral thesis and I spent a lot of time looking up definitions of words. With a sub-title like "Quick and Quirky", I found this book to be neither. I appreciate the scholarly approach to the subject, but this book was not particularly accessible for me.

[Kai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time on this garbage. This book is pretentious, disrespectful to neurodivergent people, and discounts agender people altogether. Read Stryker or Spade or Puar or Gossett or literally anyone else if you're interested in trans theory that relates to the lived experiences of trans people both historically and currently.

[Christina Ferrari · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Read for a class) Trans* is not a quick and quirky guide… instead it’s an academically dense, historical account of the exploration of trans* identities and experiences. Anecdotal accounts connect with the authors extensive research— Halberstam covers a wide range of topics that fall under the even more extensive term, “trans*.” Personally, I felt for an only 130ish page book, it bit off more than it could chew, content wise. The constant references to different shows, movies, and historical figures/celebrities for each new argument made the reading hard to follow and a bit redundant especially during the later chapters.

[Ivan Pelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is theory

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was... interesting, especially Halberstam's reading of the 2016 Boys Don't Cry controversy. However, it didn't tell me much I didn't already know, and it... hmm. Halberstam openly owns the trans-masc bias of the book, and justifies it on the grounds of most trans theory being by trans women, but... I'm not sure that's the best choice for what this book proclaims itself to be. This book is not the Little Book of Transmasculininty, according to its cover, and yet at times it seems to be trying to do that AND be a generalist trans work.

I also find it interesting, from the outside, how you find trans women thinkers noting that trans men dominate the conversation, and then trans men saying the same of trans women (and then enbies saying the same of both, and around we go). Some of this has got to be cyclic - if public and scholarly attention goes in cycles, trying to correct imbalance, you'd get a cycle of 'there's not enough attention to X' / 'there's SO much attention to X and not enough to Y!'

[Pan Ellington · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely neither quick nor quirky, as the text is firmly rooted in queer, critical theory. expected something more accessible, particularly coming from halberstam. twas an interesting perspective, though. important for the discourse and that...

[Stoffia · Rating 2 out of 5]

La quatrième de couverture promet "une brève histoire de la transidentité". Ce n'est pas ça du tout. Au lieu de cela, cet essai est une chimère quelque part entre le mémoire et la philosophie universitaire.

On a donc droit à des anecdotes personnelles sur la vie de l'auteur, comment il a vécu sa propre identité et comment l'ont pris les gens autour de lui, sa famille, etc. J'ai lu plusieurs critiques qui ont aimé ces passages. Ce n'est pas mon truc, mais je peux comprendre l'intérêt.

Puis on enchaîne avec de la grosse philo tirée directement de la French Theory californienne des années 70. On y mêle Foucault, de la psychanalyse et tout plein d'éléments du genre. Comme chez tous les fans de Foucault, on y explique des concepts simples de la façon la plus compliquée possible.

(J'ai fait une maîtrise en philo, j'ai étudié Foucault. Si j'aime bien ses théories, j'ai une haine profonde pour sa plume, et pire encore pour celle de ses imitateurs, que je considère comme responsable du déclin de la pensée française. Mais je m'emporte.)

Le livre tente de parler beaucoup des laissés pour compte de la normalisation de la communauté LGBTQ. Les gens racisés, les travailleuses du sexe, les itinérants, etc. Je ne suis pas convaincu qu'il y parvienne. Au sens où à de nombreuses reprises, au lieu de nous dire des choses à leur sujet, le livre parle de la communauté au plus large, puis passe deux pages à nous rappeler que cela inclut aussi ces personnes marginalisées. (À un moment, l'auteur nous parle de l'actrice trans noire de Orange is The New Black. Puis immédiatement après, il nous dit que malgré ces célébrités trans blanches, il ne faut pas oublier les personnes trans noires... M'enfin.)

Certains chapitres sont plus personnels, on sent que l'auteur, un homme trans dans la soixantaine, peine à suivre les plus jeunes générations. Il se plaint qu'elles considèrent transphobes des choses qui ne l'étaient pas jadis. Qu'elles ignorent les classiques de la culture trans du 20e siècle. Qu'elles préfèrent s'éduquer sur les identités de genre sur internet plutôt que de demander conseils à des trans plus âgés rencontrés dans des bars gays.

Les premiers chapitres demeurent intéressants, si vous êtes capables de décoder le jargon foucaldien. On y explore réellement les fondements de l'identité trans, Queer, non-binaire. Bref, les fondements du rejet d'une binaire de genre imposée, aussi que comment cela peut être vécu.

Mais au final, ce bouquin est une petite déception pour moi. J'aurais aimé l'aimer.

[Toni Andres · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hoped this would warm me up to Halberstam’s writing who is someone I admire for his use of pop media (mostly film) in his texts and innovative thoughts. I liked the division of chapters into different thought trajectories surrounding trans bodies, trans identity, generational questions, activism, feminism etc. The subtitle “quick and quirky” is blatantly misleading, it’s dense academic writing with tons of references that, though being contextualised, can only develop the depth of their meanings to someone already familiar with existing scholarship in the area of feminism, queer/trans studies. I had been under the impression that this would try harder to “bridge the academic/mainstream gap” but alas, that is not the case.

I greatly enjoyed the chapter on generational conflicts within queer communities. This was a great plead for a sensitive awareness of what queer history means and engaging with a history of queer bodies, it also worked really well with the chapter on trans children.

Overall, I’m still not entirely sure if I get the “trans*” terminology in its full explosive potential the way Halberstam appears to push it. I also don’t feel very strongly (or positively) about the comparison to the Lego Movie plot - which was fun but felt a bit like a case for build-your-gender which, I’m pretty certain, was precisely not what the rest of the text was arguing for. So all in all, I feel slightly warmer to Halberstam’s writing but maintain some reservations. Intriguing text nevertheless.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book isn't for beginners, I believe it can benefit beginners by immediately introducing them to different facets of trans theory and history. Because the author often assumes more knowledge on the part of readers than beginners will have, the resulting readerly vertigo can be a positive thing because it requires greater openness.

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this shortly after it came out (at least five years ago), so it'sbeen a while but I realized I never rated it. It has good information and I've used the beginning chapter as a part of a gender studies class. I would need to reread it to say much more or talk about it with how language has changed since its publication.

[WallofText · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have said, this book is neither quick nor as light as the quirky in the title suggests. It's dense, academic, and a bit repetitive. Some interesting thoughts with a definite lean towards trans masculine and older views, sometimes to its own detriment.

[neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think this is more of an effect of the fact that this is my first time reading a book that looks at trans*ness academically but i still really enjoyed it!! i got a trove of more media to check out

[Alex Prong · Rating 5 out of 5]

F the haters jack halberstam forever

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good overview of trans* politics, particularly because a lot of neat literature is used and therefore referred to. The empasis on de-centering of white middle-class narratives (Chapter 2) was particularly great because it provided a pretty long reading list.

There's also interesting stuff on the tensions that flare inter-generationally (Chapter 4, 5), due to youthful amnesia/not-being-born vs. cultural inertia of the old. Halberstam clearly doesn't want to go all out on younger activist critics, but there's bits and pieces throughout about how we need to pay attention to new regulatory regimes that replace the old ones, the need to display greater subtlety in judgement, pick fights appropriately, etc., which can easily read as criticism. This should be read as part of Halberstam's point about the perils of the shift from trans elders inducting kids into the community over time to well-meaning but over-protective and over-enthusiastic parents taking over (Chapter 3).

The last chapter on trans* feminism (Chapter 6) is probably the weakest. There's a lot of Butler talk, which I can't really stand. Halberstam's weak version of politics is on display - for example, while describing an episode of the tv show Transparent where the trans woman protagonist Moira attends the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Halberstand admits there's "a fantastic sequence in which various characters discuss the pros and cons of this policy in a compact and compelling way" (112). But this is followed by Moira leaving and having sex with another trans woman. For Halberstam, so taken with aesthetic play and alternative politics and approaches, this scene is revelatory: "By making lemonade out of lemons, Transparent offers an ecstatic response to the seemingly unwavering standoff between female-born women and trans* women" (113). This strikes me as more evasion of real tensions than a new beginning, but this kind of shift (also found in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity) is apparently popular with queer theorists ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which is not to say that there aren't great lines:

Indeed, the haptic offers a great aesthetic frame for trans* representation in general. As explained by theorist Laura Marks in her book Touch, the haptic is a sensory mode of perception that engages a model of knowing and perception that is not oriented toward mastery, not deployed simply at the level of the visual. The haptic both names the way the mind grasps for meanings that elude it while still holding on to the partial knowledge available. It violates the opposition between subject and object and demands that the viewer/namer/authority feel implicated in the act of looking, naming, and judging. For Marks, the haptic is “a visual erotics that offers its object to the viewer but only on condition that its unknowability remain intact, and that the viewer, in coming closer, give up his or her own mastery.” As this quote indicates, hapticality organizes meaning, knowing, and seeing in ways that exceed rational, sense-making enterprises and instead force the viewer to examine their own relations to truth and authenticity. This is a perfect frame for the trans* body, which, in the end, does not seek to be seen and known but rather wishes to throw the organization of all bodies into doubt. (90)

This is beautiful, ethically profound, and makes me want to read the book mentioned. Whether this can sustain a politics, especially for the marginalized, however, is far from clear.

The conclusion tries to use lego-analogy to bring in architectural talk about living bodies, instead of talk that (for example) treats the body as "home." I mean, ok.

[Star · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feminism is the belief that all people deserve equal opportunities, regardless of gender identity. For decades, this has been observed as the fight for women’s rights. However, more recently, transgender people have been a part of the conversation about gender-based inequality.  Some individuals have an issue with trans* people being a part of the conversation for gender equality because many of them aren’t women, but others recognize that trans* individuals face discrimination based on their gender identity. Within the feminist movement, trans* individuals of differing identities belong in different aspects of the movement. Similar to intersecting identities such as race and disability status, transwomen can offer a diverse perspective in the feminist fight. Trans* individuals belong in many different aspects of feminism because all people should be a part of the fight for equality. 
    Feminism fights against gender-based inequality (Wade and Ferree 2019). According to Lundrigan, (2019) Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) is a term that is problematic because it is used to dehumanize, but it is essentially used to describe feminists who believe trans* people don’t belong in feminist fights (Lundrigan 2019). That doesn’t make sense though because trans* people face discrimination based entirely on their gender identity. Lundrigan (2019) noted that gender can be sectioned into three categories: biological, social, or internal identity. Due to the fact that trans* women at the very least experience the internal and social identities as women, she pointed out examples of gender-based discrimination trans* people face. They face legal discrimination in the form of bathroom bans, unprotected housing, employment, and health care all on the basis of their gender identity. Women are at an increased risk of sexual and gendered violence. Trans* women are no exception to that statistic. In fact, trans* women face even higher rates of sexual and domestic violence (Halberstam 2018:18). The author, Halberstam (2018) brought up the important action that had taken place in May 2013: “transgender” was removed from the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and replaced by the term “gender dysphoria”. Up until 2013, America viewed trans* people as a mental disorder rather than a gender identity. That is an example of gendered discrimination that is specific to a trans identity (Halberstam 2018:19). Due to the reality that they are confronted with discrimination based on their gender identities, they should be allowed in the social aspect of the fight for gender equality. 
    Although trans* people should be included in the feminist fight, different trans* identities may influence where they best fit within the movement. Halberstam revealed a woman who was discussing modern-day women in society and she referred to “lesbian women altering themselves into transmen” as negative and confusing (Halberstam 2018:117). She seemed to hold the view that women want to be men so they can have the same rights as men and thought they should instead help fight for equality. She saw transmen as oppressed women who gave up and therefore were traitors of the feminist movement. Although this is untrue, it does raise the question: where do transmen belong in feminism? In this day and age, the most commonly known aspect of feminism is the fight for reproductive freedom. Personally, I believe that transwomen and other women who are not impacted by such policies should take a back seat on this specific topic of feminist discussion. The reason I believe this is because I think that those who are and have been impacted by the lack of reproductive liberties should be the main voices of this fight. That could include transmen. Not because they are women, but because they are directly impacted by aspects such as access to safe contraception and abortions. This does not mean that transwomen cannot be feminists and speak up about such issues, but it more means that they should help amplify the voices of those who are impacted and be allies. All people should be feminists, which includes women, men, and all other gender identities. Wade and Ferree (2019) pointed out that feminism is the fight for gender equality. It is not a women-only space. Feminist politics involves eliminating the gendered hierarchy within society. It is a fight for autonomy and choice. With the support of allies fighting alongside and amplifying the voices of feminists, social change can be promoted more quickly (Wade and Ferree 2019). 
    Not only does experience and credibility matter in where people are placed in certain categories of feminism, but feminism must encompass the intersecting identities of oppressed genders in order to make strides towards true equality. In chapter 2 of Trans*, Halberstam (2018) showed the privilege within the trans* community. They said that those who were white and upper class were seen as “deserving while abandoning other trans* bodies and trans experiences to vulnerability and criminalization.” (Halberstam 2018:34). People within marginalized identities tend to overlook their privileges. The authors of the book, Gender, identified privilege as “ unearned social and economic advantage based on our location in a social hierarchy; others do not.” (Wade and Ferree 2019:94). Although someone may be a part of a minority group, they need to be mindful of ways that they may be privileged. Wade and Ferree (2019) pointed out that within feminism, the recognition of the intersectionality of identities and experiences is vital. That includes the struggles of racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, etc. within the feminist community (Wade and Ferree 2019). Trans* women face unique struggles and experiences that cis women do not such as gender dysphoria and transphobia (Lundrigan 2019). Similar to the importance of white able-bodied individuals not speaking over disabled women of color, it is important that cis women do not speak over trans* women in those discussions. Trans* people may people belong to intersecting oppressed groups facing sexism, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination (Nagoshi and Brzuzy 2010). Because of their unique experiences with gender, trans* people can add a diverse perspective to feminism (Johnson 2005). 
    Feminism must include those with trans* identities because they face gender-based discrimination. Although some feminists struggle with grappling the concept of trans* people’s place within the feminist fight, it is clear that they belong in the movement. Similar to cis women, transwomen are at an increased risk of sexual and domestic abuse. They also face discrimination on the basis of gender that cis women don’t face such as transphobia. Within the fight for reproductive rights, transmen and other people who are impacted by those freedoms should be the leaders in that specific aspect of feminism. Trans women and cis women face different struggles. With that in mind, feminists need to make sure they are creating room for those with less privilege due to intersecting identities to have a voice due to the reality that they are often drowned out by the most privileged in their underprivileged group. It is important to include trans* people within the conversations about feminism because they can add diverse experiences necessary within the fight for equality.





REFERENCES
Halberstam, J. (2018). Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Johnson, Katherine. 2005. “From Gender to Transgender: Thirty Years of Feminist Debates.” Social Alternatives 24(2):36–39.
Lundrigan, Kat. 2019. “Exploring Gender: Identification, Oppression, and Rights.” Canadian Social Work 20(2):109–19.
Nagoshi, Julie L., and Stephan/ie Brzuzy. 2010. “Transgender Theory: Embodying Research and Practice.” Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work 25(4):431–43.  
Wade, Lisa, and Myra Marx Ferree 2019. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. 2nd ed. Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton et Company.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halberstam looks how language and labels are used by the trans community and how language informs identity. It is a fascinating study of trans* theory.

"Trans* pays attention to the ebb and flow of regulation and innovation, governance, and experimentation. In addition to placing shifts and changes in trans identities firmly within a matrix of gender and sexuality identities and practices, Trans* will argue that new visibility for any given community has advantages and disadvantages, liabilities and potentialities." 18

"Lucas Crawford, for example, writes beautifully about architectures of stone and flesh that determine, imprint, and shape the selves that move through them." 24

"The act of mapping a category onto subjects who may not have recognized the practices, lifestyles, notions of body and self, and so forth that it references, " she (Maria Elena Martinez) writes, "aligns itself with a genealogy of power-one that imposes, distorts, or forecloses certain desires, identifications, and experiences." 25

"If "queer: in the 1990s and 2000s was the marker of a politics of sex and gender that exceeded identity and gestured toward a critique of state power and assimilationist goals, we could say the term "trans" marks a politics based on a general instability of identity and oriented toward social transformation, not political accommodation." 50

"Children, in other words, are dense figures of social anxiety and aspiration both. For this reason, the way that discourses on gender and sexuality circulate through them gives us much information about how normalization works." 55

"Children of all backgrounds, in other words, are supposed to internalize models of gender and reproduce them in forms that match up with their cultural, racial, and classed locations and in relation to manners, gender-appropriate likes and dislikes, conventional interactions within a heterosexual matrix, and even their own hopes and fears about the future." 60

"But the weird set of experiences that we call childhood stands outside adult logics of time and space. The time of the child, then, like the time of the queer, is always already over and still to come. As Kathryn Bond Stockton puts it, "the child is precisely who we are not and, in fact, never were. It is the act of the adults looking back." Childhood, for Stockton, is ghostly: it haunts adulthood, eludes children, and becomes a misty presence and a palpable absence all at once." 61

"Transgender bodies, indeed, represented a condition of radical instability against which other gendered bodies appeared legible, knowable, and natural." 96

"The bathroom as I claimed then, is a technology of gender, a mode of sorting, producing, and sustaining gender norms in a public sphere where those same norms were rapidly disintegrating." 133

"As Stefano Harney and Fred Moten propose in their brilliant book The Undercommons, the way to address persistent problems of racism, sexism, and homophobia is to see that discrimination does not only impact the people toward whom it is directed, it affects everyone." 135

[Simón · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I've been looking for. I picked it up from a feminist bookstore in Montreal and thought it would be a nice addition to my library of gender studies. I've read many (poorly written) sincere accounts by binary trans people. And I've read messed up pseudo- psychiatric attempts at "explaining" trans* identities, but I haven't found something that bridges the biographic, cultural, and theory as well as this.
Agreed, it isn't really quirky or quick. I read large parts of it aloud to my partner so we could discuss the points. I made a list of films and artists to look up so I'd get a deeper understanding of Halberstam's interpretation. But overall, I just giggled and amen-ed my way through the chapters because the perspective on ontology and language felt so fresh. Halberstam seems to resist a lot of the good/bad judgement that comes with applying queer theory to political situations. The afterword made me cry -- I haven't read in print (only on Reddit) such a nuanced account of different names and different pronouns. I haven't felt kinship with any other theorists (Julia Serano for example) both on a day-to-day level and on the level of a theory that supports multiplicity, reluctant to tow the binary trans party line. Thanks a million for making space for this enby to gain so much cognitive clarity.

[Meeni Levi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a very nice book that introduce the many paths you can travel down when doing trans* studies. The fact that each chapter is introduced by personal musings helps shift the discourse away from theory only and into real life.
Still, this is an academic book based a lot on feminist and queer theory. It's dense. It's not always easy to read, and I personnally felt like some concepts were introduced without being explain, leaving the reader to do research into the definitions on their own, despite the concept in question being immediately relevant to the text.

I could have given it four stars, maybe, if this particular edition wasn't riddled with typos. I'm a non-native speaker and found at least 5 spelling/grammar mistakes on a first reading. Disappointing for an otherwise quality academic work.

[ju motter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Não chamaria de curto e nem de curioso, mas isso não torna o livro menos fundamental. É denso e altamente crítico, na verdade. Sendo assim, não se trata de uma leitura para iniciantes no tema que querem informações mastigadas e mais resolutivas sobre o tema. Acredito que seja o livro mais provocativo e maduro de Halberstam até agora. Superando, para mim, o inestimável Female Masculinity. É uma abordagem essencial sobre os perigos das normatizações, das transnormatividades, dentro de um contexto estadunidense e que pode ser facilmente importada para outros contextos. E é, sobretudo, um chamado à atenção sobre as histórias que estamos contando.

[Benjamín Santiago Montiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hay algunos aspectos con los que no termino de estar de acuerdo, pero este libro me ha hecho reflexionar sobre cómo veo algunas formas de nombrar lo trans y mi forma de percibir representaciones antiguas.

[Jennifer J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like a syllabus--or perhaps like an annotated bibliography. But thorough and thoughtful and good. Halberstam does do a bit of handwringing about the youth, but is transparent and self-aware about it. Some of the generational things Halberstam points to felt personal in the text. I take hir point about the fact that different cultures, signifiers, ownerships, and meanings obtained throughout the Black queer community that can at some times be orthogonal to the symbolic terrain of much of white queer existence. But can't I hold that awareness and the feeling that RuPaul has done some things that are actually problematic (as opposed to just being a POC doomed to be misunderstood 100% of the time in a white supremacist society) at the same time? I also found the section about the Reed protests to be surreal, since that is my alma mater and the goings on of that protest group have been a non-trivial part of my social discourse for a while now--it's a source of ENORMOUS contention among the college's alumni network as well as among the communities currently on campus. But it always felt, clearly inaccurately, like weirdness happening in your own home, so it was--as I said--surreal to have picked up this volume and find Halberstam delving into the details of it in the back 2 chapters. I appreciated hir take on the issue, but it brought all the discussion points of the book together in an effective, compelling, deeply personal bow at the end.

On a last note, I really appreciated the gloss of Sarah Haley's work in Chapter 3:

"Sarah Haley, for example, in a stunning account of state violence directed at young Black women at the start of the twentieth century in the United States, discovers that [begin quote from Haley] 'imprisoned black women were labelled queer in the years immediately preceding the word being used to describe homosexual desire and homosexuals.' This leads her [Haley] to the startling insight that [begin second quote from Haley] 'the imprisoned black female subject was, in some ways, vestibular to queerness.'"

Halberstam continues further down the page:

"The fact that current definitions and uses of the term 'queer' proceed without a clear sense of the centrality of bodies of color to the production of its meaning suggests that one function of sex/gender classifications is the occlusion of the operation of white supremacy within seemingly natural systems of meaning."

This one short snippit, all found on pg 51, stayed with me for a long time. As someone who studies a different area of society (drug use) that is also DEEPLY rooted in racial and racist discourses in the U.S., these two ideas together--Haley's foundational observation and Halberstam's statement of the impact of that observation--offer so much in terms of thinking through how whiteness as a social phenomenon impacts lived experiences in the problem space of drug use in so many ways beyond the obvious. The obvious, I dare say, was expertly covered by the likes of Michelle Alexander, Carl Hart, and others. The "beyond"--the ways in which racist linguistic innovation around drug use has been naturalized/neutralized in ways that obscure that history--is something that remains to be thoroughly addressed in the literature, as far as I am aware at least*. And now it's all I can think about.

*edit: Actually, the deliberate alteration of the spelling of marijuana, formally "marihuana," to mimic Spanish phonetics and make it seem "foreign" and "scary" has been discussed by numerous scholars. But there's so much more to unearth there, I think.

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me, Trans* feels like a primer to a Gender 201 course: touching on media to make the argument that trans identity is different and more complicated than what is presented in current mass media narratives, but never diving into any specifics. It reads more like an outline of an anthology rather than a book in of itself. Of course, it is impossible to argue against Halberstam's premise, and the examples he cites (Halberstam has explicitly said he is pronoun-indifferent) are all relevant to his premise. Halberstam outlines the current liberal construction of transgenderism as an identity-based politic best addressed by surface changes to institutions like bathrooms and then complicates it by re- introducing older transgender scholarship with more radical roots. It is important to note that new understandings of transgenderism are linked to white, thin, androgynous, upper-middle class Gen Z bodies while these older discourses come from groups with much less institutional privilege. In the terms of the very limited scope of his goal, Halberstam is successful. It cannot be denied that transgenderism is more complicated than the current construction. Still, it is a pity he wasn't at least a little more ambitious, applying current counter-narratives to the current Zeitgeist or getting more specific about (de)constructions of gender. I am definitely biased, but I do wish he had at least touched on nonbinary identity. Implying a radical rejection of gender ideology, nonbinary identity often just serves to create a palatable "third gender" of the androgynous female; even as more and more speak out against this definition, mass-media continues to focus on the bodies of people like Asia Dillon over those who are less normatively gendered. This would have been an excellent and very current example of the tension between liberal and radical politics that discourses around trans bodies serve as a vehicle for; as it stands, Halberstam doesn't even mention the word nonbinary. I think of this book-- and much of Halberstam's writing-- as a good source to develop a reading/viewing list of trans media. I walked away from this book primarily curious about the book Testo Junkie and the art piece Ken. To be destroyed. Still, I can't help but be disappointed that Halberstam, who is known for his attempts to bridge high and low media, refuses to acknowledge the current creations and ideas of gender that proliferate amongst the youngest of us all over the internet. In his attempts to bridge the gap between generations of trans people, Halberstam, unfortunately, pits them against each other by refusing much of millennial and gen z radicalism. I hoped for more.

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me no talkee as good as J. Jack Halberstam.

So even though this book is quick and quirky, it is very academic. I dropped out of academia, by which I mean I got a practical B.S. degree in computers and writing and then went my merry way, with only a glimpse of what life would mean if I went on within the system. So I don't speak academia, but I waded through anyway, a couple of page a night. I think I got the gist of it, and did enjoy reading it, but it is not for the weak of heart or brain.

I did like the ideas in it, and it was a great counterpoint to the novel I was reading simultaneously but more quickly -- Gabriel Squailia's Viscera - which actually *houses* (note what I did there) (oh you might not have read the book -- (or either book) -- but Trans* concludes with the argument that trans* bodies remind all of us that all our bodies are always under construction - and postulating that could lead us to be more open to invention - not just physically and architecturally but in how we organize socially -- and to me, also in how we create and invent art, that reflection of ourselves. And Squailia's Viscera shows trans bodies, architecture, and culture as continually and violently changing and reinventing themselves.

I don't know if I'm doing full justice to the ideas contained herein, and am not qualified to read the book academically or review it, but even though I sort of regretted putting this one first in my current Trans reading list, it was actually most likely the one most pertinent to me personally, being a gender-fluid person born as female who has lived as a woman all my life but now get to in my 60s, explore my masculine -- or dual -- nature, timidly but with some joy that I even get to do that. It also served to illumine Squalia's book which I enjoyed so much, and now, looking back over it, I'm starting to consider Viscera a masterpiece, containing as it does, so much of a mirror image of Halberstam's postulated theories.

So I am glad I read it first, even though I felt like I lacked some of the context to understand the academic language, I felt like I got the gist of the arguments, and it turned out to be a good companion in my personal journey.

Note on names : the book just has Jack Halberstam but Goodreads says "J. Jack Halberstam".

[olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

The review section of this book made me laugh a little before diving into the book, n made me sceptical for sure. But I came out actually really having fun with the idea of what even would be 'quick' and 'quirky' for 'trans*' and 'transitioning' is; maybe that was the whole joke?

The Lego chapter and pronoun chapter were a little '???' to me (I appreciate Jack [this is how Jack wanted to go by, instead of pronouns, according to the pronoun chapter] being vulnerable and merely human), but there is quite a bit of good research and theorising that is quite the discussion on twitter literally right now (looking at my other screens).

I am biased since I write about the prefix of 'trans', but this book definitely ponders on the prefix itself too (Jack didn't quite put it this way, mostly emphasises on the asterisk.) Naming and not naming, and being and not being are very altering moments for transness.

Overall, a great book for locating reference films, theorists, and historians, with Jack sprinkling fun theorising moments. Will a cis person randomly read this book and feel enlightened? Probably not? Will a trans person enjoy it? Probably sort of???? The writings open a lot of doors to many many deeper conversations.

[Nathalie Valentina]

I have mixed feelings about this book, but the following are some things to keep in mind before picking it up:

1. It’s not quick nor quirky. The narrative is dense and heavily research based. I don’t recommend this as your introduction to trans allyship or awareness. However, I did learn quite a few things about trans history and film. A better title would have been something like, “Trans* Gender Variability Throughout History in Film and Literature.”

2. It’s repetitive and a little cynical. This is not your uplifting, lighthearted intro to the trans community. This could be paired with “Trans Allyship Workbook” by Davey Shlasko because it offers tips and an easily digestible overview (ex. white trans people supporting trans POC).

3. Although I appreciate Halbertstam’s research and respect his perspective, I don’t agree with a lot of it, or perhaps I don’t like his approach. Most of the things I didn’t like could be due to poor word choice or awkward metaphors, but the following sentence in the last paragraph of the book infuriated me: “Trans* bodies, in their fragmented, unfinished, broken-beyond-repair forms, remind all of us that the body is always under construction.”

[yana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, but who thought it would be a good idea to name it "Quick and Quirky"? It's an academic text through and through.

Regardless of its density though, this book has been an incredible read; easily one of the most compelling series of arguments which has unfortunately garnered our "Sports Dad of Queer Theory" an absolute pile of disregard from readers who can't put up with his established-academic-and-he-knows-it tone.

Whether you agree or disagree with him though, I strongly recommend reading this title while paying specific attention to the divide and connections between the old trans* theory guard and the new youth/social-media folks growing up under entirely different circumstances with precious little (and heavily white-washed and censored if any) knowledge of queer history.

Also, be warned of typos... Apparently when you hit a certain level of academic success, you don't get points deducted for presentation.

[Jackie Jones]

The author discusses the history of transgender and how having a name was good and
bad. The author discusses the different words used throughout the years and how people
do not have to put themselves in a gender binary. There is a discussion on how the
different ideas of theorists such as Lombroso and Freud on why those who LGBTQ are
who they are and how they made no sense and were incorrect. Their theories were
discounted but still, some may believe how they did. The author discussed the concern of
imprisoned queer black women and the concern of not being protected and how brutality
has occurred. There is also a concern of queer black men having a higher incarceration.
Gender, Race and Nation rate than white transgendered men. The author discusses how prisons need to do a better job of helping and protecting those who are transgender as we do anyone else.