Excluded Quotes

“When you're a trans woman, you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody, but if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you're accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

“Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual's personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and live choices simply shouldn't factor into it.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

“And in most queer communities, regardless of one's sex or identity, people who are more masculine in gender expression are almost always viewed as more valid and attractive than their feminine counterparts.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

“They [heterosexual cis women] are accepted in the straight mainstream way more readily than I [trans woman] will ever be. But they are marginalized in their day-to-day lives because they are feminine. To argue that they are reinforcing the binary, or the patriarchy or the hegemonic gender system, because they are conventional feminine (as opposed to subversively feminine) essentially implies that they are enabling their own oppression. This is just another variation of the claim that rapists make when they insinuate that the woman in question was 'asking for it' because of what she was wearing or how she behaved.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

“And trans women and femmes share another important attribute: We are survivors. The rest of the world may assume we are weak and fragile because of our feminine inclinations, but in reality, living with other people’s relentless misogynistic bullshit has made us tenacious bad-asses.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

“Both the radical and reformist sides of this debate will insist that their approach will lead to salvation, whereas the reciprocal approach will ultimately lead to doom. (More specifically, reformists will accuse radicals of “holding back the movement,” and radicals will accuse reformists of “reinforcing the gender system.”) The problem with both these approaches is that they fail to appreciate that queer people are a heterogeneous group. Each of us faces a unique set of circumstances, and therefore we may respond quite differently to any given situation. But even more importantly, these approaches fail to realize that because queer people are marked, we have been placed in a double bind. Neither prescribed solution gets to the heart of the problem: the fact that other people mark us as queer, and by doing so, they will perceive, interpret, and treat us differently than the straight majority no matter what course of action we take.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive