A Short History of Trans Misogyny

★★★☆☆ – Good!

You know that feeling you sometimes get from academic literature – the feeling that the author, at some point, realized that the book is their soapbox? “This is my book – I can write anything I want in it!” This book gives off that feeling, for better and for worse (but also for better!).

If you, like me, are a 21ˢᵗ-century trans woman, the history contained in this book will, for the most part, not pertain to you directly. My gender identity is not an ethnoreligious phenomenon, I’ve never been a sex worker, and I was but a glint in my grandfather’s eye in the ’60s. Nevertheless, the history detailed in this book is eminently interesting, and offers a perspective on transfemininity (and its interaction with mainstream society) that may be illuminating and useful – it certainly made me question some of my basal assumptions.

It is my view that in order to create something truly special, one must be “radically different” for some value of that phrase. And if you are as “out there” as is required to create something special, I believe, you will necessarily not only make decisions that resonate with your audience as something special, but some decisions that will simply go down as “mad” as well. A necessity of making something great is to make something questionable. This book is a prime example: For every part that makes you question your place in society, there’s a part where the author recounts an entire music video, or goes on about nothing for six paragraphs. The final chapter of the book might make you – it certainly made me – feel like you’re being inducted into a sex-radical female-supremacist cult. The very final sentence – “Will you demand it all?” – struck me as particularly discombobulating. Because overall, it isn’t that kind of book.

When you read a book on gender theory – especially one written by a marginalized author – there’s always a risk that it’ll be angry, isn’t there? Righteously so, but nevertheless the sort of book you shouldn’t read if you aren’t at the top of your mental game; the sort of book that’s upsetting even if it’s right. The sort of book that induces angst in the vulnerable. A Short History is not that kind of book. It’s mixed in its digestibility, sure, and the coherence of its arguments isn’t always readily apparent (as in, I wasn’t always sure what arguments it tried to make) – but it’s level-headed and informative (if more than a bit florid and high-falutin’). You certainly don’t risk anything by giving it a try.