Whipping Girl

Reading a trans manifesto / collection of critical essays on feminism / gender mindfuck in a desperately needed way. Called Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. It's blowing my mind. Dissecting sexism and privilege into 3 major camps. Promoting a bimodal distribution pattern for the relationship between gender expression and biological sex. Identifying and undermining both cultural and personal patterns of cissexual privilege and transphobia. If any of this stuff interests you, reader, by all means, this book is a gem.



Taking it personally, I think a lot of the negativity I express towards my own gender identification / subconscious sex (as transsexual woman), gender expression (androgynous leaning towards feminine), and sexual orientation (lesbian with bi tendencies) stems from how I grew up, which was Roman Catholic, middle class, in an environment that actively resisted any atypical gender expression and tried to ignore that sex existed.

Essentially, I grew up transphobic and sexually repressed. Hence the years of depression and denial.

How can a transsexual be transphobic? There are protective measures one takes in order to feel safe; even if safe hurts, it may hurt less than unsafe. In the way a pizza lover can feel extremely guilty for their tasty inclination. In the same way an insecure and closeted gender deviant will outwardly project gender-normative behavior. Like being a queer but being extremely uncomfortable around queers. Like how two protons repulse each other.

This, more than any one thing, gets me to question my identity, though I've known I am a woman since age 12. But I was socialized into both fearing and doubting this feeling, trying to hide it, not draw attention to the many ways I wasn't normal, my eyebrow-raising manner. It's a strange thing to be overcoming, to learn just how deep the tendrils of socialization have rooted in my being.

That's an overly-abstracted and metaphysical way of saying that as my self-awareness grows, I am daily surprised by the degree to which I have been taught to hate and to fear myself.

As an undergrad, I joined a fraternity, grew a beard, didn't wash much (thinking self-care was feminine and Spartan-ness was masculine), expressed a preference for cheap beer over mixed drinks, wore preppy sterile neutrally-colored male garb, talked about how men are superior to women (traditional sexism) because we were more emotionally stable (oppositional sexism) (this despite how I would drink myself into oblivion and stupordom nightly), stayed away from drag shows, thought homosexuality was a way of life as opposed to an adjective, would repeatedly get drunk and come out to a small circle of friends and then act like I didn't remember what I had said the night before, denied saying it when my friends' memories proved more functional than my own.

I adjusted my behavior to fit in, sought to be what I thought the norm was. Standing out was too scary. I had been conditioned to think I would be scorned, shunned, stigmatized, even by close friends. Joining the fraternity essentially guaranteed that I would be, and was, if only for expressing non-hyper-masculine behavior, like blacking out on jungle juice, growing my hair, not seeking sex at every party, preferring we play actual funk instead of booty-rap, playing acoustic hippie music and electronica and Bjork on bowl cruises.

Musings. The more I read and understand myself and how I relate to gender, the more empowered and encouraged by my transsexuality I feel, as opposed to afraid and depressed. It is true.

I am slowly becoming a better me than I ever learned to be.

Any other good reads out there?

Now if I could just sleep.

Until Next Time,

J