Welcome to the first week of reading Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg!
Each week we'll read one chapter and discuss it in the comments. There are 8 chapters, and each chapter isn't too long, so this will be relatively light reading for most of you.
Also, THIS BOOK ISN'T JUST FOR TRANS PEOPLE. Obviously the book discusses trans issues, but as I've said before, it covers discussion on gender topics that would be relevant to basically everyone. So I highly encourage you to join if you're interested, regardless of whether you're trans or not.
To get started, here is a list of resources taken from the previous reading group session:
pdf download
epub download - Huge shout out to comrade @EugeneDebs for putting this together. I realized I didn't credit them in either post but here it is. I appreciate your efforts. ❤️
chapter 1 audiobook - Huge shout out to comrade @futomes for recording these. No words can truly express my appreciation for this. Thank you so much. ❤️
chapter 2 audiobook
chapter 3 audiobook
chapter 4 audiobook
chapter 5 audiobook
chapter 6 audiobook
chapter 7 audiobook
chapter 8 audiobook
Also here's another PDF download link and the whole book on ProleWiki.
In this thread we'll be discussing Chapter 1: We Are All Works in Progress.
CWs: Discussion of transphobia, abuse, SA. I should also mention since this came out in 1998, some of the language used might feel a little dated (specific language used is also a good topic of discussion imo).
I'll also ping a discussion list each week. Since this is the first week, the ping list will only include the few who've mentioned they're interested, but please let me know if you'd like to be added (or removed).
This is my first time doing something like this, so let me know if you have any feedback for me. Thanks!
Ah ok, that makes sense and I definitely see those things as intertwined.
Sorry for the very late reply to this. I agree with you and it's honestly something I've been thinking about all week. When I first read this the questions that popped into my head were more along the lines of "Are femboys, crossdressers, dragqueens, etc. trans?" but the case you bring up is very interesting. Obviously most people these days wouldn't see something like women wearing pants or having short hair as "trans" in any way, but it's true that at one point women dressing like this and taking on strictly male roles was seen bold act of crossing gender lines. In this case, they were able to successfully change social norms to the point where this is no longer something anyone even thinks about it, which gives me hope that we will eventually win and move past our current situation.
idk girl, I'm more pessimistic about this. to people who believe in the conventional gender hierarchy in which men are above women, it just Makes Sense for some women to try to want to increase their status by being more masculine. within this worldview, MTF persons are Acting Illogically, and to them, must therefore be "impaired" in some way or acting with ulterior motives.
what would give me hope is a sign of any significant amount of the population realizing that it's fucking BS that whatever was between your legs when you spawned in defines how to have to relate to people. I wish I could say zoomers achieved this, it seems to be generation with the most q/gq people within recent memory in the western world, but it also seems to have some of the most reactionary/trad people, so I don't know if anything has actually changed.
personal anecdote: at my previous job, there was one co-worker who happened to be a trans man. I actually didn't learn this until after about 5 years of working with him, and I only learned it in passing. None of the guys ever gave him shit for it, even though I guess everyone who started there before me knew for whatever reason. Yet these same people had nothing but vile shit to say about trans women to the point where it was one of the reasons I left.
it's not just a dividing line, it's a hierarchy, and comes with the complexities that you see in other hierarchies like race and socioeconomic class