lavender magazineby E.B. Boatner
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
Julia Serano
Seal Press
$15.99
Julia Serano's volume of essays takes an in-depth look at our culture's pervasive misogyny and how that in great part accounts for the public's fascination with transsexual women. She notes that while transgenderedness is considered to be a pathology for both, transgender women are treated more harshly than transgender men.
Serano, a trans woman herself, argues persuasively that this discrepancy is rooted in the widely held belief among both laymen and professionals that women are the inferior, and less desirable, gender. With that mindset, a doctor or therapist to whom the concept of transgender individuals is distasteful, will consider it less pathological for a woman to identify as male, than for a man to lose prestige and entitlement by identifying as female. Femininity is the least desirable characteristic—in women as well as men. Serano tackles these and like issues in clear, concise prose that invites the reader to examine their own perceptions of transgender women and of femininity.
