Whipping Girl: Interview with trans feminist Julia Serano

http://www.thescavenger.net/glbsgdq/whipping-girl-interview-with-trans-feminist-julia-serano-28675.html

Cath Davies talks to writer, spoken word performer and activist Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.

In the introduction to your book, Whipping Girl, you claim that 'as a transsexual woman, I would have to say that most of the anti-trans sentiment that I have had to deal with is probably better described as misogyny' and that 'we are ridiculed and dismissed not merely because we transgress binary gender norms, but rather because we choose to be women rather than men'. Is this something you have experienced within lesbian or queer women's' communities? And how do you think the experiences of trans women differ to those of trans men?

I think that trans women and trans men have a lot in common, in that we both have the experience of having others react negatively to our cross-gender identification and gender non-conformity as children and adults, of having lived as both women and men at different points in our lives, of physically transitioning, and having other people view our femaleness or maleness as "fake" simply because we were not born into that sex.

I have read "Whipping Girl", and I think it is a very important book for all trans people to read.  It not only helps us to understand our culture's resistance to us, but it can assist us in forming our attitudes about ourselves and each other.