Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism

by Julia Serano

Overview

In her third book Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism, Julia Serano chronicles her own personal evolution and the many shifts in transgender activism that have occurred since the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a personal history of where transgender activism has recently been, and a passionate & insightful analysis of where it should head in the future. This collection compiles forty-eight of her previously unpublished and difficult to find trans-themed writings, including her early slam poems and spoken word, essays and manifestos written contemporaneously with her acclaimed books Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, plus her recent work addressing differences within transgender communities and activism. These pieces are augmented with thoughtful introductions and interludes that contextualize the issues at hand and previous periods in transgender activism. Combining elements of memoir, historical account, gender theory, and activist philosophy, this book is a must for anyone who has appreciated Serano's previous books and/or has an interest in transgender identities, experiences, perspectives, and progress.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996881005
Publisher:	Switch Hitter Press
Publication date:	11/09/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer, activist, and biologist. She is the author of two other books, 2007's Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (which Ms. Magazine ranked #16 on their list of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time) and 2013's Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (which was a finalist for the 2013 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction). Julia's other writings have appeared in over a dozen anthologies, in magazines and news outlets such as TIME, The Guardian, The Advocate, The Daily Beast, Bitch, AlterNet, Out, Ms., and Salon, and have been used as teaching materials in queer and gender studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and human sexuality courses across North America. As a scientist, Julia has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Columbia University, and spent seventeen years as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fields of genetics and evolutionary-developmental biology. She also writes silly, surreal, sex-positive fiction under the pen name Kat Cataclysm, and creates music under the moniker *soft vowel sounds*. More about all her creative endeavors can be found at juliaserano.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part 1: Performance and Poetry; 1. Vice Versa; 2. Ophelia Revisited; 3. Either Or; 4. Scared to Death; 5. Small Blue Thing; 6. Class Dismissed; 7. Super Hero; 8. Book Worm; 9. Introduction to Draw Blood; 10. Cocky; 11. Sleeping Sickness; 12. Mix and Match; 13. Endgame; 14. Period Piece; 15. Draw Blood; 16. Open Letter to Lisa Vogel; 17. Fighting Words; 18. Cherry Picking; 19. San Francisco Bay Area Trans Performance and Activism; Part 2: Articulating Trans-misogyny; 20. Her Own Femme; 21. Frustration; 22. Questionable; 23. Finally; 24. Trans-misogyny Primer; 25. Whipping Girl FAQ on Cissexual, Cisgender, and Cis Privilege; 26. 96 Percent; 27. Talking Past One Another; 28. Blog-Born-Blog; 29. Empowering Femininity; Part 3: Pathological Science Revisited; 30. Psychology, Sexualization, and Trans-Invalidations; 31. Stop Sexualizing Us!; 32. The Beauty In Us; 33. Reconceptualizing "Autogynephilia" as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies; 34. Trans People Are Still "Disordered" in the DSM-5; 35. An Open Letter to The New Yorker; Part 4: Communities and Disparities; 36. Bisexual Does Not "Reinforce" Anything; 37. A "Transsexual Versus Transgender" Intervention; 38. Baby Talk; 39. First Date; 40. Elders;41. Contagious; 42. In Defense of Partners; 43. Desirable; Part 5: Differences of Opinion in Trans Activism; 44. Considering Trans and Queer Appropriation; 45. A Personal History of the "T-word" (and some more general reflections on language and activism); 46. On People, Polarization, Panopticons, and #ComplexFeelingsAboutActivism; 47. Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited-Part 1: Who Exactly Does "Cis" Refer To?; 48. Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited-Part 2: Reconciling Disparate Uses of the Cis/Trans Distinction; There is No Perfect Word (a Transgender Glossary of Sorts); Notes