Transgressive: A Trans Woman on Gender, Feminism, and Politics

Blogger Williams serves up an excellent collection of essays on the practical, philosophical, and psychological concerns surrounding trans identities. Entries address such topics as male privilege (Williams refutes the framing that assumes trans women as a group have it, noting that personal experience varies); reclaiming the word “tranny” for herself; how trans women’s “femininity is never seen as natural, always artificial”; the phenomenon of “passing” (“for a trans woman to ‘pass’ is for strangers to not realize they were assigned male at birth.... Why should cis people be the standard through which we define and understand the experience of trans folks?”); identifying a middle ground between those who “believe that gender dysphoria... and the desire for ‘opposite’ sexed bodily characteristics” define being trans and those who don’t; and “the overwhelming sense of isolation” that comes from “being an extreme statistical minority.” The writing, by turns vulnerable and urgent, reveals Williams to be a deep thinker with a direct style of address and a keen sense of humor (“If I lived on a deserted island that had a Sephora, I would still wear makeup”). Her arguments are consistently balanced, respectful, and informed. Williams’s terrific work breaking down academic concepts into understandable language and clear, concrete ideas will be a boon to both newbies to and veterans of the trans experience and issues. (May)