Dear all,

Per suggestions on this board, I read 'Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue' by Leslie Feinberg and I really enjoyed the variety of perspectives brought forth and the clearly enumerated link between capitalism and trans oppression. That said, I had an issue with a lot of the dated understanding of sexuality, gender, and terminology for both of those aspects of human indentity. Or rather, I applaud Leslie for hir for having an incredibly accepting, compassionate, and progressive presentation, but holding this book up today as the end-all-be-all and litmus test for allyship feels reductive. In particular, the aggressive commands to read the book have been particularly off-putting as has the flippant use of the b-word (although that's mostly my personal grievance). I think this attitude and presentation is unconstructive and worse I think could actively alienate comrades who have not reached sufficient development in terms of consciousness and compassion for trans oppression.

In terms of my own exploration and self-understanding as a transfemme person, I have found Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano to be a more focused and stronger help for understanding transphobia, trans misogyny, and my relationship to femininity. I realize that book is focused on the transfemme perspective and I am obviously thus biased. I also think it is important to highlight the voices of transmasc people and have started recommending Trans Liberation more, too, since their voices are so little acknowldeged and represented. I have also learned a lot from Heath Fogg Davies' 'Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter?' which does a good job of exploring the harms of gendered institution and interrogates the role of gender in public life—a sort of abolitionist position even! While his solutions are ultimately very beurocratic and liberal, he does a lot of work to present trans issues to a skeptical and liberal audience. Importantly, his arguments are very comprehensive and could be good tools to have in our arsenal when explaining this issues to allies or people we are trying to convert. Finally, while it is really really academic, Lise Vogel's 'Marxism and the Oppression of Women' is a really comprehensive analysis of why misogyny is necessary to capitalism and could aid the understanding of the queer and feminist struggle.

I bring up these other books not to seem pretentious, but just to point out that Beyond Pink and Blue is not a monolith and in particular treating it as the end-all-be-all for the trans liberation struggle and allyship I think is harmful. I am glad that all who have gained a better understanding of themselves or their queer friends, and the nature of the struggle have been able to do so and do not mean to diminish that experience.

I also hope that this can serve as a constructive example of dialectical debate and 'struggle session starting'. I've had a lot of issues with people providing a (dumb) take, not elaborating or mentioning some other part of site discourse, and just saying 'discuss'. This isn't Twitter, folks! I believe that that presentation of discourse fosters cliqueism and creates a lot of defensive feelings which do not create a stronger line or better-informed people.

Re: using a throwaway In general, I do not like to have accounts on social media platforms since I struggle with internet addiction and it is not healthy for me to invest myself heavily in a community since it will encourage an unhealthy amount of screen time for me. That said, in the frequent times I have messed up and gone back online it has been to the comfort of this website and the generally good content herein. I think that perspective as a comparative outsider without a lot of investment, but someone who has been back fairly frequently since mid-summer has given me the perspective to identify a trend I see as harmful and reductive.