I’m not a person who likes to read ‘theory.’ I’m not upper class – I don’t need somebody telling me about the struggles people face in society, because I either experience them first-hand or witness them first-hand.
I didn’t need Karl Marx to tell me that wealth needs redistributing (though it was nice to discover him as a teenager). I didn’t need Greta Thunberg to tell me that the planet is dying. But I sort of did need Shon Faye to highlight to me how transgender struggles are just the same as my own struggles as a working-class (cis) woman.
I’ve always been trans-inclusive in my feminism, always been partially aware that what trans people experience in society overlaps with what I do. But not to the extent I do now after reading this book.
I will admit, I always held the belief that yes, trans women are women, but because they had been at least at some point living life and experiencing society as a boy/man, they didn’t understand misogyny and sexism the way I do. If I tried to imagine going to a women’s meeting discussing discrimination we were experiencing and a woman who on the outside could be male-passing was present, I would find their input less relevant. (This is a situation I would never find myself in so I have no idea why this is something I even pictured).
I have changed my mind! Some trans women were acutely aware they were trans before transitioning or even ‘admitting’ it to anybody. So, whilst identifying as a woman, they were witnessing misogyny, it’s just those being misogynistic didn’t know their words or actions also related to the secret trans woman.
Moreover, ‘out there’ trans women experience a very specific type of misogyny which Faye explains: transmisogyny. This occurs when a trans woman is questioned for not fitting the stereotypical, traditional view of the female gender.
But trans women can’t ever really win with how they ‘look.’ If a trans woman ‘sexualises’ themselves i.e. by pouting, showing cleavage, she is ‘reinforcing the idea that women are sexual objects.’ On the other hand, if she is all covered up, no make-up, short hair, she is just a confused gay man. So essentially, transphobia, especially targeted at trans women, is just homophobia and misogyny mixed up and placed on steroids.
I never understood just how much misogyny there was in transphobic circles. Everything boils down to how a woman is a reproductive system who must look a certain way. When it’s actual (cis) women reiterating this rhetoric, it is even more mind-boggling.
I have always felt that trans men have the easier side of the coin. Perhaps, to an extent they do. I don’t know, I am neither a trans man or woman. But, Faye does highlight a key issue that many trans men face – especially as teens.
In this book, Faye refers to how common it is for trans men to be asked if they’re not just butch lesbians. Are they not just confused? Even though they identify as men, as in the eyes of the people asking these questions they are still women, this is again just people trying to control women. They are just young and confused, they can’t think for themselves!
Until reading this book (and a few days ago when the proposal to reform the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland was stopped by the British Government), I felt like trans rights in the UK were (albeit slowly) improving.
Faye does highlight some promising examples in UK society where trans people have been wholeheartedly accepted by family, friends, and schools. But it is all too apparent this isn’t yet the norm.
Overall, this book presents a flawless argument as to why we should all see the liberation of trans people as the same struggle as the liberation for all side-lined ‘groups’ of people.
Faye shows how anti-trans feminism, or socialism, or whatever name you want to give it, just benefits capitalism. By excluding trans people from your fight for freedom you are just giving capitalists a group of people to continue blaming the flaws in society on.
It also benefits the patriarchy. To quote Faye herself: “Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.”
Izzy sagt, Izzy does 