Welcome to the fourth week of reading Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg!
If you’re just getting started, here’s a link to the thread for
- Chapter 1: https://hexbear.net/post/5178006?scrollToComments=false
- Chapter 2: https://hexbear.net/post/5254179?scrollToComments=false
- Chapter 3: https://hexbear.net/post/5329173?scrollToComments=false
We’re only doing one chapter per week and the discussion threads will be left open, so latecomers are still very much welcome to join if interested.
As mentioned before… This isn’t just a book for trans people! If you’re cis, please feel free to join and don’t feel intimidated if you’re not trans and/or new to these topics.
Here is a list of resources taken from the previous reading group session:
pdf download
epub download - Huge shout out to comrade @EugeneDebs for putting this together. I realized I didn’t credit them in either post but here it is. I appreciate your efforts. ❤️
chapter 1 audiobook - Huge shout out to comrade @futomes for recording these. No words can truly express my appreciation for this. Thank you so much. ❤️
chapter 2 audiobook
chapter 3 audiobook
chapter 4 audiobook
chapter 5 audiobook
chapter 6 audiobook
chapter 7 audiobook
chapter 8 audiobook
Also here’s another PDF download link and the whole book on ProleWiki.
In this thread we’ll be discussing Chapter 4: “Are You a Guy, or What?”
CWs: Mentions of transphobia, misgendering.
This chapter covers remarks by Feinberg at a True Spirit Conference workshop called “Exploring Our Options”, which are primarily focused on challenging the gender binary and defining ourselves in ways that honor our self-expression.
There are also two great “Portrait” sections here, one by Michael Hernandez and another by Dragon Xcaliber, with both discussing their lived experience in not fitting neatly into the categories that society tries to force us into.
I’ll ping whoever has been participating so far, but please let me know if you’d like to be added (or removed).
Feel free to let me know if you have any feedback also. Thanks!
Don’t really have many comments, but the book gets more compelling the more I read. I really like the framing of language here. Our actions, dressing, linguistic conventions aren’t simply neutral, and communicate various assumptions and notions within. That’s why it’s important to examine the language we use. Cisnormative language isn’t enough to express ourselves, which is why things like neopronouns are needed.
I tried to link all this theory with Marxism in general, because I thought it would be useful, but it doesn’t really feel like it fits. Not even into dialectics. Language might be a sort of blind spot for Marxism, despite being really important to how human societies develop.