Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  My biggest home repair – trying to fix the relationship between Michael and the two of our three kids who still refuse contact with him – is dead in the water. Still, even though I have no cause to, I feel stirrings of hope and find that a mere iota of optimism after a punishing winter goes a long way. I regard myself as a delicate flower bud and imagine myself emerging from the soil after a long, cruel winter as something miraculous and precious. I am fragile, but even the coldest frost can’t stop me from poking my head through the soil. The fact of this gives me a sense of bravura I have never recognized in myself before now. Most of my attention is dedicated to preparing for Daisy’s impending departure for college. She has made it clear that having Michael present on her move-in day will make her more anxious than she already is. I long for a partner for this milestone – someone to smile at as we bask in the glow of a job well done, someone to hold me steady as I walk away and let her go – but I am on my own. This is not the way it was supposed to be , I think to myself for the umpteenth time, mournful that the milestones we had envisioned spending together are now my sole domain. We drive home to the city for a few days to finish packing, and on the way the build-up of pressure and sadness and anxiety about all the ways in which our family has changed and is about to again with Daisy’s departure explosively ruptures and spews venom and heartbreak. It is coming from all three of us in the car in equal measure: me, Daisy and Hudson (lucky Georgia has dodged a bullet by staying upstate with my parents). We are like live wires of emotion and I have to pull the car over at a rest stop to keep us from combusting on the highway. Daisy is mad at Hudson for being aloof and sullen; Hudson is mad at Daisy for escaping us and abandoning him; both of them are furious at me that I can’t glue our family back together but even worse, they pity me; and all of us are enraged at the person causing this maelstrom who is not in the car with us. I fold in half, resting my head on the steering wheel and weeping as I have never wept before, primal sobs wracking my body. Sadness I can manage, but this anger – toxic fumes of anger from all of us – suffocates me. Daisy wordlessly places napkins scrounged from the glove compartment on my lap; when I finally pick my head up, I see Hudson in the rear-view mirror looking at me with hostility and contempt.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Daisy and Hudson have complained to me that my efforts at reuniting them feel heavy-handed, that when they’re ready to see him they will, but I shouldn’t expect it for a long time. I didn’t cause this disturbance in our family and I can’t fix it. I’m doing my best on my own to keep it all together, but this latest news is going to be my downfall – proof that I have neither authority nor control and that I am failing woefully short of the parenting my kids need. I send Georgia into Michael’s car so that we can speak privately. Shaking and crying, I relay the phone call. “I’m sorry,” he says sympathetically. “Can I give you a hug?” “A hug?” I hurl back at him, the word becoming a grenade. “A fucking hug? What I need is a co-parent and a partner. I need a husband, a father for my kids. I need you back but the you that was you before. I’ve never felt so alone. What I don’t need is a fucking hug.” With that, I storm back into my car. The camp director calls again from Israel. I am usually respectful and polite, but, truly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. What little self-control I’ve been able to cling onto until now slips away. I have constructed a delicate and precarious house of cards and I am watching it spectacularly topple down, so I don’t have an update for this man, just a broken heart, a troubled son and a husband whom I no longer recognize. I scoff that he is overreacting, that Hudson was caught with marijuana not a gun, and demand that he put my son on the phone right away. In a moment, I hear Hudson’s voice, faraway, subdued and angry. If he wants to be angry, I will meet him there, I will show him a new level of anger he’s never seen from me. It erupts out of me, grief and rage spewing across the international phone line. “Mom, you have to calm down, I can’t talk to you like this,” he pleads. “Calm down? Calm down? I just got a call from a man telling me they’ll call the police if I don’t immediately get my son off premises in a foreign country in which I know no one and don’t speak the language!” I scream. “I know,” he says. “I’m really sorry. But please, I need you to help me.” I breathe deeply to suppress my internal squall and let the silence instead speak between us. Finally, I hear his voice again, humbled and softer now. “I’m so depressed,” he says. “What’s happening with you and Dad is killing me. I can’t get away from it. The only time I feel good is when I’m high.” I suck my breath in. This is the worst possible response he could have given me.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Unfortunately, this lack of experience usually leads cissexuals to mistakenly believe that the process of gendering is a matter of pure observation, rather than the act of speculation it is. Cissexual Assumption The second process that enables cissexual privilege is cissexual assumption. This occurs when a cissexual makes the common, albeit mistaken, assumption that the way they experience their physical and subconscious sexes (i.e., the fact that they do not feel uncomfortable with the sex they were born into, nor do they think of themselves as or wish they could become the other sex) applies to everyone else in the world. In other words, the cissexual indiscriminately projects their cissexuality onto all other people, thus transforming cissexuality into a human attribute that is taken for granted. There is an obvious analogy to heterosexual assumption here: Most cissexuals assume that everyone they meet is also cissexual, just as most heterosexuals assume that everyone they meet is also heterosexual (unless, of course, they are provided with evidence to the contrary). While cissexual assumption remains invisible to most cissexuals, those of us who are transsexual are excruciatingly aware of it. Prior to our transitions, we find that the cissexual majority simply assumes that we fully identify as members of our assigned sex, thus making it difficult for us to manage our gender difference and to be open about the way we see ourselves. And after our transitions, many of us find that the cissexual majority simply assumes that we have always been members of our identified sex, thus making it impossible for us to be open about our trans status without constantly having to come out to others. Thus, while most cissexuals are unaware that cissexual assumption even exists, those of us who are transsexual recognize it as an active process that erases trans people and their experiences. Cissexual Gender Entitlement For most cissexuals, the fact that they feel comfortable inhabiting their own physical sex, and that other people confirm this sense of naturalness by appropriately gendering them, allows them to develop a sense of entitlement regarding their own gender: They feel entitled to call themselves a woman or a man. This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, because many of these same cissexuals also assume that they are infallible in their ability to assign genders to other people, they can develop an overactive sense of cissexual gender entitlement.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Further, as one reads through MTF transsexual case studies, it becomes readily apparent that the word “attractive” is regularly used in conjunction with trans women whom the gatekeepers consider to be successful in their transitions. Those who would argue that this emphasis on the sexual desirability of trans women is a thing of the past might want to take a look at J. Michael Bailey’s book, which I mentioned previously (published in 2003), in which he comments, “There is no way to say this as sensitively as I would prefer, so I will just go ahead. Most homosexual transsexuals are much better looking than most autogynephilic transsexuals.” 43 While not all gatekeepers are guilty of sexualizing their trans female clients to this extent, it is clear that many, if not most, expect trans women to make themselves as conventionally pretty as possible. In Anne Bolin’s 1988 book In Search of Eve, a trans woman she interviewed put it this way: “Shrinks have the idea that to be a transsexual you must be a traditionally feminine woman: skirts, stockings, the whole nine yards.” 44 Another trans woman sums up the problem this way: “You must conform to a doctor’s idea of a woman, not necessarily yours.” 45 Viviane Namaste’s 2000 book Invisible Lives includes an interview with a trans woman who was initially denied hormones by a gatekeeper because she showed up for her therapy appointment wearing “male” clothes. She recounts: “I just went back, and this time I did all my kohl [makeup], inside and outside my eyes, [wore] my little fake fur jacket and my tight black pants. And she said, ‘You’ve come a long way since I saw you first. And now I am convinced that you’re transsexual.’ It was like three weeks later!” 46 In my own conversations with trans women, I’ve found that such expectations are still quite prevalent. On a trans-woman-focused email list that I was a member of in the early 2000s, a new member posted that she had just scheduled her first therapy appointment and she asked if anyone had any advice for her. Sadly, there were about twenty responses, mostly from trans women who’d had the experience of being turned down because they had worn “male” or unisex clothing to their visits, and then later being approved after showing up to their appointments wearing dresses and makeup. While such standards are clearly traditionally sexist, it should once again be pointed out that they are also cissexist, as they require transsexual women to meet a more rigid standard of femininity than cissexual women in order to be considered female.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I contemplate my options, desperately wanting to leave this apartment and be in my own bed, but it’s too late at night for me to attempt to get home. I lie flat on my back under the covers and pray that my ribs are just bruised and will feel better in the morning. #7’s breathing is a raggedy cacophony and his blissful dream state is an affront to me. I lie absolutely still, gently nudging him away whenever he attempts to throw an arm around me, focusing on shallowly breathing in and out to avoid disturbing my ribs. My heart is racing and I know sleep will not come to me; I’m angry at #7 and wounded and mad at myself for being here in the first place when my better instincts told me #7 was not for me. By the time daylight starts to gently streak its way across the room, his breathing has quieted and I finally drift off. I hear him move in his sleep and then feel the bed shift as he rises from it, but I am not ready to greet him or the day, so I stay still and feign sleep. I hear him move around the kitchen, banging cabinets open and closed as he makes coffee, and then the familiar and welcome sound of the coffee machine burbling. A few minutes later he climbs back into bed. I open my eyes to peek and see he’s got a mug of coffee and his iPad, so I try to fall asleep again. I dream that I am in a park with Georgia and she falls from the top of the slide, and I jerk awake, which makes me gasp with the pain the sudden movement has caused. “Good morning, beautiful,” he says, oblivious to my despair, looking lovingly at me. “No, definitely not a good morning. I’m exhausted,” I say, lobbing my words at him. “I was awake all night. My rib is broken and I’m sorry to report that you were snoring very loudly.” I glare at him. I know that I’m being ill-tempered and mean, but the innocent look in his eyes infuriates me. He responds nonchalantly that he doesn’t snore. I snort, informing him that he’s sadly mistaken, that he snores and not gently either, and that if he thinks I’m exaggerating about my rib, I am not, that I’m certain it is broken. It occurs to me that he might be someone who snores when he’s drunk but not otherwise and that he truly is unaware of it. He offers to bring me coffee and says he’s sorry about my rib, stroking my hair and then heading off to the kitchen. I gratefully accept the lukewarm coffee and tell him I need to go home, but he asks if we can eat at a brunch spot he loves across the street before I leave. Thinking about a strong, hot cup of coffee, I nod my head.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  There is a scholarly consensus on the authenticity of those seven letters in the middle column. But the letters in the right column are quite distinct from the seven authentic ones in style, tone, vocabulary, and content. Those differences are cumulatively too much to be the result of using different secretaries, changing dictation methods, or simply getting old, tired, conservative, or fearful. In this book we accept, therefore, the general scholarly consensus that the following six letters are inauthentic and post-Pauline: 1–2 Timothy and Titus (very strong consensus), Ephesians (strong consensus), Colossians (less strong consensus), and 2 Thessalonians (weak consensus). The problem is not just pseudepigraphical writing, an accepted process within ancient Jewish tradition in which texts were attributed to venerable ancient figures. New revelations, oracles, testaments, and books were attributed, for example, to Adam, Shem, Enoch, Abraham, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, Elijah, Ezekiel, Zephaniah, Ezra, Baruch, and Job, to mention just a few creative inventions. The problem is whether that pseudo-Pauline history and theology is in valid continuity with Paul himself or is, as we will argue, an attempt to sanitize a social subversive, to domesticate a dissident apostle, and to make Christianity and Rome safe for one another. Put another way, are those inauthentic Pauline letters just pseudo-Pauline, post-Pauline, or para-Pauline, or are they actually and deliberately anti-Pauline? We ask, therefore, who Paul actually was, because only when that is established from his undoubtedly authentic letters can you decide to find him likable or unlikable, see him as agreeable or disagreeable, and, especially, discover what the precise difference is between Roman imperial theology and Pauline Christian theology. Our basic argument is that the New Testament content and sequence has literally and figuratively framed Paul by locating those seven authentic Pauline letters after Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which corrects Paul’s story before we read him, and among or before those inauthentic letters, which correct Paul’s theology after we have read him. We concentrate on the seven authentic ones rather than the six inauthentic letters to ask this one question: What was the historical Paul’s position on slavery and patriarchy? Paul and Slavery The argument in this section on slavery opposes the authentic, or Pauline, position of the historical Paul to the inauthentic, or post-Pauline, tradition of the canonical Paul. The main text for discussion is an entire letter about a single, specific slave and the focus is on manumission, the formal process of freeing a slave under Roman law and custom. “My Child Onesimus, My Own Heart”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  This inconsistency implicitly suggests that trans women must somehow specifically seek out jobs as sex workers, presumably because we so desperately wish to be sexually objectified by men.In fact, many trans women are sex workers, but generally not because they wish to be sexual objects. Like their cissexual counterparts, many trans women turn to such work because few other viable economic options are available to them. For example, in San Francisco, perhaps the most trans-friendly city in the nation, approximately 75 percent of transgender people cannot find full-time work, 57 percent have experienced employment discrimination on the job, and 96 percent live below the city’s median income.4 In other words, any realistic portrayal of transgender sex workers would necessarily have to address the issue of poverty that comes at the hands of anti-trans prejudice. This, of course, rarely happens on TV or in movies, where depictions of trans female sex workers are almost always brief and superfluous. Thus, media stereotypes of trans female sex workers not only promote the misconception that trans women transition so they can be sexualized, but they also deny the cissexual prejudice that drives many actual trans women into sex work in the first place.While there has been extensive feminist analysis examining the ways in which women are sexualized in the media, such work has typically ignored media depictions of trans women. In fact, some feminists even seem to accept at face value media stereotypes of trans women as hyperfeminine and wishing to be sexualized—a rather illogical position given their own critiques of how images of women and other sexual minorities are typically distorted and mischaracterized by a predominantly straight-male-centric media. However, it’s a mistake for cissexual women to view depictions of trans women as having little to do with themselves, as they are so obviously meant to dismiss both transsexuality and femaleness. After all, in a world where women are regularly reduced to objects of male desire, it’s no accident that trans women—the only people in our society who actively choose to become women and who actively fight for their right to be recognized as female—are almost universally depicted in a purely sexualized manner.Unfortunately, the narrow context of the predator/prey power dynamic has shaped not only media and pop culture depictions of trans women, but psychiatric depictions as well.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  I was also interrogated regarding my tendency to color-coordinate my T-shirts and sneakers (“Is it just a coincidence or do you make them match on purpose?” or “Why would you do that?”). Another time, a friend asked me to hold her purse for a minute and then ostracized me for strapping it onto my shoulder (“I asked you to hold it, not to wear it!”). And I was regularly subjected to strange looks and comments for using words like “cute,” “adorable,” or “pretty” in a nonsarcastic way. I have hundreds of anecdotes like these—of people commenting, critiquing, and expressing concern over even the slightest manifestations of my femininity, given that I was male-bodied.Unfortunately, I have found that many women fail to appreciate effemimania as a very real and pervasive form of traditional sexism, one that oppressively restricts and undermines feminine gender expression in male-bodied people. During a question and answer session at a gender-themed event I participated in, a trans woman brought up the intense ridicule a man can face for the simple act of wearing a pink tie. The audience, who was made up predominantly of people who were socialized female, laughed at this remark in what seemed to me to be a highly unsympathetic way, as though they believed that the hypothetical man in question suffered from some irrational form of male paranoia. This sort of thinking not only makes invisible the role that women often play in employing and propagating effemimania (in fact, all of the effemimanic remarks I described in the previous paragraph were made by women), but entirely dismisses the severity of this form of sexism. In my five years of living as a woman—one who very rarely wears makeup, who regularly dresses like a tomboy, who often goes long periods of time without shaving her legs or armpits, who sometimes curses like a sailor, who is sometimes very physically active, and who is unafraid to take on supposedly masculine tasks such as using tools, lifting heavy boxes, etc.—I have not experienced a single gender-anxious comment or critique regarding my masculine gender expression that has even come close to the level of intensity or condescension that I regularly received for my feminine expressions back when I was perceived as male.Effemimania is not merely a phenomenon that affects adults, but rather one that begins early in childhood; this is highlighted by a recent study carried out by Emily Kane, who examined parental responses to gender nonconformity in their preschool children.1 Kane found that the parents she studied often encouraged gender nonconformity in their female children and few offered negative responses when they engaged in stereotypically masculine activities.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Therefore, while it is important to educate people about the distinctions between different gender inclinations and sex characteristics, and the unique identities, issues, and challenges each minority group faces because of those specific differences, it is also important to stand together to challenge the myth that women and men are “opposites.” In my experience as a trans activist, I have found that the biggest obstacle facing those who fall under the “queer” or “LGBTIQ” umbrella, with regards to coming together to challenge oppositional sexism, is primarily a conceptual one. Over the years, different queer subgroups have each developed their own theories and language to describe and communicate their particular struggles. Many of these concepts, while effective in single-inclination activism, are counterproductive in the fight against oppositional sexism because they marginalize and make invisible the experiences of other queers. For example, the gay rights movement has historically framed much of their activism around the premise that heterosexuals oppress homosexuals. This oversimplification creates the false impression that homosexual and heterosexual people are “opposites”—an idea that marginalizes bisexuals. Further, the terms most commonly used to describe the prejudice faced by lesbians and gay men—“homophobia” and “heterosexism”—mistakenly imply that queer people are primarily discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. This is a false assumption, as those in the lesbian and gay communities who arguably face the harshest discrimination from the straight world are those who also exhibit exceptional gender expression (i.e., outwardly feminine gay men and butch lesbian women). This privileging of sexual orientation over other gender inclinations has allowed some gay rights activists to exclude gender-variant people from their movement (under the premise that they are focused on sexual orientation, not gender identity or expression), while simultaneously claiming that the prejudice and violence faced by transgender people is the result of “homophobia.” This appropriation of gender-variant experiences and struggles by single-issue gay rights activists seems to serve the sole purpose of placing cisgendered gays and lesbians atop the queer pecking order. Any movement whose goal is to truly end prejudice against all queer people must begin by replacing gay-specific phrases (like “heterosexism”) with more inclusive ones (such as “oppositional sexism”) that are equally respectful of all exceptional gender and sexual traits, and which acknowledge the fact that, in many cases, homophobia and transphobia are indistinguishable phenomena. The transgender movement, which was primarily made up of those excluded by mainstream gay rights groups, has conceptual and linguistic problems of its own.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Katherine had asked me for guidance, “Tell me what you want, to leave him or to reunite, and I will come up with every good reason for it.” Mara had sat with me at Starbucks when I told her my news, straight through an appointment I knew she was missing in order to stay with me, and reassured me that if I took Michael back, she and my other friends would too. Jacqueline heeded my request not to speak badly of Michael, but besieged him with angry texts for hurting me. Jen, Lauren and Jessica sat with me in Jessica’s living room for hours at a time, listening and asking questions and holding my hand. If I expressed anger at Michael, they nodded along but otherwise used self-restraint I could see caused their lips to press together in a tight line. Johanna and Stephen took me and the kids to our favorite dim sum restaurant. When Stephen asked if I was feeling better on the no-sugar diet I had started just a couple of weeks earlier, before my marriage came to a screeching halt, I gave him a quizzical look and repeated in a dazed tone, “Do I feel better?” and we both laughed at the absurdity of the question until we cried. Julie texted emojis from her home in Chicago, apologizing that she could not be at my side but letting me know every single day that she was thinking of me. I could feel the vibrations of the love these friends had for me and admired them for facing my grief head-on without trying to manage it. They had offered solace and hugs and tissues, but not advice, understanding that I had to figure this out on my own. Now, as I tell them my brazen story, they gracefully change course, cheering for me, expressing delight that I have momentarily emerged from my paralyzed stupor, showering me with praise for my boldness. They joke that somehow I’ve ended up ahead, that the tragedy of my fall and then excitement of my rise is a surprise and wonder, something to envy if they didn’t love me so much. Even so, I’m keenly aware that my life – my real, mundane life – goes on much as it did before, and that at the moment it’s pretty bleak. I’m still furious at Michael, tender with Georgia and equal parts terrified of the once-clear future now hazy in front of me and miserably alone. For all the chutzpah that had me soaring on Saturday night, I’ve landed back on my little square of the earth and am certain that the entire episode was a fluke, something I will likely not experience again. * By Wednesday afternoon, the momentary high of Saturday night has only served to remind me of how low I actually am now that I’m back in my routine with Georgia and feeling more than a little sorry for myself.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  About us.” “Now?” I watched him so at ease with himself, the fat in the middle, the various layers of padding around the chin, the chin disappearing into a soufflé of neck meat. His chin area looked like it was a second mouth and I imagined it talking. What was it saying? Feed me , it said. I don’t give a fuck if I’m attractive or not. I don’t need to. I have options. All of him said that. From his nervous laughter whenever I had brought up marriage—or even moving in together—the years of dismissals, the claims that I wouldn’t want that either, to the disappearance of the chiseled, handsome stranger I first met at a party into a honeybear I came to know and love into another kind of stranger: a physical manifestation of time and letting oneself go eclipsing both the stranger and the honeybear until they all but disappeared. I felt irate. How dare he not give a fuck? What a luxury, the luxury of a man. The luxury of someone who looked at the ravages of time and went, “Eh.” And that is when I said it. “Maybe we should just break up.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was an empty threat, something I tossed out. It was how I felt, but it was only a bit of it—a percentage. Maybe 22 percent. That 22 percent was loud right now. It wanted to punctuate the heavy evening ennui, the waiting-to-be-rescued. I wanted drama if only to sever the nothingness of things breaking, the heaviness of having to live in the world, dependent on things, dependent on others, waiting for roadside assistance with a talking chin. I wanted to have him try to stop me, to intervene. Maybe I wanted to hurt him a little bit. Mostly I wanted to hear him say no. But he didn’t say no. He didn’t say no at all. He looked at me, sighed, and said calmly, “I think you might be right.” And with that the chins disappeared. And all I saw now were his strong shoulders, his deep blue eyes. So many times when we were fucking, his belly bouncing off me, I tried to look only at his eyes—to conjure the attraction I had felt when we first met. Now, suddenly, it was all I could see. “Or at least,” he said, “maybe we can try a separation for a little while.” Now my words had had the opposite effect of my intentions. Or maybe not opposite, exactly. With Jamie taking the bait, but running with it in a completely unexpected direction, he had certainly put a pin in my boredom and annoyance. Fear is a great intoxicant in its own way. Anyone hooked on its adrenaline can tell you that.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Posing the question in this way allows them to recognize that the potential male privileges they might have gained if raised male would not be worth the price of having to deny or repress their femaleness and femininity. Male privileges, while very real, are little consolation when you feel like you have to hide your femaleness/femininity from your family and friends; when you’ve endured being the only female/feminine-inclined person in often-misogynistic male-only spaces such as men’s locker rooms; when you cannot safely share your femaleness/femininity with others, but instead must clandestinely explore it on your own in isolation; when you are unable to simply be female/feminine without having others accuse you of “emulating” women or of merely being “effeminate.”I am not trying to make the case here that MTF spectrum folks are “more oppressed” than cissexual women, as playing the moreoppressed-than-thou card serves no purpose other than narcissism. But I do hope to encourage cissexual women to take a moment to put themselves in our shoes, to consider how patronizing and condescending dismissive quips about “male privilege” would sound to you if you had been forced against your will into boyhood. As someone who spent my childhood desperately wishing that I could be a girl rather than boy, and who as an adult considers it a privilege to finally have the opportunity to live in the world as a woman rather than a man, I find those attempts to undermine trans women’s femaleness by decrying “male privilege” hollow and crass.Having said all that, I will be the first to admit that many MTF spectrum folks seem to be rather oblivious to the impact that traditional sexism has on their lives—both with respect to the male privileges they gain because of it as well as the special social stigma they receive for their feminine transgender expression and/or for choosing to transition to female. Personally, it was only after I began living full-time as a woman, experiencing firsthand all of the inferior and negative assumptions that others projected onto me because of my femaleness, that I began to make a connection between traditional sexism and the discrimination that I faced because of the specific direction of my transition and transgender expression. Only then did I realize how inadequate the transgender movement’s mantra—that we are discriminated against for “transgressing binary gender norms”—is for those of us on the MTF spectrum who primarily grapple with effemimania and trans-misogyny.MTF spectrum folks need feminism in order to make sense out of our lives and to work toward ending our continuing marginalization. Unfortunately, many cissexual feminists seem to fear that MTF spectrum inclusion within feminism might dilute, distract, or undercut a movement that has historically centered itself on the struggles and issues of cissexual women. Typically, such fears arise from the assumption that we cannot work together because we supposedly have different goals, or that we are unable to relate to one another’s experiences.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  If there is anything to be learned from sexological and sociological accounts of transsexuality, it is that cissexism—i.e., the tendency to hold transsexual genders to a different standard than cissexual ones—runs rampant not only among the general public, but also throughout the medical and psychiatric establishments and in the ivory towers of academia. If sociologists truly wanted to better understand transsexuality, rather than focus exclusively on the behaviors and etiology of transsexuals, they would study the irrational animosity, fear, and disrespect that many cissexuals express toward trans people (and others with exceptional gender and sexual traits). If sexologists were truly interested in transsexuals’ mental and physical well-being, they would not try to micromanage our transitions, but rather focus their energies on correcting the huge disparity that exists between cissexual and transsexual access to gender-related healthcare. It is the gatekeepers’ failure to adequately advocate on behalf of their trans patients that has allowed U.S. insurance companies (which regularly cover cissexual hormone replacement therapy, genital and breast reconstruction, and procedures to enhance or enable cissexual fertility and sexuality) to get away with denying coverage for similar treatments for transsexuals. And the popular stereotype that transsexuals are “crazy”—that our identified genders are merely the product of overactive imaginations and are not to be taken seriously—is also the result of the same medically and psychiatrically sanctioned double standard: while cissexuals are free to choose from hundreds of different types of surgical body modifications without being pathologized or requiring anyone else’s permission, procedures required for transsexuals to lead full and healthy lives are singled out for gatekeeper approval and an accompanying diagnosis of gender identity disorder. Despite the recent civil rights progress that has accompanied the rise of transgender activism in the 1990s, the gatekeeper model of transsexuality still dominates in the United States. While HBIGDA has slightly liberalized its Standards of Care in recent years, it still requires transsexuals to gain psychiatric approval in order to gain access to hormones, obtain surgery, and change their legal sex. This system is inherently cissexist, as it requires trans people to accommodate and appease the gender presumptions of individual therapists (who potentially harbor traditional sexist, oppositional sexist, and/or cissexist biases) in order to have our identified genders recognized.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Were the notions of masculinity and femininity less rigid, sex change operations should be unnecessary. —Margrit Eichler (1980) 72 Sex-change surgery is pro foundly conservative in that it reinforces sharply contrasting gender roles by shaping individuals to fit them. —Germaine Greer (1999) 73 While transsexuals may be deviants in terms of cultural norms about how one arrives at being a man or a woman, they are, for the most part, highly conformist about what to do once you get there. —Judith Shapiro (1991) 74 Ironically, transsexuals wish to be women but end up approximating men’s sexual conservatism ... most can still be typified as the Uncle Toms of the sexual liberation movement, in sharp contrast with other sexual minorities. —Thomas Kando (1974) 75 The implication that transsexuals transition in order to hide their exceptional gender expression and/or sexual orientation is only made possible by the social constructionist practice of dumbing down gender to exclude subconscious sex. This exclusion is notable, since virtually all transsexuals describe experiencing a profound, inexplicable, intrinsic self-knowing regarding their own gender. Because such accounts of transsexual subconscious sex/gender identity are nearly ubiquitous, one can only conclude that either the above critics have made their conclusions without bothering to read or listen to what transsexuals have said about their own lives and experiences, or they have chosen to ignore or discount such accounts, presumably out of an unwillingness to consider the possibility that trans people have an understanding about gender that cissexual academics do not. Not only do these “transsexual-as- assimilationist” accusations blatantly dismiss transsexual perspectives, but they are also unabashedly cissexist in other ways. They erase the existence of the many transsexuals who are unrelenting feminists and queer activists, and hold those transsexuals who do identify as heterosexual feminine women and masculine men more accountable for gender-based oppression than the overwhelming majority of cissexual people who identify the same way. Another dehumanizing tactic used by these academic critics is the assumption that they are capable of fully understanding and speaking authoritatively about transsexuality despite the fact that they are not transsexual themselves; in fact, rarely do they get to know any transsexuals personally. When Shapiro, Nanda, Grimm, and Eichler speak disparagingly about transsexuals, their arguments rely almost entirely on other people’s research. Hausman boasts about attending one transgender conference, then liberally (and extensively) quotes from transsexual autobiographies without any consideration given to the role that non-trans book publishers and audiences play in deciding which transsexual stories get told and which do not.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Every trans person I’ve spoke with about this—whether MTF or FTM spectrum, homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual—has said that their sexual fantasies almost always involve (on some level) their being in the appropriately sexed body. When one takes this necessary difference in trans and cis perspectives into consideration, it becomes obvious that Blanchard’s “autogynephiles,” who have fantasies that center on thoughts of their own physical femaleness rather than on the “physique of the partner,” are not significantly different from cissexual women who sometimes have fantasies of being fondled or penetrated by faceless men, or cissexual men who imagine receiving blow jobs from faceless women. In fact, given the prominence of the penis in straight male porn, men’s locker room conversations, and public restroom stall artistry, one could easily make the case that male heterosexuality is driven to a large extent by autophallophilia—being aroused by the image or thought of oneself as having a penis. Of course, it is unlikely that Blanchard would even consider this possibility, both because it places trans people and cissexuals on equal footing and because it implies that a man can sexually objectify his own male body, an act that is fundamentally incompatible with predator/prey logic. In fact, the restrictive nature of the predator/prey dichotomy ensures that only MTF spectrum trans people can ever be accused of sexually objectifying their own preferred gender. Cissexual women may be aroused by wearing sexy feminine articles of clothing and FTM spectrum trans folks may be turned on by the thought of having a penis, but because these groups are considered female (in the eyes of many psychiatrists, at any rate), they are not deemed to be legitimate sexual aggressors. And while cissexual men are regularly characterized as sexual aggressors, any sexually charged feelings they may have related to their own maleness or masculinity will be ignored because of our societal reluctance to consider men as sexual objects. Many people, both within and outside the field of psychiatry, seem so compulsively driven to sexualize MTF gender identities and expressions that they fail to ask a far more relevant and pressing question: How does the ubiquitous and assumed predator/prey dichotomy shape the way MTF spectrum trans people come to view themselves?

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  As a result, Roy comes off as excruciatingly mousy and confused, presumably because it never occurred to either Wilkinson or Anderson that a man who wanted to be female could be any other way.For someone who claims to have little interest in making a film about the “adventures of a transgender person,” Anderson sure does fancy her film up in all of the accoutrements of the transsexual transitioning process: The dialogue includes discussions about electrolysis, a play-by-play description of how a vagina is created during MTF sex reassignment surgery, and even talk about what breast size Roy can expect after she goes on hormones. At one point in the movie, close-ups of Roy’s hormone prescriptions—Premarin and Spironolactone—precede an early morning family breakfast scene in which Roy, her wife, and her daughter (who has recently had her first period) all start arguing with each other in an apparent hormone-induced frenzy. (Upon watching that scene, I wasn’t quite sure if I should be more offended as a woman or as a transsexual.)In the end, the most damaging aspect of Normal is that it gives the impression of being a serious film about transsexuality without ever incorporating the perspectives of real-life transsexuals. There are countless other movies that, on the surface, seem to be more demeaning or insulting toward transsexuals, but I find Normal to be more damaging than most. At least the Ace Ventura s and South Park s of the world don’t even bother to pretend that they know what they’re talking about when they create transsexual characters. Anderson, on the other hand, did just enough homework about transsexuality to make her film dangerous. She poached and pilfered the transsexual experience without any sense of respect or responsibility for the very people she exploited in the process.Another writer who knows just enough to be dangerous is Jeffrey Eugenides. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex centers on an intersex person named Cal, who is raised female until he discovers his condition during puberty. The book follows Cal as he develops male physical attributes and eventually a male identity. So why did Eugenides set out to write a book about an intersex person? In an interview, he explained that he simply “used a hermaphrodite” (a word most intersex people find stigmatizing) as a metaphor for the confusing changes in identity and sexuality that all people face during adolescence.8 So, this time, a main character is ungendered to make a larger point about puberty and metamorphosis.Eugenides says he was initially inspired to write Middlesex after reading Herculine Barbin, a real-life account of an intersex person who lived during the nineteenth century, published by French philosopher Michel Foucault in 1978. Eugenides was fascinated by the book, but he found that, “as an expression of what it is like to be a hermaphrodite, from the inside, Herculine Barbin’s memoir is quite disappointing.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In early July 2016, a researcher named Lisa Littman, who had no prior experience with trans children or trans healthcare, surveyed parents recruited from these same three websites about a supposed “new type” of gender dysphoria that presumably spreads by “social contagion,” which she dubbed “rapid onset gender dysphoria” or “ROGD.” By August, based solely on Littman’s survey recruitment posts and other claims made on these three websites, conservative organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and American College of Pediatricians and conservative media outlets like The American Conservative and National Review were writing about ROGD and “transgender social contagion” as though they were already settled science. All of this happened within six short months! By the time Littman’s study was finally published two years later, ROGD had already been uncritically discussed in numerous mainstream publications and cited by gender-disaffirming practitioners in academic journals. The study itself was roundly critiqued for its obvious sampling bias, the fact that it interviewed only parents and not their trans children, its inability to distinguish ROGD from regular gender dysphoria, and its mistaking correlation for causation (Littman presumed that trans peers and trans-themed social media sites were causing children to adopt trans identities, rather than the more likely scenario that the children were seeking out said peers and social media because they were trans). 20 In fact, there were so many problems with Littman’s study that the journal that published it later issued a correction and apology. As I write this, at least nine peer-reviewed studies have tested ROGD and “transgender social contagion,” and all yielded results inconsistent with, or that directly contradict, these hypotheses. 21 Despite having been refuted in the scientific literature, these concepts continue to persist in the public imagination. I often see people use “social contagion” as shorthand for “the increased number of trans children today relative to the past” without a shred of evidence that trans identities have suddenly become “contagious.” Indeed, the very concept of “social contagion” has long been critiqued for being poorly defined and conflating several potentially distinct social phenomena. 22 One such phenomenon is a reduction of restraints: If there is a social norm prohibiting a particular behavior, many people who are inclined to engage in said behavior may refrain from doing so—in queer communities, we colloquially call this “being in the closet.” But once that social restraint is lifted, these people may start expressing that behavior publicly for the first time (which onlookers may misperceive as a “rapid increase” due to “social contagion”).

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It’s all I’ve talked about the past few days, how I’m trying to eat healthier, how tortured I am without my sugary treats at night?” I asked. “Yes, I know,” he said matter-of-factly. “These are for when you eat sugar again.” “But I’m not going to eat it again. The point is I stopped eating it. Why would you give this to me? It’s like you’re mocking me, openly predicting I will fail at this, instead of perhaps showing a little support,” I said angrily. Daisy shot me a look of dismay, incredulous at my lack of gratitude for the second time that day. “So don’t eat it. Give it to the kids, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have it,” he said. “Do you ever listen to me? I’m just wondering. When I talk, do you hear me?” I asked. His insistent cheerfulness started to fade and all three kids turned to scold me for being so cranky and unappreciative. I knew I sounded like a petulant child; I hated myself for it and for how the kids were looking disdainfully at me, but I was alarmed. We knew each other so well, and these gifts were puzzling to me; it was so obvious I would not like them. Then the kids’ school break arrived. Mid-winter recess in February, aka the absolute coldest, dreariest time of the year. Daisy headed to Boston to visit her friends and I took Hudson and Georgia to our house upstate. Michael joined us on Friday, the last day of the break. He called me when he went to pick up Hudson at the ski mountain to let me know that our son was injured with what appeared to be a broken hand. I let out a long, angry sigh. This kid’s skiing was the bane of my existence – he was passionate and talented, but every season we weathered broken bones or concussions. Michael applauded his fearlessness while all I could see in it was more trips to orthopedic surgeons and an open checkbook. I blamed Michael for encouraging this and was further angry that I had to be the one to figure out what to do with every accident. When they arrived home later with Hudson’s broken hand in a cast, I had warm bowls of chicken tortilla soup waiting for them. As we ate dinner, I tried to catch Michael’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. I kept my eyes on him as he stared down at his bowl of soup resolutely. As strained as things had become between us, this felt egregiously harsh, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me. It was at that moment that the gravity of what he had been trying to tell me weeks earlier clicked and I realized with growing alarm that something in our home had gone terribly awry. After dinner, Michael said he was exhausted and would put Georgia to sleep in our bed and go to sleep with her.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then Rochelle called. “The girl he is seeing is a scientist,” she said. “She’s blond.” “He’s seeing someone?” “I thought you knew,” she said. Apparently the woman’s name was Megan and she was five years younger than me. Rochelle knew nothing more about her. She had bumped into them at a Chinese restaurant. “Well, can you find out?” “I’ll try,” said Rochelle. I could tell she was getting sick of me. Or more than sick of me, actually, she was scared of me. She had always thought we were both safe from the crazy-woman disease: that desperation and need. But now I had fallen into it, fallen all the way under, and she saw how a person could just go. One minute you were playfully complaining to friends about a man’s farts and the next minute you would kill to have the farts back. Could she catch the disease from me? Was her own contentment in danger? I texted her three times to get the info but she just wrote back: rly busy I wanted to tell her I was pissed off, that I felt she had abandoned and betrayed me. I wanted to say that the only reason she had any confidence in her Brillo-self—the only reason she was “okay”—was that there was too much inertia in her relationship for her husband to leave. I wanted to say that this wasn’t a reason for confidence, or something to be proud of. As I had seen, that inertia could be disturbed at any moment by an accidental slip of the tongue. But I didn’t want her to quarantine me entirely. I might need her. So I wrote my own narratives. Megan was not only a scientist but an award-winning geologist. They hiked together and discussed the reproduction of cacti. They fucked on a rock. Nothing is more beautiful than the sex your ex-boyfriend is having with his new lover. Nothing more magical and full of gasps. Meanwhile I was in Hersheyland. I could no longer play it cool. One night I parked down the street from his house until I saw him pull in to the driveway and get out of his car. He was alone. I waited until the lights turned on. Then I got out of the car. Walking down his driveway I realized that I had butterflies for the first time in years. Maybe this was what it took to maintain butterflies in your partner’s driveway? A blond scientist named Megan. I rang the bell. He took a minute, did not ask who it was, then opened the door. “Lucy,” he said. I felt rage in my chest, in every part of me. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” I yelled. And then I hit him in the face. I had never hit anyone before. This was not what I had planned. I hadn’t planned anything actually.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Luke in the Acts of the Apostles agrees with that general picture, but he also adds some details better taken as enthusiasm rather than as history. He has Paul declare, “I am a Jew” (21:39); “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [ Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today” (22:3); “I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees” (23:6); and, finally, “I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee” (26:5). It is probably safer to bracket Pharisaic ancestry and especially Jerusalem education as a Lukan upgrading of Paul’s status and as part of his theme that everything starts from Jerusalem. Another Lukan upgrading of Pauline status concerns his Tarsian citizenship in Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3 (impossible?) and his Roman citizenship in Acts 16:37; 22:27–28; 23:27 (improbable?). In any case, Paul himself never mentions that latter status, and, if his Roman beatings are any indication, he was never a Roman citizen. Those are first warnings about distinguishing the Pauline Paul from the Lukan Paul by separation and discrimination rather than by combination and conflation. To that we will return in Chapter 1 below and quite often thereafter. A ZEALOUS PERSECUTOR. Paul and Luke agree that he persecuted the early church, but, once again, some Lukan details require bracketing. Paul mentions this point twice with a close conjunction between violent persecution and religious zeal. “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it…. I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (Gal. 1:13–14). And again, “As to zeal, [I was] a persecutor of the church” (Phil. 3:6). He also notes, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). “Zeal” indicates religious vigilantism based on personal and individual responsibility after the model and in the tradition of Phineas, who, in Numbers 25:6–8, slew an Israelite and the Midianite woman he had married. That is how, for example, the treatise The Special Laws by the contemporary Jewish philosopher Philo understands such religious “zeal.” It allows any outraged person “to exact the penalties offhand and with no delay without bringing the offender before jury or council or any kind of magistrate at all” (1.55). Luke agrees on Paul as persecutor, but adds that he went from the high priests at Jerusalem with authority to punish Christians at Damascus (Acts 9:1–2). Still, apart from the historical implausibility of such Jewish authority exercised in Nabatean Damascus, Acts has the same combination of zeal and violence (or zeal as violence) found in Paul. Luke has Paul say, “Being zealous for God…I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison” (22:3–4).