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Nearest Exit May be Behind You, The by S. Bear Bergman (8-Jan-2010) Paperback
Lambda Literary Award finalistAlternately unsettling and affirming, devastating and delicious, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You is a new collection of essays on gender and identity by S. Bear Bergman that is irrevocably honest and endlessly illuminating. With humor and grace, these essays deal with issues from women's spaces to the old boys' network, from gay male bathhouses to lesbian potlucks, from being a child to preparing to have one. Throughout, S. Bear Bergman shows us there are things you learn when you're visibly different from those around you-whether it's being transgressively gendered or readably queer. As a transmasculine person, Bergman keeps readers breathless and rapt in the freakshow tent long after the midway has gone dark, when the good hooch gets passed around and the best stories get told. Ze offers unique perspectives on issues that challenge, complicate, and confound the "official stories" about how gender and sexuality work.S. Bear Bergman's first book was Butch is a Noun (Suspect Thoughts Press). Ze is an activist, gender-jammer, and author of two books and three award-winning solo stage shows. Bergman recently relocated to Burlington, Ontario, from New England.
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First published October 1, 2009
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About the author
S. Bear Bergman
22 books176 followersS. Bear Bergman is a storyteller, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian. He is the author of Butch Is a Noun (reissued with a new foreword by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), Lambda Literary Award-finalist The Nearest Exit May be Behind You (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009), Backwards Day (Flamingo Rampant, 2012), Lambda Literary Award-finalist The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy (Flamingo Rampant, 2012) and Blood, Marriage, Wine, & Glitter (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013) – as well as the editor (with the inimitable Kate Bornstein) of the multiple-award-winning Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press, 2010). Bear is also the creator and performer of three award-winning solo performances and a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics (see his CV for an extensive list of publications of presentations). Bear can be found many days in an airport lounge, writing stories on his laptop and letters on any piece of paper that can pretend to be stationery.
A frequent lecturer at colleges and universities regarding issues relating to gender, sexuality, and culture, Bear enjoys digging in to complicated ideas and getting dirty doing it. He also works extensively helping to create queer and trans cultural competency at universities, corporations, health care providers, and governmental organizations. This work has included training, policy development, policy reviews, and process/barrier audits, as well as cultural awareness consulting for external marketing.
As a Jew, Bear also speaks extensively about how his religious and cultural lives have shaped one another and the intersection of identities, especially as it relates to being both Jewish and queer. He remains exceptionally pleased to have been asked to write the chapter on trans inclusion for Hillel International’s LGBTQ Resource Guide
Less recently, Bear was one of the five original founders of the first Gay/Straight Alliance, a frequent lecturer at high schools and colleges on the subject of making schools safe for GLBT students, and a founding commission member of what is now called the Massachusetts Safe Schools Project. Bear was an insufferable know-it-all in high school, but is reformed these days. Somewhat.
Bear was educated at Concord Academy, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts. He currently resides in Toronto, Ontario where he has set up housekeeping with his husband j wallace skelton and their children, and travels frequently to visit the many people close to his heart.
A frequent lecturer at colleges and universities regarding issues relating to gender, sexuality, and culture, Bear enjoys digging in to complicated ideas and getting dirty doing it. He also works extensively helping to create queer and trans cultural competency at universities, corporations, health care providers, and governmental organizations. This work has included training, policy development, policy reviews, and process/barrier audits, as well as cultural awareness consulting for external marketing.
As a Jew, Bear also speaks extensively about how his religious and cultural lives have shaped one another and the intersection of identities, especially as it relates to being both Jewish and queer. He remains exceptionally pleased to have been asked to write the chapter on trans inclusion for Hillel International’s LGBTQ Resource Guide
Less recently, Bear was one of the five original founders of the first Gay/Straight Alliance, a frequent lecturer at high schools and colleges on the subject of making schools safe for GLBT students, and a founding commission member of what is now called the Massachusetts Safe Schools Project. Bear was an insufferable know-it-all in high school, but is reformed these days. Somewhat.
Bear was educated at Concord Academy, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts. He currently resides in Toronto, Ontario where he has set up housekeeping with his husband j wallace skelton and their children, and travels frequently to visit the many people close to his heart.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
November 15, 2016
(The author's current pronouns are he/him; I will use those pronouns in this review)
I've seen Bear speak on numerous occasions; we've shared space at events so I have first hand experience. I have people who are very close to me who have been treated poorly by Bear, so I also have second hand experience. It is nigh impossible to separate Bear from his writing. While he is a good writer, in the corners and shadows of his writing, his entitlement, bravado, and dismissal shine through. He often speaks from a place of assumption; perhaps I notice this because so much of his assumptions grate upon me. He made broad sweeping statements using language that was outdated at the time this book was published. He makes many statements about how all young queers want to have sex, how queers experience sexuality, holding up sex as the pinnacle of queerness. He barely acknowledges race. By the end of the book, I felt that Bear saw me as much as most straight cisgender people do: not at all. And in that, I felt excluded and unseen, a freak among freaks.
I've seen Bear speak on numerous occasions; we've shared space at events so I have first hand experience. I have people who are very close to me who have been treated poorly by Bear, so I also have second hand experience. It is nigh impossible to separate Bear from his writing. While he is a good writer, in the corners and shadows of his writing, his entitlement, bravado, and dismissal shine through. He often speaks from a place of assumption; perhaps I notice this because so much of his assumptions grate upon me. He made broad sweeping statements using language that was outdated at the time this book was published. He makes many statements about how all young queers want to have sex, how queers experience sexuality, holding up sex as the pinnacle of queerness. He barely acknowledges race. By the end of the book, I felt that Bear saw me as much as most straight cisgender people do: not at all. And in that, I felt excluded and unseen, a freak among freaks.
March 14, 2010
Bear strikes again. Amusing and amazing--"Hey, I resemble that remark!" moments abound, where you would *never* expect them, at least not if you're not a formerly butch-identified New York Jew trannyfag (and before any political correctivists get too excited, I'm using the author's terms for hirself).
Bear saves the best for last. In the final essay, ze outright rejects the negativity, the dys-phorias and the non-conformity and all that usually surrounds gender and comes up with a pure positivist view:
"That's the first great thing about transfolk--we have thought about who we are. We've thought about it a lot. We have thought about our genders and our bodies, but also we have had a lot of other things to think about, haven't we? We examine every action, attitude, gesture, choice of work or hobby. We think about what drink we order in a bar and we think about how we wrap our scarves around our necks, for sure, but we also think about how we want to be in the world. We don't follow a path, we forge our own. We have to. And it makes us thoughful. It makes us all recognize that we do have a choice about most things, that we can define and enact who we think we are."
If you have any interest at all in people, go read. Now.
Bear saves the best for last. In the final essay, ze outright rejects the negativity, the dys-phorias and the non-conformity and all that usually surrounds gender and comes up with a pure positivist view:
"That's the first great thing about transfolk--we have thought about who we are. We've thought about it a lot. We have thought about our genders and our bodies, but also we have had a lot of other things to think about, haven't we? We examine every action, attitude, gesture, choice of work or hobby. We think about what drink we order in a bar and we think about how we wrap our scarves around our necks, for sure, but we also think about how we want to be in the world. We don't follow a path, we forge our own. We have to. And it makes us thoughful. It makes us all recognize that we do have a choice about most things, that we can define and enact who we think we are."
If you have any interest at all in people, go read. Now.
December 25, 2021
I was visiting another city and staying in the house of a family friend, and I'm a sucker for other people's bookshelves. Also, Bear Bergman is tenuously an acquaintance and I really admire what he does in the world. So I was inevitably going to pick up this collection of essays, and I'm glad I did.
Bergman is a transmasculine person and a self-described ambassador to the world for nuanced gender thinking, both through his live performance pieces and his essays. In this book, he's exploring complications: what if I sometimes would call myself a butch and sometimes a transman? What do I say to people who seem to need me to be one or the other? How do I reconcile my very public, very examined life with how angry I can get when even a dear friend asks me a question that feels intrusive? How do I justify my decision to tell my parents they can use my old name and old gender? Separate from justifications, how do I navigate a public space (like a wedding) where some people call me one thing and some people call me another?
Should I force the homophobe who thinks she could catch "the gay" from me to sit next to me on the plane, when I can do that just by doing nothing? And if I decide to let her sit elsewhere, who am I protecting? When am I complicit?
No matter how much you think about these things, Bear will push you to think more deeply. And if you don't think about these things at all, Bear will present them in ways that encourage you to consider at least some of the questions.
I'm not just a sucker for other people's bookshelves; I'm a sucker for people who are doing their best to be honest about complexity and sidestep any easy answers.
Bergman is a transmasculine person and a self-described ambassador to the world for nuanced gender thinking, both through his live performance pieces and his essays. In this book, he's exploring complications: what if I sometimes would call myself a butch and sometimes a transman? What do I say to people who seem to need me to be one or the other? How do I reconcile my very public, very examined life with how angry I can get when even a dear friend asks me a question that feels intrusive? How do I justify my decision to tell my parents they can use my old name and old gender? Separate from justifications, how do I navigate a public space (like a wedding) where some people call me one thing and some people call me another?
Should I force the homophobe who thinks she could catch "the gay" from me to sit next to me on the plane, when I can do that just by doing nothing? And if I decide to let her sit elsewhere, who am I protecting? When am I complicit?
No matter how much you think about these things, Bear will push you to think more deeply. And if you don't think about these things at all, Bear will present them in ways that encourage you to consider at least some of the questions.
I'm not just a sucker for other people's bookshelves; I'm a sucker for people who are doing their best to be honest about complexity and sidestep any easy answers.
January 27, 2023
Content warnings are listed at the end of my review! S. Bear Bergman currently uses he/him/his pronouns, rather than the past ze/hir/hirs pronouns used in the book, so my review will use Bear's current pronouns.
This book never really grabbed my whole attention, it was lukewarm and readable and my opinion stayed continually such until Bergman suddenly unleashed anti-Asian comments toward a friend of his near the end of this book. I'll detail this more later in my review, but it wholly spoiled my thoughts of the book, bringing the complains I was compiling but dismissing back to the top of my attention. It's yourtried tired and true trans nonfiction of a white transmasculine guy talking about his life. He brings the perspective of a Jewish person, his gender at the time being a complex transmasculine identity that didn't fit binary roles, and being married to another trans man... But he didn't really present these in any memorable way aside from short essays like reading an excessively long Instagram caption that you skim and then skip (without the pictures even).
CW ANTI-CHINESE RACISM: Bear makes a comment to his friend who is mixed race, being raised by his close family who is Chinese that after being rejected in many interviews despite being a talented candidate that he should "...Wear a band-collared shirt instead of a straight-collared shirt-with-tie, and display a dragon adornment somewhere on you as well. Don’t get a haircut beforehand. Speak even a little more softly, and a little more slowly. Let them project whatever Orientalism they have onto you, and then they can understand you as some sort of Tao Master of the Database." I think this was incredibly out of line as someone who is white and not Chinese. He uses this to springboard into a conversation about Western gender roles and their confining expectations but from a standpoint of race looping it back to himself as a white transgender man, that is not his conversation to take over or have. Earlier in the book Bergman had a conversation like this from a perspective he could claim talking about explaining the stoic masculinity Western culture demands that his Jewish family does not enforce- so this was just senseless to include.
I think this is a good example of the weakness of this work- he goes out guns a blazing with what his thoughts are, trying to be as radical and unapologetic to a fault, making it excessive at best, or as we saw racist at worst. This shouldn't have made it past the draft but it survived to print, and I just don't think a lot was offered to make digging though this hold value. The personal bits aren't written with enough effort put in to make them garner investment, and the theories are slapdash and too closely confined to Bergman's experience rather than the broad community so I walk away unsure with what his goal was. A great example of this is in "SING IF YOU'RE GLAD TO BE TRANS" where he continually emphasizes the link between sex and queerness, which causes happiness, jumping neatly over asexual folks and generalizing that all queer sex is positive and detached from how it is depicted in adult films (unfortunately, rape still happens and standards set by film still set harmful ideas of how to behave). There's no start or finish to even justify this as anything more than calling this a printed out blog, just loose rambling stumbling around until the book finally concludes.
Summary:
Readability: ★☆☆☆☆, Pros: Bear's attitude can be funny. Cons: this attitude contributes to the writing style that's only marker is transgression, which gets old and dangerous as Bear blunders into racism. He very liberally uses slurs, and as someone who is supportive of folks reclaiming slurs that they can, I even found it excessive, lacking creativity, and unproductive. The lack of direction just bored me, it felt like doom scrolling through a blog archive but the only thing not deleted was the vent posts with maybe 3 engagements a piece.
Entertainment: ★★☆☆☆, It's caught halfway between being a collection of gender theory essays and a personal memoir, so both ideas fight with the little amount of effort they are given leaving both possible goals feeling undercooked and forgettable.
Audience: I don't know who this book will service, and time has aged it poorly. It doesn't even provide enough solid groundwork of context to justify it as historical value (Aside from how trans visibility being a slow trickle let otherwise unnoteworthy voices randomly into the spotlight). I don't have any reason to recommend this to any reader.
Content Warnings: anti-Chinese stereotyping, antisemitism, deadnames, death, divorce, dysphoria, fatphobia, financial anxiety, gatekeeping, homophobia, implied ace exclusion, islamophobia, medical discrimination, medical emergency, misgendering, pregnancy, racism, sex, slurs
This book never really grabbed my whole attention, it was lukewarm and readable and my opinion stayed continually such until Bergman suddenly unleashed anti-Asian comments toward a friend of his near the end of this book. I'll detail this more later in my review, but it wholly spoiled my thoughts of the book, bringing the complains I was compiling but dismissing back to the top of my attention. It's your
CW ANTI-CHINESE RACISM: Bear makes a comment to his friend who is mixed race, being raised by his close family who is Chinese that after being rejected in many interviews despite being a talented candidate that he should "...Wear a band-collared shirt instead of a straight-collared shirt-with-tie, and display a dragon adornment somewhere on you as well. Don’t get a haircut beforehand. Speak even a little more softly, and a little more slowly. Let them project whatever Orientalism they have onto you, and then they can understand you as some sort of Tao Master of the Database." I think this was incredibly out of line as someone who is white and not Chinese. He uses this to springboard into a conversation about Western gender roles and their confining expectations but from a standpoint of race looping it back to himself as a white transgender man, that is not his conversation to take over or have. Earlier in the book Bergman had a conversation like this from a perspective he could claim talking about explaining the stoic masculinity Western culture demands that his Jewish family does not enforce- so this was just senseless to include.
I think this is a good example of the weakness of this work- he goes out guns a blazing with what his thoughts are, trying to be as radical and unapologetic to a fault, making it excessive at best, or as we saw racist at worst. This shouldn't have made it past the draft but it survived to print, and I just don't think a lot was offered to make digging though this hold value. The personal bits aren't written with enough effort put in to make them garner investment, and the theories are slapdash and too closely confined to Bergman's experience rather than the broad community so I walk away unsure with what his goal was. A great example of this is in "SING IF YOU'RE GLAD TO BE TRANS" where he continually emphasizes the link between sex and queerness, which causes happiness, jumping neatly over asexual folks and generalizing that all queer sex is positive and detached from how it is depicted in adult films (unfortunately, rape still happens and standards set by film still set harmful ideas of how to behave). There's no start or finish to even justify this as anything more than calling this a printed out blog, just loose rambling stumbling around until the book finally concludes.
Summary:
Readability: ★☆☆☆☆, Pros: Bear's attitude can be funny. Cons: this attitude contributes to the writing style that's only marker is transgression, which gets old and dangerous as Bear blunders into racism. He very liberally uses slurs, and as someone who is supportive of folks reclaiming slurs that they can, I even found it excessive, lacking creativity, and unproductive. The lack of direction just bored me, it felt like doom scrolling through a blog archive but the only thing not deleted was the vent posts with maybe 3 engagements a piece.
Entertainment: ★★☆☆☆, It's caught halfway between being a collection of gender theory essays and a personal memoir, so both ideas fight with the little amount of effort they are given leaving both possible goals feeling undercooked and forgettable.
Audience: I don't know who this book will service, and time has aged it poorly. It doesn't even provide enough solid groundwork of context to justify it as historical value (Aside from how trans visibility being a slow trickle let otherwise unnoteworthy voices randomly into the spotlight). I don't have any reason to recommend this to any reader.
Content Warnings: anti-Chinese stereotyping, antisemitism, deadnames, death, divorce, dysphoria, fatphobia, financial anxiety, gatekeeping, homophobia, implied ace exclusion, islamophobia, medical discrimination, medical emergency, misgendering, pregnancy, racism, sex, slurs
March 25, 2015
Best essays (so far - only 1/2 of the way through the book so far):
- the nearest exit may be behind you (on always making sure you have a way to escape)
- roadside assistance (about wanting potential homophobes to know, after they've benefited from your help, who has helped them)
- it only takes a minute I (very short vignettes)
- dutiful grandchild (in the old age home, only one gender matters)
- when will you be having surgery? (there are many reasons to answer no)
- new year (busting them with kindness is so satisfying)
- field guide to transmasculine creatures (about the importance of acknowledging the fluidity and variety of human gender)
- i'm just saying (again, the gender binary is a fallacy, and "i have never really felt like a girl" is not the same as "i have always felt like a boy")
- passing the word (a very strongly worded argument against "passing" as a concept in favor of "read" - puts the onus on the viewer, leaves behind a racist-legacy word)
- sing if you're glad to be trans (about how being trans is great!)
The rest of the essays are fine, but I didn't like them as much as those listed above. However, my favorite quote was in one of the other essays. It's an imagined conversation by a transmasculine person whose transmasculine husband is pregnant with their first child (they will appear to the world as two dads):
Annoying woman in grocery store, after engaging son in peek-a-boo: Where is your mommy?
Son: I don't have a mommy!
Annoying woman (patronizingly): everyone has a mommy!
Parent: Actually, he doesn't have a mommy. He has an abba and a papa. And two great-grandmothers and five great-aunts and three great-uncles. Plus four grandparents, six uncles, eleven aunties, and a brace of cousins in varying degrees of consanguinity. Also a Tante Hanne and an Uncle Malcolm and an Ankle and a Spuncle and a Baba and a Big Pup--so really, it's probably just as well he doesn't have a mommy, as I frankly have no idea when we'd schedule time to see her."
- the nearest exit may be behind you (on always making sure you have a way to escape)
- roadside assistance (about wanting potential homophobes to know, after they've benefited from your help, who has helped them)
- it only takes a minute I (very short vignettes)
- dutiful grandchild (in the old age home, only one gender matters)
- when will you be having surgery? (there are many reasons to answer no)
- new year (busting them with kindness is so satisfying)
- field guide to transmasculine creatures (about the importance of acknowledging the fluidity and variety of human gender)
- i'm just saying (again, the gender binary is a fallacy, and "i have never really felt like a girl" is not the same as "i have always felt like a boy")
- passing the word (a very strongly worded argument against "passing" as a concept in favor of "read" - puts the onus on the viewer, leaves behind a racist-legacy word)
- sing if you're glad to be trans (about how being trans is great!)
The rest of the essays are fine, but I didn't like them as much as those listed above. However, my favorite quote was in one of the other essays. It's an imagined conversation by a transmasculine person whose transmasculine husband is pregnant with their first child (they will appear to the world as two dads):
Annoying woman in grocery store, after engaging son in peek-a-boo: Where is your mommy?
Son: I don't have a mommy!
Annoying woman (patronizingly): everyone has a mommy!
Parent: Actually, he doesn't have a mommy. He has an abba and a papa. And two great-grandmothers and five great-aunts and three great-uncles. Plus four grandparents, six uncles, eleven aunties, and a brace of cousins in varying degrees of consanguinity. Also a Tante Hanne and an Uncle Malcolm and an Ankle and a Spuncle and a Baba and a Big Pup--so really, it's probably just as well he doesn't have a mommy, as I frankly have no idea when we'd schedule time to see her."
May 30, 2016
I was going back and forth on my opinion of this book the entire time I was reading it.
At the start of it, I was getting annoyed at the author's use of the word "tranny", because this word really offends me and has been used to insult me in the past. I realize that it was not meant to offend in this case, however, so I finally decided not to let it bother me anymore.
After getting over this, I found I disagreed with what the author was saying, but I was finding just as much of the book fascinating. There is an essay in this book called Passing the Word which I loved. It was enlightening and I found myself completely agreeing with Bergman in this case. Other essays, such as the series of It Only Takes a Minute essays were also very interesting and in some cases quite funny.
So this book was an up-and-down experience for me. It was a great read, and I especially recommend the last essay Sing If You're Glad to Be Trans to all the trans* youth in the world. It was an empowering essay to read, and it ended the book off on a high.
At the start of it, I was getting annoyed at the author's use of the word "tranny", because this word really offends me and has been used to insult me in the past. I realize that it was not meant to offend in this case, however, so I finally decided not to let it bother me anymore.
After getting over this, I found I disagreed with what the author was saying, but I was finding just as much of the book fascinating. There is an essay in this book called Passing the Word which I loved. It was enlightening and I found myself completely agreeing with Bergman in this case. Other essays, such as the series of It Only Takes a Minute essays were also very interesting and in some cases quite funny.
So this book was an up-and-down experience for me. It was a great read, and I especially recommend the last essay Sing If You're Glad to Be Trans to all the trans* youth in the world. It was an empowering essay to read, and it ended the book off on a high.
January 20, 2020
Sometimes I felt like I was reading a longtime blog, where I was expected to be very familiar with the author, about whatever struck hir fancy, or an academic analysis of the discourse around gender theory and queer theory. I agree with other comments the book couldn’t decide if it was an essay collection or a memoir, and ultimately failed at both. I also appreciate others who commented on the author’s hyperfocus on having sex as the pinnacle of queer achievement - I found it very disheartening and sometimes had to work to hear the message underneath it.
I did really enjoy the essays focusing on the author’s Jewish faith and culture, and how that so significantly affected hir gender experience, especially Wrap/t and Today I Am a Man. I also enjoyed the essays on gender expression/performance (particularly Dutiful Grandchild and It’s Always Easier If You Can Be Something They Recognize).
I did really enjoy the essays focusing on the author’s Jewish faith and culture, and how that so significantly affected hir gender experience, especially Wrap/t and Today I Am a Man. I also enjoyed the essays on gender expression/performance (particularly Dutiful Grandchild and It’s Always Easier If You Can Be Something They Recognize).
Read
March 23, 2019This is a funny, often sweet, always interesting collection of essays on the author's experience of living a queer, trans and Jewish life. It's non-intentionally fascinating also in that it was published 2009, and it's clear from reading it now that the queer personal and political landscape has changed enormously in ten years. Bergman uses the terminology of the "gender outlaw", popularised by Kate Bornstein (which put me off originally as I loathe Bornstein's writing - but Bergman is much better than her). Ze doesn't, however, use the words "nonbinary" or "genderqueer", which have become standard use a mere decade later. Particularly as Bergman's description of hir gendered experience reads to the modern ear as archetypically nonbinary and genderqueer - and in so being, is much, much more common than Bergman indicates it is. None of this is intended to be criticism - the book was written in 2009! - but it adds an additional dimension to an already interesting book. There's also some discussion about Bergman's experience of, and experience of being interrogated about, the difference between butch lesbians, butches generally (Bergman's previous work, which I haven't read, was Butch Is A Noun and made the argument that "butch" is a freestanding gender) and trans men. Bergman rightly remarks that there isn't a a single difference or, for some people, any difference at all - it's part of the tapestry of queer lived experience. However, in these madder times in which transphobic lesbians despair at "butch flight', butch lesbians leaving their holy womanhood to be Transed into men (lol urgh), Bergman's comparatively more innocent examination of the question bears rereading.
Read
March 30, 2024This was as exceptional as anything by this author, though there were definitely some parts that hurt - trans discrimination isn't an easy topic. But so much of this book is about hope. I've appreciated reading Bergman's work in reverse chronological order, getting to see how some of his dreams and ideas have come to fruition.
December 23, 2018
I read a couple of reviews on this book that definitely impacted my reading experience. I am deeply inclined to agree with someone else's analysis that Bergman fails to connect his experience to a broader context of queer and/or trans identity. I found it difficult to avoid comparing Bergman's writing to Ivan Coyote (there's considerable overlap) but when I inevitably failed, I was left with the question of "who is he writing to?" I found the tone variably so personal or so universal that I never felt caught in the scope of Bergman's account. Additionally, this book was first published in 2009 and some of the vocabulary, analysis, and Hot Takes have not aged very well. There is definitely charm and humour, but overall it feels to me like this book couldn't decide whether it was didactic or confessional, and was consequently neither.
March 22, 2012
Bear Bergman is an incredibly gifted storyteller. Some of these pieces should be mandatory reading if you're a human; one in particular, about a harrowing plane ride and 100-mile drive over the Canadian border for compassionate health care, should be required for anyone who works in the medical profession. Can't recommend it highly enough!
July 11, 2012
Bergman's inability to view themself within a broader context of queer and transgender rights makes the book ultimately uninteresting. It ends up coming across as a diary or blog of someone concerned with queer/transgender issues, but with few if any interesting stories or anecdotes. By failing to embrace either the memoir or essay format, "The Nearest Exit" misses its mark.
May 8, 2021
Really good read. Ze bears hir soul with grace. Love the tenderness with which ze treats hir family.
March 7, 2019
I spotted the spine of this in a photo of someone else's bookshelf and thought it looked possibly interesting, and then I wolfed it down in a couple of days because it engaged me so strongly.
It's a collection of essays on one person's experience of being transgender and genderqueer and queer. My (e-book) copy is now full of bookmarks and highlightings - so many bits rang so many bells for me.
One thread probably of more interest to me than to most people I'd recommend it to is stuff about being queer and part of a religious community that knew you before you were queer, or before you were as queer, and, relatedly, being queer around older relatives.
It's very readable and anecdotal rather than academic: highly recommended.
---------------
Four or five years later I went back to look up a quotation and got sucked back into rereading the whole thing. Still great.
It's a collection of essays on one person's experience of being transgender and genderqueer and queer. My (e-book) copy is now full of bookmarks and highlightings - so many bits rang so many bells for me.
One thread probably of more interest to me than to most people I'd recommend it to is stuff about being queer and part of a religious community that knew you before you were queer, or before you were as queer, and, relatedly, being queer around older relatives.
It's very readable and anecdotal rather than academic: highly recommended.
---------------
Four or five years later I went back to look up a quotation and got sucked back into rereading the whole thing. Still great.
May 1, 2017
This book is ok, but forgettable. If it weren't for the sad dearth of trans literature out there, I doubt it would have any attention at all. It seems to me that Bear Bergman has talent, but received (relatively) quick success as one of the few trans voices out there and has not pushed himself to reach his full potential as a writer or a thinker. These essays are chatty but superficial: they read like blog posts, rushed out after less than a week of work. One essay was just a transcript of several emails back and forth with a friend with intermittent commentary. This territory deserves better, deeper, more enduring work than this. I'll keep looking.
(I originally used the pronouns ze/hir, but replaced them with he/him/his after learning that Bear now prefers masculine pronouns: http://www.sbearbergman.com/faq/)
(I originally used the pronouns ze/hir, but replaced them with he/him/his after learning that Bear now prefers masculine pronouns: http://www.sbearbergman.com/faq/)
January 18, 2016
This book was wonderful. Funny, interesting, compelling, thoughtful, honest. I recommend this book to everyone, but particularly to people who are queer, trans, or know and love someone who is. I can't describe how great it is to read something that you think and feel in a book, things that you weren't sure anyone else thought or felt. Or the feeling of reading in a book that exactly what and who you are is ok, and it's ok that you aren't exactly sure about who and what you are either. The feeling that this author actually cares about me as an individual, despite not knowing me, and that ze puts out hir work because ze wants people like me to read it.
February 17, 2019
You know how as a kid, you'd repeat a word over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until the word itself lost meaning and only became another sound you could make? That's how I felt about "que*r" and "tr*nny" by the end of this book. I wish these words at least had some synonyms Bear Bergman could use, if only for some variety in the textual landscape!
The rest of the book was just as repetitive and honestly, a little shallow. I think a younger me would have liked it, but at this point in my life, I've read far better books (and even unedited blog posts) that it disappoints.
The rest of the book was just as repetitive and honestly, a little shallow. I think a younger me would have liked it, but at this point in my life, I've read far better books (and even unedited blog posts) that it disappoints.
Read
September 11, 2013In The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, S. Bear Bergman explores life in the gray areas of the gender spectrum. Bergman examines such everyday things as feeling safe in a public restroom or a doctor’s office, while also exploring larger issues such as getting one’s husband pregnant or trying to get through Customs with the “wrong” gender marker one’s passport. Insightful and hilarious, affirming and poignant, this book provides a beautifully written, brutally honest, and delightfully funny description of life as a visibly queer person. –CM
December 14, 2022
Honestly, Bear could write a technical manual on underwater basketweaving and I would read it and love every minute of it. I am glad he chose to write this book instead, though. His perspectives on life, gender, families, relationships, identities, sexuality, and every other topic he mentions are witty, insightful, and an overall delight to read. His writing voice resonates so strongly with me and inspires me to find my own.
June 15, 2010
Fantastic, thought-provoking and funny collection of essays on gender, politics, and just getting through life when you don't quite fit the regular mold.
April 21, 2017
Bear Bergman is ahead of hir time. This book completely embodies what it means for me to be a non-binary person. This is thoughtful and was just a brilliant read.
July 14, 2016
Overall, it was a nice collection of essays. I laughed, I thought, I was challenged. But somewhere in the middle I lost interest and almost didn't finish it.
May 31, 2022
This book helped me realize that I was allowed to be trans. Pretty cool. <3
October 14, 2024
I really wanted to like, or at least get something out of, this novel? memoir? collection of essays? but I couldn't. I found it boring and unreadable.
September 24, 2010
Just go out and read it already, mmkay?
May 14, 2022
3.5/5
I went into this expecting a series of funny, yet meaningful essays. They were less of the former, but certainly the latter. So long as you're prepared to read through more serious topics and discussions of gender, you'll likely enjoy this. I had to take breaks a few times - it's not a read in one sitting type of book for me - but not because I wasn't finding the material interesting and relatable. It's well written and thoughtful, but can also be a lot to digest at times.
I'd also say that, to best enjoy and relate to this collection, it'd be helpful if you're queer, trans, gender non conforming, somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and/or Jewish (the last one is definitely key in many of the essays, but not all). And if you're none of those things but you're reading this review, then give it a go. Maybe you'll learn something or at least have an opportunity to think about things in a different way.
Lastly, if queer slurs upset you, be prepared that you will encounter a lot of them in this collection. Bear uses them in an "embrace the slur to take the power away from our enemies" type of way - they're not used as insult, but as identity - but it still might be jarring to read so repeatedly.
I went into this expecting a series of funny, yet meaningful essays. They were less of the former, but certainly the latter. So long as you're prepared to read through more serious topics and discussions of gender, you'll likely enjoy this. I had to take breaks a few times - it's not a read in one sitting type of book for me - but not because I wasn't finding the material interesting and relatable. It's well written and thoughtful, but can also be a lot to digest at times.
I'd also say that, to best enjoy and relate to this collection, it'd be helpful if you're queer, trans, gender non conforming, somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and/or Jewish (the last one is definitely key in many of the essays, but not all). And if you're none of those things but you're reading this review, then give it a go. Maybe you'll learn something or at least have an opportunity to think about things in a different way.
Lastly, if queer slurs upset you, be prepared that you will encounter a lot of them in this collection. Bear uses them in an "embrace the slur to take the power away from our enemies" type of way - they're not used as insult, but as identity - but it still might be jarring to read so repeatedly.
August 1, 2021
I read The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You this week. I'm embarrassed to say that despite owning a copy of the book since 2010, I've not read it until now. I'm so sorry, Bear! It's a shame because I would have got much more out of it if I'd read it at the time. Some of the terminology seems to be a bit dated; in particular the constant use of two terms which would not be particularly acceptable now. On the other hand, the idea of being non-binary was a rather new idea, but has now become much more commonplace. Some of the essays are bit hit and miss, but I think it depends on the readers approach to the topics. It's an interesting book and I think Sing if You're Glad To be Trans is certainly still relevant. I struggled somewhat with Butch Is A Noun, never having been a butch. The focus for Nearest Exit is more on being Trans, queer and Jewish, so I got much more out of it. I think it helped that I was able to relate it more to the Bear I know.
November 4, 2025
This was pretty thoughtful and somewhat interesting, but I feel like for better or worse it was a lot like sitting with Bear at a bar and hearing him just chat excitedly about his perspectives on living as someone like him in a couple dozen several minute long unorganised snippets. And as a result, it doesn't have the coherence of character portrait that a memoir would have (as we get a collection of varied and disordered glimpses of who Bear is at the time of writing), but it also doesn't have the coherence of subject content that a work of gender theory for its own sake would have (as it's mostly Bear's own personal sensibilities on an array of subject he happens to have felt interested in addressing at one time or another). This reads a bit too much like an arbitrary collection of philosophising copied and pasted in no particular order from some very thoughtful and intelligent person's blog.
March 25, 2024
If this book falters, it's because it's a little disjointed, and it was published in 2009. Bergman discusses The Whipping Girl, which had just been published, and this month, that book will have a 3rd edition to celebrate its 15 years in publication.
When Bergman's observations about gender are astoot, they are profound and sometimes very funny. I did think a lot about how Bergman and his spouse are (or were at the time) Professional Transgender People and how draining it is when your gender is your Job.
I didn't mind the profane or the reclamation of slurs used against trans and queer people. But there are moments of racism, including one stinker of an essay about different types of transgressive gender and using his Chinese friend software engineer friend as a prime example.
When Bergman's observations about gender are astoot, they are profound and sometimes very funny. I did think a lot about how Bergman and his spouse are (or were at the time) Professional Transgender People and how draining it is when your gender is your Job.
I didn't mind the profane or the reclamation of slurs used against trans and queer people. But there are moments of racism, including one stinker of an essay about different types of transgressive gender and using his Chinese friend software engineer friend as a prime example.
June 19, 2018
This was so interesting and worth it to read! I love essays and it was really eye-opening to read about someone’s experience with being trans but not ‘straightforwardly’ so, for lack of a better word. It was just really informative; it’s always so important to read about people’s experiences when they differ from your own. A balance is best but I’ve been really invested lately in diving deep into books that are about experiences I’ve never had or had to think about. Seriously recommend it for all humans!!!
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