Feminism Against Cisness

by Emma Heaney (Editor)

The contributors to Feminism against Cisness showcase the future of feminist historical, theoretical, and political thought freed from the conceptual strictures of the fallacy that assigned sex determines sexed experience. The essays demonstrate that this fallacy hinges on the enforcement of white and bourgeois standards of gender comportment that naturalize brutalizing race and class hierarchies. It is, therefore, no accident that the social processes making cisness compulsory are also implicated in antiblackness, misogyny, indigenous erasure, xenophobia, and bourgeois antipathy for working-class life. Working from trans historical archives and materialist trans feminist theories, this volume demonstrates the violent work that cis ideology has done and thinks toward a future for feminism beyond its counter-revolutionary pull.

Contributors. Cameron Awkward-Rich, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Jules Gill-Peterson, Emma Heaney, Margaux L. Kristjansson, Greta LaFleur, Grace Lavery, Durba Mitra, Beans Velocci, Joanna Wuest

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, History, Gender, Transgender

280 pages, Paperback

Published May 3, 2024

About the author

Emma Heaney is an assistant professor of English at William Paterson University

Reviews

[An · Rating 5 out of 5]

bonísssssssssim

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really interesting edited volume that explores ways for feminism to oppose the unholy alliance of so-called radical feminists with the neo-fascists of the far right in their joint effort to marginalize and erase trans people. It’s got plenty of Marxist analysis, which always warms my heart, as it points out how the idea of “sex” as a binary is constructed by racism and capitalism (redundant?) seeking to devalue the work of reproductive labor and the bodies who perform it. But most of the chapters are quite dense, especially the introduction. A layperson looking for an analysis of the ideas that go into the creation of cisness will probably want to find it elsewhere. Not to assume laypeople can’t understand fancy academic talk, but I’m well into a PhD in religious studies, and I could barely get through it.

Highlight of the book is Beans Velocci’s on the historical contingency of cisness, where they point out that while writing histories to show that trans people are not a new phenomenon is important, it’s also important to point out that cis people ARE a new phenomenon, created out of imperialist, capitalist, and racist needs to define “woman” in specific terms.

[Declan · Rating 5 out of 5]

said hell yeah every page (QE)

[Caris · Rating 2 out of 5]

In lieu of a review of the whole book, which I may still do, I wrote an essay on the problems with how this book tackles trans history:

https://open.substack.com/pub/carisem...

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag, as any of these collections are, but several of the essays (I focused on the historical ones) are excitingly suggestive.

[birdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

a really great exploration of cisness and it's strictures - with race and class embedded in critique and discourse - a great feminist text!

the language is very inaccessible at times. I attempted to pick it up a few times before being able to get into due to it's density

the contributions of Awkward-Rich, Bey and Gill Peterson are particular favourites.