Olive’s Reviews > What Is Gender Nihilism? A Reader > Status Update

Essay: The Empire Strikes Back

Holy fucking shit!!!

Reading history about healthcare for trans ppl in the states and understanding how very little has changed and seeing once again how western medicine has poisoned our culture through prescriptivism 🤩

One is not born a woman has been my fav essay so far. “Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is specific social relation to a man…”
Take this with a grain of salt lacking the context of the greater essay 😝

First essay “The Woman-Identified-Woman”

Always interesting to read feminist literature published in the 70s, although this essay feels more aligned with my current beliefs than most. Queer labels were created in response to heteronormative prescriptions. While I recognize the historically and often individual importance of labelling, it has always felt like a response to, as opposed to “what I am.”