Xan’s Reviews > TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress ... and Won! > Status Update

Trying to pick this back up again. I still find myself irritated by the sweeping generalizations that erase other people's work, and how disrespectful so much of what she says feels. She did admit that it was her story not the story tho.

This book uses different definitions of things than the ones I know, and language that's not current. For example she calls someone in current times both genderqueer and also cisgender, which could be how the person identifies but that feels unclear. The book also uses the word "trannie", has a moment where she explains why she is using it and acknowledges that its fallen into disfavor.

I keep wanting to talk back to this book because it states things as definitive truth about trans history that I know not to be true. (For example it claims that there was little trans political activism n the 1960s-early 90s in the US, that STAR was powered by drag queens, that there were no drag kings yet in the early 90s.) It makes it hard to trust the rest of the book. & creates a frustrating reading experience.