Abstract
Excluded is a collection of essays from the last decade by transgender activist, writer, and performer Julia Serano, known for her popularization of cisgender (a synonym for nontransgender) from her 2007 book Whipping Girl. These essays cover a variety of topics including Serano’s experiences in lesbian spaces to working at Camp Trans, her reflections on language use, and how feminist communities may unintentionally demonize anyone who doesn’t identify as or act “radical enough.” These independent essays call for holistic feminism, a feminist theory that recognizes the importance of intersectionality and true inclusion, while also acknowledging the difficulty of putting theories into action.
One unique aspect of Serano’s views of feminism is the necessity of redefining the traditional definition of sexism. She proposes to include heterosexism (privileging heterosexuality over other sexual orientations), cissexism (privileging those whose gender identity today matches the sex they were assigned at birth over transgender and gender nonconforming identified individuals), and monosexism (privileging those attracted to one gender over those attracted to multiple genders) in discussions of and the fight against sexism, showcasing the structural inequalities inherent in each of these subsets of sexism. Serano goes on to discuss how policing gender presentations becomes an inadvertent way of supporting sexism; transgender women who present in a feminine manner are seen as recreating the gender binary, while transgender women who dress more androgynously or in a more masculine way are accused of not trying hard enough to be women or holding onto male privilege. This critique carries over into further essays about how gender policing hurts all women—if a woman wears a skirt, she may be marked as “not really a feminist” or supporting the patriarchy, while a woman wearing pants is rarely accused to trying to gain male privilege or reinforcing masculinity as a dominant group in society. Throughout the book, Serano advocates for more dialogue around issues such as gender presentation and the “calling out” of privilege, rather than the current action of taking a hard-line stance, resulting in the separation and division of feminists and queer communities.
While these essays are drawn from a variety of time periods and situations, they blend to create a deeper understanding of many of the challenges facing feminist and queer communities around the inclusion of transgender individuals as well as the need for acknowledging intersectionality. A few essays seemed more stream of consciousness and less formal than others, but generally, any social worker is likely to find several pieces that resonate and require a deeper level of critical thinking around their own beliefs, attitudes, and actions and how these play out in their own communities or in their practice.
This book is not a transgender 101 education tool or an introduction to gender reader. Rather, it interrogates gender politics in feminist and queer communities in order to examine and disrupt language and policies that are exclusive. Excluded would be an excellent selection for a feminism in social work seminar or critical sexuality studies; perhaps even for an advanced level master’s class that aims to deconstruct privilege and the ways in which power/oppression are operationalized in community spaces. Additionally, most feminists and social workers could benefit from reading Excluded; gaining a better understanding of the experiences of transgender women attempting to collaborate with feminists and/or access feminist-identified or queer-identified spaces, in order to better support a culture of inclusion and intersectional awareness for communities and clients.