Review of A Short History of Trans Misogyny by Jules Gill-Peterson - Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, London, New York: Verso Press, 2024, ISBN-13: 978-1-80429-156-6
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: A Short History of Trans Misogyny makes the bold and sophisticated claim that trans misogyny has less or little to do with psychological hatred of an identity and everything to do with the historical and ongoing devaluation of trans femininity and those who are perceived as trans feminine.Building off literature in both trans scholarship as well as feminist work on misogyny, this work is a masterclass in critical, historical analysis that embraces the ambiguity, tensions, and frictions of the past to interrogate the current framing of trans politics.Gill-Peterson's account traces the contours of trans misogynistic violence through the overlapping textures of statemandated policing and material possibilities.The book's decisive claim is captured by Gill-Peterson's coy remark: "Trans misogyny functions less as anyone's personal failure than something like the weather" (x).Gill-Peterson offers a lesson in historical critique as she challenges the resilience of the "trans panic defense," 1 a logic that suggests that the background, weather-like "killability" of trans feminized persons is common and sensical (5).Such appeals ignore the impersonal and interdependent nature of sociality, where "[i]n truth, everyone is implicated in and shaped by trans misogyny" (viii).She questions the legitimacy of psychological explanations as well as identity politics that would fashion trans women as natural victims/aggressors by uprooting the conditions that historically allow the weather to appear so predictably violent.The book sheds unparalleled doubt on the proposition that there is (or ever was) a collective noun that curtails the global and historical multi-valent productions of trans femininity as excessive of and in many ways only proximate to actual trans women, or individuals who speak about themselves as such.In this way, she maintains that trans misogyny bears upon sociality as a whole and not merely those of whom are most selfevidently victimized or spectacularized by it.Guiding each chapter is a broader question: why and how have trans women and trans femininity been targets of mistreatment by straight men, non-trans women, and gays and lesbians?One is not a trans misogynist primarily out of hatred of trans women, although it can involve this too.Societal structures that feminize individuals into material precariousness are trans misogynistic,
Source: Hypatia
DOI: 10.1017/hyp.2024.77
Author: Maia Wellborn
Institution: University of Oregon
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4405016629