I listened to the second edition of Transgender History as an audiobook from the library, and found it interesting enough that I'm seriously consideriI listened to the second edition of Transgender History as an audiobook from the library, and found it interesting enough that I'm seriously considering whether I should buy a paper copy to have as a reference, even if I don't actually need a trans history reference.
I admit that I was expecting from the title something broader than a US-specific history of trans people and issues, but having a detailed and fairly complete-seeming history of US trans issues was actually very interesting, and I was embarrassed to realize how much I hadn't known about the abortive flowering of trans activism and even some trans rights improvements in the 1960's and 1970's before the Reagan era shut everything down. As someone whose memory largely starts with Clinton's election, it's really hard for me to grasp just how much the US back-slid under Reagan......more
I'm a bit embarrassed that I hadn't heard of this book before my queer urbanist book club decided to read it, and that I didn't immediately recognize I'm a bit embarrassed that I hadn't heard of this book before my queer urbanist book club decided to read it, and that I didn't immediately recognize Delores Hayden's name, despite having read and even cited both her academic papers and Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000.
While The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities is just over forty years old, sadly little progress has been made the fundamental issue Hayden examines: developing a new way of living and built environment that is both more efficient and less socially isolating. The book is a history of various attempts—religious, socialist, and sometimes explicitly feminist—to redesign the built environment, housekeeping, and sometimes family structure of the American family to make housekeeping, cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing labor more efficient in terms of time and money and, in general, to reduce the burden of domestic labor on women.
In general, I hadn't heard of these attempts—even, as with Jane Addams's Hull House, I'd heard of their contexts—and I was surprised to realize how many different motivations they had, including both explicitly feminist ones and ones based on religion (the Shakers, one of the few attempts I did know about), and ones motivated by a general industrial-era belief that since labor outside the home had been made more efficient by the division of labor, it was time to apply this to domestic labor as well. It was depressingly unsurprising, however, to read about the reasons they failed: in most cases a combination of men's resistance to the idea of someone other than their wife cooking food for them, or their wife cooking food for others in cooperative arrangements, a general unwillingness of upper-class households to come to terms with their class privilege with respect to their servants, and general social disapproval. It was also not surprising to learn that the most successful attempts were those involving groups—professional women and the low-income and largely unmarried individuals at Hull House—least susceptible to these issues.
I thought it interesting to see the breadth of these proposals as well: they varied from communal living proposals, such as the Shakers' communities and the Fourierist "North American Phalanx" to attempts by groups of families to establish community laundries and hot meal delivery services: both things which have, in practice, re-emerged as purely capitalist enterprises in recent years, at least for those rich and urban enough to rely heavily on them.
The book ends in the years between the World Wars, with a discussion of how the post-World-War-I Red Scare and the rise of a new consumer culture based around heavily-marketed housekeeping conveniences and car-dependent, low-density suburbanization (generally much less amenable to cooperative housekeeping schemes) killed off such schemes, at least among the "respectable" classes, for a generation, while creating a new and more severe problem of isolation for housewives expected to do all their housework alone, and in an environment even less accommodating of social interaction than that their mothers and grandmothers had experienced, even if technology had made the physical labor easier. I do wish, however, that Hayden had devoted more text to the discussion of how this transition happened....more
Definitely an interesting—and accessible, for an academic history—work on types of trans experience before the modern concept of "transgender" came toDefinitely an interesting—and accessible, for an academic history—work on types of trans experience before the modern concept of "transgender" came to be established, with an unusually strong focus on how much life tended to suck for various cultures' "third gender" people....more
This was a fairly interesting discussion of the science on the effects of testosterone, and the degree to which studies on it have been distorted by gThis was a fairly interesting discussion of the science on the effects of testosterone, and the degree to which studies on it have been distorted by gendered expectations and the idea that testosterone is the "male hormone," leading researchers to bias their work based on expectations of what a "male hormone" should do. The last section is a very long discussion of the relationship between testosterone and athletic ability—as with most of the book, the answer is "it's complicated"—which was interesting. However, I wish it had discussed transgender athletes and bodies more, or really, at all. Unfortunately, it is true that there really just isn't much research on trans bodies.
One minor thing I found interesting is that the authors mentioned that immunoassays of testosterone are inaccurate at low testosterone levels, and tend to overestimate them: and by low levels, they mean "normal" female levels. Which, since they're what's usually used for the tests of testosterone levels I and other trans women get, means that we're likely getting inaccurate information on how suppressed our testosterone is....more
This book is fundamentally an attempted refutation of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography. I'm not sure whether I think it succeeded: Carole HooveThis book is fundamentally an attempted refutation of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography. I'm not sure whether I think it succeeded: Carole Hooven definitely points out some flaws in that book's arguments, but it also struck me as underestimating the importance of socialization—a topic that only seemed acknowledged as important in passing once or twice—and unfair to intersex female athletes....more
Read this for potential relevance in a project I have about circumcision and gender. It may be useful as a reference. It was also sort of weird to reaRead this for potential relevance in a project I have about circumcision and gender. It may be useful as a reference. It was also sort of weird to realize just how alien some things that men apparently consider central to "the male experience" are to me....more
I'm not really sure how to classify this, and I certainly shouldn't have spent this evening reading it in one go, but I did really enjoy it, and it gaI'm not really sure how to classify this, and I certainly shouldn't have spent this evening reading it in one go, but I did really enjoy it, and it gave me lots of feelings about my own struggles with both motivation and feeling worthy if I am not working constantly. (On the other hand, I've never enjoyed physical exercise anything like the way Bechdel does....more
This was an interesting read, though I felt that it focused more on the philosophical than the practical aspects of non-marriage-states. Also, I am noThis was an interesting read, though I felt that it focused more on the philosophical than the practical aspects of non-marriage-states. Also, I am not convinced that Chambers's reasoning in the last chapter, on regulation of private/religious marriages was entirely coherent....more
I finally found time to read this book after it had spent six years on my bookshelf, and I was pretty disappointed. It seemed more a four-hundred-pageI finally found time to read this book after it had spent six years on my bookshelf, and I was pretty disappointed. It seemed more a four-hundred-page collection of anecdotes than a well-organized and coherent summary of the topic, and certainly didn't do a particularly good job of convincing me of its reliability, given the lack of proper citations and the sensationalist portrayal of some topics....more
This was definitely an interesting read, even if I would've liked a bit more trans-awareness from the author. A major thing that I learned from it, beThis was definitely an interesting read, even if I would've liked a bit more trans-awareness from the author. A major thing that I learned from it, beyond just how early the Roman Empire started to adopt the use of court eunuchs, is the significant role that eunuchs played in the Eastern Church. I had heard of the Church Fathers' early decrees banning eunuchs (apparently, only self-castrated ones) from holy orders, but hadn't realized how narrowly that had been interpreted in the East, and that there were even monasteries solely for eunuchs and parents who had their children castrated in preparation for a career in the Church....more
Honestly, I'm not well-positioned to tell how original Julia Serano's ideas are, but reading this gave me some useful thoughts on topics related to seHonestly, I'm not well-positioned to tell how original Julia Serano's ideas are, but reading this gave me some useful thoughts on topics related to sexuality and my issues with circumcision....more
This was an interesting and disturbing book. It forced me to think more about the cultural contexts of genital mutilation traditions, and the degree tThis was an interesting and disturbing book. It forced me to think more about the cultural contexts of genital mutilation traditions, and the degree to which the issue isn't so much the cutting itself as the broader lack of autonomy that children and young adults in many cultures have. Not just autonomy with respect to their parents, but with respect to society more broadly. Prazak details how even when children and their parents were opposed in theory to female circumcision, cultural pressures made it essentially impossible to follow any other path, given the limited life trajectories actually available to girls....more
This was a very detailed and academic book on the history of female genital cutting as medicalized surgery in the United States: a practice that persiThis was a very detailed and academic book on the history of female genital cutting as medicalized surgery in the United States: a practice that persisted for much longer than I had thought. I had known that it was used by some Victorian doctors as a way to prevent masturbation, alongside male circumcision, which was medicalized for the same purpose at the same time. What I hadn't realized was that it also continued after "preventing masturbation" was no longer seen as a valid medical goal: apparently, for much of the 20th Century, American doctors performed female circumcision--though usually consensually on adults--in the hope of making it easier for them to orgasm from penis-in-vagina sex, which was seen as the only normative way for adult women to orgasm....more
A housemate lent me a copy of this book, which she'd bought because several members of the household are queer women interested in the history of femaA housemate lent me a copy of this book, which she'd bought because several members of the household are queer women interested in the history of female monasticism, recently. Since it was just a loan, I actually managed to start reading it in a hurry, so I could get it back to her in time to pass on to the others in the house.
Despite the book's cover, which feels like something you'd expect on a badly-produced, self-published book, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy is actually from the University of Chicago Press, and is not actually the sort of salacious, gossipy book that the marketing department seems to have thought it should be sold as.
The author, Craig A. Monson, is a historian of Renaissance music who wrote this book as a side project, to make use of a number of stories he had come across in his research at the Vatican archives on choral music performed by nuns in Renaissance Italy, but that weren't actually relevant to his academic work. (That this genre existed at all was one of the first things I learned at the book: while I knew that the Church had long banned women from singing in choirs, I hadn't realized that there had been an exception for nuns singing in their cloister churches, which could often be heard as part of the services in the external churches attached to their convents.)
In Renaissance Italy, the upper classes sent an exceptional fraction of their daughters—possibly a majority, it seems?—into convents to reduce the costs of the dowries they were responsible for, resulting in convents populated with large numbers of women with no religious vocations and limited outlets for their creativity and intellectual explorations. This led to attempts to escape convent life, including one convent burned down by its residents, attempts to achieve fame and standing that were unacceptable to Vatican authorities, and even simply attempts to be a bit more a part of the general life of their cities than was permitted by monastic rules.
Fundamentally, these stories are tragedies, of women denied their potential by a society that had forced them into religious roles inconsistent with their needs, desires, or vocations....more
Yet another hard-to-classify book! This one is, honestly, more about intersectionality generally than anything that struck me as clearly gender- or feYet another hard-to-classify book! This one is, honestly, more about intersectionality generally than anything that struck me as clearly gender- or feminism-specific. It had some good ideas, but most of them didn't seem especially new to me?...more
Honestly, not as interesting as I was hoping, perhaps partly because of the degree to which it was more a memoir than a traditional academic book. AndHonestly, not as interesting as I was hoping, perhaps partly because of the degree to which it was more a memoir than a traditional academic book. And, for the most part, the ideas weren't new to me....more
Fundamentally, this is a history of the role of eunuch-bureaucrats in the Ming state, with the thesis that---contrary to the official histories of theFundamentally, this is a history of the role of eunuch-bureaucrats in the Ming state, with the thesis that---contrary to the official histories of the period, which were largely written by their political rivals, the literati-bureaucrats---these bureaucrats largely played a positive role in the functioning of the state.
While my interest in Ming Dynasty eunuch-bureaucrats is largely from a gender studies perspective, I felt that this was a useful book because of Shih-Shan Henry Tsai's effort to break down the still-common myth that eunuchs were inherently venial and cruel because of their hormonal condition. He notes that even literati-bureaucrat commentators acknowledged that their behavior and personalities were not fundamentally different from those of other courtiers, despite their physical differences.
It was also interesting, though a bit horrifying, to realize just how severe the churn of court intrigue was: it seems that almost no one who served the Ming emperors in a high-ranking capacity managed to have a long life that didn't end in exile or execution, more often because of political infighting than actual serious crimes or incompetence....more
This was a pretty interesting book, if not exactly what I expected. Leyla Jagiella is a Polish-German trans woman who converted to Islam as a teenagerThis was a pretty interesting book, if not exactly what I expected. Leyla Jagiella is a Polish-German trans woman who converted to Islam as a teenager who lived in hijra communities in Delhi for several years. It is part autobiography, part description of the communities she was part of and their role in north-Indian society, and partly a manifesto of her ideas about the role of gender and third-gender identities. It also felt like it was a bit of a straight trans woman's rant about feeling like she isn't fully accepted as a woman by men in the West: something which, I gather, is a common problem, but fairly alien to my experience as a trans woman who mostly only dates other women.
Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey gave me a lot of complicated feelings about the interconnection between gender identity and society, and the degree to which one's possible gender options are strongly tied to what one's society assumes with, in most traditional societies, an expectation that marriage and childbearing is essential to counting as a full person, even if roles exist for non-childbearing adults as well. (Having just read Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting may have influenced my feelings here.) Leyla Jagiella repeatedly mentions, but doesn't really address the implications of the fact that it is acceptable in some of North Indian traditional culture for men to have hijra girlfriends, but only as long as they also have a proper wife they raise children with, suggesting that straight trans women, though perhaps their dating straight men is more accepted, can never really be a full-status part of this society....more