I finished this book a while ago and it really blew my mind. I'm a trans woman and it completely changed my understanding of my own gender and my understanding of gender as a concept. It's given my a new understanding of the ways I may have been perpetuating harm and ways to change for the better. It was just a life changing read for myself and my cis wife as well.

My question is why don't I see this opinion more frequently in the world? I've almost never heard someone use the term effemamania even though it feels so accurate to what's going on so often. I googled it and I don't see much real critique of it other than a single reddit post. Is there some big problem with the book that makes it not actually a good book that I'm missing? Or is it just more or less ignored for some reason?

Also if anyone else has read it I'd love to hear your thoughts too. Sorry if this is the wrong comm. trans-heart

  • Pisha [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    6 months ago

    It's a very good book, all in all. I still don't think anything has really surpassed it in terms of being a book-length theorization of the specific misogyny faced by transfemmes – you can find scattered critiques on the internet, mostly bad ones, but I just don't think posts really matter in comparison with books. And yes, it is only being ignored because, frankly, society at large hates us and the idea that we face a specific kind of oppression, even though it's blindingly obvious, is very hurtful to the egos of a lot of people who consider themselves leftists.