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frantically's review
4.25
What I especially loved being themed is how it is often gay men that make queer spaces unsafe and uncomfortable for female-presenting people. Their gayness does not excuse the casual misogyny they often display.
Graphic: Bullying, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Transphobia, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia
solenodon's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia, Grief, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Mental illness, Racism, Sexual content, and Xenophobia
Minor: Hate crime, Infidelity, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Suicide
maudsmeets's review
4.5
Any ambiguity or nonconformity, especially in relation to gender, conjurers terror. This is precisely why men are afraid of me. Why women are afraid of me, too.
But your fear is not only hurting me, it's hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be.
An informative, reflective and challenging read that combines autobiographical stories with gender theory seamlessly.
I would recommend this text to anyone. We can all learn from this and we should all learn from this, to be frank.
Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Racism, Sexism, Transphobia, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Infidelity, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment
violet_pages's review
4.0
Graphic: Misogyny and Sexism
Moderate: Homophobia and Transphobia
Minor: Body shaming and Xenophobia
lulujoanis's review
4.5
Required reading: so brilliant, so educational even to me as a trans woman (so I can't even imagine the lessons a cis person could learn from this!)
Admittedly, in the middle, some assumptions Vivek made about other people's genders, while she was trying to make a point against gender assumption, made me uncomfortable. Maybe I'm raw myself, because "When I was a man" is a particularly triggering sentiment to me, less than 3 months into my own transition.
But the end sold me. Very cleverly, she allowed herself to express these contradictions, as all closeted trans / gnc people, and newly realized trans / gnc people do in the search for language to describe and rationalize their identity and existences. And she deconstructed these hypocrisies by, at the end of her threads of logic, memoir, and queer theory, reversing expectations- she mourns her beard and biceps from "when she was a man", like my own complicated relationship with my own facial hair. It's the ultimate argument for gender abolition- even for the betterment of the men that hurt her, and us trans people.
Lots of important race philosophy, too, for the light-skinned queers among us.
Minor: Transphobia and Xenophobia