A review by garberdog
Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality by Gayle Salamon
3.0
A clear, concise, and compelling work of theory. This text makes a critical intervention into gender theory, pushing back against some of the worst excesses of essentialism, liberal individualism, and insipidity that often plagues trans theory (I'm looking at you, Jay Prosser) while simultaneously critiquing the cissexism of many feminist theories of embodiment (notably Grosz and Hausman). Theories from psychoanalysis and phenomenology, as well as from thinkers like Irigaray, are presented, explained and expanded upon on useful and interesting ways.
So it's a real shame that Salamon makes the bizarre, transmisogynistic, and ill-informed choice to center trans-masculinity in this text. She states at the end of her introduction "my general discussions of trans (sic) will often take MTF experience as my focus, in a reversal of what has historically been a conflation of trans experience with MTF experience." Beyond the fact that this is simply incorrect, it's politically repugnant. Even if trans-feminine people (and specifically here, trans women) did take up "disproportionate" space in transgender discourse, they have every right to. Trans women experience far more violence, higher rates of incarceration, and much greater stimga and discrimination (transmisogyny is word for a reason) than do trans men. This infuriateing decision returns to haunt the text in chapter 3 and most unforgivbly in chapter 4, where Salamon gets basic facts about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival wrong (she states that both trans men and trans women are excluded; in fact, only trans women are excluded, trans men being allowed in because they were "born women"). She focuses so much time and attention on trans men that trans women are only rarely if even mentioned, and then only in passing. This, despite the fact that the vast majority of what Salamon seems to be critiquing is better described as transmisogyny, and not cissexism or transphobia (ie trans women specifically are impacted). This makes this work another in a long history of cisgender feminists valorizing masculinity at the expense of trans women. This is a real shame, because Salamon's text shines it's strongest when she is discussing either trans women specifically or trans people in the abstract. Her politics themselves are lackluster.
Which brings up the next critical weakness of this text: Salamon completely ignores race and class. She may not have been trying to write Dean Spade's "Normal Life," but she doesn't talk about how it is trans women of color (and particularly black trans women) who face the harshest consequences of white supremacist (trans)misogyny. She never speaks of prisons, colonialism, police brutality, capitalism, or any other horrible violent systems that impact trans folks every day. Again, I recognize she's writing theory; but that's not an excuse, and her work suffers for it.
This brings me to a general complaint: it seems impossible to find transfeminist theory that is social constructionist, anti-essentialist, intersectional, actually feminist (as opposed to transmisogynist and femmephobic), and historically and politically aware. One gets at best one or two of these things (like Julia Serano's books, which are (liberal) transfeminist, but are also deeply essentialist, reductionist, and more importantly racist and classist as all get out.)
So it's a real shame that Salamon makes the bizarre, transmisogynistic, and ill-informed choice to center trans-masculinity in this text. She states at the end of her introduction "my general discussions of trans (sic) will often take MTF experience as my focus, in a reversal of what has historically been a conflation of trans experience with MTF experience." Beyond the fact that this is simply incorrect, it's politically repugnant. Even if trans-feminine people (and specifically here, trans women) did take up "disproportionate" space in transgender discourse, they have every right to. Trans women experience far more violence, higher rates of incarceration, and much greater stimga and discrimination (transmisogyny is word for a reason) than do trans men. This infuriateing decision returns to haunt the text in chapter 3 and most unforgivbly in chapter 4, where Salamon gets basic facts about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival wrong (she states that both trans men and trans women are excluded; in fact, only trans women are excluded, trans men being allowed in because they were "born women"). She focuses so much time and attention on trans men that trans women are only rarely if even mentioned, and then only in passing. This, despite the fact that the vast majority of what Salamon seems to be critiquing is better described as transmisogyny, and not cissexism or transphobia (ie trans women specifically are impacted). This makes this work another in a long history of cisgender feminists valorizing masculinity at the expense of trans women. This is a real shame, because Salamon's text shines it's strongest when she is discussing either trans women specifically or trans people in the abstract. Her politics themselves are lackluster.
Which brings up the next critical weakness of this text: Salamon completely ignores race and class. She may not have been trying to write Dean Spade's "Normal Life," but she doesn't talk about how it is trans women of color (and particularly black trans women) who face the harshest consequences of white supremacist (trans)misogyny. She never speaks of prisons, colonialism, police brutality, capitalism, or any other horrible violent systems that impact trans folks every day. Again, I recognize she's writing theory; but that's not an excuse, and her work suffers for it.
This brings me to a general complaint: it seems impossible to find transfeminist theory that is social constructionist, anti-essentialist, intersectional, actually feminist (as opposed to transmisogynist and femmephobic), and historically and politically aware. One gets at best one or two of these things (like Julia Serano's books, which are (liberal) transfeminist, but are also deeply essentialist, reductionist, and more importantly racist and classist as all get out.)