8 votes

Sandy Stone - The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto

3 comments

  1. musicotic
    Link
    An interesting and important part of trans advocacy history is Sandy Stone's rebuttal to Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Sandy Stone was a part of the lesbian...

    An interesting and important part of trans advocacy history is Sandy Stone's rebuttal to Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Sandy Stone was a part of the lesbian feminist record label Olivia, and was ostracized and attacked for her participation due to her being trans. She was personally targeted by a number of trans-exclusive radical feminists & eventually left the label. Stone's work essentially founded academic trans literature and is built upon Butler's work. I recommend that everyone give it a read, it's quite short.

    1 vote
  2. [2]
    ComradeCatgirl
    (edited )
    Link
    Damn, the paper sure shows how shitty it was to be transgender back then. This is an interesting article and gives context to what culture and the conversation looked like back then. It is no...

    Damn, the paper sure shows how shitty it was to be transgender back then. This is an interesting article and gives context to what culture and the conversation looked like back then. It is no doubt influential and important, but 25 years later feels dated.

    It's clearly heavily influenced by Butler's Gender Trouble, but I believe it lacks nuance and takes the most literal interpretation of Butler. The whole article assumes the idea gender is ONLY performative and political, ignoring primary the subjective experience of the body and gender. In doing so, I believe she reduces transgender gender identity to a culturally constructed, externally imposed social construct that trans people are in a sense victim to. Maybe I am misreading her, but I believe even Butler has since come to a more nuanced take of gender and transgenderism than Stone articulates here.

    1 vote
    1. musicotic
      Link Parent
      I don't see this interpretation really. Performativity is all about subjective experience. Butler's take has "mellowed" and adjusted in response to criticism from the trans community yes, which...

      The whole article assumes the idea gender is ONLY performative and political, ignoring primary the subjective experience of the body and gender.

      I don't see this interpretation really. Performativity is all about subjective experience.

      Butler's take has "mellowed" and adjusted in response to criticism from the trans community yes, which can be seen in her work Undoing Gender, but she never compromised the main principles and points of her book, but rather clarified her positions and arguments.