Julia Serano heard one enban say "the binary is boring." and we've all been dealing with the fallout out for 2 decades
Wait what what did Julia do
She wrote Whipping girl where she coined the term "binaryphobia" which is just non binary people making jokes about how the binary is restrictive. She freaked out and wrote a book about it, which led to transradical feminism
we can have nuance and criticism of trans theorists, we can take some of the good (coining transmisogyny and oppositional sexism) and also understand that the text itself comes from a place of bigotry
sorry i gotta be a bitch again (with receipts). from Whipping Girl:
There are many different (but often overlapping) forms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety. The
It's kind of crazy to me that she brings biphobia (which has a lot of mirrors with exorsexism), doesn't mention anything about how some bisexuals think they are better than monosexuals and how that's monophobia), but when it comes to nonbinary people...
Anyways, worse than giving credence to "binary-phobia" is her concept of "subversivism" which is what we can trace directly to the exorsexist attitudes in scholars like Jules Gill-Peterson and Kadji Amin. gonna just copy this whole section:
The majority of experiences as a trans activist and spoken word artist have taken place in what is increasingly becoming known as the “queer/trans” community. It is a subgroup within the greater LGBTIQ community that is composed mostly of folks in their twenties and thirties who are more likely to refer to themselves as “dykes,” “queer,” and/or “trans” than “lesbian” or “gay.” While diverse in a number of ways, this subpopulation tends to predominantly inhabit urban and academic settings, and is skewed toward those who are white and/or from middle-class backgrounds. In many ways, the queer/trans community is best described as a sort of marriage of the transgender movement’s call to “shatter the gender binary” and the lesbian community’s pro-sex, pro-kink backlash to 1980s-era Andrea Dworkinism. Its politics are generally antiassimilationist, particularly with regard to gender and sexual expression. This apparent limitlessness and lack of boundaries lead many to believe that “queer/trans” represents the vanguard of today’s gender and sexual revolution. However, over the last four years in which I’ve been a part of this community, I’ve become increasingly troubled by a trend that, while not applicable to all queer/trans folks, seems to be becoming a dominant belief in this community, one that threatens to restrict its gender and sexual diversity. I call this trend subversivism. Subversivism is the practice of extolling certain gender and sexual expressions and identities simply because they are unconventional or nonconforming. In the parlance of subversivism, these atypical genders and sexualities are “good” because they “transgress” or “subvert” oppressive binary gender norms. The justification for the practice of subversivism has evolved out of a particular reading (although some would call it a misreading) of the work of various influential queer theorists over the last decade and a half. To briefly summarize this popularized account: All forms of sexism arise from the binary gender system. Since this binary gender system is everywhere—in our thoughts, language, traditions, behaviors, etc.—the only way we can overturn it is to actively undermine the system from within. Thus, in order to challenge sexism, people must “perform” their genders in ways that bend, break, and blur all of the imaginary distinctions that exist between male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, and so on, presumably leading to a systemwide binary meltdown. According to the principles of subversivism, drag is inherently “subversive,” as it reveals that our society’s binary notions of maleness and femaleness are not natural, but rather are actively “constructed” and “performed” by all of us. Another way that one can be “transgressively gendered” is by identifying as genderqueer or genderfluid—i.e., refusing to identify fully as either woman or man.
The notion that certain gender identities and expressions are inherently “subversive” or “transgressive” can be seen throughout the queer/trans community, where drag and gender-bending are routinely celebrated, where binary-confounding identities such as “boy-identified-dyke” and identities and expressions that appear to subvert or blur gender binaries, subversivism automatically creates a reciprocal category of people whose gender and sexual identities and expressions are by default inherently conservative, even “hegemonic,” because they are seen as reinforcing or naturalizing the binary gender system. Not surprisingly, this often-unspoken category of bad, conservative genders is predominantly made up of feminine women and masculine men who are attracted to the “opposite” sex. One routinely sees this “dark side” of subversivism rear its head in the queer/trans community, where it is not uncommon to hear individuals critique or call into question other queers or trans folks because their gender presentation, behaviors, or sexual preferences are not deemed “subversive” enough. Indeed, if one fails to sufficiently distinguish oneself from heterosexual feminine women and masculine men, one runs the risk of being accused of “reinforcing the gender binary,” an indictment that is tantamount to being called a sexist. One of the most common targets of such critiques are transsexuals, and particularly those who are heterosexual and gender-normative post-transition. Indeed, because such transsexuals (in the eyes of others) transition from a seemingly “transgressive” queer identity to a “conservative” straight one, subversivists may even claim that they have transitioned in order to purposefully “assimilate” themselves into straight culture. While these days, such accusations are often couched in the rhetoric of current queer theory, they rely on many of the same mistaken assumptions that plagued the work of cissexist feminists like Janice Raymond and sociologists like Thomas Kando decades ago. The practice of subversivism also negatively impacts trans people on the MTF spectrum. After all, in our culture, the meanings of “bold,” “rebellious,” and “dangerous”—adjectives that often come to mind when considering subversiveness—are practically built into our understanding of masculinity. In contrast, femininity conjures up antonyms like “timid,” “conventional,” and “safe,” [note: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SERANO?????????????????????] also which seem entirely incompatible with subversion. Therefore, despite the fact that the mainstream public tends to be more concerned and disturbed by MTF spectrum trans people than their FTM spectrum counterparts, subversivism creates the impression that trans masculinities are inherently “subversive” and “transgressive,” while their trans feminine counterparts are “lame” and “conservative” in comparison. Subversivism’s privileging of trans masculinities over trans femininities helps to explain why cissexual queer women and FTM spectrum folks tend to dominate the queer/trans community: Their exceptional gender expressions and identities are routinely empowered and encouraged in such settings. In contrast, there is generally a dearth of MTF spectrum folks who regularly inhabit queer/trans spaces.
Literally nothing has changed in two decades and time is a flat circle. The talking points are all the fucking same. If Julia Serano has never actually understood how much she has contribued to exorsexist talking points in the community (straight down to being a white middle class woman talking about how the "queer community" is all young middle class gays who only want to be subversive as a shallow political statement).
Like, yeah Serano! 20 years later and nobody knows the term exorsexism, nobody knows the term misandrogyny, nonbinary people are constantly being harassed over not fitting into various new queer binaries, queer spaces are overwhelmingly binary, people with "subversive" identities are harassed until they recloset themselves, nobody uses neopronouns, transphobes have been using nonbinary people with blue hair and pronouns as one of their top favorite trans boogeymen for over a decade, but yeah Julia!!! Subversivism is totally a "dominant belief" in our community and its DEFINITELY the primary one we should be concerned about!!!! won't SOMEBODY think of the gender conforming white upper middle class straight trans women & men.
She gets so close to this at the end of the above quote, the constant recreation of the gender binary. That is a real problem... but its from exorsexism and binary ideology, Serano, not binaryphobia or subversivism.
It's not even that I think no nonbinary person has ever acted like this. Certainly, radical feminists have historically been hostile to both feminine and masculine people and argued that only a gender neutral presentation can be feminist. In fact, Serano goes on to talk about this, although she distinguishes these radical feminists as "cultural feminists," and primarily focuses on their attacks on femininity & not their equivalent hostility towards butches. It's not crazy to me that Serano really had such experiences in some queer/trans spaces, although to be completely honest I cannot help but feel that she may not be writing in totally good faith here, as the exorsexism in her writing makes me suspicious of how strongly she is presenting "subversivism" here.
But this comes back to the age-old issue of saying "certain queer spaces are actively hostile to [xyz group of trans people], therefore all other trans groups are privileged!" which is that different spaces have different biases. Serano goes on to talk about most queer/trans spaces have few MTF crossdressers or trans women; but there are plenty of people who will tell you that their local scene is dominated by those groups. People will talk about how "all" or "most" trans resources are exclusively about binders for trans men, but there are others who will talk about how the only resources near them are for trans women.
The point being, its not that queer/trans spaces are not frequently transmisogynistic. It is that people frequently refuse to listen to trans men or nonbinary people talk about similarly deeply rooted ATM or exorsexism in these spaces. So the criticism of these spaces fails to be a genuine move towards community reflection and positive change, because people think a solution that only considers one part of the problem and ignores the rest will actually fix things. After all, writers like Serano never seem concerned with the erasure of trans men, NB/GQ people assigned female, or drag kings from LGBT spaces that aren't the "queer/trans" culture is describing. The history of erasure and anti-transmasculinity simply disappears from the picture; its simply natural when a space is all MTF spectrum people and the absence of trans men or drag kings or others on the FTM spectrum doesn't need to be interrogated, but when a space is primarily FTM spectrum people, its uniquely problematic.
As a final note: Serano, like so many people, does not see nonbinary people as nonbinary whether we like it or not. What I mean is, for some people its being an androgynous boygirl freak or kill yourself out of dysphoria. And naturally, those people are going to fight tooth and nail to dismantle the system that punishes us at every turn for making the choice to live as a freak instead of die normal.
We are never given that grace or understanding, though. We constantly have our identities and our political theory as nb/gq/gnc people reduced down to a shallow political choice to be academically critiqued, not something that people - including working class people (like Leslie Feinberg) and people of color (like Dr. Marquis Bey), like - are creating to survive and find strength despite the world we live in.
TL;DR Julia Serano heard some enben say "the binary is boring" and we've all been dealing with the fallout out for 2 decades. everyone read Emi Koyama The Transfeminist Manifesto and Racist Feminism at the National Women’s Studies Association
The thing that pisses me off is that there's actually a lot of potential in the term "subversivism", when defined as "when a bigot says that <marginalised group a> is better than <marginalised group b> based on an arbitrary idea of what's 'progressive'". The simplest example I have of it is this TERF tweet:
The premise is essentially that people have a moral duty to choose their gender identity based on an arbitrary criteria of what is most transgressive. There's so many strange assumptions and errors in that premise that deserve thorough analysis. And another important part of this is that the elevation of <marginalised group a> is often based in bigoted assumptions about <marginalised group a>. Like, as a nonbinary person I don't appreciate it when people imply that my identity is a political choice and not just something that I am.
But we don't get to have that conversation because Serano is only capable of theorising about why she is The Most Oppressed Person Ever, apparently! I also think there's an element of projection here too. Exclusionist binary trans people think that they are the most transgressive people in the queer community. So when nonbinary, non-dysphoric, gnc people etc. say "hello, we're also trans", exclusionist binary trans people project their intentions onto us and think we're vying for their crown or something lol. Because I've seen like 100 exclusionist binary trans people complaining about this but I can't name a single example of it actually happening.
And the worst part of it all is that she thought she wasn't clear enough about subversivism being about Nasty Nonbinarys harming the Trve Transsexual Womyn. So she renamed it from "subversivism" to "Compulsory Genderqueerness". Yes, as a reference to "compulsory heterosexuality". Julia Serano literally thinks that there is social pressure to be genderqueer, which is equivalent in magnitude to the social pressure to be heterosexual. And she's referenced it recently, so she seems to still believe this. If people gave a single fuck about nonbinary people, then saying that "Compulsory Genderqueerness" exists would have destroyed her credibility forever.
^^^ All of this, but perhaps especially this:
Exclusionist binary trans people think that they are the most transgressive people in the queer community. So when nonbinary, non-dysphoric, gnc people etc. say "hello, we're also trans", exclusionist binary trans people project their intentions onto us and think we're vying for their crown or something lol. Because I've seen like 100 exclusionist binary trans people complaining about this but I can't name a single example of it actually happening.
This is why it's hard to take Serano in good faith on subversivism to me. Because every other transmed or exclusionary binary trans person loves to go on and on about these exact subjects, how nonbinary people think we're better than them and how no blue haired theyfab could EVER be as socially transgressive as a binary passing feminine heterosexual trans woman (there are about 100 posts on Tumblr on this exact subject right now). Its a combination of the "I have to be the Main Character of Transness" projection, combined with people's internalized exorsexism being triggered by the idea of NB/GQ/GNC people being outspoken and politically active and actually criticizing the social structures that oppress us, which also oppress binary trans people but which they find some validation in appealing to so they take it as a personal attack.
