Transmissions From the Transgender Battleground

I will start each review with a plot summary. I will try not to give spoilers for future chapters. Then I will comment on the aspects of the story and characters that I find relevant to the gender discussion. This means that in addition to my initial listen to the whole book, I will be listening to each chapter two more times. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.  Summary of Chapter We are introduced to Reese, a 35 year old transsexual woman. Reese is on a ‘date’ with her “Cowboy”, a married man who is HIV+, a result of a previous affair with a different transwoman. While riding to pick up takeout, Reese thinks about her attraction to married men and the new sexual thrill she’s discovered by having sex with an HIV+ man. She compares the potential risk of contracting HIV to the possibility of pregnancy that women face. She has even taken to calling her PreP prescription ‘birth control’. Reese thinks about the fact that as a transwoman she can not have a baby, yet she desperately wants to

This isn't about being happy about being transgender, I'll save that for another time, but about whether or not one is allowed to be transgender and be happy with your life. Full disclosure: I am happy with my life. I have a career I want. I have a great boyfriend. I had a wonderful, supportive husband. I own a home. I have friends. I have a few too many cats. I've developed interests in new types of music. I've even learned that under the right circumstances I can enjoy watching a football game. And importantly, I'm comfortable in my body now, give or take the weight that I tend to loose and gain back every few years. But if you listen to the "trans community", all of that is impossible. I'm transgender and to be transgender means that you are oppressed. People hate/fear/mock you wherever you go. We face discrimination in employment, housing, relationships. People want to stop us from existing, Now I'm not going to say that none of those things ev

OK, don't shoot me, but I'm going to say something positive about "Detransition, Baby". At one point, a character refers to the current generation of transwomen as rampaging baby elephants. She goes into a longwinded explanation of groups of orphaned elephants that rain destruction, even on each other as a result of both their trauma and the fact that there are no adult elephants keeping them in line. This sounds pretty accurate from what I've seen of trans spaces, both in real life and especially online. Most of my online energy is spent on Twitter. But I've recently started looking at other spaces, specifically trans specific spaces. What I'm seeing is shocking. I'm not at all going to excuse bad behavior, but I think I'm starting to understand why it's flourishing. First, I keep forgetting that while a lot of platforms say they have age restrictions, children have and always will get around that. I still can't understand how Twitter can

I was introduced to the novel "Detransition, Baby" written by Torrey Peters, by a Twitter follower. This book is garnering critical and popular acclaim as an "Unforgettable portrait of three women". It has been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, which according to their website. "is an award celebrating and honouring fiction written by women" and "showcase the very best writing by women". The novel is unforgettable, but not in a good way. And I'm sorry, but if this is someone's idea of the "very best" writing done by women in 2020, I despair. This says nothing about whether or not Peters, a transwoman, should be considered for this award.  To be upfront, I downloaded the eBook version and listened to it as an audiobook. This would not be my preferred way to experience a book, but it was the best way I felt I could get through it. I don't consider the writing to be good. The chapters are overly long. The narrat

 "If transwomen want to be women, why do so many appear to hate women?" I see this or similar sentiments often. While certainly not all transwomen "hate" women, the actions and especially the words of many can make it feel like we do, Go online and you will quickly find transwomen complaining about "cis lesbians" or "TERFs". Maybe they'll even tell you that transwomen are somehow better at being women then women are. It can feel jarring to think that people that claim to be women apparently have so little respect for the group they claim to be a part of. Where does this come from? In my opinion most of it stems from jealousy. Transwomen are jealous of women, to one degree or another.Yes, even me. The simple fact is that you are what we wish we were. We can go on and on about "trans pride" all we like, but the simple fact is that given the choice, we would have rather been born female. Of course this comes with stipulations a lot of

  Disclaimer: I used the term TERF in the title strictly to make a catchier headline. I no longer refer to women as TERFs except possibly in a sense of camaraderie. I have been called a TERF repeatedly, and know it to be a slur, as unfairly and inaccurately hurled at women as it is at me.   For the first few years of my transition, I held and repeated many to the same viewpoints of Trans Rights Activists. This included but was not limited to: Trans women are women, as a woman I’m entitled to use women’s spaces, trans women belong in women’s sports. I even believed that there were trans children and that they should be allowed to transition. Over time my views started to shift. I became more critical of these ideas and what I was being told by other trans people. My views shifted so much that I honestly forgot that I’d ever believed the original ones. Birth of a TRA They say that most people don’t know any transgender people. That holds true even if you are transgender yoursel