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Having gotten my disclaimer out of the way:
I think Serano's primary point, that some (though I suspect she would say all) of the problems many have with transsexual women is a problem with valuing femininity, is spot on. This is reflected in the intense scrutiny heaped upon ts women over 'choosing' to embrace traits typically assigned to assigned-women (this is also reflected in the tension between some self-identified sex-positive feminists and some self-defined radical feminists, but there do appear to be orders of magnitude of difference in intensity between that conflict and acceptance of ts women).
I think her line of argument could benefit from a deeper power analysis, though; I'd suggest that the reason ts women are so closely examined, and targets of such deep suspicion, is because they're perceived as assigned-men, social recipients of relative assigned privilege, taking on assigned lesser privilege. There appears to be a cognitive dissonance around the concept of anyone intentionally moving from "more/better" to "less/worse" that combines with a deep structural suspicion of the positionality of that which is defined as 'feminine' that leads to the position so violently defended by MWMF, among others.
I don't think that intersectionality and queer theory are the natural enemies that Serano seems to suggest. From my perspective, there seems to be a fair amount of misunderstanding around the idea in queer theory that identity is contextual, performative, and socially created which leads many people to assume that the goal is to do away with identity. From the perspective of someone who struggles daily for the right to even begin to actualize their inner sense of self, I can see how "gender is a construct" can be (mis)construed as "gender is a lie" and then "the goal is to do away with (all) gender". But that's the problem with specious logic; if one accepts the premise, all other steps make perfect sense.
Speaking as one who partakes, often and deeply, of both queer and poststructural theory, I have always taken the motto "exploding the binary" to mean radically increasing the choices available, not reducing them. The only thing I could see that might be discarded would be the structural privilege of some positions at the expense or exclusion of others. If, however, one's sense of their own identity (in this case, gender) is dependent on power over or exclusion of others, then I'd say that part should be tossed aside, and the sooner the better. |
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