[JFB] in which I am kind of a bitch about trans lit (and/or cis people, or something)

[hermionesviolin]

So, last May or so, someone we'll call A. started a DEI bookclub at my work.

It has recently dwindled down to a Core Four of us showing up for discussion meetings (though there's about a dozen people in the Slack channel).  But about a week after the inauguration, A. posted a notice in the social channel on work Slack about our February (Black History Month) book and invited folks to come to the meeting, join the low-pressure Slack channel, whatever, if interested (since it felt like people might have more appetite for this sort of thing in This Current Climate). 

2 people joined the Slack channel, including someone we'll call O.

Two days later, Jan 31, I posted in the bookclub channel:

It's very me that now that we've picked what we're doing for February I'm thinking ahead to what we're gonna do for March. Back in December [when I had posted about month themes through June] I had said:

March: Women's History Month -- we could overlap this with letting [R.] nominate a slate of graphic novels, or with picking an Indigenous memoir (something [A]. would like at some point)

Do people have preferences?
Another option (given recent aggressive attacks on trans people) is to do a book by a trans woman (could be fiction or non-fiction) in March.

Based on the ensuing responses, on Feb 5, A. posted a poll:

What type of text/author do we want to focus on in March?

1. Memoior written by an indigenous woman
   
2. Text written by a trans woman
   
3. Include both options in the reading selection/ poll
   

Feb 11 (today), A. posted in the bookclub channel:

Okay, based on the poll, I'll include options representing both types of texts/ authors! Does anyone have any recommendations for books by a trans woman?

O replied:

I have two: either She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boyle or Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
I have read the first one and found it very poignant

My partner then got a flurry of messages from me as I spent time on Goodreads:

I have now learned that JFB also wrote a book called Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs and honestly I would be more interested to read that [than her famous transition memoir] and I don't even like dogs.  (Ob Jupiter Ascending caveat applies, obvs.)

Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

I had not realized she was such a prolific author.

From her GR bio:
> Her 2008 memoir, I'm Looking Through You, is about growing up in a haunted house. While trans issues form part of the exposition of the book, the primary focus of I'm Looking Through You is on what it means to be "haunted," and how we all seek to find peace with our various ghosts, both the supernatural and the all-too-human.

Again, ALSO MORE INTERESTING!

I also have opinions about how JFB's famous memoir is from 2003 -- so it's over 20 years old at this point. (The haunting book is 2008, as noted above, and the dog one is 2020.) There is value in classics, to be sure, but given how much Discourse has changed over the years, I would overall prefer to read more recent works. I am also just not interested in a standard Transition Memoir. (Not to be confused with what Casey Plett calls Gender Novels.) I recognize I am not a typical cis audience in this way. I'm on gender Tumblr way less than my genderqueer best friend is, and I get all my Gender Reveal podcast filtered through my trans partner, and yet -- I feel like I should make some sort of riff on the xkcd "average familiarity" comic here or something, but I am running out of steam for thinking/writing.