An informed, judicious, sensitive consideration of the falsehoods and hazards of contemporary trans activism.
How zealous activists have misrepresented biology and endangered women.
Joyce, a senior staff journalist at the Economist, provocatively challenges the now common assumption among progressives that, regarding social classifications, self-determination of gender identity ought to have priority over any underlying biological reality. Offering carefully researched analyses of the scientific view of human sexual dimorphism, the psychology of gender dysphoria, and the medical and personal tolls associated with transitioning, the author argues that a refusal to acknowledge biology has, among other injustices, caused enormous and unnecessary harm to many children and threatened safe spaces for women. Joyce explains how trans-rights ideologues have spread falsehoods about what contemporary research actually demonstrates about the immutability of sex and encouraged an egregiously one-sided public discourse. “When it comes to whether sex or gender identity should take precedence in law and everyday life,” writes the author, “the conflict has been treated as if only trans people are affected, and there has been no negotiation at all.” Joyce’s work is impressively logical, nuanced, and empathetic in restoring balance to such negotiations. Particularly astute is the author’s critique of how specialists in the West now typically counsel parents of children who present with gender dysphoria, often resorting to dubious or outright false assertions about how this disorder tends to proceed without medical intervention—or understating the risks of surgery or hormone therapies. Also excellent is her discussion of the practical and moral problems generated by an undiscriminating acceptance of trans women as women in single-sex spaces such as public bathrooms as well as in professional sports and the penal system. Furthermore, Joyce’s recommendations for how a just society might balance the rights of trans people with those of the rest of its members are profoundly compelling.
An informed, judicious, sensitive consideration of the falsehoods and hazards of contemporary trans activism.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-861-54372-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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