| Lots of MTW's/transwomen's claims to be feminist books are merely womanist and don't reveal a serious engagement of feminist gender studies. Riki Anne Wilchins is providing a transgender feminist political analysis of a good many things, including gender. The only objection I have to the text is the sexual self-disclosures that seem to violate the true integrity of the book. Where the queer sexual celebration of love works splendidly in Minnie Bruce Pratt's, "S/he," it feels like advertisement in Wilchins'. I'm left wanting more of Riki Anne doing her transfeminist political critiques of US culture(s) and re-readings of Foucault. A beyond the old-boy bastions of heteropatriarchy, is where I want her to go. In this revolutionary's work there's much motivation to be found for taking social action. This puts the text nearly in the league with Leslie Feinberg's "Transliberation." What is quite interesting to note is the trumping of Kate Bornstein's "Gender Outlaw," that this text ably achieves. The everyday outlaw gal seems old school, by contrast, and relegated to the discourse of transsexual auto-autobiography proselytzings, or the "All About Me" genre. "Read My Lips," is a refreshing "switch," so to speak with the pun intended, from the overdose in transgender literature of ever-repetitous gender-crossing sufferable self-disclosures. Finally, the transwriter's emphasis lands on the political, emphasizing the need for collective action. In this sense, it is remarkable. |
