Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

In her latest book, Serano elaborates on arguments from her first book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, putting hard-won lessons about feminism, queer politics, and gender to good use in a sharp and accessible essay collection. Most of the essays orbit around the theme of exclusion; Serano investigates how feminist and queer movements have excluded to transgender women, feminine people, bisexuals, sex workers, and others. Analyzing that discrimination, she provides theoretical and conceptual solutions that draw on her own feminist activism. Her unique take on the nature-versus-nurture debate is refreshing for its candor and nuance, avoiding dogmatism on either side. Serano takes what she calls a “holistic approach to feminism,” saying such a view is responsive to all forms of discrimination without practicing the titular exclusion that the book inveighs against. While her denial of the existence of a “gender system” flies in the face of much social research, the book is an excellent primer on contemporary transfeminist thought. (Oct.)