My life in books

Jill Lepore’s The Secret Life of Wonder Woman isn’t about Wonder Woman, so much as it is about the way that she became not just the perfect realisation of the lives and passions of the incredible group of people who were involved in the lives of her creators, but the crystalisation of the early suffragist, feminist, and to some degree socialist views of a generation of women and men who fought for women’s rights. Where Wonder Woman is Amazonian royalty, her creators were influenced by some of the fiercest voices for women,’s equality, suffrage, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom that existed during the early years of the 1900s. Where Wonder Woman fought for truth, one of her creators spent much of his professional life studying how to determine truth from deception in criminal cases, and determine the reliability of testimony in court.

Four people may be said to have taken a hand in creating the crucible in which Wonder Woman, the symbol of female power - who wears bracelets of iron to remind her and all Amazons that giving oneself into the power of a man means giving oneself into slavery - was shaped.

These four people, three women and one man, lived their own secret lives, and it was from their common experiences, beliefs, and philosophies that the idea of Wonder Woman took form. The feminist hero was a collaborative effort between William Moulton Marston and his three partners, Elizabeth Holloway, Olive Byrne, and Marjorie Huntley, all feminists, suffragists and free love radicals like himself - a polyamorous family collective.

Marsdon was a professor of philosophy and psychology, the two fields not being seen as particularly different at the time, who focused on the psychology and physiology of emotion, observation, and deception in his research. He was, with much input from his long-time partner and colleague, the inventor of the lie detector machine.

Something else he shared with his partner Elizabeth Holloway was a lifelong commitment to feminism, whom he met when they were both in grade school. Neither seems to have ever thought seriously about a future without the other, though both were often to be found in circles that approved of female emancipation and free love. Holloway, like Marsden, spent much of her early adult life in study, beginning her university education at Mount Holyoke, a hotbed of feminism and suffragette agitation, and earning both an MA from Radcyffe and a law degree.

Olive Byrne, who lived with the family in the role of nanny to the Marsdon children - hers and Holloway’s - was the one with the strongest ties to radical feminism. Her mother, Ethyl Byrne, sister of Margaret Sanger, was a suffragist, birth control advocate and socialist, who nearly died in prison in a well publicised hunger strike. Even when Sanger compromised with eugenicists and conservatives to get her arguments for birth control mainstreamed, Byrne remained a free love radical socialist, and Olive had much of her uncompromising spirit. Olive met Marsdon, several years her senior, when she took a course in experimental psychology with him at Tutfs, where she was majoring in English. She later became his research assistant and at some point his lover.

Marjorie Huntley was perhaps the most open-minded of the household, and more of an intermittent member of the household, the eccentric aunt who wanders off but keeps her home base with the rest of the family. Through Huntley’s radical and mystical ideas and connections, Marsdon, Holoway and Byrne became involved in a new age mix of feminism, bondage, free love and theosophy, a cult of female superiority through submission, that is frankly not particularly coherent in its principles and may have been a way for the four people involved to give themselves justification for the kind of relationships and family they wanted despite its extreme variance from not just convention, but some of the more established radical ways of organising sexual relationships currently being explored.

Marston wanted his wife and his lovers - all of them strong, intelligent women not easily manipulated - without having to work hard at it, and he wanted relationships where he could explore his interest in domination and submission. Holloway wanted Marston, but she also wanted to be both professional woman and mother in a world where one woman doing both was hard to imagine. Byrne wanted Marston, and after a childhood of insecurity, with mothers and aunts protesting and organising, being in prison, politically active, and dropping Olive off wherever someone could take care of her, wanted a committed family, and Huntley wanted lovers she could live out her unusual beliefs and bondage fantasies with. Some evidence from the letters and personal remembrances of surviving family members suggests that most if not all of them were at least open to the idea of bisexuality. With Marsdon as the nexus, they created an intentional family.

Despite his credentials, intelligence and charisma, Marsdon was the sort of person who was constantly getting involved in situations that seemed at best not well thought-out or unreasonably self-promoting and at worst vaguely unethical. Instead of rising in the ranks of academia, he slowly dropped, and soon was unable to keep a professional appointment. He tried and failed in a number of business ventures. Ultimately, he proved utterly incapable of supporting his family in any normal occupation. The household of three, sometimes four adults, and four children, was primarily supported by Holloway, with occasional lecturing fees from Marston and some money from Byrne’s writing as a regular contributor to Family Circle. The family made up its own amusements, many of which involved writing and drawing of comics - then in their infancy - by the children.

As Lepore describes the household at this point, “The kids read the comics. Holloway earned the money. Huntley burned incense in the attic. Olive took care of everyone, stealing time to write for Family Circle. And William Moulton Marston, the last of the Moultons of Moulton Castle, the lie detector who declared feminine rule a fact, was petted and indulged. He’d fume and he’d storm and he’d holler, and the women would whisper to the children, ‘It’s best to ignore him.’ “

In 1938, Olive Byrne’s brother, Jack Burns, who had been working in pulp publishing (and tried but failed to get Marsden an ‘in’ to pulp fiction writing), started a comics line that featured strong women like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Amazonia of the North in his new product, Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics. Superman and Batman had become icons for Maxwell Charles Gaines’ comic lines, but no one else was writing female heroes. As comics became more popular, the also received criticism for their violence and sexuality and its effect on children. After Olive Byrne wrote one of her ‘ask the psychiatrist’ articles for Family Circle in which Marsden was strongly approving of comics as long as they never showed successful murder or torture - trust bondage enthusiast Marsden to approve of stories of women tied up but rescued before anything bad can happen - Gaines hired him as a consultant. And Marsden convinced Gaines to introduce a new superhero - and thus, after development work in the Marsden household and the DC comics offices, Wonder Woman was born. Marsden wrote the story, and handed it over with the warning that none of the feminism was to be altered. It wasn’t, though there was opposition from many corners during the comic’s early years. Wonder Woman was a popular success, but its enemies were powerful, and there were many people, including some of those who later worked for Gaines at DC Comics after Marston contracted polio and became less able to be involved in the production of the comic, who rejected not just the comics in general, with their violence and crime, but Wonder Woman’s obvious feminism and rejection of traditional female roles.

And what about the bondage? At one level, they were using a visual language of woman in chains familiar to anyone who had lived through the era of women’s suffrage and extending it to include all women’s struggles. They were also putting into images their own family mythologies about the need for women to submit in order to gain full superiority. And they were playing out their family dynamics in public.

The Marsden family was a unique environment from which a genre-changing comic emerged, but there’s no hiding the strange dynamics and ethical choices here - and I’m not talking about either polyamory or bondage. First, there’s the obsession with lie detection, which strikes me as a consequence of the hidden lives and connections among these four people. Then, there’s the overwhelming focus on self promotion, and promotion of Marsden’s projects. And the utter lack of professional ethics. Holloway advances Marsden’s chances to write for the Encyclopedia Britannica without disclosing their relationship; Olive praises his psychiatric gifts and his projects without disclosure either, and even - before it’s known that he created Wonder Woman - solicits his advice to concerned parents about comic for their kids. Their authorial interrelationships are intricate, covert, and unethical.

And, yet, for all their flaws, these four people encapsulated a generation’s need for change, for freedom, for women’s independence and created a feminist icon that still resonates today, despite all attempts to diminish it.

Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote are performers, long-time creative partners whose shows are a mix of comedy, music and other media. They are also both trans, and it was inevitable that they would eventually develop - with contributions from a new partner, Clyde Petersen, also trans - a performance that came out of their experiences. The show they developed, called Gender Failure, has now become the basis of a book by the same name.

Gender Failure is not an easy book to describe. Its themes, though, are highly relevant to the current revolution in understanding gender. This is an exploration of growing up assigned female when you are not, about feeling a failure at being a girl because you don’t want to do the same things, about feeling vaguely wrong. It’s about slowly working out who you really are and what you want to do about it. It’s about the way society treats people who are gender non-conforming or non-binary or who don’t fit into the two standard boxes for gender identity and presentation. It’s about gender dysphoria, feeling that parts of your body, the parts we associate with gender, aren’t right, aren’t really a part of you the way your foot or your shoulder is. It’s about realising that human experience transcends the so-called gender binary and that locking ourselves into boxes that prescribe not just a binary of genitals and bodies, but of behaviours and identities, limits us all.

As we learn through a series of interwoven autobiographical essays, alternating between the experiences of the two authors around gender, both Coyote and Spoon have tried out several labels, checked out several gender identity boxes, before separately coming to identify as non-binary. Both have at times chosen a style of gender presentation that tends toward masculine. By the photos included in the book, Coyote in particular reads as butch, and acknowledges that this remains a part of their identity. Neither fits exactly into one of those gendered boxes, however, even the expanded set. But society insists that even if you are gender-non-conforming, you have to do it in the right way to get the body you feel you should be in. As Coyote says, taking about their decision to have top surgery:

“In British Columbia, the province in Canada where I live, this surgery is covered by our health care system, provided you qualify. And by qualify, they mean be diagnosed. They, being the government. The government will pay for you to get fixed, but only if they decide you are broken in the right way. The other they being, in this case, the medical establishment. Before the bureaucrats can sign off on the form and send it to the surgeon, a psychologist and a psychiatrist must first decide if they believe me that I am who I say I am. In order to do this, I must fill out a long multiple-choice questionnaire, which the psychologist that my doctor referred me to will read through and assess, and then refer me to a psychiatrist for a proper diagnosis. Because someone who is trained in this stuff has to sign off that I do in fact have a bona fide gender identity disorder, but that someone cannot be me, because I am not qualified. And by gender identity disorder, they all mean that you want to be a man. Or a woman, as the case may be. It is not enough to just feel that you are not a woman or a man. You must want to be not the box that they have all previously put you in. There is no box to check for not wanting a box at all. No one knows how to fix that.”

Spoon comments on their own first realisation of the possibility of not having to identify as male despite rejecting their assigned sex:

“What would it mean not to be a man or a woman? Over the years I had learned not to think of people’s assigned sexes as their genders, but I had expected others to place themselves at least conceptually on one side of the gender binary. I started to meet a lot more people who went by the “they” pronoun. Most people in the queer community around me didn’t have any difficulty using it. In a space where non-binary pronouns had been largely accepted, I began to see the benefits of using them. It dragged me out of an identity that had been previously cemented because I thought being a man was the only way to move away from my assigned sex. In this community I did not have to be male not to be female.”

By calling the show, and the book, Gender Failure, Coyote and Spoon openup the discussion on gender identity - in discussing their own experiences, initially labeling them as ‘failures’ at being girls, or women, but then also coming to realise that identifying as men is just as inauthentic for them, they call for the question - is it those who do not fit in the boxes who are failures, or is the binary system itself proving to be a failure as more and more people reject its rigidity and limited possibilities. As Spoon comments: “Now that I define my gender and sexuality as stories I tell and agree upon, I want to leave room for future possibilities that I have not been presented with yet. I am a gender failure. I failed at the gender binary, unable to find a place in being either a man or a woman with which I felt comfortable. But ultimately I believe that it’s the binary that fails to leave room for most people to write their own gender stories.”

Doing some reading of bell hooks, because it’s been a long time since I read Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, and because I have a few other books by her on hand that I’ve not yet read.

Hooks’ critique of second wave, white feminism, remains as trenchant today as it was when she first wrote about it in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Her analysis of the deadly flaws of liberal feminism - its focus on individual rights and achieving equality within the existing social and economic structure - has been borne out by the stalling of real progress on eliminating sexist and other forms of oppression over the last 30 years. As she notes in this foundational work, “The lack of any emphasis on domination is consistent with the liberal feminist belief that women can achieve equality with men of their class without challenging and changing the cultural basis of group oppression. It is this belief that negates the likelihood that the potential radicalism of liberal feminism will ever be realized.”

While some of her analysis is specific to the time, so much of what she writes here is still relevant, particularly when she looks at white liberal/bourgeois feminism and its failures to embrace a struggle against all forms of domination and oppression, settling for an increased degree of social and economic equality between white women and white men.

“Many feminist radicals now know that neither a feminism that focuses on woman as an autonomous human being worthy of personal freedom nor one that focuses on the attainment of equality of opportunity with men can rid society of sexism and male domination. Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

Hooks unabashedly connects oppression to capitalism, demanding that feminism address the structural inequalities that come from an exploitative economic system as well as the oppressions based in gender and race. She calls for a change in values, a new conception of power that does not include domination over others, and predicts - sadly, with pinpoint accuracy - that a feminism that seeks equality for women within the existing social and economic structure is a feminism that will fail.

“Before women can work to reconstruct society we must reject the notion that obtaining power in the existing social structure will necessarily advance feminist struggle to end sexist oppression. It may allow numbers of women to gain greater material privilege, control over their destiny, and the destiny of others, all of which are important goals. It will not end male domination as a system. The suggestion that women must obtain power before they can effectively resist sexism is rooted in the false assumption that women have no power. Women, even the most oppressed among us, do exercise some power. These powers can be used to advance feminist struggle. Forms of power held by exploited and oppressed groups are described in Elizabeth Janeway's important work Powers of the Weak. One of the most significant forms of power held by the weak is ‘the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful.’ Janeway calls this the ‘ordered use of the power to disbelieve.’ “

Hooks also looks at the relationship between domination and violence, in the context of the home and family, in social interactions, and in imperialism and war. She reminds us that violence is not inherently male, rather, that a society in which men are assumed to be dominant over women leads to male violence against women, just as other firms of domination and oppression lead to white violence against people of colour, and imperialist violence against the nations of the global south.

In the end, hooks is reaching toward the future of the feminist movement in this treatise, examining the ways in which feminist movements had taken wrong turns, and looking at what would be needed to keep feminism vital and forward-moving as an ideology and as a movement.

“To move beyond the stage of feminist rebellion, to move past the impasse that characterizes contemporary feminist movement, women must recognize the need for reorganization. Without dismissing the positive dimensions of feminist movement up to this point, we need to accept that there was never a strategy on the part of feminist organizers and participants to build mass awareness of the need for feminist movement through political education. Such a strategy is needed if feminism is to be a political movement impacting on society as a whole in a revolutionary and transformative way. We also need to face the fact that many of the dilemmas facing feminist movement today were created by bourgeois women who shaped the movement in ways that served their opportunistic class interests. We must now work to change its direction so that women of all classes can see that their interest in ending sexist oppression is served by feminist movement.”

She continues: “To build a mass-based feminist movement, we need to have a liberatory ideology that can be shared with everyone. That revolutionary ideology can be created only if the experiences of people on the margin who suffer sexist oppression and other forms of group oppression are understood, addressed, and incorporated. They must participate in feminist movement as makers of theory and as leaders of action. In past feminist practice, we have been satisfied with relying on self-appointed individuals, some of whom are more concerned about exercising authority and power than with communicating with people from various backgrounds and political perspectives. Such individuals do not choose to learn about collective female experience, but impose their own ideas and values. Leaders are needed, and should be individuals who acknowledge their relationship to the group and who are accountable to it. They should have the ability to show love and compassion, show this love through their actions, and be able to engage in successful dialogue.”

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman is Theodora Goss’ second novel featuring the members of the Athena Club - Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein, all the female creations of men of science, members of the secretive organisation the Société des Alchimistes. The monstrous gentlewomen have a new mission - a journey to the Continent, to rescue if they can another woman they feel is by nature a member of their unusual club, Lucinda Van Helsing - whose existence they have become aware if through Mary’s former governess, Mina Murray Harker (who readers of Victorian science fantasy will recognise as the bride of Jonathan Harker). But something is brewing among the English members of the Society, so the gentlewomen decide to divide their numbers - while Catherine hunts down the clues to what is happening in England, and Beatrice takes care of Diana, who Mary feels is still too young and impetuous to be left to her own devices, Mary and Justine (passing as a man) will go to Vienna. Thanks to Mary’s employer, the world’s only consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, Mary and Justine will have help once they reach Vienna, as Holmes has armed them with a letter of introduction to a well-positioned woman of society, the widow Irene Norton, née Adler. As one might expect, this division of labour is rejected by Diana, who follows Mary and Justine, disguised as a young boy, and ultimately proves to be as essential to the mission as the others.

Of course, with the names Harker and Van Helsing so prominent in the narrative, it’s no surprise that this Athena Club adventure deals with vampirism, drawing not only on the original Bram Stoker Dracula, but also on the less familiar novella by Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, as basis and inspiration for some of its key events.

The literary nerd in me loves what Goss is doing in these novels, playing with the tropes of the foundational literature of both the sf and mystery genres, integrating real cultural history (such as the pivotal role played by Sigmund Freud in the rescue of Lucinda Van Helsing, and ongoing references to the suffragette movement) into the fictional accounts of these “monstrous” women. Goss’ treatment of Irene Adler is a thing of beauty, and her mentorship of Mary, Justine and Diana - giving them an example of an intelligent, accomplished woman fully the equal of any man and prepared to work outside of convention and the law to achieve her goals - is a delight to read.

The novel is written in the same style as the first, largely a standard narrative, but interrupted at regular intervals by conversations after the fact among the members of the Athena Club, in a kind of meta-narrative that is occurring after the fact, back at home, as Catherine reads her account of their adventures to the others and they discuss what really happened, and how Catherine has portrayed them. This technique adds to our understanding of the characters and their relationships, and provides just enough release of tension to reassure us that our heroines will survive, without giving away too much of the story in advance.

The story ends on a cliff-hanger - while the main plot, the rescue of Lucinda and the confrontation with the Société des Alchimistes - is brought to a conclusion in one case, and a suitable resting point in the other, other concerns which had seemed peripheral to the narrative suddenly take prominence, and suggest the shape of the next novel, which I most eagerly look forward to.

I have not read much on trans history, theory and activism. I’ve read Feinberg and Bornstein, but in general, this is an area where I feel a real need to learn more, to widen my perspectives and understanding. I approach the topic from an absolute conviction that trans men are men, trans women are women, trans non-binary folk are non-binary folk, and that in everyday circumstances, the question of one’s being trans or cis is relevant for health and medical issues and otherwise is no one’s damn business. But it’s important to me to learn from trans folk what they want me, as a cis person, to know, and so I’m reading more theory and lived experience by trans folk.

Julia Serano’s book, Excluded: Making Feminism and Queer Movements More Inclusive, seemed an obvious place to start. I’m a feminist, and queer, and have long been aware that trans folk have not been fully included in these activist spaces. And as a feminist and a queer person who has cis privilege, it’s my responsibility to understand why that’s happening and how to change it.

In her Introduction to the book, Serano briefly discusses the ways that transgender folk are excluded, noting that “... they are all steeped in sexism—in each case, exclusion is based on the premise that certain ways of being gendered or sexual are more legitimate, natural, or righteous than others.” She goes on to state: “... I believe that sexism-based exclusion within feminist and queer circles stems primarily from a handful of foundational, albeit incorrect, assumptions that we routinely make about gender and sexuality, and about sexism and marginalization. These false assumptions infect our theories, our activism, our organizations, and our communities. And they enable us to vigorously protest certain forms of sexism (especially sexisms that we personally face!) while simultaneously ignoring and/or perpetuating other forms of sexism. In short, the way we describe and set out to challenge sexism is irreparably broken. My main purpose in writing this book is to highlight these fallacies in our theory and activism, and to offer new and more accurate ways of thinking about gender and sexism that will avoid the pitfalls of the past.”

The book takes the form of a series of essays in two sections, the first dealing with exclusion, particularly from the author’s perspective as a trans, bisexual, femme woman. The second section consists of essays “... that forward a new framework for thinking about gender, sexuality, sexism, and marginalization.”

Serano begins with the observation that transexualism and transgenderism are often critiqued in feminist theory because they, as some feminists argue, “reinforce the gender binary.” A significant body of feminist work sees the source of sexism in the existence of a ‘gender system’ and posits that the way to end sexism is by ‘moving beyond gender’ - these theorists see gender as wholly socially constructed. Serano calls this approach gender artifactualism, and identifies it as a perversion of the famous statement that the personal is political.

Gender artifactualism may be seen as a response to gender determinism, the belief that women and men are born with predetermined sex-specific behaviors and desires. The argument that gender roles are ‘programmed’ by one’s biology implies that the observed differences between men and women are both natural and immutable, and this is frequently used as a justification for a vast range of sexist attitudes and behaviours.

Serano sees both gender artifactualism and gender determinism as ‘homogenising’ - either one assumes that there can be little to no individual variation in gender and sexuality, because in either case, behaviours are programmed, either by biology or by socialisation. In truth, however, variety is widespread in these areas - there is a wide range of gender identifications, ways being gendered (or not), and ways of being sexual (or not). Looking at this variety, Serano argues instead that a theory that matches this reality must be holistic, and include multiple factors in understanding the genesis and nature of gender, including factirs associated with biology, environment, and socialisation.

“The holistic model that I am forwarding here begins with the recognition that while we may be biologically similar to one another in many ways, we are also the products of biological variation—nobody shares our unique genetic and physiological makeup. And while we may share the same culture, or may be subjected to the same social expectations and norms, we are also each uniquely socially situated—nobody shares our specific set of life experiences or environment. Therefore, while our shared biology and culture may create certain trends (e.g., a preponderance of typical genders and sexualities), we should also expect the variation in our biology and life experiences to help generate diversity in our genders and sexualities.”

She goes on to say that “Because gender and sexuality have many biological, social, and environmental inputs, they are not particularly malleable—in other words, changing one or a couple inputs would not likely result in a huge overall effect. This explains why most of us find that we cannot easily or purposefully change our genders and sexualities at the drop of a hat (despite some people’s claims that “gender is just performance” or that one can simply “pray away the gay”). Like our tastes in food, most of us experience our genders and sexualities to be profound, deeply felt, and resistant to change. Sure, sometimes people experience shifts in their gender or sexuality, just as our taste for certain foods may change over time. But when these shifts do occur, they are almost always inexplicable, unexpected, and sometimes even downright unwanted (at least at first). Such shifts might occur as a result of changes in some combination of our physiology, environment, and/or life experiences.”

Serano argues that, rather than locating the source of sexism and cissexism (and other forms of oppression based on identity) in a monolithic gender system, we need to see this too as a complex set of interactions derived from the existence of multiple marked states - that is to say, characteristics or behaviours which are noticed because they differ from what is assumed or expected.

“... unmarked/marked distinctions may arise from our own personal biases and expectations, or they may be culturally ordained. In either case, the process of marking a person or trait often occurs on an unconscious level, and therefore takes on an air of common sense: It just seems “natural” for us to focus our attention on people who we view as exceptional or different from us in some significant way.”

As Serano points out, reactions to marked states can be positive, negative, or neutral, but they define the marked state as both remarkable and questionable, in that we feel entitled to notice and comment on the marked state, and to ask questions about someone exhibiting a marked status. Marked traits which are seen negatively, or stigmatised, are often thought of as being suspicious, artificial, dubious, inauthentic, invalid, unnatural, exotic, or alien. The effect is often to dehumanise the people possessing the marked trait. For Serrano, the importance of understanding the distinctions between marked and unmarked states is that “... it appears to underlie all forms of sexism, as well as marginalization more generally. This is not to say that being marked is the same thing as, or necessarily leads to, being marginalized—as I alluded to in previous examples, we are just as capable of being indifferent to, or even impressed by, someone who is deemed marked as we are of invalidating them. But what is true is that the act of marking automatically creates a double standard, where certain traits are viewed and treated differently than others. This act of marking essentially divides the world up into two classes: those who have the trait in question (for whom meanings and value judgments will tend to “stick”), and those who do not (and who are therefore beyond reproach). These double standards provide the underlying architecture that enables sexism and marginalization.”

It is the existence of such double standards with respect to stigmatised marked traits that leads to marginalisation, as those exhibiting such traits are consistently seen and treated differently, in a multitude of ways. The fact that multiple double standards can be applied to a single marked trait, and that the same double standards can be applied to many different marked traits, results in the complex experiences of marginalisation reported by those exhibiting marked traits - being seen, for instance, as sometimes dangerous, sometimes exotic, sometimes ignored, sometimes to be pitied - but never to be seen as simply another individual human being.

“Thinking about sexism and marginalization in terms of myriad double standards implores us to challenge all double standards: those that are prevalent, and those that are rare; those that negatively impact us, and those that negatively impact others; those that we are currently aware of, as well as those that are currently unknown to us. Having such a mindset can make us more open to learning about new double standards when they are first described to us (rather than outright dismissing them because they do not fit into our worldview), and more mindful of the fact that we ourselves are fallible (as we may be unknowingly engaging in, or enforcing, certain double standards ourselves). Perhaps most importantly, thinking in terms of myriad double standards encourages humility, as it forces us to admit that there are many aspects of gender and sexism that we do not personally experience, and therefore cannot fully know about. For this reason, it would be conceited for us to project our fixed and limited perspective of the universe onto other people.”

Serano identifies three general types of double standards at work in marginalisation: universal assumptions, hierarchies, and stereotypes or attributions.

“When we talk about sexism and marginalization, we often talk about them in terms of some overarching ideology or ism that is prevalent in society. Isms are generally composed of the three types of double standards that I have discussed so far. For instance, traditional sexism (the overarching ideology) consists of a universal assumption (that maleness and masculinity are the norm), a hierarchy (that women are seen as less legitimate and important than men), and a slew of stereotypes and attributions.”

Having established the basic tenets of this theory of gender, and the processes of sexism and marginalisation, Serano goes on to propose a holistic approach to feminist as a means of combatting such marginalisation. She begins by defining holistic feminism as “...a wide-ranging movement to challenge all double standards based on sex, gender, and/or sexuality. Furthermore, this approach to feminism remains committed to intersectionality and working to challenge all forms of marginalization, rather than focusing solely on specific forms of sexism.”

Some of the tools or methodologies of a holistic approach to feminism, in Serano’s model, include:

Expecting heterogeneity - combatting the homogenising of marginalised groups that arises from stereotyping and universal assumptions by recognising that individuals within a marginalised group will differ in many ways;

Challenging gender entitlement - rejecting the societal expectation that people identify and express their genders in particular ways and the punitive response to those who do not follow social expectations, refusing to police the autonomous and consensual genders and sexualities of others; and

Self-examining desire and embracing ambivalence - examining our attractions (and lack of attractions) for indications of unacknowledged double standards, and understanding that sexual attractions and practices can have both empowering, positive, aspects, and disempowering, negative aspects.

Serano also stresses the importance of understanding the ways that invalidation is used as a technique against multiple marginalised groups - indeed, she notes that it is possible to identify a previously unrecognised marginalisation by observing that those who share in are invalidated in specific ways. There are many forms that invalidation can take, such as: suggesting mental incompetence; sexualising the marginalised group; attributions of immorality, danger, deceitful or manipulative behaviour; describing and treating the marginalised group as being unhealthy, sick, or diseased; seeing the marginalised group as anomalous, exotic, open to fetishisation or being an object of fascination or study; identification as unnatural, inauthentic, or fake.

This model of holistic feminism, and the theory of marked states and double standards that underlies it, appeals strongly to me. It recognises the multiplicity of marginalisations and invalidations that are at the root of any oppressive situation, and leaves room for differences and commonalities among marginalised groups to be acknowledged and incorporated into an ongoing life of activism. It allows for the identification of unacknowledged firms of marginalisation, and their inclusion in an activist framework. There’s much to consider here, and I’m now looking forward to reading more of Serano’s analysis and theoretical work, to see the development of this model.

Bitch Planet Volume 2: President Bitch (containing issues 6 through 10 of the comic series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick) continues to tell a brilliantly dystopic and uncomfortably violent story. As with the first volume, I can’t quite say I like or enjoy reading it, it’s too raw and too close to reality, in spirit if not in fact. It’s hard to read about women in prison for being insufficiently docile, and not hear the chants of ‘Lock her up’ heard at Trump rallies, or think of women of colour from Joanne Little to Sandra Bland and on and on, imprisoned, abused, raped, killed, in jails and prisons, or thousands of migrant women detained for the ‘crime’ of seeking refuge in the richest country in the world. Feminist dystopias are hard things to read if you happen to be a woman in this time.

But, on with the story. Volume One established the scene and set up a situation where former athlete Kamau agrees to lead a team of women inmates in the Metaton tournament that is a huge part of the authoritarian, patriarchal culture in which a place like Bitch Planet can exist. Volume 2 begins with a flashback telling the story of Bitch Planet inmate Meiko Maki, who was murdered during a Metaton practice session at the conclusion of Volume 1. In the present, multiple plot threads are advancing. Meiko’s father, Makoto Maki, an engineer, has been assigned the task of building a Metaton stadium on the Bitch Planet. He agrees, hoping to see his daughter - not knowing she is dead. Kamau has convinced a guard to get a map of the prison for her, and convinced that her sister is being held in a special cell. We, however, have seen that her sister Morowa, a trans woman, is being held in the general population in a special section with other trans women. Whitney, the official who offered Kamau the leadership of the Metaton tram, has been stripped of her position and imprisoned fir Meiko’s murder - and is now Kamau’s cellmate.

When Makoto is allowed a ‘virtual interview’ with Meiko, he realises something is very wrong, and uses his authority to get access to the prison controls, shut down the power and open all the cell doors. Kamau takes the opportunity to look for her sister, but instead, discovers that the mysterious unnamed prisoner in the special cell is an older black woman named Eleanor Doane, whom Kamau addresses as Madame President. The volume ends as revolution, both in the prison and on Earth begins.

There is a very raw, very real feeling to this narrative. It’s powerful, it is saying things that need to be said. It’s profoundly intersectional, and one of the things about it that is so very right is the way that it shows us that while sexism causes damage and injury to all women, it’s the multiply marginalised, black women, trans women, women who cannot conform to male-created standards of beauty, who suffer most. It acknowledges the reality that women of colour have always been more likely to be seen as transgressive and non-compliant, and be punished for it by the justice system, which has always operated for the benefit of the multiply privileged - those who are white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender and predominantly men.

I can hardly bear to read it, but I’m going to keep on doing so anyway. If you are interested, I urge you to read the individual comics, not the trade compilations, because of the excellent articles by feminist, anti-racist and trans activists and scholars. Bitch Planet is more than just a powerful feminist narrative, it’s an experience.

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, is a collection of work memorialising and expanding upon the significant contributions to social justice theory made by the women of the Combahee River Collective (CRC). Taylor’s stated intent in this volume is “an effort to reconnect the radical roots of Black feminist analysis and practice to contemporary organizing efforts” and “to show how these politics remain historically vibrant and relevant to the struggles of today.”

The Combahee River Collective, “a radical Black feminist organization formed in 1974 and named after Harriet Tubman’s 1853 raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed 750 enslaved people” formed in reaction to both the white feminist movement, and the civil rights movement. The women of the CRC - including Barbara Smith, her sister Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier - were painfully aware that white feminists were not paying attention to racism and the particular conditions experienced by the black woman in America; at the same time, they felt that a focus on racism alone was not a sufficient basis for critical analysis and action planning relevant to black women’s liberation.

While it would be some years yet before Kimberlé Crenshaw named and defined intersectionality, the CRC “...described oppressions as “interlocking” or happening “simultaneously,” thus creating new measures of oppression and inequality. In other words, Black women could not quantify their oppression only in terms of sexism or racism, or of homophobia experienced by Black lesbians. They were not ever a single category, but it was the merging or enmeshment of those identities that compounded how Black women experienced oppression.”

The CRC also introduced the concept of identity politics into radical social analysis, arguing that “...oppression on the basis of identity—whether it was racial, gender, class, or sexual orientation identity—was a source of political radicalization.” Furthermore, identity politics meant that “experiences of oppression, humiliations, and the indignities created by poverty, racism, and sexism opened Black women up to the possibility of radical and revolutionary politics” - it provided a point of entry for an oppressed group to work towards their own liberation. For the CRC, identity politics was connected to coalition building. They believed that different oppressed groups, in working together on the issues affecting the liberation of those oppressed groups, could effect real change. Identity politics allowed people to radicalise around their own oppression, identify the specific issues affecting their own conditions - and then join with other groups to address multiple issues together.

The CRC was a truly radical political movement, operating from a socialist base that acknowledged the importance of class in an understanding of the oppression of black women, and within a spirit of internationalism that declared solidarity with the “global movement of Black and Brown people united in struggle against the colonial, imperialist, and capitalist domination of the West, led by the United States.”

The first chapter of the book is, inevitably, a reprinting of The Combahee River Collective Statement, a historic document that sets out the results of the Collective’s analysis. They begin by stating:

“The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”

I remember reading, and being deeply affected by, the CRC Statement. I think it is an absolute necessity for any feminist or anti-racist activist to read it, and one of the things that delights me about Taylor’s book is that she has made the Statement readily available in print. If you are unfamiliar with it, there are also a few places where it can be found online, if you look for it. It is an important document, more so now than ever as we witness the failure of white feminism or socialist action or civil rights movements alone to radically transform our world to one in which true social justice is the rule, not the fervently hoped for, rare in practice exception.

The Statement is the heart of this book. What follows in the interviews conducted by Taylor with Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier and Alice Garza, and the comments of Barbara Ransby is the background, contextualisation, extension, and evolution of these essential ideas, presented to a new generation that can build on them to bring about real change, true liberation for all.

These interviews are powerful, thoughtful, often raw, always real, explorations of what it means to be a politically and economically radical black feminist. They are steeped in intersectionality, in the importance of seeing the indivisibility of multiple marked statuses. They are fearless in calling out both white supremacy and late-stage capitalism as poisonous ideologies that limit social justice. They are historically and immediately important.

It has been 40 years since the publication of the Combahee River Collective Statement, and it remains an important document in the body of theory that informs the broad social justice movement, and the specific Black feminist movement. In bringing together the statement and the voices of those who created it, and who have incorporated its ideas into their own movement, Taylor reminds us of its power and truth.

Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal, is a collection of tributes, homages, memories, essays and other writings in honour of this vastly influential, respected and beloved author. It follows in the vein of other recent collections honouring James Tiptree Jr, aka Alice Sheldon, and Samuel “Chip” Delany.

Alexandra Pierce says in her Introduction to the collection:

“This book collects some of the ways people relate and connect to Butler, with each section’s title a quote from a letter or essay within it. The first section, ‘Your work is a river I come home to’, focuses on how Butler has inspired people: in their work, in their lives. In the second, which uses a line from Butler’s own essay ‘Positive Obsessions’, authors reflect on systemic and current political issues that Butler either commented on or would have, were she still alive. ‘Love lingers in between dog-eared pages’ includes letters and essays mainly interested in Butler’s fiction—from Kindred to Xenogenesis to Fledgling—with reactions, arguments, and reflections on her work. Next, in ‘I am an Octavia E. Butler Scholar’, are letters from some of the Octavia E. Butler Scholars: Clarion and Clarion West students who received the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, set up by the Carl Brandon Society in Butler’s honour after her death. The following chapter fits neatly after the Clarion one: ‘Forget talent. There is only the work’. It features writers reflecting on how Butler influenced their writing through tutoring at Clarion or otherwise. The subsequent section, ‘I love you across oceans, across generations, across lives’ includes, broadly speaking, love letters. They recount ways in which Butler and her work changed something about the writers in situations as individual as the people describing them. The book is rounded out with a memorial that appeared in Science Fiction Studies in 2010, highlighting Butler’s many contributions to science fiction as well as examining how Butler has been studied. And we end with Octavia Butler’s own words, in an interview with Stephen W. Potts from 1996. It was important to us we allow Butler to speak for herself.”

Butler’s work has always been important to me; like so many others, I count her as one of my favourite authors, someone whose work has not only entertained but challenged and inspired me. One of the most important things to me about Butler’s work is how unapologetically political she is, in the broadest sense of examining existing power relations and social injustice, and imagining ways to survive, resist, oppose, change, create a more just and community-oriented world. That’s a feeling shared by many of those who contributed to this volume.

Mimi Mondal writes in her Introduction about the experience of editing this volume in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections, of being an immigrant from India, who had seen the country of her birth elect a “right-wing religious demagogue” in 2014.

“I remember staying curled up in bed way past daytime on November 8, trying to grasp for a reason to get up and finding none, absolutely none. My landlord at the time, an otherwise extremely active and optimistic gay man in his early fifties, was lying crumpled in the other bedroom. My mother, on the other end of a cross-continental phone call, was advising me to stay indoors, in case there was backlash in the streets. Where was I going to go now? What was the point of doing anything, writing anything, believing anything? Someone like me wasn’t wanted anywhere—not back at home, not even in this other country which had taken so much of my faith and love. Once again, I was back to being a number: the gunk that needed to be drained out of the swamp, denied visas to stay or work, turned back from airports, put on the other side of a wall, and made to pay for it too.

It was through this endless numbness that I walked into this project. I felt barely functional, but I took it up because I had read and loved more of Octavia’s work in the meantime, because I had never stopped feeling grateful for the scholarship, because I had to keep my brain and my hand going. I had been an editor before. Even on a really bad day when nothing else made sense, I could mechanically line-edit pages and pages of text. I did not expect this anthology to hold me together, make me cry tears of gratefulness, help me draw strength and hope, through the next few months as wave after wave of bad news kept hitting. I expected these letters to fondly reminisce about a favourite author whom some of the writers may have met, but I did not expect unrestrained conversation about politics, or avowals of continued resistance and solidarity. I expected to help create a tribute volume, something elegantly detached and intellectual that went well with the muted shades of libraries and halls of fame, but the letters in this anthology are alive, bleeding, screaming, urgent—in a way that reflects my own state of mind at these times.”

These are the things that Butler calls forth from us, the passions for justice, for resistance, for struggle, for speaking and writing and performing truth in the face of unbridled arrogance, privilege and power.

In essays and more personal narratives, writers such as Andrea Hairston, Nisi Shawl, Karen Lord, Katheen Kayembe, Rachel Swirsky, Steven Barnes and Nnedi Okorafor - to name only a few - discuss Butler’s work, and talk with passion about what Butler meant, and means, to them. In turn, their words help the reader to clarify and expand on what Butler and her work mean to us.

She was genius, and giant, and she left us such generous gifts.

Danielle L. McGuire’s book At The Dark End of the Street, subtitled Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, looks at the role of black women’s resistance to sexual violence at the hands of white men in the history of the civil rights movement. As she notes in her Introduction:

“And yet analyses of rape and sexualized violence play little or no role in most histories of the civil rights movement, which present it as a struggle between black and white men—the heroic leadership of Martin Luther King confronting intransigent white supremacists like “Bull” Connor. The real story—that the civil rights movement is also rooted in African-American women’s long struggle against sexual violence—has never before been written. The stories of black women who fought for bodily integrity and personal dignity hold profound truths about the sexualized violence that marked racial politics and African American lives during the modern civil rights movement. If we understand the role rape and sexual violence played in African Americans’ daily lives and within the larger freedom struggle, we have to reinterpret, if not rewrite, the history of the civil rights movement.”

In her landmark book, McGuire focuses on the history of black women and sexual violence in Montgomery, Alabama - the home of icon and activist Rosa Parks and in some ways the birthplace of the civil rights movement in the South - where in 1944, Recy Taylor’s speaking out about her rape made headlines and brought Parks, then a NAACP worker, to nearby Abbeville to investigate the case. Using Montgomery as a case study for her thesis, McGuire follows the stories of sexual violence and the response of the black community, particularly black women - but she makes it clear that Montgomery is hardly an anomaly, that such race-based sexual violence was and is endemic in America.

“Montgomery, Alabama, was not the only place in which attacks on black women fueled protests against white supremacy. Between 1940 and 1975, sexual violence and interracial rape became one crucial battleground upon which African Americans sought to destroy white supremacy and gain personal and political autonomy. Civil rights campaigns in Little Rock, Arkansas; Macon, Georgia; Tallahassee, Florida; Washington, North Carolina; Birmingham and Selma, Alabama; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and many other places had roots in organized resistance to sexual violence and appeals for protection of black womanhood.”

While her focus in examining black activism in response to sexual violence is on the harassment and rape of black women, uncounted numbers of whom were victims of white men who were never punished, McGuire does not ignore the way that accusations of gendered violence were used against black men, thousands of whom were falsely accused of offenses against white women and, if they escaped lynching, found it nearly impossible to convince the courts of their innocence.

However, her central narrative is clear in connecting the growing outrage at the numerous incidents of black women abducted and raped by white men with the impetus to activism. Years before the assault on Recy Taylor, the cause of the Scottsboro nine - nine black youths convicted of raping two white women - brought together black civil rights activists and white progressives to fight for justice; Taylor’s case galvanised protest and resulted in the formation of organisations whose activities would expand and persist.

Despite their best efforts, it proved impossible to win convictions against Taylor’s rapists, who either denied their involvement, or alleged that she was a known prostitute whom they had paid. But the movement went on to take up the cases of other black women, and to broadcast information about these assaults across the country.

Aside from entrenched racism and the belief that the rape of black women was not really a crime, the progressives and activists involved in fighting for equal justice faced serious opposition from another direction: the cold war fear of Communist ‘infiltrtion’ and McCarthyism. Many of those, white and black, who took up the cause of equal justice for blacks were, or had t one time been, involved in groups that the government had identified as communist. In some cases, so many members of civil rights organisations were also linked to socialist or communist groups, that the FBI considered them as Communist fronts. This led to their civil rights positions and actions being discounted as Russian propaganda intended to destabilise and discredit the U.S.

Yet on the other hand, the post-war era had seen many black veterans returning from the theatres in Europe and the Pacific, changed by their participation in the war against fascism. These former soldiers “...returned home with a new sense of pride and purpose and often led campaigns for citizenship rights, legal equality, and bodily integrity. In small towns and cities across the South, black veterans became the “shock troops” of an emerging civil rights movement.”

In the mythology of the civil rights movement, the spark is Rosa Park’s refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery bus. Parks is often portrayed as a woman who simply was too tired, and snapped one day. In reality, the organising had begun years before, around the far more complex issue of violence against blacks, and particularly sexual violence against black women. McGuire draws the connections between this focus and the bus protests. Most working black women could not afford cars; to get to their places of work - many were domestic workers who lived far from the homes of their employers - they had to ride the buses. But the indignities did not end at having to sit at the back of the bus. Black people were often subjected to verbal and physical assault for the slightest indication of disrespect. They could be required to pay at the front, then get off and board at the rear doors - unless the bus driver decided to drive off without them. Bus drivers sometimes beat black riders who sat in the wrong seats, or refused to get up and move further back, or get off if a seat was needed for a white person. The buses were a site of white violence toward blacks.

McGuire’s narrative of the Montgomery bus boycott, and other actions undertaken during the civil rights era to bring public pressure to bear on the rampant discrimination and racism of the Southern US, restore to its place the forgotten role of black women. Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat or defend herself in court; she was just the first woman with a sufficiently impeccable reputation to risk a national news event on. Much of the organising and fundraising during the boycott was done by women. Women organised car pools and drove cars. And in the thousands, women walked, or shared rides, rather than break the boycott, in the face of daiky threats and abuse. Women were charged and arrested for their roles in the boycott, but the media narrative focused on the male ministers, and above all, on the charismatic young Martin Luther King Jr. in making him the hero of the movement, the work of black women was pushed into shadows.

Women were active, organising, marching, working on voter registration, desegregating lunch counters and schools, their work and courage the backbone of the civil rights movement. Women like Jo Ann Robinson and Fannie Lou Hamer gave tirelessly of their energy and time in the movement. Like the men, they risked harassment, loss of employment, beatings, jail, destructions of property snd homes through vandalism and arson, and death. They also risked sexual intimidation, humiliation and rape.

McGuire spares the reader none of the details of the brutal acts that shored up white supremacy, the beatings, rapes, torturings, deliberate mutilations, and murders of black men, women and children for the slightest of imagined offences against the “proper order” of society, for being “uppity” or indeed for no reason at all other than the fear, insecurity and rage of white people. McGuire writes about the civil rights era, the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, but the reader cannot forget, as the horrifying images emerge from the page, that the violence continues.

No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters is a collection of Ursula Le Guin’s writings taken largely from her personal blog. I’d read most of them before, having been a follower of that blog from fairly early on. And being of the opinion that anything Le Guin chooses to write about is worth reading, even if it is only what she imagines her cat might like her to write about. Maybe even particularly that.

There will be no more blog posts. But reading them in a concentrated dose, in this volume, is like looking into the wise and imaginative mind of one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, and seeing what she does when she’s at home. Of course there is always the necessary distance between writer and reader. Le Guin knew well she was writing for an audience, even in this blog. But I like to think she knew she was writing for an audience that loved her and wanted to know some of the things about her that she was willing to share.

As Karen Joy Fowler remarks in the Introduction:

“What you will find in these pages here is a more casual Le Guin, a Le Guin at home. Some of the issues that have obsessed her throughout her career—the fatal model of growth capitalism; sisterhood and the ways in which it differs from the male fraternal; the denigration and misunderstandings of genre, science, and belief—continue to appear, but they’ve been sanded back to their absolute essentials. It is particularly pleasurable here to watch the lively way her mind works, and how a posting whose trappings initially seem merely sportive becomes deeply consequential.”

Le Guin’s topics range from the love her cat has of hunting beetles to the magnificent subversiveness inherent in the truth that lies beneath all speculative fiction, that “it doesn’t have to be the way it is.” In some ways, she has personified in her blog one of my favourite aphorisms, the one attributed to the Roman playwright Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) which says “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” All of that which is human, which can be apprehended by a human, is hers to explore and discuss.