A blog about Quakerism, transgender identity, and books. A lot of books.

Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex is about the relationship between butchness, transmasculinity, and the people who are against these forms of self-expression. It was published in 2021. Four years later, the political climate in the UK that it describes has materially changed, but the conflicts that Finn Mackay describes haven’t really. I think that it is as relevant now as it was when it was written: Mackay writes lucidly about the nature of the gender critical movement in a way that I feel is quite unique. They are able to do this analysis because of their deep understanding of radical feminist writing. Mackay’s project with this book is a rehabilitative one. They want radical feminism to stop being associated solely with its trans-exclusionary form, and they want to draw a line between belonging to gender critical communities and belonging to radical feminist communities–not because one excludes the other but because they are not necessarily the same thing. This is very personal for Mackay: they have identified with radical feminism since their teens and have what I would describe as a complex relationship to gender. In the book, they say that they identify as a queer butch, and politically identify as a woman. In a 2022 article, they described themselves as “a queer butch, or transmasc, identifying with much in the trans-with-an-asterisk label.” For this reason I’ve decided not to really pass judgement on whether this book is intended to be read as a ‘butch book’ or a ’transmasculine book’ and instead work with the book’s premise that these identities are very much linked.

I really liked Body Problems: What Intersex Priest Sally Gross Teaches Us About Embodiment, Justice, and Belonging by M. Wolff. I read it for the first time in early September, and I left a short review on StoryGraph at the time in part to record my immediate thoughts and in part because I thought that leaving a review might help other people to find the book. It was a sacrifice to the almighty algorithm. The purpose of this review is different. I assume some people who read this review will not have heard of this book before, but others will have heard of the book and are wondering whether or not they should read it, or if it is relevant to their field of interest. So I will do my best to summarise what this book is about and what I think makes it worthwhile.

In her 2020 book Hatred: Understanding our Most Dangerous Emotion, Berit Brogaard presents a complex but not comprehensive analysis of the emotion of hatred.

Hi - my name is Clark (he/him). I started this blog to have a space to write about Quakerism, transgender identity, and topics that I think intersect with one or both of those things. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books on a variety of topics that I would like to write reviews for in this context. I don’t write very quickly so I don’t know how often I’ll update this blog, but I’d like to aim for a post every month or so and see where that leaves me.