Read, Shake, Appreciate #9
Welcome to Read, Shake, Appreciate! This is your fortnightly round-up of words that made me feel inspired, songs that made me shake my ass, and people who I think deserve some spotlight.
This week I’m reading:
The Transgender Issue, An Argument For Justice by Shon Faye
At the risk of sounding like a British dad, this book does exactly what it says on the tin. Shon Faye states the case for trans liberation with searing clarity and unrelenting focus. Covering all the most urgent bases – from the failures of the medical establishment, to policing, class inequalities and anti-trans feminism. Faye proves her point without a single stutter: that the mainstream conversation on “the transgender issue” is the wrong conversation. All it does is further marginalise and stigmatise trans people, and ultimately, harms all of us who are invested in liberation from patriarchal norms.
I’d especially recommend this book to anyone who’s been involved in a lot of online trans activist spaces and wants to get beyond the one-liners, or anyone who regularly has to defend their support of trans liberation to people who don’t get it yet. Or just… Anyone. Here’s a brilliant excerpt from the introduction:
The media agenda with respect to ‘the transgender issue’ is often cynical and unhelpful to the cause of trans justice and liberation. Media coverage of the trans community rarely seems to be driven by a desire to inform and educate the public about the actual issues and challenges facing a group who – as all evidence indicates – are likely to experience severe discrimination throughout their lives. Today, the typical news item on trans people features a debate between a trans advocate on one side and a person with ‘concerns’ on the other – as if both parties are equally affected by the discussion. As trans people face a broken healthcare system – which in turn leaves them with a desperate lack of support both with their gender and the mental health impacts of the all-too-commonly associated problems of family rejection, bullying, homelessness and unemployment – trans people with any kind of platform or access have tried to focus media reporting on these issues, to no avail. Instead, we are invited on television to debate whether trans people should be allowed to use public toilets. Trans people have been dehumanized, reduced to a talking point or conceptual problem: an ‘issue’ to be discussed and debated endlessly. It turns out that when the media want to talk about trans issues, it means they want to talk about their issues with us, not the challenges facing us.
This week I’m shaking to:
All About U by Rai-Elle
Best listened to first thing in the morning to banish all self-doubt and get your mind really right.
This week I’m appreciating:
I think I’ve been following Leah for at least 5 years now, and she remains one of the most consistent, creative and colourful people on my timeline. I love that she never wavers from her mission of empowering her community (especially other fat, Black Muslim women) to know their worth, live their best lives and be fiercely authentic along the way. Everyone needs a bit of Leah V in their life.