Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity [Paperback]

Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 27, 2006

Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of “passing.” In a pass-fail situation, standards for acceptance may vary, but somebody always gets trampled on. This anthology seeks to eliminate the pressure to pass and thereby unearth the delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation that might create.
Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, has a history of editing anthologies based on brazen nonconformity and gender defiance. Mattilda sets out to ask the question, “What lies are people forced to tell in order to gain acceptance as 'real'.” The answers are as varied as the life experiences of the writers who tackle this urgent and essential topic.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There's an emerging new wave of sex and gender revolutionaries. Mattilda has performed the Herculean task of gathering all my favorite smart, irreverent, talented, fierce, funny, and fabulous people together in one place. I can't wait to see what happens once That's Revolting has been out there for a while." -- Kate Bornstein

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (November 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580051847
• ISBN-13: 978-1580051842
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Transgender

More About the Author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is most recently the editor of Why Are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), and the author of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). Mattilda is the editor of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and an expanded second edition of That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008). She's also the author of Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003), and the editor of Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004; now Routledge) and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (Haworth 2000; now Routledge).

Sycamore's first memoir, The End of San Francisco, will be published by City Lights in April 2013.

Mattilda's home page is mattildabernsteinsycamore.com, which includes a delicious blog.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A book every radical feminist and LGBTQI activist should read! September 8, 2007

By wildflowerboy

Format:Paperback

As a queer man who because of my politics, my class, and my weight always felt like an outsider among other queer men, this radical anthology on passing and not passing really resonated with me. Like Gloria Anzaldua's groundbreaking feminist classic, "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza", this book challenges us all to interrogate the gender, racial, and sexual orientation dichotomies that so confine us. By exploring the contradictions, ambiguities, and complexities of our individual and collective selves, this liberatory book encourages readers to move beyond identity politics and discover new frontiers. Whether you are a lesbian-identified gay man like myself, or a heterosexual queer, or a multiracial transgendered individual, or a white person of color, this fascinating book will help you embrace your multiplicities and live outside of the binary system. Activists who have read and enjoyed Mattilda's earlier anthology, "That's Revolting!" will not be disappointed with this book.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars less like jane, more like shaw December 22, 2006

By Jane G. Trimble

Format:Paperback

buy a copy of this book for yourself and any person you know that isnt simple minded. The other day i went out and bought two copies, one for me, and one for that kind of person, and both of us love it. Though i am not done yet, this book is one of my favorite non-fiction that i have read this year. Matt Bernstein Sycamore does not pretend to be an absolute authority on the topics of passing/not passing, and niether do any of the contributors, but they all hand down a great amount of knowledge to the reader about what it is like to grow up as an Okie, in a homohop group, someone who is into masochism, a disabled lesbian, and so on.

before coming across this book, i had never put much thought into the topics of passing and how they touch my life and others, and like Sycamores other books, this one definatly opened my eyes wider than before.

With Nobody Passes, Sycamore gives us a book with topics that aren't focused in on by the mainstream, and the underground.

Mattilda's past books have changed my life and how i look at things, and this one is already starting too, so i HIGHLY suggest picking this up and giving it a read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Classic, Having Passed the Test of Time March 4, 2008

By Kevin Killian HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

Many months have gone by since the publication of this handsome and groundbreaking anthology, and is is time to declare it a true classic, having passed the test of time, the test truly exacting, the test that makes sense. The articles are still as timely and fresh as the day they were written. On the topic of passing, Mattilda (a/k/a Matt Bernstein Sycamore) is often eloquent, while stretching the topic into unexpected places to such a degree that the often elastic word comes to have little or no connection with the activity it once used to denote. In a way, this book is a more progressive and activist sequel to Brooke Kroeger's standard-bearing study PASSING: WHEN PEOPLE CAN"T BE WHO THEY ARE. "Passing"---the search to be what you're not---has gotten a bad press over the years, and Kroeger's book was one of the first to make us challenge our assumptions regarding this taboo topic.

In a similar vein, Mattilda assembles a cross section of profiles of young contemporary Americans, supplementing extensive interviews with expert comment. In the background of NOBODY PASSES we experience, as though a shadow had crossed the sun, the tragic tales of "passing" as that of Brandon Teena, the drifter whose murder became the basis for the film "Boys Don't Cry." Mattilda's book urges to ask the question, Aren't we all "passing" in one way or another? She musters scholarly and theoretical sources to support her speculations on identity and authenticity, and even dares to ask, why are we doing this? What market are we being offered up to satisfy?

Why is eros shaped the way it is? Why do some pass the test (the other test, not the test of time) and others fail, condemned into a limbo of "quirky" and deprived of the rights accorded other citizens with more money. Gender reassignment is just one way in which the staus quo is seized with a desire to smooth every bump away. Other prejudices must be battled daily. Some of the writers aren't as skilled as others, but that's just a fact of life and it doesn't mean they don't have fascinating things to say. "We're jaded, shaded, judged every day by everyone else's eyes, given pass or fail," writes Jen Cross, "a glance over, an examination." Unlearning oneself may be the only way out, that, and organized mass action. Your identity may not be the same as mine, but you will learn to respect mine, and your own, after you read through the challenging and controversial essays in this book.