Customer Reviews

Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

As the straight as-yet-not-ex-wife of a transvestite man, I am trying to find readings to help me explain my situation to myself, as well as to friends or relatives. _Read My Lips_ is a serious book not written with the affectation that seems to afflict many male-to-female writers. While I still don't share the author's belief that all gender classification is oppressive, Riki does a good job explaining why some people do. I was particularly taken with her understanding that being female in this society is not all sweetness and makeup, and her willingness to point out the ways all the different kinds of gender outlaws she has encountered oppress one another. Not recommended as the first book to give your elderly mother or father; some familiarity with the rhetoric of feminism and liberation is helpful.

I love this book, which adds to the burgeoning collection of work by transgender theorists on their lives and critical perceptions about them. As a fellow Foucault junkie, I like the way that Riki Ann has factored the instability of bodies and truth into this work. As a gay male in a women's studies programme that is very open to transgender theory, I welcome and value Riki's work as a contribution. Rest assured, the other tribes within the queer nation want to listen to what you have to say.Riki, please write something else, soon!

If you're sick and tired of academic treatises on gender equality, read this book - it's a breath of fresh air. Wilchins raises many provocative questions, and, even better, has witty, wise and brilliantly articulate answers for them. Her analysis of the limitations of mainstream feminist and lesbigay movements complements Urvashi Vaid's Virtual Equality beautifully.

Part autobiography, part feminist theory, part humor, Riki Anne Wilchins' book has brought the dialogue on gender up to date. The female to male transsexual perspective is not as prominent as it ought to be, Riki admits, and, yes, there is a dose of transexual angst. But it is delivered with humor, at times with an intense and graphic sincerity. The last chapter is a chronology of documented hate crimes against transsexuals, and it underscores the urgency with which Riki is questioning language and gender exclusion. The question is not "How to judge who is Woman or Man?", but "Why should anyone have the power to judge at all?" How can there be a genderqueer dialogue, if the language itself is heterosexual?

These forays into semiotics are interspersed with personal anecdotes and musings on the range of gender performance she has encountered as part of a growing "Transexual Menace" movement. They end with an introspective three person sex scene that runs for an entire chapter. How better to illustrate the true language of the genderqueer?

Lots of MTW's/transwomen's claims to be feminist books are merely womanist and don't reveal a serious engagement of feminist gender studies. Riki Anne Wilchins is providing a transgender feminist political analysis of a good many things, including gender. The only objection I have to the text is the sexual self-disclosures that seem to violate the true integrity of the book. Where the queer sexual celebration of love works splendidly in Minnie Bruce Pratt's, "S/he," it feels like advertisement in Wilchins'.

I'm left wanting more of Riki Anne doing her transfeminist political critiques of US culture(s) and re-readings of Foucault. A beyond the old-boy bastions of heteropatriarchy, is where I want her to go. In this revolutionary's work there's much motivation to be found for taking social action. This puts the text nearly in the league with Leslie Feinberg's "Transliberation." What is quite interesting to note is the trumping of Kate Bornstein's "Gender Outlaw," that this text ably achieves. The everyday outlaw gal seems old school, by contrast, and relegated to the discourse of transsexual auto-autobiography proselytzings, or the "All About Me" genre. "Read My Lips," is a refreshing "switch," so to speak with the pun intended, from the overdose in transgender literature of ever-repetitous gender-crossing sufferable self-disclosures. Finally, the transwriter's emphasis lands on the political, emphasizing the need for collective action. In this sense, it is remarkable.

Knowing Riki is a blessing. Riki signed my book and said at the time of doing so there was a lot of me in there. As an intersexed person that had just begun to read the book I had my reservations however we both see gender issues in a similiar fashion, this I already knew. The further I got into the book the more I begun to understand that Riki truly understands what people are all about. While her book is part autobiography and part gender/fem theory it allows those with an open mind to share a fresh perspective of just how all theis 'gender stuff' impacts Everyone! Truly a wonderful book.

I highly suggest Riki Wilchins! She gives great insight into the world of being genderqueer. Funny, insightful, and thought provoking!

I read this book hoping to be empowered by a transgender rights leader. Rikki Wilchins is the founder and president of Gender pac. The book was a total disapointment. Wilchin's bio was not moving at all. The book was filled with graphic sex talk about Wilchin's artifical vagina. She talks about workshops where biological women touch her genitals. The book is vulgar and could make more people have hatred for the transgenderd. A total waste of time.