Feminism Against Cisness

Emma Heaney is Clinical Assistant Professor of Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at New York University and the author of The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory.

“In this smart collection of essays, trans feminist scholars show us how cisness is constructed, imposed, naturalized, racialized, scientized, stabilized, policed, resisted, twisted, disputed, and refused. They remind us that the dominant fictions of gender sustain race, class, and colonial hierarchies, and they point us toward the solidarities we need in our troubled political moment.” - Joanne Meyerowitz, author of (How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States) “From the first sentence-‘Cisness is feminism’s counterrevolution’-this collection radically rewires our thinking, making visible the work that cisness has been doing all along. I would buy it just for Emma Heaney’s introduction, which gifts us ‘a theory of sexual difference without cisness.’ Happily, the rest of the volume, consisting of essays by field-defining thinkers, is equally groundbreaking. This collection is the most vital intervention in feminist/trans thought I have seen in a very long time.” - Paisley Currah, author of (Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity) "In this slim but significant volume, contributors disrupt normative narratives of assigned sex as determinative of sexed experience, with specific attention paid to intersections of racism, sexism and classism. It features outstanding essays by Marquis Bey, Grace Lavery, Jules Gill-Peterson and others." - Karla J. Strand (Ms.)

• Acknowledgments  ixIntroduction. Sexual Difference without Cisness / Emma Heaney  1I. Trans Politics1. On Trans Use of the Many Sojourner Truths / Cameron Awkward-Rich  372. 1970s Trans Feminism as Decolonial Praxis / Margaux L. Kristjansson and Emma Heaney  56II. Trans History3. Trans Feminine Histories, Piece by Piece, or, Vernacular Print and the Histories of Gender / Greta Lafleur  834. Denaturing Cisness, or, Toward Trans History as Method / Beans Velocci  108III. Trans History5. Two Senses of Gender Abolition: Gender as Accumulation Strategy / Kay Gabriel  1356. Faceless: Nonconfessions of a Gender / Marquis Bey  158IV. Anti-Trans Politics7. Assuaging the Anxious Matriarch: Social Conservatives, Radical Feminists, and Dark Money against Trans Rights / Joanna Wuest  1758. Caring for Trans Kids, Transnationally, or Against “Gender-Critical” Moms / Jules Gill-Peterson  1979. Generic Deductiveness: Reasoning as Mood in the Stoner Neo-Noir / Grace Lavery  217Afterword. Toward a Feminism for the Living / Durba Mitra  241Contributors  251Index  257