The Book of Doors had a couple of fun twists, but also some instances of torture and body horror that I just don’t want to read anymore. There is enough cruelty in the real world not to have it in fiction too, especially when it doesn’t really contribute toward making the villains more compelling. On balance, the book was okay but I feel like it could have been more.
The second of the books I bought in Maine is The Myth of the Wrong Body by Miquel Missé. I’m only a little ways in, but I find I have to exercise patience with the translation, and the different culture the author is coming from. The word “transgenderism”, in English, is in the domain of bigots as an attempt to delegitimize trans people — so it’s weird to see a trans activist using it. And also, the basic premise the author has, that his body was “stolen” by transition, plays too neatly into the current transphobic penchant for bullshit stories about regret and detransition… but no transphobe is going to read the writings of a trans activist and latch onto this, they’re just going to continue making shit up from whole cloth.
I’ll have to read the rest of the book to judge better. I’ve seen some reviewers say they disagreed with some points in the book but overall found it a worthwhile read. I have not seen anyone saying the author is a transphobe or struggling with internalized transphobia. So far, it seems to me like the author’s heart is in the right place and I agree on key points.
Most people have only heard two or three trans narratives: the transphobic one that says it’s all lies, perhaps the equally transphobic “autogynephilia” narrative (that trans women are just gay men who want to attract men), and the wrong body narrative. But the latter can also be problematic, and that’s not a radical idea in 2025.
The idea behind it is that trans people, through no choice of their own, were “born in the wrong body” and the fix is to change the body. The problems with this are:
- It makes transness a disease to be cured, a source of unhappiness; only cis people are allowed to be happy. Medical transition effectively makes a trans person into a cisgender one.
- The model is very much rooted in the gender binary and gender essentialism, including the narrative that physical sex and psychological gender must be in alignment.
- It also confused gender with sexual orientation. Historically, any whiff of queerness or nonconformity in front of the multiple psychiatrists, doctors, judges etc. involved in the process was grounds for denial. They “reasoned” that if a trans woman loved women, she must not really be a woman.
- Likewise, any sign that it was a choice or a desire on the part of a trans person was grounds for denial. Proof of suffering was required, pursuit of happiness was not enough.
- Anyone who just wanted to live as their gender identity without medical intervention was invalidated. People were divided between “transsexual” and “transvestite” (making it about physical sex or physical clothing, not about gender).
As far as I’m concerned, none of this denies that medical transition is extremely helpful for a lot of trans folks and that it saves lives. But the wrong body narrative doesn’t fit everyone. I don’t recall now whether it was this book that said it or I saw it elsewhere, but “I wasn’t born in the wrong body, I was born in the wrong society” resonates with me. (If I could magically change several things about my body to suit my specifications, I sure would! But I’m neither dysphoric nor interested in the hormones and/or surgery route. And frankly, genitals are low down on my list of concerns no matter what.)