reading recs pt. 1
23rd of August, 2025the recommendation list
i've been reading lately (though mostly slowly decomposing and stressing and playing factorio instead of reading). and i always come across very interesting articles, essays, or even wikipedia entries that i think other people should read too! so, here's a small list of recent interesting articles that i've read that i think people might enjoy and afterwards a few short passages on what i think about each of the article linked:
"the only moral abortion is my abortion" by Joice Arthur -- the article talks about how many anti-choice and pro-life women get abortions themselves and how they rationalise such a decision.
what is transmisogyny by Julia Serano -- the author expands on her original definition of transmisogyny (Serano coined the term in her book Whipping Girl) and adds more explanation and examples from her writing which she has done after publishing Whipping Girl. a great read for anyone who's interested in this topic.
"cringe" content in a society of control (PDF) by Caroline Brody -- a bit more complex read, this undergrad paper looks at the culture of cringe through the lens of "societies of control" by Gilles Deleuze. according to the author, "cringe" culture contributes to the creation of a "control society" where instead of a single authority that oppresses people, it is instead the whole system and the people themselves who keep others in line. the viewed and the viewer becomes one and the same.
my thoughts
this section is not meant to be a deep and thoughtful analyses of these articles (im writing this at 1am and NOT editing). instead, this is more of a thought dump and, in a way, an archive to remind myself of what i've thought while reading these texts
abortions
one thought striked me while reading the article -- i feel sad for those women. it is sad to realise that some people have managed to trap themselves in such a tar pit out of which is very difficult to get out. to think that many of these women feel bad and guilty for getting an abortion simply because they were coerced or raised in a deeply anti-abortion environment is saddening. i think it's on par of whenever i see some trans person who have so much internalised transphobia, especially one that they've learned through TERF ideology, that they hate themselves so much (example being a user on Tumblr expressing how gross they felt because they were a "man" but wanted to be a woman). i think this hits very close. i might never experience pregnancy (and im fine with that) and i can't necessarily relate to those anti-abortion people, but while reading the article i just wished for all of them to eventually find a good community, one that is not filled with so much hatred towards women rights and women in general.
it's always shocking to me seeing women who are against women rights and this is definitely not a new phenomenon -- look at all the anti-suffragists during the suffrage movement in the UK. a lot of them were women! i think this shows how it's not enough to simply be a woman (cis, trans, or otherwise), because that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand and support feminism. i think feminism has become so diluted in the modern society, in the sense that if you ask most people if they consider themselves feminist, chances are, they'll reply yes, but if you prod that line of questioning further, you'll realise that they haven't actually interacted or engaged with feminist theory. they just think "feminism = i support women" which is a gross oversimplification of it. same goes for any theory (be it critical race theory, gender theory, etc). take me, for example, an immigrant trans woman, but my identity doesn't mean that i can't be racist, anti-immigrant, or a transphobe. being trans is not the same as engaging with gender theory and i haven't engaged with it.
transmisogyny
transmisogyny is a thing that often causes me stress talking about. transmisogyny discourses have filled social media, including Tumblr, where i spend most of my time. and if you've read the last paragraph, you know that i'm not expert at gender theory because i haven't read it. i know of transmisogyny simply from other trans women and the larger trans community. but i have one thing to say:
a lot of people who are against transmisogyny (or TMA/TME terminology) (usually these people on Tumblr are who are called "transandro bros", "transandrophobia" being the opposite of transmisogyny, a portmanteau of transphobia and androphobia = discrimination of men). a lot of those people criticise the book Whipping Girl where the word trans-misogyny comes from, and criticise Julia Serano, on the basis that she discriminates non-binary, transmasculine people and trans men in her book. because in the book Whipping Girl, Serano doesn't talk a lot about how tranmasculine people/trans men experience transphobia, as well as intersex people, non-binary people, etc. however, in the article "What is Transmisogyny" (or in one of the sources she provides in it), Serano explains the reason why she doesn't talk a lot about people outside of the transfeminine spectre and why the book feels more like a collection of her opinions, rather than a definitive and comprehensive academic resource on trans women -- because it is! Serano initially wrote the book as a collection of her personal essays and opinions. it's not meant to be a definitive guide on trans people and the trans community, instead it's a book by one trans women and her perspective of experiencing transphobia, misogyny, and transmisogyny. Serano has said that she never expected the book to become such a hit or be studied in universities. and she herself admits that the book misses a lot of theory and that that theory needs to be worked on by other people. and she's glad that other people work on that! so i think people who criticise Serano or her book miss this very important point and do so in bad faith.
cringe
i stumbled on this article while talking about cringe with my friend. i'm a person who is mostly cringe-free. i practically live on Tumblr, speak in Tumblrish and am not afraid to be absolutely weird around my friends. i do feel embarrassment and especially second-hand embarrassment from watching films or kids, but i'm pretty okay with cringe and i'm not afraid of "being cringe". i think we should all embrace being free and weird.
however, reading this undergrad paper (and im no psych major), i think my understanding of cringe and the way it works as a vector of control in a society has expanded quite marginally. now, i don't necessarily 100% take this as a solid fact -- it is an undergraduate paper and is just the author sharing her perspective on it and looking at cringe through a new lens. but i do agree that instilling the fear of embarrassment or embarrassment into people is a powerful tool. embarrassment feels awful, especially when a person has social anxiety, and in an age where anything can be recorded and kept forever online, this tool becomes even more powerful in the hands of the crowd. obviously this isn't done or perpetrated by some single bad actor or some secret cabal. im no conspiracy theorist and i understand that societal trends often arise not from one individual action, but from a mass of individual actions and for many complex reasons.
i don't have anything to add to the paper, it's just great in its own right and has made me hate cringe culture even more now. you should absolutely read it, even if you disagree with it, it's still a new perspective and can be refreshing to take a look at "cringe" things differently.
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