Genderberg has exploded since my operation. I'm going to plug it to anyone I know who'd be interested (which unfortunately isn't many people, because it's hard to be against pornstitution these days and people suck, but I'll find someone!)
Anyway, what did I come here for? (I need caffeine--it's early here and I'm always pressed for time, I really need someone to stick a drip in my arm so I can get my morning hit intravenously). Ah, yes. Books!
Has anyone heard of Sheila Jeffreys' new book 'Beauty & Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West?' (I know Laurelin has, 'cuz she wrote about it on her blog). I've got it and it rocks; it explains all about the sexism implicit in cutting up women's bodies (as in cosmetic surgery) to hew to male-approved beauty standards. It also draws an interesting paralell between labiaplatsy surgery and Female Genital Mutilation in Third World countries, and the hypocritical way Western liberals applaud the former but are repelled by the latter (there's lots of really horrific stuff in there, like a porn star with massively augmented breasts--weighing in at six kilos--who underwent increasing cosmetic surgery procedures as a form of performance art, so be warned if you're squeamish.)
There's also a discussion on the radical feminist opposition to transgenderism (I could post this part on the forum that dealt with it, but hey, two birds with one stone) where Jeffreys gives an example of how the MTF notion of womanhood is limited to either embracing 'Whore Chic' or a 1950's style of femininity (and in the case of the latter, the example is of a woman whose husband became a female, and the bio woman was the one who did all the housework, while the husband spent the day trying on frocks and painting his face.) The idea that there's certain behaviours that are called 'masculine' (and that women can't do unless they occupy a male body)is the crux of why radical feminists have been against trangenderism (and why they wanted to abolish gender, not do the pomo thing and create more expressions of it). I know that some of you are against this idea, I'm not completely for it myself, but if you want to know WHY older rad fems aren't all 'yay trans!', then this book explains it in no uncertain terms.
Anyway, it mostly deals with beauty practices and it's a great resource. Totally blows away any liberal fem bull notions of cosmetic surgery being all about choice & agency. I Heart Jeffreys.