I was really stunned by how clear and consistent the author expressed her ideas in the book, sometimes even a bit wordy, in order to express herself thoroughly, but in a way I actually like.
Another thing I like about Serano's book is that after she describes her feelings, she can not only boil the intrinsic theories down for transsexual people like herself, but can also analogously apply the logic for cissexual people, in a way we can hardly see as being "normal" since we never bother to look at, which was explained as our blind-spot in the passage.
Like the all the other people who are concerned with this topic, I did ask a lot of questions even before I took this class. For example, I had the exact question Serano asked to cissexual people, such as myself, "how do I know that I am really straight". What's interesting is that in China, there is a popular way of answering this question by the young people. "You never know whether you are straight or not until you met the one person who is meant to be". Well, you can just think this is another lame novel plot, but what I want to say is that when these questions are raised, it may show even more misunderstanding than those who don't ask--just like it was indicated by the author. People ask this kind of question because they can't even put themselves in the shoes and imagine the way transsexual or homosexual people feel. It might not be because that they don't want to do so, but instead they are not able to imagine and feel it by themselves. This can also be boiled down to the fact of the existing blind-spot. We are blind since we are blocked to see the things we have in common, thus unable to find what's truly different and what are the same, that is why they can't have the empathy to understand.
That is why Serano explained the concept of subconscious sex and conscious sex and use them to give the blind-spots a location. For cissexual people, we have the same subconscious and conscious sex that's why we don't have to worry about the inconsistency. Yet, for people who have inconsistent subconscious and conscious sexes, things can be very miserable because they are not able to find their right position and at the same time they have to struggle to make efforts ignoring all the labels other people give them. After figuring most things our, transsexual people would take the sex-changing process after the long-term fight because they know where they really want to be in the end. However, that is to say, for cissexual like myself, I have the same reason not to change my sexuality as those who choose to do so--to stay consistent with one's subconscious sexuality, where the preferred positions lie for the most of the time, not for any external reasons.
One thing to add is that, as the author described, cissexual people are kind of hardwired to expect their bodies to be male or female, which made me understand how our thoughts function more. Combining with the theory that we still subconsciously discriminate femininity in a way we don't realize, I get to understand that some girls want to become boys for the reason of receiving privilege and advantages, instead of feeling as a boy from the beginning.
P.S. I always had the doubt whether I should feel sorry for some transsexual people since they were born with more struggles and mind sufferings that most cissexual people might not have. Is that a kind of discrimination? Or it is "understanding?"
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