There wasn’t a commonly used word to describe a boy who wanted to be a girl in 1979.

But that’s exactly who Julia Serano was.

Serano used her own experiences as a transgender woman to talk about how the transgender community has evolved since her adolescence, and where she hopes the trans* liberation movement will go in the future.

She shared her wisdom as the keynote speaker for the third annual Trans* Day of Liberation. The LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University hosted the event in Watson Theater on Monday night. Serano, a transgender activist and writer, spoke about trans* activism and referred to excerpts from her new book, “Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.” A question-and-answer session followed her speech.

Topics within Serano’s speech included raising awareness about the struggles and achievements of the trans* community, and furthering the trans* liberation movement — an effort to improve the treatment of transgender people.

“Sometimes you can be really shocked at how much progress happens over a short period of time,” Serano said, but later clarified, “Binary gender norms haven’t budged all that much in all these years.”

The most well-known day for the trans* community is the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. TDOR is held to memorialize and honor trans* people that have been murdered in the past year for being transgender, said Abby Fite, an administrative specialist in the LGBT Resource Center.

“It is a chance to give tribute to people and draw attention to trans* people that are targeted, and at a higher risk of being victimized,” Fite said.

The Trans* Day of Liberation was started three years ago at SU to highlight the progression of the trans* community, namely the rise of the liberation movement.

“Mainstream discourse is focused on challenges and deficits of the trans* community,” Fite said. “Essentially, things that are hard, which is a very limited view. We implemented this event to celebrate the successes of the trans* community.”

Sophia Bravo, a sophomore, television, radio and film major who identifies as gender queer, said one of the largest problems with inclusion in feminist and LGBT movements is the insistence on the gender binary, or the duality of gender.

“It is not evil,” Bravo said about the gender binary. “But rather, used as a litmus test of who is considered a woman or man. Who is privileged to feminist space and who isn’t? Who is privileged to queer space and who isn’t?”

In her discussion, Serano said she hopes that rather than trying to fight gender binary or patriarchy, people should try to stop gender entitlement, which she defined as when someone projects their expectations and assumptions about gender and sexuality onto others.

Serano promoted the idea that the problems commonly associated with the gender binary — disregard for specific groups of people and oversimplification of gender identity — do not stem from the idea of two genders, but rather with gender entitlement.

“Society expects people to behave in certain ways and punishes them if they do not,” she said.

Beyond just what society expects of the trans* community, Serano addressed the fracturing within the community itself, pointing out that as the trans* community has grown and garnered recognition, differences have begun to surface.

“When we expect all members to act or behave in a specific way in order to be a bona fide member of a community, what we are actually doing is creating stereotypes,” she said.

Serano promoted the idea that the trans* liberation movement should not be viewed as just a movement just for trans* people, but as a movement that allows anyone to color out of the lines of gender.

She then closed with an original spoken word piece, saying, “My gender is a work of nonfiction.”

Published on April 8, 2014 at 1:30 am

Contact Anjali: acalwis@syr.edu