Book Review: Trans/Rad/Fem - A Searing Intervention
Talia Bhatt's latest book - Trans/Rad/Fem - heralds a brand new chapter for transfeminist politics.
You can (and should) purchase Talia Bhatt’s brand new book - Trans/Rad/Fem - RIGHT NOW for Kindle, in paperback, or as a PDF/epub.
You do not need to be a radical feminist to love this book.
Talia Bhatt’s latest work, Trans/Rad/Fem, provides a searing intervention into contemporary understandings of gender. The text is materialist to its core, framing the suffering of gender marginalised people as not rooted solely in our identities or our ‘innate’ differences, but rather the violence done to us under patriarchy.
Bhatt’s razor-sharp autopsy of patriarchy takes inspiration from second-wave feminism, but does so critically, identifying that ‘good’ feminism does not belong to any one period in feminist history. Indeed, the history of feminist thought has been one that has regularly denied epistemic authority to the most marginalised - especially to those who are transfeminine, disabled, and racialised (as Bhatt is herself). Our liberation, then, lies in our future, and we can take inspiration from various works and period in feminist history, whilst remaining critical of their failures, to build our new transfeminist project.
Bhatt’s writing unapologetically centres women, and the millenia of oppression which have defined their abjection. Bhatt lucidly illustrates how the need to control women as reproductive, domestic, and sexual assets - both private and public - underpins our construction of sex/gender. Yet Bhatt’s theorising also does much to explain the position of other feminised subjects - including nonbinary people, transmasculine people, and even gay men - deftly illustrating the various ways in which the need to coercively maintain gender hierarchy means all of whom are subjected to gendered violence.
I have no doubt that some of Bhatt’s analysis will make people feel uncomfortable. For example, the insistence that there might, for some people, be an element of choice involved in our gender/sexuality - that a lesbian might simply choose to not have relationships with men, rather than this being something innate and inalienable - flies in the face of ‘born this way’ narratives which have become dogma. But what Bhatt is proposing here is both revolutionary and necessary - that we must condemn the violence against us not because we simply ‘can’t help’ our queerness, but rather, that, even if we could simply choose to be queer, we would have every right to do so. By identifying the violence that forces us into serving cis men, and patriarchy, at every moment of our lives, Bhatt calls for a world in which queer people can actually be free.
Bhatt’s writing is at its absolute strongest when it is engaging with other literature - and, most often, tearing it apart. From Janice Raymond’s ‘Transmiosgyny Bible’ to Czech plays about robots, Bhatt is punchy in her critiques, and in using these works to illustrate far broader points about how gender, often insidiously, operates throughout them.
Like many works of trans theory before hers, Bhatt utilises her own personal, autobiographical experiences to provide perspective on wider phenomena. Her lived experiences with gendered and racialised violence undergird the text, adding heft to the brutality she depicts. As a trans woman from the global south, Bhatt refuses to concede her epistemic authority, blazing with anger at the contemporary queer and gender theorists who mysticise and romanticise Indian culture, in purported service of a decolonial perspective, which, in reality, perpetuates orientalism. The value of this work cannot be understated.
If there is one criticism to be made of Bhatt’s book, it is that it perhaps tries to achieve too much. It is easy to see why - the pages scream of a desperation to be heard, of ideas long-reflected on pouring relentlessly on to the page in a profound bid to resist epistemicide. However, the pace of the book is almost overwhelming, as Bhatt races along, daring the reader to keep up with her incisive critique of the totality of violence which forms our world. Some of her brilliant ideas, I feel, might have benefited from a slower excavation, a deeper marinade - but this might be a ‘skill issue’ on the part of the reader. Amidst a world collapsing about us, I understand why the pace is so fast.
Bhatt’s work, I feel, heralds a brand new chapter for transfeminist politics. Though there is much work still to be done, Bhatt provides a beautiful and solid foundation to build on. I hope people will take her ideas and run with them, informing them with new lived perspectives (such as transmasculine ones). But I think every trans person would benefit from reading this text, from understanding how Bhatt got here, from engaging with her perspective, and from reflecting on what the possibilities for our future might be. Even if you end up disagreeing with Trans/Rad/Fem - it provides a cannot-miss opportunity to think differently about the world and engage more critically with gender, and the violence which surrounds us.