Author Julia Serano Separates Sex From Stigma in Sexed Up
Atlantic cover story on detransitioning — but pulls the covers of the faulty methods and factual errors rampant throughout them by mining data and fact-checking sources.In her third book, Sexed Up, Serano focuses her brilliant mind on sexualization, “when a person is nonconsensually reduced to their real or imagined sexual attributes,” and how this process results from what she identifies as five mindsets that binarize how we perceive and interpret people.
In naming these mindsets, Serano endeavors to bring awareness to how forcefully binaries shape society from her standpoint as a bisexual trans woman.
More critically, in exposing these biased thought patterns and perceptions, Serano aims to destigmatize sex, putting forth a vision for how we can live ethically sexual lives without reducing people to stereotypes or singular aspects of their identities.Sexualization is the centerpiece of your new book, with a clear emphasis on the verb part of speech, the action — to sexualize — to examine how each of us perceives and interprets sex, gender, and sexuality.
How and when did you arrive at the subject of your new book? When I transitioned from male to female back in 2001, the most jarring aspect for me was all the different sexual motives and meanings that people suddenly started projecting onto me.
