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Featuring critical essays, erotica, and stitched-up memories, Gender/Fucking explores sexual arousal as a site of knowledge about the self and world.
Taking the idea of intellectual masturbation a bit too literally, Florence Ashley draws on their experiences as a transfeminine activist, academic, and slut to interrogate what it means to live in a gendered body in our difficult yet occasionally loving world. With personal essays about the fetishization of trans bodies, recovering from surgery, and losing hope, Florence’s collection celebrates the queer messiness of sex and identity. Through the embrace of its raw and lyrical prose, Gender/Fucking invites the reader into the intimate world of academic smut to ask what it means to be horny on main in a sex-negative world—and what power it might hold. Interviews: What Does Embodied Liberation Look Like?, truthout (17 March 2024); interview for APA Studies on LGBTQ Philosophy (19 November 2024)
Excerpt: The blurred lines between ‘transamory’ and chasing, Daily Xtra (8 March 2024) |
“A rare book that is simultaneously insightful and silly, theoretical and visceral, sexy and heartbreaking, full of provocative and challenging ideas while also being a fun and enjoyable read.” -Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl and Sexed Up
“This book aroused me, laid bare my trauma, and rang a bell deep in my soul. This book could change your life. It changed mine.” -Gwen Marshall, philosopher “Transsexuality has never been sexier.” -Cáel Keegan, author of Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender “By introducing new ways of thinking about love, sex, relationships, and the impending future, this book meditates on the stigma against daring to have a body—and especially a transfeminine body—in public space.” -Amy Marvin, author of Laughing at Trans Women: A Theory of Transmisogyny “One could simply say that Florence’s prose is unpretentious in the candidness that they radiate - but I think it is more than just that, it is also a testament of this irreducible messiness that concentrates into a sexual bedrock that can be simultaneously humiliating and humbling, tragic and comic, serious and playful, a matter of life and death weaved together by love.” -Simone A. Medina Polo, philosopher and interdisciplinary artist |
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Survivors of conversion practices – interventions designed to prevent people from being trans – have likened them to torture. In the last decade, bans on these deeply unethical and harmful acts have proliferated, and governments across the world are considering following suit. However, despite this political momentum, few governments, scholars, or advocates have focused on the conversion experiences of transgender people.
Banning Transgender Conversion Practices centres trans realities to rethink and push forward the legal regulation of conversion therapy. Florence Ashley considers pivotal questions for anyone studying or working to prevent these harmful interventions. What is the scope of the bans? How do they differ across jurisdictions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of legislative approaches to regulating trans conversion therapy? How can we improve these prohibitions? In answering these questions and more, they synthesize statutory interpretation, comparative and constitutional analysis, bioethics, the sociology of professions, and policy evaluation to conclude that preventing conversion efforts necessitates affirmative healthcare professional cultures and the adoption of detailed laws that clearly communicate which practices are banned. Importantly, Banning Transgender Conversion Practices analysis culminates in a carefully annotated model law that offers meticulous guidance for legislatures and policymakers. This compelling study will interest legal scholars, policymakers, lawyers, judges, health care professionals, 2SLGBTQIA+ advocates, and anyone interested in improving the lives of trans people. |
“Meticulously deconstructing layer afer layer, they place conversion practices under the lens of their analytical scrutiny and bring clarity to a debate that is most ofen waged on the basis of only prejudice.” -Victor Madrigal-Borloz, UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
“A thoughtful, thoroughly researched, and important contribution to this project.” -Jennifer Levi & Kevin Barry, Harvard Law Review ”Nothing short of a rhetorical tour de force. A must-read for jurists, healthcare professionals and policy folks who want to understand this critical issue in a clear, concise, yet thorough manner.” -Brigitte Pellerin, National Magazine ”This book provides an astonishing theoretical foundation of the key arguments and the model to approach the fight against these conversion practices.” -Rebecca Sanaeikia, Medical Law International ”Although the book is scholarly in approach, Ashley excels at directing the reader, whether or not a legal or clinical scholar, to the painful real-world issues.” -Reese Minshew, LGBT Health |