Julia Michelle Serano is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, trans–bi activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books Whipping Girl, Excluded, and Outspoken. She is also a prolific public speaker who has given many talks at universities and conferences, and her writing is frequently featured in queer, feminist, and pop-culture magazines.
Life
On her blog, SwitchHitter.net, Julia Serano said she first consciously recognized in herself a desire to be female during the late 1970s when she was 11 years old. A few years later, she began crossdressing. At first, she crossdressed secretively, but eventually she started identifying herself openly as a "male crossdresser." Serano attended her first support group for crossdressers in 1994 while living in Kansas. Soon afterward, Serano moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she met her wife, Dani, in 1998. Around this time, Serano began identifying as not only a crossdresser but also as transgender and bigender. In 2001, she began medically transitioning and identifying as a trans woman.
Career
Serano earned her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from Columbia University. She researched genetics and developmental and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Berkeley for seventeen years. Serano is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Her second book, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, was published on September 10, 2013 by Seal Press. Her third book, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism, she published herself under Switch Hitter Press, which she founded along with Switch Hitter Records. Outspoken is a 2017 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her work has appeared in queer, feminist, and pop-culture magazines, including Bitch, Clamor, Kitchen Sink, LiP, make/shift, and Transgender Tapestry. Excerpts of her work have appeared in The Believer and The San Francisco Chronicle, and on NPR. Serano has spoken about transgender and transwomen's issues at numerous universities, often at queer-, feminist-, psychology-, and philosophy-themed conferences. Her writings have also been used in teaching materials in gender studies courses across the United States. Serano is a slam poet, and has given spoken-word performances at universities as well as at events such as the National Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco PrideDyke March and Trans March stages, Ladyfest, outCRY!, Femme 2006 and in The Vagina Monologues. She was a guitarist and vocalist for the band Bitesize from 1997 through the early 2000s, and has also recorded solo music. Serano organizes and hosts GenderEnders, a performance series that features the work of transgender, intersex, and genderqueer artists and allies. It has produced 20 shows. She received a grant to curate "The Penis Issue: Trans and Intersex Women Speak Their Minds," a spoken-word event, as part of the 2007 National Queer Arts Festival. She writes social justice articles on the website Medium. Some topics she frequently writes about include transgender identity, LGBTQ+ visibility, and identity within politics.
