Maria Ramnehill – A Transfeminist Manifesto

This lecture will be a presentation on Ett transfeministiskt manifest (A transfeminist manifesto). A transfeminist manifesto could be described as a trans woman’s autobiography, but not in the traditional sense of a chronological narrative. It’s an attempt at analyzing the cultural, medical, legal and political forces that have had an influence on me as a trans woman.

I believe that narrative culture such as newsmedia and journalistic documentaries, movies, and literature have a great impact on both how our society views trans women and also how we view ourselves. I offer an analysis of the transmisogynistic ideas in the popular culture that I grew up with, and trace the evolution of those ideas to more recent movies and tv-shows and show how transgender people in general and trans women in particular are viewed as psychotic, perverse, sexual aggressors or otherwise deceitful. Even though trans representation has been better the last couple of years I try to show how most of it is still problematic. The focus is on Anglo-American popular culture and Swedish popular culture and news media.

Maria Ramnehill is a freelance journalist based in Gothenburg, and the author of Ett transfeministiskt manifest, published by Bokförlaget Atlas in 2016. She writes about popular culture, literature and theater, often with a critical feminist and transgender perspective and contributes regularly to several newspapers and online magazines, including Göteborgs Posten and Fria tidningen. In early 2016 Svenska Dagbladet published a short essay on transgender themes in Swedish literature of the past 20 years.