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Hil Malatino opened his talk on his new book “Trans Care” with not his own summary of the book, but rather the commentaries of readers.

He noted a positive review, where Jules Gill-Peterson called his book “our little yellow book,” a reference to Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. He then read a critical review written by an anonymized Goodreads reviewer deeming his book “ultimately feels rough and scattershot, like a series of disparate essays in search of a connecting thesis.”

Malatino, an assistant professor in the department of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State, has authored two published books. His second book, “Trans Care,” covers the care practices that transgender people and communities build in a society filled with anti-trans hate and systematic trans exclusion. Syracuse University’s LGBTQ Studies Program hosted the event for SU students, and assistant professor of women’s and gender studies PJ DiPietro moderated the discussion.

In acknowledging the critical comment, Malatino used this event as a platform to streamline the theses of his book, which he deems to be so obvious that he does not think necessary to be repeated. The theses includes: “trans people are exhausted,” “trans people are sick of the bullsh*t,” “trans people would like to live our lives in the absence of critical commentary about whether we do, have, or should exist,” and “trans people know what trans people need.”

After this brief presentation, Malatino started his first official book reading with his chapter “Theorizing Trans Care.” The chapter addresses the question of burnout in the trans community and the need to end the concept of care as debt. Occasionally, along his reading, Malatino stopped and provided an explanation or context for some of his terms and writings.

The Q&A section opened up many conversations surrounding both the theories around trans lives and trans care as well as the reality that trans communities are facing.

An audience member asked, “What do you think about this formulation?” and “What do you think is the relationship between care and love?” In answer to this question, Malatino noted that while he hopes that care and love can coincide, he thinks that we should not require love in caring.

“This is not a book about institutionalized forms of care,” wrote Liz Montegary at Nursing Clio, one of the commentators of the book that Malatino referenced. “This is a book about how trans people care for one another.”

Malatino recalled his story of being asked by the dean of the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State to hold a training for staff with regards to transgender inclusion. These works are asked of him even though Malatino is not a trainer. Many transgender and LGBTQ people are not paid for this kind of labor — and even when they are paid, they may experience burnout from it.

Many audience members were also curious about Malatino’s thoughts on current issues. One of the very first questions concerned a bill in Florida’s state legislature which requires grade schools and colleges to divide athletes according to their biological sex and bans transgender people from participating in women’s sports.

As someone who is from Florida, Malatino is “pissed” and he considered this type of legislation to make children feel “radically unsafe.”

Published on April 14, 2021 at 11:58 pm