“Corset, Shame, and Cat Ears: On Transfemininity” by J. Szpilka is one of those rare books that reshapes the conversation about trans lives without asking for pity or applause. It refuses to be another elegy about violence or another manifesto pleading for respect. Instead, it insists on life, messy, sensual, awkward, intellectual, and sometimes hilarious life. Szpilka’s book is a kind of reclamation, a way of saying that transfemininity does not need to justify itself through pain. It exists, it shines, it plays video games, reads theory, shops for corsets, listens to music, and dreams of better worlds.
Szpilka weaves a deeply personal yet sharply analytical narrative that draws from feminist theory, pop culture, erotic fantasy, and lived experience. There are traces of growing up in front of computer screens, of navigating shame and pleasure, and of learning to inhabit a trans life with tenderness rather than apology. The book’s rhythm moves between theory and confession, between citation and emotion. It is part essay, part love letter, part resistance text. Szpilka does not simply talk about transfemininity as a category; she performs it on the page, with all its contradictions intact. Her writing feels like an invitation to witness the texture of being trans rather than a demand to understand it.
